Short story
„Don’t
you think it's rather strange we get along so well?“
Freda
propped her chin on her palm and eyed her opposite from deep, green
eyes. There were small laughter lines all around them that belied her
apparent youthfulness and a careful inspection of her reddish hair
would have revealed more than just the occasional grey hair. Freda
was sitting on a roughly hewn table, a plate with cleanly gnawed down
pheasant bones in front of her. Crumbs of bread were scattered around
the plate, further testimony of a happily devoured meal. Freda wasn’t
the most orderly person, but she knew her opposite didn’t pay
attention to such small details.
“You’ve
got some fat on your cheek,” His voice was deep, resounding, like a
bell. Freda grimaced and then wiped her finger over her cheek.
Instead of cleaning the oily finger on a piece of cloth, however, she
licked it carefully clean. She gave him a stern look.
“I
notice you haven’t answered my question. You don’t agree?”
The
slightly belligerent tone caused her opposite to sigh in mock
exasperation, but there was an amused expression in his bronze
coloured eyes. He propped up his elbows and steepled his fingers,
while he gave himself an air of careful consideration. It wasn’t a
natural gesture to his kind but he had observed it in humans and
adopted it, partly because he realised how such studied gestures
annoyed Freda. She promptly scowled and then, with an attempt at
studied indifference herself (which failed miserably) she slid from
the bench and began to clear the table. The plate was carried
outside, the bones thrown over the side of the cliff by the entrance,
the plate scrubbed clean with sand in the spring nearby. Once back
she cleaned the table by sweeping all the crumbs together into her
hollow hand. With one gesture she threw them all into her mouth and
ate them. He noticed it without comment, without even allowing her to
know that he had noticed. Such gestures came naturally to her, but
whenever she became aware of them she was deeply embarrassed. He
didn’t mind, but he was pained by the knowledge of what lay behind
such small gestures; the deprivation of a childhood spent in abysmal
poverty, where the next meal was probably several days away and then
insufficient. He still remembered her as the small girl, so grubby
one was hesitant to venture a guess as to her natural skin colour,
hair a tangled mess that ate combs, so emaciated every joint in her
body showed up prominently. He still remembered the disgust he felt
at that moment. His kind would never allow one of theirs to get into
such a shape. But the village she had come from had been blind to her
plight, and that of several other children. He silently chuckled.
Getting her to take her first bath had been a bit of a struggle.
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