#11.9.15

Denny’s with Aisha

Rain!

106/100 on my history midterm (Hella killed those EC points)

Caught up with WTNV

She had bought a long roll of paper from the seller on her street and a good new pen with a hard nib. New ink too, a bright blue that reminded her of bird feathers. She scratched a few test lines at the top of the roll to check that the pen was working and then lay it down to think.

The player had started up something slow and deliberate and he was not exceptional but clearly had some skill. It was a song she did not know and she watched him for a while, the rosin dust shaking from the strings, the light sharp on one curve of the wood. She smiled to herself and looked about the rest of the room and when she took a breath she could smell the fire in the hearth and the smoke from a pipe that someone had lit. Traces of rot from the walls and also the scent of water that had stood too long and some other distant thing that she could not place.

And there were the faces of the ones she sat with, old and young. A group of elders in one corner sitting at a game of cards and a pair of children out of firststudy for lunch, a boy and a girl. Not far from the player in his corner there was a family with a small child and the father had it in his arms, propping it up to see the player at his trade, and the child’s arms were raised up, reaching for the sound--

Ai, mind if I sit? someone said, and she jerked out of reverie and sent her pen skittering. Ia, she said. Chair’s free.

’s not much room, the girl said. Busy day.

Is at that.

You writer, poet?

Not sure yet.

Artist?

Na. Can’t draw a line with a straightedge, hardly.

The other girl glanced down at the page and saw the aimless marks on it and then took the chair and sat. She leaned in and seemed about to speak but then pulled back. Won’t keep you from your work then, she said, and set the book she carried on the table and opened it to read.

-

They sat in a comfortable silence. One scratching with her pen, the other engrossed in her book to the point where she no longer heard the player or the song or the noises of what was around her. The book was of falconry, an old text newly printed, the words in larger type on the yellowed paper. From time to time she would take a louder breath or mutter slightly and the other girl would look up to watch her. By the time the next page was turned she had looked away again.

What’s your name? The girl reading asked eventually.

She ceased her writing and looked up. Heren, she said.

I like your handwriting.

Heren glanced down at the splintered scrawl that had cast ink across all corners of the page and shook her head. I can’t stand it, she said. It’s a new pen and I can’t make it work. Or maybe the paper isn’t right.

Could be you need a smoother surface.

Could. What’s your name then?

Lesse.

Less?

Lesse. You have to work to get it perfect but it’s different. E on the end of it.

And you’re just here to read?

I hate my parents, she said. She smiled in a lopsided way and then shrugged. Still living with them, though. I came to get away.

Why?

I don’t know. I just do. I think I always have. I’ve never really thought about why, they just--

She took a breath and her shoulders and arms and all her being seemed to raise a few inches with it and when she let it out it seemed somehow too little to account for all she had taken into her. I just do, she said.

Heren was tapping the rearend of the pen on the table beside her sheet and she made another two quick marks at the top of her page to get the ink flowing again and then the nib tore through and caught in a notch in the table and snapped. She held up the pen with a kind of lighthearted disgust and her mouth was slightly open such that Lesse laughed. Not your day, she said. Is it.