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“I hope Grog doesn’t kill him”.
Keyleth didn’t want that, really. Didn’t she?
They were at this musty bar, air damp with patrons’ sweat, thick with smoke of cigars and candles, every table, every floor board sticky with drying alcohol. One moment they were sitting stiffly, watching each other warily. They were like arrows ready to be shot. Keyleth was clenching her cup, white knuckles even paler on the dark wood.
She didn’t want to hurt the guy. But others?..
Tension stretched their bodies like a bowstring, stretched the bow of time itself making the single moment of quiet last forever.
And suddenly Grog broke the spell. Stillness – gone with a single tiger-pounce. He jumped from his seat and sent Scanlan’s half-orc flying across the room with his fist.
Natural flyer he was, graceful as a bird. He did not fall. He did not stagger. No, he just smiled wide like a happy pup he was. Ready to play.
And then they laughed, and Keyleth laughed with them, and thick, musty air took away their anger, even if for a moment.
A bar-fight. A game.
Their table was brought down on the half-orc head. With a crash of a falling tree the wood cracked sending splinters all around. Frozen, Keyleth watched one hungry splinter dig into her palm and bite her flesh and drink her boiling blood.
She snorted and nearly spilled her drink. Sweet ale, sweet and strong and every gulp sent the room spinning and lights flickering. She giggled all the way through as if she was flying up, as if she was falling down.
“Hey, Chod…”
“Lionel, really”. Percy put his hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. “You are usually so good at this!”
She was. But for some reason she didn’t want to be now. She felt like spatting “Chod” at him again. Or calling him “Idiot”. Bloody stupid half-orc. Half of something, never whole. Always missing – something, someone.
Keyleth wasn’t like him, she was sure of that.
Her skin pickled and sizzled under the clothes and the red hairs on the neck were standing up, moving in circles. She always felt like that before turning into Minxie. And suddenly all she wanted was to bite into his throat and tear it and spit and growl like an animal she felt she was.
Something burned inside her chest so bright and wanted to burst out so hard she thought she might vomit up a sun.
Keyleth grinned at the ever-confused half-orc.
“Chard”. He didn’t deserve to be Lionel. She wanted to howl at him: “Chard! Chard! Chard!”. It was the sound with which spotless steel was brough down on prisoners’ necks, air cut in neatly symmetrical blocks. It was the harmony of butcher’s knife.
She liked him. She smiled and laughed and made jokes. She wanted to chase him like a prey through the forest, bellowing and crying and sending fire at the sky. The gaping wound of her mouth would be the last thing he ever sees. Her mouth – full of his hot black blood.
Chod, Chod, Chod. Oh, how she hated him for being with Scanlan. For Scanlan being with him and not them.
For leaving. For coming back.
Chod, Chod, Chod.
Silly her! Can’t remember the name! The simple name.
It was an accident. Of course. And nothing more.
And then Grog hit him. And again. And again.
And for some reason it felt so good. She felt like it was not Grog but her throwing the punch – but it wasn’t Chod, or Chard, or Lionel who received it either.
It was one bloody gnome and she wanted to punch all shit out of him. All the lying, the manipulating, the prevarication. She wanted him to choke on his lies so that another one might never come out of his foul mouth. Wanted it so hard that her fingers throbbed.
How dare he come again to them – in disguise! And deceive them! To steal the bloody bullets!
But she was still okay with him, wasn’t she?
“Maybe some friends do drag you down”. He did.
A sudden thought stroke her like a lighting, for a moment illuminating dusk-covered bar. Didn’t they want him to lie? But to others, not to them. It should be so easy to decide, when to lie and when to not.
Then why no one of them wanted to? Why did they leave the choice to him and him alone?
“You are still a heartbreaker”. But not to her, Keyleth knew. Her heart wasn’t broken. She was glad to see Scanlan, was she not? The speech she made honouring his name – wasn’t it enough of a prove that they still were friends?
But why then did it hurt so bad, to see him again?
When Grog left, the disappointment swell in her like a snake preparing for an attack.
“Hey, Lion. Come here”.
She raised her hand. Why was it in a fist? She saw the knuckles whitening. She smiled all the way, she grinned, she laughed.
It’s all a game, really!
He tilted his face to her. His stupid bloodied face, smiling, asking for another broken tooth.
It was so easy. To punch him and never stop. Grog showed her, how. You take your rage and you let it burn until it is so bright that it blinds your eyes with tears. And then you take it into your palm. And hold it. Make a fist of your rage. Make it unyielding like iron, unbreaking like a king’s will. And hammer at the world until it makes sense.
They didn’t stop her.
Keyleth did it.
Boulder, Parchment, Shears. Suddenly the fist of stone became the open palm, weightless, wind-guided paper. She would always win with paper in their games when she was a little girl. Before her childhood ended, before the only thing left of her mother was a single leg.
And then Chod brought her down with one hearty punch.
It’s all a game. Everybody laughed, and she laughed, holding her bloody tooth in her hand, lying on the drink-spilled floor, body shaking. And then she couldn’t breathe anymore, couldn’t see.
It took her a moment to realise that it was not fire that left blazing tracks on her cheeks, but water. She was crying. And for some reason Keyleth wasn’t angry anymore. Only sad. The games were long since over – she saw it in Scanlan’s dark, worried eyes.
They were going to another ziggurat and they might not even comeback. And Keyleth cried and cried, until her bitten lips were covered with salt as if she was drinking the bottomless sea.
“Lionel”, she mumbled drunkenly as she was lifted up. She felt so light that if big gentle hands would let go of her, she would surely be carried away by wind. “I am sorry”.
Sorry she was, bitterly so. But Keyleth couldn’t tell for what – and for who.
Lionel, Lionel, Lionel, she kept repeating to herself like a spell smelling of old forest and burned bark. He should remember her – whole. Not the ghost of the leg that would be left of her.
He should remember her whole. And she, in turn, should remember him – as the young and stupid and playful lion he was.
“Lionel”, she whispered finally and let the gentle darkness, soft like a raven’s feather, take her. Peaceful, even if only for one last night.