NaNoWriMo 2016 — Day 2 — The Peddler Sage
The woman, Lynn, bowed with a slight flourish, seemly marking her even more out of place among the pauper fields.
“Then, it seems, I am done quite an honor to meet a woman of your lineage.” She held the bow for long moments, and the silence dragged on becoming a thing of it’s own dying breath.
I thought perhaps my mother would take offense with such mockery.
Anzil bared her teeth and ever so slightly her claws gleamed in the light. By first accounts she appeared to be enraged but her words instead stilled me.
“Who are you woman to speak such poisonous words?”
Lynn remained bowed as still as I was, though unlike my own confusion she seemed to understand in the way the adults often could and just as often presummed that I could not. Though I admit in this case I was lost at the exchange.
“I am but as you see me this day and nothing more,” Lynn replied, unmoved by my mother’s apparent anger. “A simple woman who has chosen to see as much of the world as might and remember as I may.”
My mother’s low rumble reverberated in my chest.
“As for what you fear, know that I am only here to be on my way and nothing more to you or yours.” Lynn’s warm smile seemed to melt into her words even as it remained unseen in the bow. “And as my path would take by here, I thought to offer but a simple honor as has long been forgotten and denied by those who should know better but be them fools.”
“Fools?”
“Indeed, after all forsaking what should be honored, they could be nothing less.”
The tension in Anzil’s frame lessened ever the so slightly.
“And you? Are you one of these very fools?”
“I should hope not, but then that is often the answer of the fools themselves.” A grin now, still unseen, but felt once more. “But no, I just simply am on my way and wish do my little part to right a wrong. Though I know I can not hope to change the weight of the years. At least I might hold the line and be one who did not look away.”
“I see,” Anzil’s said her claws once more pulled back against her pads and the frame of her jaw no longer strained with anger.
“Good…say, might I rise again?”
Anzil’s eyes widen and she rocked back a bit.
“Of course, of course!”
