Open The Bilge In The Bucket Sing Me To Sleep

[Eskila]

"As the winter months draw near, I'm often reminded of the way that clouds look at sunset. Like all the fire in the world decided enough was enough and it was time to go home, flying up to the sun while it rests. Like a little bit of mercy granted for the beasts below. A reprieve from the harshness of the day, all the destruction and hurt, laid to rest 'til morning. A good sunset cloud is like a cold bath after a hot summer day, or mashed potatoes. You don't have to chew them, but you can. I like to chew them twice and feel them squish all over inside my mouth, and that's the feeling of a sunset cloud.

"Sometimes when I go walking, looking for fires when the clouds have gone dark, because fire doesn't actually leave with the sun - it has no soul, no mercy, no regrets, like the time you took your sister's sweet meats from her special jar under your shared bed and replaced them with dandelions and a caterpillar you found crawling on the windowsill, and she cried because she was saving the last of them to give to you when you were feeling bad, and now you were feeling extra bad for making her cry, but then you tell her it was you that took them because you were feeling bad earlier and thought she might like the caterpillar, and she laughs and tickles you and you pee the bed, that kind of regret.

"Sometimes, I hear little songs playing in the windows, and I think I'd like that. I'd like someone to play a little song for me, a lullaby to help me sleep, to make me forget that fire doesn't sleep. There was one song I liked, it went... mmhm-mmm-hmhm... but it had words, really nice words that made me want to cry. Do you ever hear nice words like that, that make you think about how your mom might hold you and burp you against her shoulder? And rub your little tummy or rub your back, and stroke your tail, or between your ears... if I had someone to stroke me between the ears, that would be really nice, too.

"One time I was trying to comb it and I fell asleep for hours and forgot the comb was in there for days and kept wondering, what's scratching my helmet? But there was nothing in my helmet. I tried again but I got worried about the comb getting stuck again that it didn't work anymore. The worst part of that was that I thought I lost my comb and I had ash in my tail, I was going to buy a new comb, or maybe a brush, but they thought the one stuck in my fur was me trying to steal from the shop, and that's a very serious accusation, stealing is wrong. Of course, what's more wrong is the situations that lead beasts to think they need to steal. That's why I'm offering work. Since I'm taking a day and night off of my own work. I'm a volunteer mostly but I get paid for it, so it's kind of like a job."

"When I get there, I hope the clouds are like the pillows, or is it that the pillows are like the clouds? Morning clouds are somber and gloomy, not like sunset clouds. Morning clouds are like cold mashed potatoes, all icy from the moon and stars, but they're pretty in their own way as the sun warms them up to ready them for a new day, and the last chance at mercy passes. Maybe I'll bring my own pillow, but I think having a new pillow would help. A pillow that doesn't know me or the shape of my face. There's comfort in the unfamiliar that way, when you're far from home, some things remain the same, but different. Its a chance to get to know something that could become your new favourite thing. You never know until you try, and if you cling to the old things, you'll never try. So this is me trying, a new bed, a new pillow, yeah... I think this might just work out. Maybe I'll see a caterpillar on the windowsill again, and we can sing that song together... mmhm-mmm-hmhm....

"So how much will that be?"

The dazed Smelt clerk gazed up at Eskila, pencil still hovering over his pad.

"Er... For the gilders you're offering, we can get you 'round twenny words."

"Oh... ok. Can you trim it down some?"

~ ~ ~

The next day's Smelt paper read, in a little box in the corner of page twelve:

Volunteer Sleep Aide! Rm#5 Bilge I.T.B.
Today Only, Bardic Lullaby/Masseuse, Pay on Wake
BYO pillow & comb, Dawn to Dusk, see Iskilla Ickymay

And Eskila sat on the bed in Room Number Five upstairs in the Bilge in the Bucket. The ruckus downstairs was noisy, but a comforting ocean, a muted roar to drown out thoughts. No graven silence marked by the constant dread of the possibility of a peeling bell. She had put on some purple linen pajamas she rarely got to wear, the single-suit kind with two buttoned windows in the back; one for the tail, one for the head.

She gazed at the open doorway with an expression of blank expectation, hugging a morning-cool pillow freshly stuffed with newly-shed fox fur.

Hopes and dreams... well, hopes, anyway.

 

[Darragh Harper]

Round and round, and round again.

Darragh’s thoughts had been swirling the edge of a storm drain ever since the turn of the season. His ermine coat of white fur had been a constant itching reminder of the coming winter cold- he shivered in his attic lodgings at night, but sweated through the last of the warmer days. His poems went unwritten, and bad memories endlessly resurfaced. First it was nightmares, then it was intrusive thoughts, then it was stewing in his cot until… until sleep failed at last to claim him.

Itch itch.

That jill last week thought you danced awfully.

Scratch. Toss.

Finny must have thought you were being so overbearing when you said he was growing up too fast. Why do you say these condescending things?

Sigh. Peek open one eye. Fuzzy bubbles foamed and popped endlessly on the black ceiling.

Remember three years ago when you got into that dumb argument with your sister in front of the whole family about who stole your quill and then you got up and it turned out you were sitting on it?

Itch.

It wasn’t entirely unfair to call her a penny-pinching peddler of pilfered property… you were really into alliteration…

Toss toss roll.

…but why can’t you ever just shut up?

“Shut up,” Darragh whispered, his face scrunching as his patience with himself snapped, and he came to the verge of tears. “Shut up shut up, let me sleep. Stop.”

“Good morning, Mister Harper!”

Darragh was sat in the twee dining room of the Sedgewick family, staring gormlessly at the laced curtains. His porridge cooled. Both his eyes had felt like they’d been punched about an hour ago for the past three hours. When did he get here? What time was it? It had to be before dawn, both his knees hurt from walking into that blasted chintz stool in the dark, the one that kept moving around the living room depending who had it last.

Selwyn Sedgewick harrumphed something about how the stoat’s winter coat was not an excuse to disregard the decorum of the breakfast table blah blah dook dook, and left the Smelt folded on the table while the ferret went to prepare the Stationarie Shoppe for opening. Darragh picked up the paper and flipped through, hoping there was an ink-lined picture in it somewhere. Maybe an advertisement for socks, or a likeness of a most-wanted criminal he could stare blankly at until the customers started coming in.

Pat. Patpat. Pat pat PAT pa-pat-pa-pat PAT.

Darragh raised the newspaper and peered down at himself. Azalea Sedgewick, Selwyn’s precocious eight-year-old daughter, was fiercely playing his belly like a drum. She looked up at him, and beamed.

“You’re white.” Azalea said happily. “Didja run out of clothes before laundry again?”

“Mnngh, stoppit ‘Zalea.”

Darragh went back to staring at the paper. It was easier to read the ads, because they were short, and came in little boxes, rather than the long columns of the articles.

Pat pa-pa-pat PAT pa-pa-pat PAT…

“Volunteer… sleep aide…” Darragh read out loud.

“I volunteer!” Azalea yelled, and pummeled the stoat with both fists. Darragh groaned, then grimaced in realisation as he stared down at his fluffy white legs.

He really ought to get more on than just his skivvies.

An hour later, Darragh shuffled into the Bilge. It was breakfast time, busy and full of eggs. Nobeast questioned the scruffy, short ermine with his sticking-out fur and faded blue-and-white striped shirt and matching breeches with frayed edges. He toddled up the creaking stairs, pillow stuffed under his shirt to keep it from getting dirty, Azalea’s borrowed comb in his top pocket. He had his fee- a couple of gilders- tucked in there besides.

Darragh peeked around the open doorway. There was a tall sable jill sat on the bed, dressed in a one-piece purple boiler suit. She clutched at a pillow, her orange-furred chin resting atop it, green eyes staring expectantly. She looked tired to such a tragic degree that Darragh felt she deserved her own poem for it. Even at his most chronically insomniacal, he could see why she too had responded to the ad in the Smelt. She was pretty, Darragh thought, with her headfur styled and dyed just so to fit her. His own, by contrast, was stubbornly arranged in bedhead spikes.

“Oh good,” Darragh mumbled as he wiped his footpaws thoroughly on the scratchy mat beside the door, and shuffled in. “We haven’t gotten started yet, then.”

The stoat wearily oozed up onto the bed and knelt a respectably unthreatening distance from the other client. He pulled his pillow out from under his shirt, and blinked at the sable.

“Wouldn’t mind a few more joinin’ before she comes and gets the lullabies goin',” Darragh admitted, if only to break the ice. It seemed they would be sharing the bed for a day’s snooze, so no reason not to be friendly. “I think I sleep better in a pile. How about you?”

 

[Eskila]

Eskila stared unblinking as Darragh made himself comfy on her bed. Her bed that she had paid for. In the room she had rented for the day and following evening, with her own money. And her soul brightened a little; he looked quite needy, and there was room. Her money was doing double duty, then, which could not often be said of money. While her soul brightened, her face did not. Her lips were the kind of lips that knew smiles by reputation, but were too embarrassed by forgetting their name to do more than an awkward wave as they passed by.

She blinked just once as he pulled his pillow out from his pyjama shirt, then tilted her head a good sixty-degrees to the left, bit by bit, as he spoke, and continued to stare.

"I guess it depends what kind of pile," she said slowly, after giving it some considerable thought. "I never had enough clothes to sleep in a pile of laundry... I did fall asleep in a pile of leaves one time but then I got woken up by a rake to the nose... There was that time as a kit I got taken to some kind of place where older kits had to sit at tables and read books and the adults were talking so I wandered off and found a shelf full of books and got so tired from pulling them off the shelf and opening them to see if they had pictures in them that I fell asleep on top of the pile, but that wasn't very comfortable. I don't think I'd want to sleep on that pile again. There were a lot of sharp edges on the covers. Sharper than crinkly leaves. Crinkly leaves are nice because..."

She kicked her legs off the side of the bed as she rambled on about the colours of autumn, the comforting smell of rain and decay, and the tender moments of pre-winter cozies being absolutely ruined by the smell and taste of tea.

Or tried to. Vague memories of kithood had flooded back as she went on, and she seemed mildly surprised that her legs had suddenly become as long as they were. A slight frown tugged at her lips - a much more first-name-basis and gets-invites-to-brunch companion to her face - and she settled for scuffing the floor with her toe claws in the end.

"Anyway, sorry," she said. "Do you know who is coming? Have you heard her before? I didn't think anyone else would be joining me..."

 

[Darragh Harper]

Darragh tilted his head to match hers, as the words tumbled from her unsmiling lips.

She was a poet.

Her voice rolled in and out like gentle waves at low tide, and he was adrift in a little coracle, washed back to kithood, then to piles of autumn leaves, then the comfort of the fireside in winter. Darragh sighed, content. Oh, she was lovely. Published, undoubtedly. Acclaimed, almost certainly. This eloquent jill had the gift of a master poet - turning the simple into the captivating. The way she made feelings and images flow between familiar, everyday moments left him yearning to soak in the beauty of ordinary existence with an untethered, unprejudiced mind.

Would it be gauche to ask for the title of her printed works? Would it collapse this serene moment of deep inner reflection and aesthetic bliss, if he told this wonderful pine marten in purple that hearing her recite her poetry would tend his soul like the scattering of fresh woodchips over hungry embers? A name, sweet seamstress of silken sentences! Oh, he must have her name!

“’S pretty…” Darragh managed to murmur. ““…Um. No, I only know one bard… he’s a tod, and I don’t think he masseuses either.”

Darragh patted his headfur down ineffectually, a flutter in his chest. ““Er… m’name’s Darragh and I’m a- er, that is I sometimes… I like to… I’ve got…”

The flustered stoat managed a weak zhp as he ran out of air. He gasped for his next breath and trembled.

““…I poet.” Darragh managed to blurt out. His ears burned as he hastened to clarify. ““I don’t have a pen name. I’m not published. I just like words. Ah… do you have a pen name? Or, or, d’you recite anywhere? I’m not in with any sophisticated crowd… actually I’ve never met any other poets face-to-face at all.”

Darragh’s ears flattened out, and his poofed black-tipped tail curled around him on the bed. Talking to jills. Talking to clever sophisticated jills with artistic merit. Darragh’s heart was starting to hammer like a rude downstairs neighbour. Why couldn’t he help sounding like such a fool?

 

[Eskila]

Eskila squirmed a little on the bed. She wasn't entirely sure what a poet was, but she hoped he had washed before coming in this morning. Perhaps he had, he didn't smell awful, as far as stoats went. Or males. Or male stoats. As usual when she was in over her head with other beasts, she just went along with it, guessing at what the words meant.

She gave it some thought before replying, just in case.

"Yeah," she said. "I have a pen name. I think I'm ok at writing it down, but it gets hard remembering all the shapes that make the glyph. When you read it, it's supposed to sound like Eskila Ikamaye, which is also my mouth name. It's ok not to have a pen name, mouth names are easier, and then you just let other beasts do your pen name. I don't carry a pen or anything around with me so that when they ask for it, it's their job to write it down instead of mine."

She gave a little nod of approval at her own methods of avoiding embarrassment.

"I guess being a poet must be lonely," she continued. "If you're not in published or in a crowd, and never see their faces? That sounds kind of like my job. Nobeast gets to see my face much because of the helmet and mask. And crowds are dangerous so I try to disperse them or get them into a line. Lines are helpful, so no one beast gets too tired..."

What else had he asked... he seemed quite awe-struck, and she felt like she should fill in the gaps while he caught his breath. Had she saved him from a fire before? Twice maybe? Ooh, right.

"I haven't um, re-sited since I started. Usually once everything's died down and its safe again I give everybeast a lecture, so it won't happen again... but I've been knocked on the head a lot, so maybe I forget. And once they rebuild, sometimes it looks different, so its hard to tell if I've been to the same site again? I think one time I had to visit three houses in the same row one day after another though. It turned out to be a seagull, they caught it at the fourth house's roof, it kept stealing cigars from dockworkers and trying to make nests with them."

She turned to the side and flopped herself over into the corner of the bed, against the wall, bunching her pillow up behind her head and tucking her paws over her belly.

"What does a pull-it do? Are the carts very heavy? My cart can get pretty heavy."

 

[Darragh Harper]

Darragh drifted in and out of comprehension. The more this visionary spoke, the less of a poet he felt himself to be alongside her. Eskila Ikamaye…

“Eskila Ikamaye…” Darragh repeated softly, before he realised he wasn’t saying it in his head. How her very name played with his tongue and his lips! She was so right, there was all the difference in the world between the name you saw swirled in ink and the one spoke aloud, the mouth-name - your name! The name that chimed like bells hanging from the lips of your beloved. Darragh didn’t carry a pen either, and he recognised Eskila’s more practical wisdom here - there was no good reason to be going around with a nasty pointy inky feather in your pocket, with it liable to snap, as well as staining your clothes and fur. That’s what his bit of charcoal was for, wrapped safe in a rag!

The stoat’s sea-grey eyes began to water as Eskila told him so bravely of the isolation she felt, though surrounded by more fans and admirers than he could possibly imagine having. To think there was enough of a crowd of aesthetes and cultural erudites to queue for a chance to meet Eskila in the flesh and fur… but it gave her no joy. The mask and helmet of society prevented her from reaching out to touch them as one soul to another. Nobeast saw the real Eskila. She was lonely…

“I think you’re really brave, Eskila,” Darragh said, his voice husky with held-back tears. His breath caught before he could say more. What more could he? Darragh had been surrounded all his life with family and friends. Seeking seclusion was a necessary part of a poet’s creative process, but never before had Darragh faced the nightmare of being right next to somebeast that saw his face, knew his name and his work, shook his paw… but never saw him at all.

As Eskila told her harrowing tale, Darragh straightened his back and perked his ears, his whiskers quivering. He knew it. Why did violence always follow so close to those trying to use their creativity to give voice to the world’s love and sorrow? This beautiful, extraordinary jill hadn’t even recited once without some brute knocking her head, and every time her dedicated listeners gathered again, the moment had irrevocably passed. The dream was gone. It was exactly like the seagull’s futile task of building a home out of embers, over and over.

Darragh nodded, wiping wetness from his eyes. “Aye. My cart… can get pretty heavy too. I’ve got help though. My best friends, my family, even my landlord’s little daughter. It’s not so bad to pull-it with them. And I’ve got my words… my poems.”

He could feel his blush, but he was too emotionally overwrought to stop his momentum now. He felt the Jitters prickling his fur, compelling him to greet a kindred soul with the love of one artist recognising another. He shuddered, then let one of his recent creations come to him.

“White crumblin' wall,
Of a fort long ago,
Watchin' the horizon,
Where I scrape the stones with my claws.

Ruined tower,
Forgetful harbor below,
Glistenin' seaweed on the waves,
I sit where generals held counsel.

Seagulls nest in the cliffs,
Squallin' over stolen fish,
Voices carry on the breeze,
This was once the edge of the world.”

Darragh hid his face in his pillow, unable to bear it any longer. What would Eskila say? Did she like the first stanza? That was Darragh’s favourite. Did she like the last line? That was what tied it together, or so Darragh thought. Did it wear too much on its sleeve, was it too obvious, too prosaic? Or was it being too obfuscating, did it care more to riddle than reveal? Did Eskila like his poem?!

“…’S a work in progress,” Darragh mumbled into the pillow.

 

[Eskila]

Eskila's ears drooped, the sadness of the thought of even his landlord's kit having to help pull a cart starting to overwhelm her. The way his eyes welled up as he thought about it, the quavering of his voice. This poor stoat had such a hard life, pulling carts with his family...

Despite the weariness of emotion tugging her own features down, she sat up immediately when she realized his words weren't making sense.

She'd seen this before, the trauma of things making beasts go mad, or worse, something with their heart or their head failing from the smoke. Regardless of the reason now, her training wasn't going to let her rest now, even as her muscles trembled with loss of control. She scrambled to his side, gently taking him by the shoulders and laying him back.

"Shh, careful, pillow down... ok, give me a smile, can you do that?" Her eyes searched his face. Whiskers seemed level, lips were even. "Arms up, both up in the air, straight up, can you do that?" All his floof spilling out of his pyjamas! His buttons could be too tight. She began to undo them from the neck down, paws fumbling, trembling with the effort of focus against the oncoming wave about to take her.

Should call someone. Someone downstairs would know a healer. But had to confirm, first. Had to make sure... don't panic other clients of the rooms and morning drinkers... Couldn't get her mouth open again anyway, her tongue just lolled out...

Little kits pulling heavy carts... stoats having strokes in her paid-for room after crying about little kits pulling heavy carts... Noooo, too sad...!

Eskila could barely notice if one of his arms was limper than the other before she pitched forward with complete loss of control of her own, faceplanting right into his soft belly fur moments after pulling the last button loose.

 

[Darragh Harper]

“O-oh!”

Darragh was taken by surprise as Eskila scrambled across the bed to be beside him. He thought to squirm back, to try and regain that reverent distance between strangers, but then Eskila gently, firmly pushed him down. His pillow tumbled from his paws. She was stronger than him, and he had no thought of resisting her anyway… mainly out of complete confusion.

“E-Eskila…?”

His poem hadn’t been that good, had it?

The greater part of the worth of a given work of art depended on a beast’s point of view, Darragh knew that. Yet there were objective yardsticks of quality as well. Pleased as he was by how much more precise and impactful his word choice was now, compared to when he’d first set out for Bully Harbour, the young poet was hardly going to accept that he had mastered wooing a beautiful jill with three stanzas about a vague feeling of melancholy he had experienced last summer while exploring some old ruins overlooking the bay.

He smiled though, because Eskila asked him to. She had said she was lonely - perhaps this was a desperate bid for a genuine connection to another soul. Just to see a face smile at her, free of any demands or deception. Up his arms went, in a stiff approximation of a kit yearning to tumble forward into a hug. She picked at his shirt buttons, her face betraying nothing of her inner turmoil - except perhaps the sleep deprivation they both shared.

Darragh understood - this moment wasn’t about him. This astonishing master-poet was having an Epiphany. Some tiny fraction of his poem had inspired her to something greater, given new life and energy to her previously sedate, almost lethargic mood. If she had been a genius while suffering from sleep deprivation, she could only be an avatar of the Muses now that she was so animated with vigor.

She wasn’t actually interested in him. This was not passionate love, the kind that made the front-cover engraving of a book of chivalric romance. This was the transcendent love of the shared virtue of Art between them. Eskila was merely collecting the broken shards of his clumsily assembled verses, and using the sight of him laying back, exposed and helpless, as a catalyst for her next magnificent opus, as the rat scholars called it.

At least that was Darragh’s assumption until Eskila poked out her tongue, and took a dive straight into his belly.

“Oof!”

Darragh was young, and interested in jills. Like many hobs in his situation - big dreams, gnawing doubts, shaky finances - Hope and Expectation constantly brawled in his mind. No holds barred, writhing in the mud, merciless tooth-loosening beat-downs, the pair of them. Hope told him that a pretty jill had just taken a rapturous interest in him, that she was tall and strong and clever and he should not question this further. Expectation told him that jills didn’t lick tummies without at least make their intentions a little clearer first. Then they were back to knocking each other senseless, leaving the stoat feeling more lost than before.

The seconds ticked by, with the pine marten’s face planted on Darragh’s midriff. He was afraid to move. He was afraid to breathe. The Epiphany… it could be as fragile as a spun-glass butterfly. She could lose her precious train of thought. She didn’t have a pen. He hadn’t offered Eskila his charcoal or his bits of scrap paper in case she needed to jot down any ideas, and now he couldn’t bring it up without distracting her. He had to keep still.

He was being stubbornly foolish, some lucid part of his exhaustion-hazed mind told him. This was physical intimacy, no matter what high-minded artistic motives were behind it. It was inappropriate and very forward on Eskila’s part, and there could be trouble if their Volunteer Sleep Aide walked in. However, this was the furthest Darragh had gone with a jill. It would be at the very least poetically inappropriate to truncate the moment by rejecting Eskila, out of some stultifying sense of properness. She was a free spirit, and he was a willing… pillow. And whatever she was getting out of this, she wasn’t hurting him.

Darragh wasn’t very ticklish, as a rule. But he was ticklish enough.

It began with some light snrrking. Then came a wheeze. His stomach muscles tensed. His right leg jittered and gave a little kick. His cheeks puffed, his eyes squinted, his lips drew back on an entirely involuntary grin. He squirmed, and the motion set him off even worse. Eskila’s head lolled on his belly, and that made him wheeze-snort harder. His arms, still raised over his head, were going to sleep and getting all prickly.

Once Darragh started laughing, he couldn’t stop. Arms and legs flailing, snout scrunched and eyes squeezed shut, jostling the poor pine marten half-draped over him, Darragh giggled and gasped for air. He writhed in ecstatic discomfort, all his hypotheses tumbling out of his mind.

Darragh really hoped nobeast was planning to walk past the open door.

 

[Eskila]

Eskila twitched. She couldn't breathe, her nose full of soft, white, downy stoat belly fluff. Her tongue felt cottony. Ears folded back, trying to shut out the sounds of giggling and cackling, and her legs kicked but barely moved. Shoulders hunched, twisted, arms pushed, limp and weak, but growing stronger by the moment as her body woke up again. The fog gradually lifted from her mind.

She managed to roll off the bed, hitting the floor with the back of her head with a good, solid thunk. Her gaze fell to the open doorway.

A lump of greasy-grey flesh, scarlet-red pustules sprouting from its back and face, oozed cautiously through the doorway on stilted, stumpy legs, skeleton arms reaching forward and snapping at the air as if pulling itself along by some invisible rope.

Hi, she said, her mouth not moving. You're not invited, please leave.

The stoat's giggling had stopped. She tried to turn her head, unsure which way her spine was. She gave her tail a little wag. Yep, her bottom was perked right up in the air. That meant her knees were here and her shoulders were here and...

She turned her face from the door into the floor, then flopped over onto her side, staring under the bed.

Deep breath. Not sure what happened... she'd just saved someone's life, maybe? She could feel a paw shaking her, and gradually sat up. She didn't look to the doorway; she knew the creature would be gone again. It always vanished before getting to her, only existing in these moments between sleep and awake, when her mind was racing sluggishly. Just one of those things.

She wiped her mouth against her pyjama sleeve, leaving a trail of drool from wrist to elbow, and made a deep, burbling dook noise at the worried stoat.

"Hi," she said, her mouth moving. "You're alive. Yay. Are you ok now?"

 

[Darragh Harper]

The comforting, if very distracting weight of the pine marten suddenly lifted from Darragh’s middle. He hiccuped as he fought his bout of giggles, then startled at the very loud bonk of something hitting the floor.

“Esk-hic!-” Darragh burbled. He flopped inelegantly on the bed, trying to come to the jill’s rescue without actually knowing where to put any of his limbs. He rolled over, and caught Eskila’s poofy tail bapping him in the face. She smelt sooty.

Darragh jolted up onto all fours, as Eskila’s purple-clad rump toppled out of sight. Peeking over the bed, he saw the beautiful pine marten- she was a pine marten he thought, with that orange bib of neck-fur?- staring under the bed with an expression that he interpreted as inscrutably pensive. Perhaps even melancholic.

The bonk worried him. Eskila had gone over the bed headfirst. Had he thrown off her balance with his squirming? He was sure she hadn’t meant for that to happen, whatever she had wanted to do with her face smushed into his belly. Darragh stretched down to take her paw in his… then got spooked and went for her shoulder instead.

“Eskila?” Darragh asked, his voice squeaky. “Eskila, did I-… are you hurt?”

Slowly, she sat up. Darragh flattened out on the bed, his arms hanging over the side - with the tall pine marten sat beside, they were roughly at the same head-height together.

“Hi,” Darragh answered, his exhaustion-shadowed eyes peering at Eskila’s in concern. “I’m okay. I um… that was really nice, Eskila. But are you okay? I didn’t mean for you to go fallin’ off the bed like that. You’re not hurt, are you?”

He couldn’t help but smile a little, even though his heart was still fluttering from all the excitement of the past few moments. Eskila had a way of being herself that Darragh found entrancing. He didn’t want to call her sweet exactly - that felt like the wrong word for it. Sweet was a word that applied to kits and boiled candy. Eskila was… unflinchingly sincere in every word she said, not because she was too naive to know better, but because being bold enough to bare your heart to the world was all that saved it from collapsing into cynicism and despair.

He had to do something for her. This cruel society, with its fetish for gratuitous violence, its maddening repression of emotional expression, and its hideous regime of censorship and thought-control had stifled the voice and blacked out the words of Eskila Ikamaye for too long. Maybe… they could recite together. Form their own band of brave poets and daring artistes! Make an underground printing press of forbidden verse that would call deep into the abyss of the soul, make beasts feel the wonder of life again, make them remember that life wasn’t about trading circular bits of metal, or sticking sharper bits into each other’s hearts.

She’d liked his poem as well, hadn’t she?

“Eskila, I know we’ve only just met, but your free verse is truly speakin’ to my heart, and… well. You let your own feelin’s be known in that forthright way o’ yours,” Darragh said, his face earnest and hopeful. “I know I’ve not got quite the reach you do, I’m only startin’ out and all… but would y’consider lettin’ me work with you? Maybe it’s a far-fetched dream o’mine but, I feel like we could really start a scene together. It could just be small things at first, testin’ the waters, but… you give your work too much to be ignored by the masses, and I want to help if I can.”

 

[Eskila]

Eskila gingerly patted herself down, checking for injuries from her fall. As far as falls went, it was one of the better ones. Only a few feet, and she'd already been mostly horizontal when it started. She gave Darragh a weary thumbs-up to confirm she was alright, but the stoat barely gave her time to answer before putting forth his proposal.

Her head was muddy. A little bit from the floor of the tavern's room, but the thoughts inside had been tossed around and tipped over a glass of bedside drinking water, which had knocked over a bladder-hide stress ball, which had rolled off the bedside table and somehow turned the valve on the emergency bedside fire faucet, and all the dirt and grime she'd so carefully hidden under layers of duty and waffles and turtle care were sloshing around and the underdressed jills that lingered at the edges of her imagination were now getting entirely undressed and wrestling in the mud and now she wasn't sure what he was talking about...

She found it under a discarded two-piece swimsuit.

"Oh," she said. And her face scrunched a little as her thoughts tried to worm around the wrestling jills while also avoiding the basket of nihilistic despair that was caught in an eddy near the emergency bedside fire faucet.

"I don't understand all your words," she began, hesitantly, honestly - as lying was a sure sign of villainous behaviour! "But I think... yeah... I'd like that. We don't have a lot of... right now it's just me and Oreva, and she's deaf... She's mostly there to do upkeep of paperwork and make sure there's no robbers, I taught her about filling the barrels and stacking gear and coiling the hoses and stuff but it would be really nice to have someone out in the street with me to help with pulling and pushing... We can start with the small ones, its volunteer work, you don't have to rush into the big ones if you're not comfortable. And the hose can get hard to work with when the pumps are being pushed too hard..."

She settled herself back on the bed, staring at the open doorway to avoid looking at the half-naked male beside her. The jills in her head were now thoroughly covered in mud and making out.

"I'm just worried because it sounds like where you are right now, they need you too. It's ok to not have a large area to work... The other houses can be kind of pushy about jurisdictions, and sometimes start fighting over who gets to do what, but what matters, what's really important, is that the job gets done, not who does it. I don't care about the bonuses... yeah, they'd help pay for more coffee and equipment, but when I first started all I had was a wooden shield. It was a plank actually, I think. So what you need more than anything, more than money, more than fame, is training. And I can help with that. If your Captain allows it, I could even go to your house to teach everyone how we do things in the 14th? Would that work? Then you can decide, and talk it over with them. I don't want to leave them short-pawed if they even need a kit's help... I can probably keep handling things on my own, it's not until winter when things start getting rough... does that make sense?"

"Also," she added after a brief thoughtful pause in which her mind-self had begun hosing off the lustful jills before they started getting her too distracted, "remind me to ask you what you were trying to say before, and are you ok?"

She finally turned to look at him again. He did seem better now his shirt buttons were undone and not constricting anything. All his words generally made sense, and came out in the right order as far as she knew. It was just the Vulpinsulan language gaps she still struggled with, she supposed.

 

[Darragh Harper]

Darragh sat back up and nodded along slowly, even as he grew less sure of what Eskila was saying. His aching, sleepless body had been promised soothing lullabies and possibly petting between the ears, and it was started to protest more firmly against this continued intellectual discourse. Darragh was managing to grab and hold onto some of Eskila’s phrases more tightly than others, but with pieces going missing between her ideas, her every utterance was open to his hazy interpretation.

There was another member of the Scene already, a deaf jill named Oreva. Darragh felt a bit sorry for Oreva - listening to Eskila speak gave her verses so much depth - but it seemed this associate was there mostly to take care of housekeeping. Meanwhile, Eskila wanted him out on the street with her… pushing and pulling? Like… pushing and pulling the flow of the cultural movement? Small recitals yes, but if Eskila could get him in front of bigger audiences… gulp! She made it sound a lot harder than he thought it would be. Like working a bilge pump… sweaty and repetitive. Well, Darragh had no objections to honouring calls for an encore, as long as he could get a glass of water or something in between.

Then Eskila pushed Darragh’s little coracle down another tributary of her flowing stream of thoughts. It sounded a bit Political really, which made the stoat’s tail fluff up and waggle a bit. He was sort of excited about the idea of becoming political, though it was hard to focus on what exactly that meant to him. He’d been involved in political violence not too long ago, against a supremacist group that were single-minded in their beliefs to the point of banality. Eskila thought his energies were better spent training on pure aesthetic and technical skill though, rather than calling to account these… Houses? Houses of Nobility? That had jurisdiction over where poets could perform?? Darragh had never even heard of that. Had he been lucky to avoid their notice so far? At least they had given Eskila a shield.

“I’m sure Cap’n Stowett wouldn’t mind…” Darragh murmured, unsure of the connection between his commanding officer in the Navy, and Eskila’s Art Scene. Had he even mentioned he was in the Navy? Maybe he smelt salty… but he’d had a bath! Eskila was a formidably perceptive beast, no mistaking it. He was a bit put out that she needed the Navy’s permission to train him in poetry, though. He was young and a bit smaller than most, but he was not a kit! He hoped Eskila didn’t really see him that way.

He wondered too at the name Eskila had chosen for this art movement. The Fourteenth? Perhaps she was an art historian too, and there had been, up until now, thirteen distinct aesthetic periods in the Imperium. Or perhaps… it was a date. By-and-by and door-to-door, we’ll have our Fourteenth of Thermidor! Revolution!!

…a metaphorical revolution, of course.

“I am okay,” Darragh affirmed, chancing a small smile. At least they were now getting back on firmer ground. He was going to express something confident and jack-like, and show he was not a kit, and most definitely interested in all her proposals, spoken and unspoken alike. He jumped down from the bed, and adopted a heroic stance and a smile. “I was jus’ sayin’ before that was really nice of you t’make y’self plainly understood, Eskila. I know the Muse can strike without warnin’, but it means a lot that you trust me so, seein’ as we’ve just met.”

The stoat swayed a little, or maybe the room did - had he needed to get to his footpaws so quickly? He pressed on though, determined not to lose heart now he was spilling it. “’Tis true I’m a wanderer ‘cross the sea, aye. P’raps it’s a dream to think we could be more than two seabirds, one flyin’ west, the other east… only meetin’ in a safe harbour in the midst of our great journey. Let’s dream, though! Isn’t that what we’re for, mad creatures like us?”

Darragh took a chance. Begging his legs not to shake, nor his paw to tremble, he reached out, to take Eskila’s paw in his own. "Let's make it happen, Eskila. You're welcome any time. The sooner the better in fact, before I go a-wanderin' once more. Coffee. Poetry. Pie, if we can swipe a slice before Azalea eats it all - hah! You'll love Azalea, too. I'll be doin' nought but lookin' forward to seein' you come 'round. S. Sedgwick's Stationarie Shoppe, corner of Mayweather and Keats, in the Trenches. Closin' time is sundown, but just ring the bell and I'll come runnin!"

 

[Eskila]

Eskila's brow nudged a bit. It was doing that a lot today, with this stoat. It was starting to get tired and wanted to stop having to nudge, knit, or furrow anymore, longing for the cozy comfort of a blank, oblivious expression.

"Ok," she said, and stood up. She closed the door part way, and there in the corner behind it, was her armour and shield, neatly arranged to hide a small pack, which contained her day clothes, a purse of gilders, and other such things. One such thing being a notebook and charcoal stick, which were issued in case of anybeast having something to admit to or say in the aftermath of a fire. Eskila's was practically unused. But now she brought it out and pushed the door back open, and sat on the bed with the little book.

Her brow panted in exertion.

She drew an S, because that sounded right. Then she stared for a good long while, silence filling the room. Then she drew a box, and another box, and another box. Lines filled the spaces between boxes. She drew a circle here, a circle there. And then tilted the notebook around, tilted her head the other way, and finally drew an X.

The northern Trenches were better serviced by the 15th, but there was overlap, and a few blocks were within range of the 14th, so she patrolled there often. And then wandered further out, sometimes because her feet just kept going while her brain lay down and stared absently into the middle distance. And so she sort of knew this Sedgwick's, but had never gone in, because it looked like lots of books and things to do with letters, and the word "Stationairie" was one of those words with the fibbing glyph in it (one of the fibbing glyphs) and rather than try and comprehend its purpose, she'd just walked by. Nevertheless, she was familiar with the street and the area, although moreso because of the maps covering the walls of the main area of Bully Harbour's 14th Volunteer Fire Brigade's house.

She turned the notebook around to show Darragh.

"I made a map," she said. "But you shouldn't joke about the bells. It's illegal to ring them for non-emergency purposes."

She put the notebook on the table beside the bed, noted with some dismay there was no emergency bedside faucet, and then stood again. She frumped her pajamas up, patted the bedding down again, and made herself comfortable and horizontal, then scooted over to make room for Darragh and his pillow.

"You're right... we should be trying to dream. I'm sorry you think I'm mad at you. I'm not mad, I was just worried." A glance towards the door and her face fell a little more. No one had come yet. But... that wasn't entirely true. He was here.

A new thought struggled to form, pecking at its shell until enough fell away that it could stick a head through and lick its eyeball at the brave new world it found itself in.

"What if... we sang for each other? I don't know the words to the song I like, but I remember how it kind of goes... Actually... I was working on a song of my own, one time. Maybe I can try to remember it. Would that help you sleep and dream?"

She stuck her tongue out of her mouth, a little under halfway. A proper sable blep. She was entirely unaware of it, or why it happened.

 

[Darragh Harper]

Darragh nodded in complete misunderstanding. Map-reading was not his strongest skill, even at times when he didn’t feel like his brain had checked out of his skull for a late breakfast. There were some blocks between the S (Shoppe?) and the X (Eskila’s place? A secret clubhouse in a basement?), but his overall impression was that the two points were not too far a walk away.

He had even less a sense of what joke he’d made that had landed flat. He suspected he hadn’t made a joke at all, or else Eskila was teasing him. That was probably it… was he coming on too strong? She seemed otherwise unbothered by his faux-pas, so Darragh was content to just look a bit apologetic, and let Eskila’s flow of thought continue. Only now she seemed to be backtracking the mildest scolding Darragh had ever received. He hadn’t thought she was mad at him at all!

“I worried about you too, when you fell,” Darragh barely mumbled, the insides of his ears looking quite pink. “Sorry for not catchin’ you or… or anythin’…”

Darragh lay beside Eskila and plumped up his pillow, his mind dancing in blissful confusion. This jill cared about his thoughts and feelings. She was honest and open, even forward. She was protective, generous, and humbly courageous. She had accepted him in a way he hadn’t even known he had needed. There was no doubt in her eyes, no distrust. She gave that gift to him freely.

… had that been her armour behind the door though?

Who was Eskila, really? Darragh had assumed at the start that she must already be successful as a published poet with a wealthy patron, but the more they’d talked, the more she had made it clear that there was deep resistance to her novel form of free-flowing verse. Surely she didn’t need to go around in full plate armour just to defend herself from critics? Were these Noble Houses she’d alluded to trying to assassinate her?

Or was she, like Darragh, in the employ of one of the myriad armed branches of the government?

As quick as his speculation had come, Darragh could feel the thought sliding into the Deal With It Later bucket. He didn’t define himself by his rank or branch of service. Would it really matter if Eskila was a Stoatorian This or an Unsmudgeable That? The government had so many tendrils prickling their way into every aspect of public life, that it hardly seemed a revelation. Darragh and Eskila were more than their official labels, they were the poets, the painters of the canvas of the soul, and not even the grasping, greedy Ministries could take that.

Ooh, but he certainly was feeling Political today! But Revolution would have to wait, for he was so very sleepy.

Darragh’s joy was as evident on his face as his exhaustion. Eskila was teasing him again with that silly tongue-blep, but he was getting better at recognising when she was having fun with him. Eskila had such a wonderful sense of humour, which somehow felt all the more sincere for its whimsy. He poked his tongue out back to be cheeky, and nodded.

“I’d love to hear it, Eskila,” he murmured. Then, his brow furrowed. “Only… I’d better stay awake a little longer after I hear it. So I can sing to you, as well.”

 

[Eskila]

Eskila nodded back against her pillow.

"It's ok if you fall asleep," she said. "It's what we're here for. I can try and sleep after maybe... or maybe someone will come..."

She gazed at the door, the shape of it blurring into an oval of sorts.

"Do you ever think, there's too much going on in a town? Maybe we weren't supposed to live all together in buildings so close. One farm a village, that's the right size. Just growing food and fishing and hunting birds, every house pushed away so if one catches fire, it doesn't take the whole place away? And all the extra bricks can be for roads so you can ride wagons to other villages to meet new beasts. And you have the strongest one pulling the wagon, or you take turns... I pull for you, you pull for me. So then it's no big deal. And you can take the wagon ride to a few villages away and meet a nice blacksmith's daughter, and she's got nice strong paws, and it's winter time so she invites you to the forge to warm up, but the work's all done so the forge isn't very hot, just embers and coals, so you press against her and say something sweet, and she kisses your whiskers and her strong paws wrap around you, and her tail is curled around your feet to keep your toes warm, so your tail keeps her toes warm, and then maybe it's starting to get a bit hot, so you take off your clothes, and make a little nest by the forge, and she pulls you down and rolls on top of you and then is kissing your whiskers even more, even your lips sometimes, and licking your tongue with her tongue, and her nice strong paws are touching you all over, and you fall asleep, and wake up and she's asleep now and it's dark... So you sit up and stoke the embers a little, and snuggle against her and go dook dook until it's morning, but then she says it was a nice time but she has to do work, and you didn't even get her name, and the wagon puller is looking for you, so you have to go as well, because you have work to do, but you tell her to visit but she's already walked away too far to hear, so you promise to visit again but when you do you find out she's already with someone else, and you think that's ok, maybe we can all be together? But then you find out she's moving lots of villages away, more days away then many wagons, because there's a village at the edge of the village-lands that needs a blacksmith with good strong paws, and her mate is a farmer who is going to make sure the far away village has everything, but you can't go because your village needs you, so you go home and think about how her tongue tasted weird but kind of nice, and the things her paws did to you to make you fall asleep, and you realise there's no one like that in your village? No one at all. Everyone you know has a mate, or is a kit, or is too old and smells weird like all old beasts smell, or they're all males anyway, or they're nice jills but they don't like other jills. And it's like that for every village you have near you. So you're just alone, but everybeast depends on the job you do, and it's years and years before the kit you're training to take over will be able to be dependable so you can travel, and by then maybe you're old and smell weird like old beasts... Maybe that's why we have cities, I guess. So that you don't wait your whole life to find someone to kiss your whiskers. It's just one day at a time, waiting for somebeast to answer your newspaper advertisement, hoping to see them in the doorway. And some days it's just a sleepy male stoat and nothing else and maybe that's going to be ok, because for a little while, even if you don't want him licking your tongue, you're not alone. You're not alone."

She took a deep breath, rubbed her eyes, and tried to remember the words and how it went.

"Here on the edge of the night
Finding the ways to tell you I'm sorry
Struggling without reasons why
I'm staring down this sky, oh so starry

Here on the edge of goodbye
If one more word be said, would I know it?
Wishing for feelings denied
Even then, would I know how to show it?

Was my heart just too big?
Was my body too warm?
Do you even know
You've left me out in this storm?
And I will try, try, try
Not to cry in the snow

And its not easy
When your feelings betray you,
When a laugh has you down on your knees
Would you believe me
That by just thinking of you
I'd be hurt in ways no one could see?
Would you still leave me
If you saw this before you,
A soul crushed by all it must be?

Here on the edge of the night
Blinded by blaze of the stars in the sky
Holding your heart close to mine
Hoping for time, for the the secrets to die

Here on the edge of goodbye
Sleep takes my hand, pulls me down to the ground
Stars fall so close to my eyes
I'm shouting and no one around hears the sound

Was my need just too much?
Was my soul just too cold?
And do you even know
You've left me out on the threshold?
But without knowing why
I will try... try, try, try...
Not to cry in the snow."​

 

[Darragh Harper]

As Darragh listened, his joyful expression faded. He passed from blissfully happy to thoughtful, then pensive. He blinked at Eskila, and felt a wetness in his eyes, which rolled down his cheek fur onto his pillow. Eskila’s face wobbled and melded into an oil-painting palette of browns and oranges. Darragh’s breath hitched in his throat, and his body curled into a defensive ball. Like a kit, he covered his face, ashamed and suddenly very, very distraught.

“N-no?” Darragh answered in a whisper, though he wasn’t sure anymore if Eskila had asked him anything, or whether she had wanted an answer. He had never had that happen to him, nothing even remotely like it. His heart had never been broken, it was still whole and ready to give. Was Eskila’s tale so easily described as heartbreaking? Or was it somehow even worse than that?

Darragh felt like a scrunched-up ball of paper. The kind he made when he’d given up on writing, crumpled the useless scrap and tossed it into the fire. No wonder Eskila thought he was a kit. Even in his short life he had experienced grief, loss and sorrow, who in this town hadn’t? But he couldn’t give voice to it the way she could, even as hard as he tried. He couldn’t turn his words into pieces of shattered glass, then make a mosaic of them with his bleeding fingers the way this master poet did.

Was he being selfish, having these feelings? A few minutes ago, Eskila had seemed happy with him, even playful. Now she sounded… not even disappointed in him, but disappointed that he was all there was. That hurt Darragh, to be a companion of last resort. He guessed she wasn’t that interested in his amateur poetry, either. Training him in her skills was going to be a chore for her, a promise she would probably regret. They wouldn’t be mutual collaborators in an art scene, she would just be patiently tutoring him while she waited for a real kindred soul to understand the depths of her pain. Was it okay to feel rejected? Or had he been stealing something from Eskila all along that he hadn’t deserved in the first place?

Darragh wanted to pretend to have fallen asleep, but that proved impossible, as he was sobbing harder and harder with every verse that Eskila sang. Here on the edge of goodbye brought him back again to the blacksmith’s forge in her story, that one night when things seemed like they were going to work out, and she hadn’t even known how close she was to the end. Why had she told him that story? Was this what other beasts felt when he opened his mouth and let his emotions flow? Should he stop doing that??

Eskila came to the end of her song, and there was quiet in the room. Darragh’s squeaking, snuffling hiccups were muffled by his paw stuffed in his mouth, the other clamped over his weeping eyes. His knees had fully drawn up to his chest, and his tail had curled around for the black tip to tickle his chin. The silence pressed on him. He had promised to sing for her.

Slowly, with halts and sniffs, Darragh began. His voice was weak and croaky at first, but once his throat cleared past the first verse, he fell into the rhythm of the ballad.

”You can be a brave knight
And I can be your squire
We can play swordfights with sticks
And be heroes for hire

I’ll carry your banner
Through sea and through fire
Shine your sword and armour
I am your faithful squire

Let’s charge into battle
Right where the fight is dire
I save you, you save me
Noble knight and true squire

The beasts all cheer for us
Kits play games we inspire
There go those two heroes
The brave knight and the squire

I’ll carry your banner
Through sea and through fire
Shine your sword and armour
I am your faithful squire

You stole away from camp
I woke up on my own
You thought you had to face
Your nemesis alone
Why did you ever think
You should face them alone?

Why did you ever think
You should face them alone?

I ran to your rescue
I climbed ever higher
I leapt through flame and flood
Once more to be your squire

The years have come and gone
Since I had to retire
Rest my broken body
Train that clueless new squire

I hung up your banner
Above the burning pyre
Passed on your kit’s birthright
For I was once your squire.”​

 

[Eskila]

Eskila sank into her pillow, further and further, until the walls seemed to stretch out and the ceiling became nothing but a speck, then nothing at all.

She woke in a snowfield, layered black with ash. A creature, not unlike a deer, soared over the snow, a tall beast swathed in black riding on its back, a pair of heads still dripping blood dangling from the strange system of ropes around the creature's neck. The beast reached down, lifted her from the snow, and carried her away through a forest of rotting winter to the warmth of a tavern, and the weight of responsibility bequeathed to her sank her to her knees.

There were battles. There were city gates, and streets, and worn boots, and dented armour, and oaths, and banners. Little rats scampered in her wake, bustling with squeaks as they played and fought each other for her attention. The beast who had swept her away from the snow was long gone, but in his place, there was an elegant ermine, a soft voice - somewhere between a mother and an elder sister - and a steady paw on her shoulder.

There were books, and lessons, and tears, and stirring and smelting of metals in a crucible, and the metal came out orange, and was shaped to her body. There was a spear that glowed golden, and a regal, maned wildcat of some sort, which she derided almost fondly. A sense of distrust lingered, despite the power this beast bestowed upon her spear and her soul.

There were friends, sitting at a pier in some village, kicking their feet at a small lake, talking of love and loss, and there was a wedding, and too much cake, and her face reflected in a river as she gave back some of the cake to nature. There was music, and a dark jill, a name whose name was music itself, who stood behind her and her shield and sang wordless music that made her muscles melt in relief - who stood beside her when everyone else had long wandered away to their own stories.

There were butterflies, and shields, and waffles topped with rainbow-coloured cream, and turtles, and treasure maps, and years and years of tedium, which was called duty and routine, which smoothed the sadness like weathered cobbles of well-known streets lit only by starlight. So smooth was this sadness, that the moments of joy, little nuggets of debris littering the road, tripped her and bruised her, for some things are the same in every world.

"...for I was once your squire," she whispered, killing the silence that echoed like thuds of a forge's hammer between their soft breath and the hiccuping sniffles of her bed companion.

She was back. And nothing felt real anymore, again.

She turned over on her side. No thoughts to think. It was obvious. She slid an arm beneath the curled up stoat, the other over his side, and pulled him into her belly, coiling her body around his, her long, puffy tail wrapping to the back of her head. She held him close, and tight, and cried into his mussy head fluff, because neither of them were alone.