[P] that's not how you pray that's not what you say

[Hugo]

⚒

Brick by brick, you build your self worth on what shaky ground you can find. Sometimes it's easier than others-- your uncle has been gone long enough that the soldiers flitting their way to the shop ask for you, see your face and the bright orange of your crest and look at you with a startling sort of clarity that you'd never experienced before. Sometimes you take their order-- a dented breastplace, a new spear head, detailing on gauntlets or quivers or (rarely) bags-- and it fills you with some of that old sense of knowing, more than you know almost anything else, that this is you: Hugo Arkwright, the Maker.r

This is one of those days.

You are humming away at your counter, carefully tooling leather to pass the time. You peel off one thin, tan ribbon at a time, watching the outline of a cobra, scales and all, surface from the brown mire of the panel. Outside the cold autumn sun is high and the wind is blowing crisp red and brown leaves down the street. Inside it is warm and dark, as it always is.

In between, where you often find yourself, there is you: tall, black and gray and white and orange, and singing, loud enough that heads turn as you pass. You try not to imagine they're looking because you sing so rarely, anymore. You pretend it's because it's bad--which it still might be--and not because it is shocking.

Truth be told, it's a little of both.
As the the last curve of the last beveled scale falls away, the little blue girl wanders her way toward the shop.

You've seen her before; you've seen everyone before, you think with a hint of resentment, it is just that they never quite remember you. Everyone remembers Rickard. They don't think of little Hugo, Charlie's age when he was in the back of the shop, hammering steel. They don't remember your careful attention to detail, your heart that would swell as you passed a new dagger to the front and watch it practically sparkle in the shaft of light through the doorway.

You wonder where that Hugo went. 
Today you are as close to that Hugo as you get.

"You're... Charlie, right?" You smile at her. It looks genuine. It feels genuine. It sort of catches you off guard. "What are you up to?"

And when my time is up, have I done enough?
Will they tell my story?

❂ | ❂

@Charlotte

[Charlotte]

in mid-fall

i just want to die anywhere else, if only i could die anywhere else. so come with me, let’s die anywhere else. anywhere, just not here. and if they ever hear my name, will they know i walked alone around these dusty streets — my tired old home.

Charlie isn’t thinking about bonfires that are supposed to eat your hopes and wishes (or about the things she would have written, had she taken part, which she didn’t). She isn’t thinking about that woman, in the sea, or how thinking about her makes the places where her teeth had punctured the girl’s skin burn.

At least, she’s trying not to think about those things.

In a few short months she will be old enough to move into the barracks and begin her training as a Halcyon, one of the few things she can remember wanting to do her whole life. And yet, every time she stands on the clifftops, or the beach, the sea seems to reach out for her. With every crash against the shore, and the rocks, it says come, come, come.

Right, not thinking about it.

The pegasus girl is wandering down the street, when she hears the singing. It’s a voice she recognizes but not one she’s ever heard sing, before. Charlie turns toward the shop, and steps inside. His smile almost surprises her as much as his singing. Today, she doesn’t feel like smiling, but because she’s not thinking about all the reasons why, she does it anyway.

“Yeah,” the girl says, glancing across the table to see what he was working on, “Hi, Hugo.” It’s impressive, certainly. The details are refined and crisp, and it’s clear that he knows how to work with a piece of leather with the same sort of care and precision that he does with steel. Charlie sort of shrugs a shoulder when he asks what she’s up to, because she’s not quite sure how to answer. “What is that for? It looks cool.”

@Hugo

☸