Xellyndra: Vest of Morelan
Nearly six years ago, a small trading city in the middle regions of the realm. . .
“Ahh shit. . .bloody ogre shit. . .”
Barely half-awake and mumbling her irritation, Xellyndra reaches up a grimy hand to swipe at the wetness dripping onto her cheek. The absent motion brings her far enough into consciousness that her disturbingly acute sense of smell awakens. Immediately, her nose wrinkles in disgust and she rolls over sideways, flopping out from beneath the shelter of a busted wooden crate. “Blech!” Heaving herself unsteadily to her feet, she sets to scrubbing her face with the end of one ragged sleeve. Filthy as the tattered cloth is, it only creates further smudges across her dirt-darkened complexion, but at least it manages to soak up the wetness. She directs a crippling glare of indignation at the top of the crate, which bears a large puddle of moisture, leaking down between the splintering planks. “Sonofa troll, drunken fools can’t pay attention to where they’re pissin.’ Suppose that’s what I get for sleeping behind a tavern.” She sighs, mumbling now as her thoughts drift elsewhere. “Hard to find a good box like that though.” Keen emerald eyes glance over to check the position of the sun, staring directly at the sinking reddish orb, unblinking. So beautiful, so perfect, she loses herself in that glorious disk of red, crimson, blood, flame.
. . .hungry crimson. . .spurting blood. . .dancing flame. . .a face, pale face, smooth and flawlessly ageless. . .its eyes, starving eyes of pure need, their very hue, crimson, screaming for sustenance. . .fangs, gouging into soft flesh, ripping, tearing, shredding. . .blood, blood everywhere, splashing and spraying, not my blood, their blood. . .the screams, the dying screams of agonization against terror, their screams, not mine, I never even screamed. . .the face, pale visage now crimson with blood. . .but the eyes, the eyes are green, the eyes are mine. . .my fault, my shame, my failure. . .pain, black, cessation. . .flames roaring to consume it all, to free the souls, to eat away the evidence of my failure, my fault, my shame, I never even screamed. . .I couldn’t, didn’t, save them. . .I NEVER EVEN SCREAMED. . .
Pain, where is that pain coming from? She unclenches her eyes, noticing that the sun has set. It has been nearly an hour then, since she rose, since memory seized her. Her gaze drops to her hands, fixed into tight fists. Thin streams of blood squeeze out from between her fingers, welling up from shallow gouges torn into her palms by chipped and broken fingernails. Shaking her head at such foolishness, she gives herself a harsh mental berating for the waste of time. “Fool, you have work to do. You wanna eat tonight or not?” The thought of food attempts to drag the memory of the creature’s violent feeding to the front of her mind again, but she pounds it back into the dark reaches to which she has relegated it. Without further hesitation, the little girl trots off down the alleyway, into the shadows of the newborn night.
Much later she finds herself in yet another seedy tavern, her seventh of the night, for it isn’t good business for her to remain anywhere long enough to attract attention. Almost idly, Xell weaves through the noisy crowd, unnoticed. Small, quick, with a practiced and exceedingly light hand, she displays surprising skill. Always moving, lifting a coin from a pocket, slipping a pouch off a belt, and then melting back into the crowd long before the mark knows any better. She had made a decent score at her first stop, lifting a silly-looking jeweled dagger off the thigh of a well-dressed woman.
The foppish hen had been engrossed in flirting with a puffed-up peacock of a man. It had been exceedingly easy to slip beneath the table, ease the dagger from its sheath, and sneak back out. The woman had no instincts whatsoever, probably didn’t even know how to use the weapon. At the next tavern, Xell traded the dagger for a meal. The gaudy mass of moonstones more than paid for the stew of meat and old vegetables that the portly barkeep had grudgingly handed over. She didn’t even want to consider what animal the meat had come from. Still, she’d thanked the man and eaten the stew without further comment. Minutes afterward, covertly lifting a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine from the tavern’s kitchen, she’d had plenty to say. “Uncharitable ogrespawn, he was chubby enough to spare plenty.” Of course, her insults were mumbled between mouthfuls of food and drink, and her lack of satisfaction with the innkeep’s generosity had no detriment on her appetite. In fact, she muttered and cursed under her breath all the way to the next tavern.
But that was hours ago, and dawn is fast approaching now. The pockets of the tavern-goers are growing light, funds depleted through drink and carousing. This would be her last stop before finding someplace to sleep for the day. Her job is easier at this time of night, despite the thinning crowds. Most of the remnants are too drunk by now to notice much of anything, certainly not the little waif of a girl passing casually by. The necessity for close concentration upon her work now gone, she begins to notice something odd about one man in particular, or rather, about his vest. Curiosity getting the better of her, she stays within the tavern even after she completes her round of the crowd, taking a seat at the bar and buying a glass of wine with part of the night’s earnings. Hidden thus in plain sight, she is able to watch the man from the corner of her eye without garnering suspicion. The man, a rather drunkenly loud and smelly specimen, keeps pulling various items from the inner pockets of his vest. A coin pouch, a dagger, a book, all emerge at some point from the black leather garment, and then are replaced within, but the vest never bulges. Her inquisitive nature completely captivated now, Xell continues to observe the noxious man as he garners the attentions of a tavern wench. The woman looks to the barkeep, who gives her the go-ahead nod, as the patrons are becoming increasingly scarce anyway.
The two proceed upstairs without further ado, all unaware of their mischievous-eyed shadower. Xell waits in the dimness at the end of the hall as they choose out a room, then slips over to sit beside the door. She doesn’t have long to wait. The squealing and grunting grinds to a halt only a few minutes later, and the little thief climbs to her feet, back pressed against the wall. A moment, and the door swings open, hiding her from the eyes of the emerging barmaid, who lets the door fall shut behind her and heads downstairs without looking back. Grinning impishly, Xell places her ear to the door, the sound of raucous snoring clearly audible through the thin wood. “Fool didn’t even stay awake long enough to lock his door.” Chuckling inwardly about the constant idiocy of marks, she pulls the door open just enough to slip inside. Silently, she scrambles toward the bed, ignoring the naked man sprawled across it, and crouching down beside the pile of clothes next to it. She gathers it all up into a bundle, including boots and blade, creeps over to the open window, and drops it all into the alley outside. The slight thud and clatter apparently isn’t enough to wake the man. Luckily, he’s deep in the clutches of drunken exhaustion. Luckily because Xell can no longer restrain her impish giggles, muffled as they are. If there’s anything she enjoys more than getting away with necessary theft, it’s pulling one over on a stupid mark even though she doesn’t need to. She hops up to sit on the windowsill and swings her legs outside, grinning and wishing she could stick around to see the man’s expression when he wakes to find all his clothing missing.
Sharp eyes rake over the wall below her, picking out a path of descent even in the deeper darkness of night that lurks in such alleyways. Deftly, she hops out of the window, making a swift one hundred eighty degree twist to face the wall, to catch herself by her hands on the windowsill. Dangling comfortably at a height more than great enough to break her skinny neck, her bare toes easily find the first footholds. Tiny toes and fingertips squeeze securely into almost nonexistent spaces between bricks, and she makes her way confidently down the wall, wiry muscles working efficiently. Five feet from the ground, still more than the length of her body, she pushes off the wall. She arcs smoothly through the air to avoid the rubbish pile just below her path of descent, twisting around again to face away from the wall, but still landing lightly poised on the balls of her feet, the pile of stolen goods right in front of her toes.
Working even more swiftly now that the fun part is over, she strips out of her own tattered pants and shirt and slips on the stolen ones, drawing the sword and awkwardly using the fine edge to slice off the extra lengths of cloth. This particular process is accompanied by multiple muttered curses, as the weapon is nearly as long as she is tall. “Cursed unwieldy monstrosity, I’ll take a good dagger any damn day.” The crotch of the pants hangs halfway down her thighs, and she has to poke a new hole in the brown leather belt to keep them up around her waist. The shirt of course is also much too big, the sleeves billowing around her thin arms, the wide neck wanting to slip down over one slim shoulder. But the simple tan cotton is thicker and a great deal cleaner than her discarded rags, and she feels warmer already than she has in weeks. Unfortunately, there is no way to make the boots come even come close to fitting her. With a regretful sigh she tosses them into the nearby rubbish heap, followed by her old clothes. The man’s undergarments, which got caught up with the rest of the pile, are delicately picked up with the tip of the sword and slung in to join the boots. The salvage and disposal completed, she wrestles the long sword back into its scabbard and sets it down, turning to that coveted item which spurred this whole happening.
The vest is a simple affair, all of smooth, unadorned black leather. The only ornamentation being the skillful yet unobtrusive braidwork that lines each hem and edge. Curious, Xell slides her hand into one of the six pockets on the inside panel. Feeling something hard hit her fingertips, she wraps the inquisitive digits around it and draws it out. It turns out to be a book, leather-bound and slightly worn around the corners, and weighty. Emerald eyes glint with real excitement as she slips the book back inside the vest. The pocket itself is much too small to conceivably hold the book, and yet it does, without expanding the slightest bit or growing any heavier. Her delighted giggle dances down the now-lightening alleyway, “A real Vest of Holding! Bless m’Luck, I thought it would be!” There in the rat-infested alley, completely alone in all the world, chilled, dirty, and walking the borderline of malnutrition, the little girl’s harsh existence is brightened by this mundane acquisition. Perpetually homeless, she feels that she has gained a semblance of a home, like the shell on a tortoise’s back. For now she has the ability to possess things other than the clothes on her back, to collect and acquire, carrying her possessions with her as she continues her endless migration. This simple option of ownership is a wondrous enough gain to make her cut a short caper right there, bouncing through a few spontaneous steps of an improvised dance of childish joy.
An angry roar splinters the light-hearted moment, bursting from the second floor window she vacated not long ago. Halting in her tracks, Xell looks up to the opening, listening as a stream of heated obscenities pours into the stillness of the early morning. Her grin widens even further as she catches a few creative ones that she’s never heard before, filing them away for future use. Apparently, cursing isn’t enough for the poor duped man, because further sounds of violence crash into the air. Shattering porcelain, cracking wood, heavy thumps and bangs pound out in a delightful song of early-morning destruction. The scamp dances to this tune, bouncing happily as she shrugs into her new vest and snatches up the sword. She hasn’t any use for the weapon, there being no way she could swing it and maintain any semblance of balance, but it should bring a few coins in trade. A small wooden stool takes flight from the above window, crunching into the opposite wall of the alley and rebounding to land near the feet of the still cavorting streetrat. She decides its time to go, before the angry mark takes a peek out his window. In light and leaping twirls and bounds, she scampers down the alley, chasing her own chiming giggle into the distance.
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