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Dorian's Upbringing
Posted: 29 Apr 2007 06:24 PM |
He sat down, breathing heavily. He looked around himself and thought, "Man 'live, this'n gets harder ever' time I c'min'ere t'mine..." He grimaced. His new, odd way of speech, the one that had set as had his new tongue, was beginning to meter it's way to the speech of his own thought. He shrugged. "Could b'worse," he thought to himself. "Reckon I could still b'writin' ever'thang I got t'say f'm'self..." After doing this for so long, he had taken to using two pickaxes as he worked. He learned where to hit the rocks in order to maximize the yield of raw materials, as well as how to manuevre the weapon just so, in order to apply the most force he could get into his strike. Nothing more to do now but to swing and gather. And of course, as he always did to pass the time in whatever mine he might find himself in, to think and remember.
"How?" He wondered as he swung the axes, large nuggets of ore falling to the ground. "T'weren't right..." He didn't know quite how, but his upbringing, muddled as it was, didn't seem to fit properly. He found himself wandering back to his earliest memories, memories of a farm.
It was a happy life; a man, a woman, and a child. There was a smattering of animals; egg bearing hens, milk bearing goats. Momma always hassled Daddy to get a stud bull and some cows. Daddy's argument was always the same: "For the cost of keeping a single cow, dear heart, not only could we buy a thousand chickens, but we could easily feed them for a year, maybe more." She would always retort, "Jeffrey, that can't be right." He would then look up at her and reply, "Anne, the beasts are simply too big. Sure enough, the beef and milk would sell beautifully, but everything else... No, they simply wouldn't be worth it." She looked down at her little boy at that point, still flustered, then smiled, the annoyance clearing. "What do you think, Dorian? Would you like to see some cows around here?" He looked up into her beautiful face with his big, innocent gray eyes, eyes very much like her own. Those eyes were the only thing she gave to the boy at his birth. Beyond that, Dorian was all Jeffrey. He looked up at her and replied, "I don't know, Momma, I think Daddy's right. Besides, cows are stinky." She laughed at that and replied resignedly, "Well so much for having cows, I guess..." He had been but a child of nine years at that point in time.
Dorian looked at his gear, realizing that, in his private reverie, he had filled his packs. Still ore aplenty to mine, but no room left to carry it. He siged, knowing that smelting was a long, slow walk away. He shouldered his packs, set them to stability on his back, and made sure that his normally used weapons were at easy reach: darts in a wrist sheath, his shield on a modified hip holster, and his sword sheathed at an elevated spot on his shoulder, so as to remain accessible, as well as to make room for the numerous packs he carried. He bagan walking as he made sure that his sword was clear in it's scabbard. He grinned wryly as he gripped the blade's pommel, remembering his 'Mother dearest'.
It had been a year since Momma and Daddy had died. It was bloody, violent, mysterious, and as far as a little boy named Dorian knew, completely unwarranted. Daddy had never done anything aside from raising farm animals, selling his wares, and occasionally beating a weapon or a new farm tool from some metals he may have been able to glean from his trips to the market. Momma did nothing more than keep house. As a boy, he wouldn't think on it. As a man, he couldn't. The memory was so hazy at this point in his life that it was like trying to swim through the sewers. At the age of ten, he had lost his parents. He had spent a year in Small Stones, not caring who thought what of him. He had grown thin that year, though still taller in stature than most of the boys there his age. It wasn't that he was being fed, it was that he hadn't hardly any appetite to eat.
The age of eleven is when she walked into his life. He was completely awestruck by the woman. She was larger than life, sinfully ugly, and carried a sword as long as he was tall. The normal gathering of youths was made, where she made a proclomation, in a voice that sounded as a greataxe being honed on a grindstone, "No girls. I don't have the time or patience for a girl. I will only look at the boys." Dorian was mesmerized. He was dumbstruck as he heard her addressed as 'Madame'. Never had he seen anything so great and ugly, nor could he imagine anything as such to be addressed as 'Madame'. Dorian had had some scares in the short eleven years that were his life at that point, but he new true fear the instant his eyes met with those of the woman who would later would insist that he address her as 'Mother dearest'.
"You. Boy. The tall one with the black hair. Yes, you. Come here." Dorian paled and broke into a cold sweat as he approached this monster, his eyes widening as he got closer. She grabbed him roughly by the chin and drew his face ever more upaward. 'By all things holy, it's nearly twice my height,' he thought of her as she scrutinized him. Her eyes widened disapprovingly, as if reading his thoughts, and she began to poke at him, jabbing a hard, sap-like finker repeatedly into his ribs. She looked at the caretaker and said simply, "He's scrawny." The man looked back at her and replied simply, "He won't eat." She then grinned at the man; a sharptoothed, predatory grin. "I'll change that," she replied. "This boy will come home with me today. I believe I have found myself a suitable son."
The boy was much too scared to even cry at this point. Everything seemed to slow for him as the conversation continued. "Very good, Madame. The scribe will draft the proper documentation, and we will be ready shortly. Do you have the adoption fee?" He was led away at this point, the last thing he conciously heard as the matrons took him to be cleaned and more properly clothed was, "And put something in his stomach! He's much too scrawny to be healthy!"
Dorian, a man grown now, shook his head, laughing as he remembered his adopted mother and the way she handled the same breed of sword that he now carried; the one that she had taught him to use. He remembered the husband that she had taken later on down the road; that emaciated, yet very charming, little half of a man. He had spent the small fortune that she had accumulated selling her prowess with a blade on drink and games of chance and driven them all straight to the slums. He was a thief and a user, born and bred, and had taught Dorian a lot of his craft. Not one to use people the way that 'Father', was prone to, he turned up a bit of a disappointment inthe man's eyes. Not much of a hindrance to Dorian, this worthless little nothing of a man's disappointment, as it was.
In her own strange way, Mother dearest had loved Dorian. In that same strange way, Dorian loved her the same. He came to be happy enough in her home and in her care, even in the slums. The time came, however, for Dorian to leave the proverbial roost. He found himself leaving that home at the end of his Mother dearest's extremely large boot. 'Father' had been too deep in the drink that day, had gotten to feeling strong, and decided to test it on Dorian. The man was charming, and very nimble on a normal day. Today wasn't a normal day, and Dorian was found standing over the unconcious, bruised, and snoring form of his adopted mother's husband. She sent him sprawling from the ram-shackle abode, his sword flying after him, yelling in that ever grating voice of hers for him to never show his face on her step again.
Dorian shrugged as he remembered this. He had been of age, and she had been in her perfect right. ' 'Sides,' he thought to himself as he trudged along, 'I'm better off this way. I reckon if'n I'd'a stayed on with'n Mother dearest'n Father, I'd'a ended th'same's he did, n'then I'd b'livin' off'n th'charity'a them rich folks'll come 'long'n find it'n th'goodness'a their hearts t'make sure that us 'pov'rished types got sum'thin' t'eat.' He grinned to himself as he walked through Buckshire by this point, wondering just how his Mother dearest and her husband were fairing these days; more importantly, however, he anticipated the heat of the forge in the Artio settlement, and the satisfaction of turning rough ore to useable ingots, and those to something that someone else might be able to use. |
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