Revolutions of Myrathra: Stained Glass Heart - Chapter 2 (Patreon)

46 hours until the Flames begin.

It wasn't that Cassander would say his apartment had been trouble from the beginning. The bus station had trouble when a balding, no-chin dwarf held up the line when they were escorted off of a bus for harassing a driver. The taxi service had trouble reaching his station due to road construction. The sidewalks had trouble distinguishing hard and wet cement in pouring rain. The inner city bus had trouble with the same-numbered route taking the newcomer to a different part of the city entirely.

When Cassander finally arrived at the three-story red-brick apartment building, he would simply say "Sorry, I had trouble getting here."

The landlord was a shorter older lady wearing a flowery blouse with cream capri pants. Her wire-framed spectacles gazed past Cassander to his suitcase speckled with mud as she motioned for him to come inside, then held up a hand as he stopped on the welcome mat.

"You wait here. I'll bring a towel."

She carried her hands and elbows like her body was segmented into three distinct joints as she walked further into the building, moving from side to side as a power walk silently stated "I'm behind schedule because you're late".

Examining the lobby as he waited, Cassander could see several hanging art pieces - three of them seemed to be prints inspired by the Painterly Saint of Patience - framed in glass and wood. When attempting to straighten one that was hanging askew, he found the frames had gained a coat of dust as they were fastened tightly to the wall with screws behind the frame.

Getting toweled off before having a separate paper towel for the luggage, the landlady led Cassander past the common lobby area and mailboxes and up a boxy spiral staircase. The building liked to keep up appearances that it was built in the business boom of the 20s and not sandwiched between aluminum-sided boxes set on the bones of its similarly-aged neighbours. The windows that shone grey, water-speckled light onto the staircase looked out to the roof. Pigeons huddled and cooed in a small outcropping near a heat vent on the top of a pizza delivery. Cigarette butts and droppings littered the scene that expanded out to the crosswalk below and a small park further down the street. A brick-and-mortar cathedral rose in the distance amidst apartment buildings, business offices, convenience stores and small shops. One side of the building looked out into the back alley and dumpsters where another, much taller apartment complex stood looming over the red-brick relic site. The final side had an exclusive and expansive view of an aluminum-sided box that was supposedly serving as a shared space for five businesses at once.

Cassander heard the jingling of keys and the turning of the door as he made the rest of his way up the stairs, careful not to bump his suitcase against the strained, cracked and thickly varnished wooden railing. The building owner gave a glance in his direction before opening apartment number 7 and moving inside for him to follow. The rest of his boxes were where he'd directed them when they were moved prior, with a metal spring bedframe hosting a slightly sunken single mattress. On the dining room table, there was an invoice for repairs to the HVAC unit in a small room inside of the bedroom closet.

"Laundry room is in the basement; first-come, first-serve. Noise complaints can be filed for any ongoing noise after 9 pm. Any damages made to your block that do not affect the rest of the building are your responsibility to fix and pay..."

The landlady said this with the monotonous tenor of someone making noises and motions with their mouth that had long since discarded holding on to any meaning in the repeated phrases. Her distant foggy-eyed expression came slightly back into focus when she pulled two keys off of her keyring and a laundry card from her pocket.

"You in school?" she asked Cassander.

He took the keys and card meekly as he replied, "I just graduated from Morrigan. Got my Bachelor’s in Folkloric Craft and Psionic Studies."

"How old are you?"

The question was less of an inquiry and more of a bracing of herself. Her face was scrunched up in calculation to see how much cleaning she'd have to do after a night of rowdy people let into her building; how many noise complaints she'd have to file or dismiss from neighbours; how many years had led up to this new blood spilled in her domain...

"22."

Her eyebrows lifted slightly but her mouth remained a slight frown. He hadn't shaved his small chin scruff recently and it itched at the small woman's stern gaze. Pointed ears drooped with her graceful wrinkles, as there was a flicker of green and a small cloud darkening over her face.

"You have any girlfriends come over? Any drinking? Drugs? Parties?"

Cassander laughed a little too quickly and a little too loudly. The landlady’s cloud shifted, as if hit by a strange crossbreeze it wasn't expecting. He regained his quieter demeanour and quickly shook his head. Suddenly he had become fascinated with the polished wooden flooring of the kitchenette.

"Do you work?"

It took a nonzero amount of restraint to stop himself from asking, "Do you?"

Cassander nodded with mention of a few job interviews. That seemed satisfactory, as the cloudy expression over the unemployed building owner seemed to smooth into a general overcast.

"You're a nice boy," she said, more as an observation than a compliment. "Rent is due on the 5th of every month."

With that, the landlady's blouse billowed back out into the hallway and slipped through a crack as the door sharply shut.

Left alone in his new apartment, Cassander looked around and began opening the few boxes stacked in front of his bedroom closet. Long-sleeve buttoned shirts made their way to coathangers, mostly unwrinkled from their clumsily folded transit. Already-read books found their way to a small metal-frame bookshelf whose shelving bubbled and warped with heat and water damage. By the time Cassander had mostly unpacked, the grey daylight had turned to a cloudy dusk. Streaks of red and gold lined the violet-gray leftovers of the summer storm, darting in and out of the city skyline.

Deciding that he'd been tired, wet and miserable for mostly long enough, Cassander took a towel and peered around the door to the bathroom. A few water damage stains in the ceiling seemed to have dried up, with spackle spreading almost like clouds on the light blue paint. Between the shower and the door, Cassander knew without looking that the mirror was on his right hand side.

He turned off the lights and felt the frame of the door. He felt for the shower head and recoiled at the spray that hit his back through his wet and clingy shirt. Waiting for it to warm, he closed off the curtain and shed the soaked clothes. He felt the water flow through his hair, down his neck and spine and gangly limbs. Mechanical movements soaped and lathered and scrubbed once, twice and three times over.

And then he heard it; rain falling on a glass window, pattering just below his collarbone and onto his surrounding ribcage. Cassander quickly shielded his chest and shut the water off, blindly reaching for the towel rack. It hung inconspicuously on a metal hook on the wall, just to the right of an aluminum-glass bonded panel. Touching the looking glass while looking for the towel, he already knew it was too late as his center of gravity moved straight forward. Every sense of direction was thrown off as he felt his arm meet with no resistance as he would appear to an observer with his upper torso sinking into the mirror. The dark did nothing to mask the change in atmosphere, as Cassander's hair fell past his ears as gravity pulled him into an abyss. With the rest of his body, he desperately pulled himself up, out and back from the mirror. Stumbling backward, he felt a thud and a dull pain in the back of his head as he hit the other bathroom wall. He sat splayed out on the tile, rubbing his head and looking towards the crack of light peeking under the door.

By the tiniest refraction, photons had made their way up past the cabinet to a false marble and the waving edge of towel fabric. Scrambling to his feet and avoiding slipping again, Cassander grabbed the towel and didn't look back as he left the bathroom. Thankfully, there weren’t any mirrors in his bedroom.

Getting changed and grabbing his phone, Cassander fell onto his bed and glanced outside at the water streaking down the window. Streaks of pink peeked out over the concrete jungle from the dissolving dark cotton of emptied storm clouds. Mostly settled in, though slightly unsettled, Cassander called his mother, Einya. The phone rang for two-and-a-half rings before picking up. Her voice was gentle and sing-song, with the chatter of birds in the background.

"Hi buddy! How's the move-in? Didja get everything all sorted?"

He couldn't “see” as well over the phone, but there were tinges of vibrating grey and yellow worrying into his cheek. He swallowed it back and mimicked the tones.

"Yeah! Just finished unpacking and cleaning, taking it easy for now."

The worrying still persisted into his jaw and teeth, "Good, good… do you have enough in the fridge? I could send a care package in the next few days?"

Cassander’s fingers fiddled with the fraying fabric of his towel, his legs unable to decide whether they wanted to kick up on the single bed mattress or touch the floor. His body reached a compromise as he had one leg up and one foot bouncing silently on the water-damaged hardwood. “Only if you want to! I’ve got a bit left,” referring to the zero groceries he’d bought today.

“Of course I want to!” Something on the other end blended the colours together - soft gradients that rose and fell slowly like waves washing over him, causing him to sink. She’d already prepared one before he called. Then the worry came back, “How’s the job hunt going?”

Cassander moved to stand and threw his towel into the laundry basket as he walked out of his room into the kitchenette. His right hand ached from gripping the phone and he swapped to the other hand and ear. “It’s going! There are some cafes and bookstores and stuff in the area that I’ll look into tomorrow. I think I saw one that was near a park with a fountain on Broodle Maps.”

“Awesome! Have you heard from your dad since you moved in?”

An arm hung frozen in the air, reaching for a cupboard door. Cassander retracted and turned away, quietly responding “I haven’t.”

“He was surprised that you left so soon,” she continued, “I’m sure he’d love it if you called him.”

Cassander nodded to no one. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and he squeezed the phone tight. “Yeah…”

The yellow over the phone blended into a blue, dawn breaking across growing rainclouds, but the rain never falls. Einya’s sing-song resumed, “Well I’ll let you get back to settling in, thanks for calling me! I love you, buddy.”

"I love you too, Mom. I’ll talk to you later.”

The two said their “bye’s” and Cassander hung up. He leaned back against the counter and sighed, before turning back to get a glass from the cupboard. He opened it to find one of the glasses shattered and pieces strewn among the other cups and plates. Carefully picking up the pieces, he mechanically tossed them in the garbage one-by-one and moved for a different glass. He ran the faucet and listened to the water rumble and patter against the steel sink like a drum. Knocking back some water that would assuage the inevitable desert of his mouth tomorrow morning, Cassander climbed into bed and trekked towards sleep.

I dreamed of the days leading up to that first fight. It was only a few weeks or so before Dad went to the hospital. We were on our lunch break and my friend was sitting with me. It was usually just him and I, though he never seemed to bring any lunch. He said he always forgot his at home, so I let him have some of mine. On that day, he was rubbing his black bangs between his fingers, like they were the strings of a violin. He seemed bored. We didn't usually talk this much when it was just us - people would look at us weird and my friend would get mad and tell me to shut up.

Then someone else had come by. My friend said his name was something that rhymed with "arse-hole", though I couldn't remember while I giggled at that joke. He'd asked me what was so funny, but my friend told me not to answer. I trusted my friend with these things, he always watched out for me like an older brother.

Maybe-Marcel didn't like my silence, so he flipped my lunch tray and walked off. It didn't look like anyone else wanted to get involved, so I picked up what I could and kept talking with my friend. It had been a while since I'd laughed.

For the next few days, Possibly-Parcel would come by and ask what I was having for lunch. I'd respond, and then one of three things would happen: if he liked the meal then he would take it; if he was neutral to the meal he would walk away from me and shove my tray across the table; if he disliked it, he would spit on it as he walked away. Mom was surprised I was eating so well at dinner when I got home. Dad said I shouldn't get too greedy.

"Aren't you getting tired of it?" My friend asked. He'd watched without saying anything, and Ostensibly-Orcel paid him no mind. Every time the larger guy came around, my friend would scrunch his face up. I'd feel something under my fingernails, then my shoulders tighten until he went away. I usually felt more tired after everyone was gone.