Somewhere Only We Know ✨

P4- Laughter Splitting my Sides with Clementines

As the evening grew tired between the Moors, the sun began to fall away, turning to rest. The familiar overwhelm of the daylight disappeared, leaving only the smell of a colder twilight breeze across the leaves, serenading nervous and beating hearts to calm. Squelching feet and the chirping of crickets were the only noises between Hammy and Heather, preoccupying them away from the conversation and hushing them into their own thoughts. Hammy got the sense that Heather was used to this sort of quiet, that she was constantly dampened within it. Maybe it was the way of life within the people here at the Moors, working into the hush of night. He found himself wondering how he would be if he were raised there, if the dew of the Moors would have calmed the citrus that seemed to run through his veins.

He looked to find Heather, trying to see his answer in her. Trailing his eyes down, he found her crouched by a bush of heathers. Before he could get his voice out to make a joke, she spoke.

"Can you tell I named myself?" Lending him a small smile, she pulled him down to crouch with her. "You were supposed to be in the Orphanage right? Hammy isn't a very common name."

Sighing, he pulled a sprig of heather through his fingers, picking slowly at the petals. "I think my dad could tell that this town wasn't going to handle the food shortage well." The heather flower smelled far nicer than the expensive perfumes that he guessed were mixed with oils and the like. "You named yourself? But you're not an orphan right?"

She shrugged. "There are other reasons to name yourself." Taking her own sprig of heather, she placed the flower above her ear. "I heard alot of stories growing up. I wanted to be in one. I had my own stories too- and wouldn't you know that in every one was this single hero: "Heather of the Moors" they would all call her, when she saved the world. When she defeated the evil witch of the swamps, when she would protect the town from evil thieves... she could see the future too, in some of the stories. I'm still not sure if I wanted her to save me or if I wanted to be her,- to escape into her perfection. I guess you know which one I picked in the end though."

When Heather looked to him this time, he wondered if maybe if her gaze was human, searching for something familiar just like his. They didn't seem so omnipotent now. "What about you?" Her voice was uncertain.

He felt his legs shaking as he crouched, that shake of exhaustion when your muscles say to you "I give up." Surrendering, he let himself fall onto his back into the mud and sludge of the Moors. Sogginess seeped into his clothes.

"I'm struggling." He said.

And she listened.

"I know it's difficult for everyone. I know it's selfish. I know I'm not the victim here, I know I have it easy, I know that these feelings I have don't have any place here. But is it so bad that I can hear it, tearing at me so much, that there's more than this? Is it so bad that I look at it all- the cakes, the friendly morning banter, the quiet lives and, and I want to turn away? There's more, there's more, I want more, more, more! These perfectly wooden carven figures all in our places- we're rotting away! Maybe I'm just naïve, maybe I'm stuck in daydreams. But I just can't- we're all scared of the Moors, you know. We're scared of new things. I should be the one most scared of this place, but here I am- and for once I feel like I can finally breathe. For once, I'm not scared that I won't fall out of the light side of life, the good side with all the comfort and the safety, because that isn't even the good side. We just tell ourselves it is, because it has to be."

Muddy water had soaked his clothes now completely, clinging to his chest and to his heart, and even as his face had warmed up in his passion, a chilly wind brushed upon his cheeks and tears.

"You want an adventure. A story right? It's already found you, Prometheus."

Tiredly, he craned his neck to follow where Heather pointed, and his strained eyes following across the distant costal line, when he saw it.

The oranges of the sun had long melted away, and the sky was painted by a deep blue, dark enough that small clusters of stars began to shine through, and the rising moon illuminated a small silhouette of a ship.

Whispers of temors made their way up from his hands up his arms, and slowly, sleeping nerves came alive, hairs standing up on end. In an abrupt shiver, a sharp tang of tonic excitement stabbed through the water pooled around his chest, sunken in the oozing mire. Blinking, over and over again, he starred at the nodding ship. Insecure murmurs made their way around his head- and they all said the same thing.

"Dad?"

The goodbye to Heather was short- rushed, probably. As he struggled to gain his footing up and away from the puddle of mud he laid in, she seemed to return to her listening ears to that engulfing quiet. And the run home became blurred in his memory, he was sure that he tripped at some point, but he wouldn't be able to explain many of the bruises that he awoke with the next morning. He entered the Inn with a searing pain in his stomach and a constricted feeling in his chest.

Gasping for air, his eyes searched the Inn in a frenzy, but it was full to the brim with clamoring figures- all people from the town that had come up the hill and into the Inn to see the newcomer. They blocked his view from whoever it was, but he begged, cried out for it to be that man. He could only hear a voice- it was deeper than what he could remember from his childhood, assuming that it was him- more brassy, but still carrying some sort of smooth thrumming underneath the surface. In his mind, as light-headed as he felt, he compared it to cleanly finished wood; still carrying some splinters, though.

Stella found him before he found her or the mysterious man, through the crowd. She didn't seem impressed.

"Where have you been? Why are you covered in mud?" Her voice rang out far more bluntly than the other, quiet, chattering voices in the room.
"Foraging."
"Foraging?"
He ignored her question. "Who's the owner of the ship?"
Letting out a small sigh, she took his hand softly- he could've sworn he saw sympathy in those eyes. "I'll take you to meet him."

Weaving through groups of people, Hammy heard small mentions of gossip of the ship owner, but for the most part people seemed to be listening to that brazen voice.

"I've been to all four corners of the world." It would boast, and people would buzz around it like bees, muttering,
"Can you imagine?"

And when Hammy finally came to meet him, there he sat, bold and callous surrounded by bottles of ale and leering bodies. Hammy noticed his mouth- tense lips that talked quickly with the wind; sometimes sentences were left hanging as the wind picked up, and picked up, and then dropped away just as hurriedly. His eyes tip-toed occasionally into sparkling interest, a deep fixation and inspiration- then all of a sudden seemed to swing completely into distance that filled him up and wisked him away to somewhere Hammy couldn't guess.

It wasn't his dad. Of course it wasn't his dad- he was stupid to think that it was. No- instead it was some guy- with windswept and dark hair and a grating cheeriness to him that he was sure was a front. His hair fell into a slight fringe, alot longer at the back than at the front, and his shirt was overzealous, with irritating ruffles and flares around the sleeves, and to mismatch was a worn out black leather vest on top. Countless shiny silver rings wrapped around his olive fingers, glistening under the candle-light- too many.

Hammy didn't notice that he was holding his own fist too tight- his knuckles were white.

"Who the hell are you?"
And guess this- the cocky bastard sniffed and snickered at him! "Who are you, walking up to me, covered in mud?" He said!
"I work here."
"Why are you so rude to a customer then, idiot?"
Hammy wrinkled up his nose angrily, and then, in complete maturity, he shoved someone else off the bar stool next to the man and sat down.
"I'm not working tonight."

This time the man snorted, and passed him one of the many lined up ale bottles. Hammy pushed it back, still with a disgruntled look on his face, and called for Stella and one of her new bilberry gins who proudly presented it with dancing hands.

"Bilberries? It's dangerous to steal from bears."
He almost stuck his tongue out at him. "Yeah, I'm sure you've fought many bears on your journeys around the world."
The man's eyes began to drift away again, only slightly. "You're interested in my journeys around the world?"
"Can you tell me anything that's actually true?"
The man shrugged with a small smile. Hammy rolled his eyes.
"What's your name then? Can you be honest with that?"
"RJ." His voice was low.
"Hammy."
He laughed at that one.