Vipersong

5 || Troubles of Men

Around kings' thrones, storm clouds gather.
~Anonymous, Year 45 New Age

——

RAFI MORA HAD ONLY one love in his life, and it was leather. Granted, it was a rather peculiar love for several reasons. Number one being that it essentially surmounted to dried up animal skin—obviously. He knew that; he wasn't dumb. But nevertheless, Rafi held a deep appreciation for leather's versatility, its durability, the smooth, supple feel of it under his hands as he whittled on his stool, secured safely away from the rest of the outside world. As far as he was concerned, leather was the greatest invention in the world.

Best of all, it got him out of that horrible place they called school.

For some reason, ever since he was ten years old, Rafi had hated school. Hated how his hands—so dexterous with metal incising tools—were utterly clumsy with quills, how his letters liked to switch places on the page, hated how he blushed beet red whenever he stumbled over the simplest recitations. He thoroughly despised the long arithmetic problems and dense history books crammed with a myriad of facts he would never be able to memorize. And he hated the way the other students laughed at him.

That funny-looking boy lives in the devil house over by the river, they used to whisper to one another. Don't touch him, he's cursed!

The worst one had been none other than Elisa Carozza, his—well, Rafi did not know what she was to him. She was an orphan from a different family, so certainly not his sister, certainly not a member of the Mora family, although his own sister and cousin had treated her as such for reasons beyond his comprehension. And even though Elisa lived under the same roof as Rafi did, she had not been called cursed—had in fact enjoyed a popularity he once envied so much it nearly hurt.

Probably because as a child, she would often pipe up with that little flouncy hair toss of hers—He's cursed and that's why he is so stupid and ugly.

Absent-mindedly, Rafi tugged on the lobes of his too-large ears with one hand as he bent over his workspace, his nose bent so close to the leather he could almost kiss it. The memory of his school days left a nasty taste in his mouth. For that first year, he had tried desperately to keep up with the long-winded passages and endless scrolls of parchment before giving up completely. He'd only scraped through because Valentina muttered the answers to him—at least until the magistra caught them in the act and sniffed with a distasteful downturn of her mouth. Don't bother with the effort, my dear. He won't understand it anyway.

A redolent evening breeze rippled through the open windows of the bottega, smelling faintly of oranges. Rafi sighed and flipped over the piece he was working on. Apprentice work suited him far better. Despite what the magistra might have believed, he was sure it was not his fault he was born ineducable. It was not his fault that he had big ears, a nose that always peeled in the sun, and a downright funny-looking face, almost as if someone had jumbled up his twin sister's perfectly fine features and stuck them on a blank canvas in some kind of unfunny jest.

It was the sum of who Rafi was—a joke that didn't quite land.

But it didn't matter. The tools in Alphonse's quiet, peaceful bottega did not care if he could spell or recite his sums; they did not care if he was hopelessly ugly or wonderfully handsome. Because under a master's hands—under his hands—it was only the beauty of the art that truly mattered.

Leather. It always came back to the leather.

Alphonse leaned over from where he sat at the stove, strumming lazily on his lute. "Excellent craftsmanship, son," he said approvingly.