Private Tales Home is where the - what even is that in my house?

[Baise]

Jonathan Burr

Valthar carefully set his axe down above his hearth. There, he hoped, it would stay for a long time. His house was nearly empty but he had never had many things. Valthar had been surprised that after nearly a year away he could have his old house back. After the demons had come there were apparently many empty homes in Faarin.

He would not shy from the call should his town need defending, but after months and months of adventure there was just one thing he wanted. Valthar gathered his furs and set out from the small house. He cast one last glance back at the heavily notched axe over the fireplace. It wasn't even norden made, but it had served him well in the journey across the summerlands.



Valthar's skin had forgotten the kiss of the ocean wind. They were harsh here, cutting through the furs now damp with ocean spray. He had never thought that his own home would seem to unforgiving and harsh. He had learned to live in a climate that was not his own.

No matter how far he travelled his hands would never forget the nets. No amount of time would take that muscle memory away. He stayed on the gentle waves for four hours until he returned. Satisfied at a piece of honest work and a heavy net he took the familiar, worn, wooden stairs back up to his empty home.

It had been empty when he left it.

 

[Jonathan Burr]

Ah, vacation in the mountains with his favorite rabbit.

Jon needed this. A nice place to recuperate and rest, and a place to sell his wares. He’d rented it out for dirt cheap, though he’d thought it was a little odd the man had misplaced the key and he’d had to lock pick his way in. Funny that. He’d have to have a key made. For the moment Hob was the best burglary deterrent he could have.

Jon had just finished brewing a pot of tea. His wild red hair was tousled from lazing about all day. He’d happily abandoned his boots and shirt, preferring to laze in front of the fire with the heat on his skin. He’d changed some of the rocks around the fireplace to large polished chunks of amethyst. Far from the humble river rocks they’d been, now they caught the firelight and sent pale violet dancing across the floor.

Jon had a mug of tea in his hands, settled happily in the chair, when their stairs creaked. Jon grumbled and cuddled down. Kids had been visiting the house on and off all day wanting to buy fire flowers.
“Look, shop’s bloody well closed for the day!” He barked at the door. “And the little shit who threw the blue sparker in the well is going to catch a hand!”

 

[Baise]

As he opened the door, Valthar immediately wished that he had taken his axe. Now there were two shapes between himself and his own fireplace. A young man with fiery red hair sat enjoying a mug of tea.

At my table.

The other, less distinct shape, loomed in the corner. Valthar stood framed in the doorway, face shifting through a range of expressions. He settled in incredulous rage.

"Shop!?" he barked. "This is my house!"

Jonathan Burr

 

[Jonathan Burr]

Jon startled and nearly dropped the tea when the man opened the door. He scowled and set the mug down. Well, so much for a relaxing evening. “The hell do you mean your house? I rented this place you drunken twat.” He snapped, rising to his feet. He sighed, and shook his head.

“Scam, right? How many people do you think paid for the place and were told the keys were lost right? What, did you pay that scummy little shit to stay here a few days too?” Jon asked. “Look, we can share the joint for a night and figure it out in the morning, but I’ve got the bed. There’s a couch.”

Hob drew closer, materializing just enough so his large yellow eyes were visible, shadowy ears lifting up and swiveling toward the stranger.
“This is Hob. Don’t do anything stupid, like try to rob me.” Jon advised.

 

[Baise]

"This has been my house since I was a child," Valthar snapped.

"I have fought demons, torn into orcs with tooth and claw, battled the whiles of southern wizards and battled dark hearted men to...What the fuck is that?"

Valthar pointed a stocky finger square at what was apparently 'hob'. It was a shame really as it was about the most words he had ever strung together in one go until that point.

 

[Jonathan Burr]

“Are you blaming me for starting bar fights with orcs and bad men? That sounds like more of an anger problem with you than anything.” Jon pointed out, and gestured at Hob. “He’s a friend. He keeps me safe while I sell my wares and he keeps me around because I’m entertaining. Or so he says.”

The rabbit stepped out, next to him, in all of his glory. He was around eight feet tall, which meant the ears he had up and pointed at Valthar were pressed against the ceiling. His lips peeled back from his muzzle in a grin, luminous yellow eyes giving Valthar a quick once-over. “I guess were sharing the couch then?” He chuckled darkly, a noise that sounded more like puppies drowning under a brook than an actual expression of mirth.

Jon shrugged. “Well I paid the place up through the end of the month. I’m not about to leave just because you’re not smart enough to lock a door right and go around picking fights with folks.” He told Valthar, picking up his tea mug. “I found some liquor but we drank all that the first night in. Sorry. There’s a tea kettle over there though.”

 

[Baise]

Silence fell. The cold sea wind excused itself around Valthar's form and introduced itself to the inside of the house. For everything that he had been through Valthar was left entirely speechless. He looked to the man, to the lupine...ogre and back to the man again. Then he looked to his own kettle.

"But...who did you even pay? For my..."

Valthar had managed to blow out most of his anger but it was planning to rally once he had come to accept the reality of what was in front of him. He didn't go to fetch someone else from the town because he didn't know exactly how he was going to explain this.

Valthar finally stepped into his own house - taking half a sideways step away from the one who he couldn't even imagine fitting on the couch alone, let alone with company.

"I want you two out!" he declared. He kept his gaze firmly fixed on the man and not the long-eared creature that was still looming over his right shoulder. The damned thing's ears were brushing the rafters.

 

[Jonathan Burr]

Jon shrugged and poured him a mug of tea, setting it on the end of the table Valthar was closest to. “I mean you want us out but we paid for the place, and I don’t really feel like leaving. What, I paid us up through the week?” He looked at Hob, who nodded. “Only had to pay for one person on account of the shadow horror over there.” Jon grinned mischievously at Valthar.

He sat back down at the table and put his feet up, stretching out. He didn’t wear shoes. At all, and it showed. “Made your fireplace prettier. I was debating on turning the whole thing to amethyst but with the mountain man theme you had going I figured less was more.” Jon said, gesturing at the dove-sized lumps of purple stone above the merrily crackling fire. They caught the light as it flickered, sending little shafts of purple light across the floor. There were other little details in the house; he’d fixed a few old window cracks and mended some of the stonework as though it never had aged.

Hob drew close to inspect Valtar, tilting his head to smell him. His nostrils were more like that of a great vulture, with a clear hole between the nares. His ears dropped behind his head. You know we could always pay in other ways. Mortals are so stuck up. His blackened hand snuck a feel of Valthar’s hind end, and Hob vanished in a swirl of wormy fur that wriggled between the floorboards.

“Don’t mind Hob. He really just likes making people feel uncomfortable.” Jon chuckled into his tea.

 

[Baise]

Valthar managed to pull a chair out from the table before he collapsed into it. He had a sense that he would have just sat down on the floor otherwise.

"He is...doing a good job..." Valthar replied. He was still watching the part of the floor where the thing had wriggled away.

He was being punished, he decided. Out on the waves a thought had crossed his mind that had made him feel guilty. He had wondered if living this life again would seem boring now. At no point in the years that had come before had he felt unsatisfied with his lot in life.

His father had been a famed warrior, one of the greatest to leave faarin and fight for the royal family. Yet he had been nothing more than a fisherman. Valthar had been perfectly content. This was his punishment for missing the excitement of the open road.

He looked at the fireplace. Apparently shining purple stones built into the stones was normal. Valthar knew every crack and ridge in that fireplace, so he recognised that whole stones had been changed and not replaced. That this man was a mage barely even registered after the rabbit thing has crawled through the floorboards.

Valthar reached for the tea, wishing that it was a beer. The woman at the end of the street brewed and sold ale and he was tempted to go and fetch one right now.

"A week you say?" Valthar asked, almost hopefully. "Could you take your bare feet off the table."

That, apparently, was all he could grasp to try and take some control of the situation back.

 

[Jonathan Burr]

Jon shrugged at him. “A week. It’s a vacation but I’ve been raking in more gold here than I have been for the past month. I might stay longer, all depends on my new roommate.” He grinned at Valthar. Maybe they could have a little fun with this. He always liked blowing people’s minds with the fire flowers...and people tended to appreciate their minds being blown. Jon loved the show, the ambience of it. He was an ostentatious person by nature.

“Hey, want to see what I sell?” Jon grinned. “It’ll knock your socks clean off your feet.”

He rose and wandered into the bedroom to fetch something out of his bag. He brought it back and set it on the table. It was a black lump of something about the size of a marble. “Marble, right? Or piece of deer shit, whatever you’re thinking.” Jonathan had a shiteating grin on his face. He picked up the marble and held it out in his palm.

The marble sparked and ignited, whirring with a loud piercing shriek. Purple sparks rained over the table and Jonathan’s arm, gold flecks spinning out into space. It lit up the entire room in lavender and bright flashes of gold, an assault on the senses that faded the background of the room away. A thick odor rose, pungent and spicy, and strongly chemical.

As swiftly as it started it was over, leaving crumbled bits of ash in Jon’s hand. He cackled and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Wanna try?” He asked, a spark of mischief in his blue eyes.

 

[Baise]

. “A week. It’s a vacation but I’ve been raking in more gold here than I have been for the past month. I might stay longer, all depends on my new roommate.”

Just like that the one thing he thought he had a handle on was yanked away. Before he could even think of how to reply he was asked to look at the intruders wares.

No, instead how about you get the fuck out of my house?

As Jonathan went to fetch something Valthar silently chastised himself for not saying that. At the same time he had to wonder why he hadn't. His mind gravitated back towards those few minutes in his boat. Those moments where he had slipped and wished for more excitement.

Is my old life no longer enough?

Valthar leaned across the table to look at the small black marble. It did look like deer droppings. When it ignited it was followed by the sound of Valthar's chair hitting the floor. He stood up and took a step back, nearly falling over it. He was already thinking of grabbing a bucket and running for the water.

Yet as quickly as it had started it had finished. Valthar was left with the scent of smoke, powerful to his norden senses, and a myriad of colours still dancing across his eyes.

He grinned.

"Yes!" he replied. "But it won't...burn the place down? It's magic?" he swiftly added as the sensible part of his mind caught up. He sat back down at the table.

 

[Jonathan Burr]

Jon grinned and shook his head. “Not magic! Chemistry!” He laughed. “Fucking around with your fireplace was magic. This? This is pure natural magic. I don’t think you can ignite it on your own though. It took me a bit to figure out how to do it magically.”

Jon waved the smoke away and took Valthar’s hand as he sat back down at the table. He dropped another black marble in it. “Palm open.” He said in a moment of seriousness. “It won’t burn you if you let the heat escape. Close your fingers around it and you’ll have to hold your dick in the other hand.”

The mage gently held his hand for a moment, making sure he’d keep it open and still, then touched the fire flower with his finger. It reacted immediately. This one sent a gout of green and blue sparks up in the air like a fountain, hissing and spitting colors upward. It only devolved into a whirling dervish of green at the end of its life, ending with a seizure-like sputter in Valnar’s palm.

“Course the big ones I sell tickets to.” Jon said playfully. “But if you want to get people in the door you let them hold color itself for a few seconds.” He rubbed the ashes off Valnar’s palm and smirked at him. “They’re called fire flowers. I invented em. Going to be the next big thing.”

 

[Baise]

Chemistry? It sounded like a form of alchemy. It seemed frivolous to use it for a visual display, but as he watched the colours dance out of his palm he knew that he would probably pay some coin to see more.

Valthar blew the Ash from his hand, before he regretfully looked at the state of his table. The work the magician had done in tidying up rather swiftly undone.

He curled his hand into a fist, focusing on the still dark spot in the middle of his palm. Nothing was burned, despite the heat he had felt.

"We are a plain, hard working people here. And I'm sure you still still make some money. How large is a big display?" he asked. Despite being a fully grown adult, a little marvel and colourful fire had diffused the heat of his anger.