AGAMA
Across the river, past a large section of forest, and lying in a small nook of empty clearing was a village. One of several small villages around the major core city of the Agama region, Wilno was a small, tight-knit community, and its inhabitants would stand out any time they went to the central cities.
Today, though, one of said inhabitants is sprawled across a counter. She stretches her arms out and flexes her fingers, sighing as another day goes by.
"I'm booooored."
Annie Eilenberg. Fifth generation alchemist, part of a chain of Eilenbergs that jumped around their family - the fourth was her grandfather, the third was her great-great-uncle, and so on - she was currently studying to take over the family's atelier. The young girl had skill and talent, and yet the small town just wasn't where she wanted to be. Sitting up a bit, she looks out the window, dreaming of the day she could head out into the world and find incredible success.
As she continues to think, her thoughts veering away every time they approach the potential challenges of the world, her attention is captured by the opening of the door. An older man enters the Atelier, looking around as he approaches the counter. Annie quickly slams her hands on the counter and straightens up.
"Hello, Mr. Müeller!" Annie opens with, recognizing the man instantly. With the small nature of the village, she quickly grew to know every customer, and can already tell the basics of his order. "Anything besides the usual?"
"No, not today." The older man shakes his head and waits, as Annie turns to the cauldron that forms the basis for her alchemy. From her posture and expression, it's clear that now that she's working on creating the heat compresses and anti-stiffness concoctions he wants, her energy is fading. It's the same as last week and the week before, Annie capable of making this by rote now, and finding no real drive to do it.
If only she was out in the big city, where people would be flocking to her day and night, and she could focus entirely on the fun parts of her job...
Still, that doesn't stop her from working through the job and handing the items to Müeller, who nods and smiles. "Thanks, Annie. Give my regards to your grandfather." As she sees him off, Annie waits to see who else might come through that door.
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Soon enough, the door of the building is pushed aside by a familiar - to Annie - figure, opening up without excessive force or caution to reveal the form of a young girl with black hair. The girl, Shirabe, wears as modest of an outfit as ever, her clothes not the dirty scraps of someone destitute but worn down and visibly patched just underneath her arms. Twinned pink ribbons holding her hair in two pigtails provide the only modicum of flash in her outfit choice. She steps into the building without a word or even a gesture, her head held forward and her gaze fixed on some point just beyond Annie as she approaches the alchemist’s counter with measured, soft steps. One hand stays right at her side, hanging just low enough to hide, partially, the battered, dirtied pair of rollerblades in it from Annie’s view. Just a few short steps from the counter, Shirabe pauses, sparing a glance at the doorway to check whether or not anyone else has entered behind her before turning back to Annie, looking past her just as she had before as she steps aside to stand up against the wall and wait.
Annie's face brightens when she hears the telltale bell of the door... only to drop a bit when she sees exactly who entered the Atelier. Rather than the excited saleswoman the last couple customers met, the tone when she speaks is one of obligation, of a chore one has to do but that one does not enjoy doing. "Nobody's ahead of you. What do you want?" Annie asks, leaning on the counter and clearly disinterested.
"It's a delivery for you," Shirabe says as she approaches, raising her arm up to her chest level and extending it out to show Annie the small paper bag in her hand. With just as little fanfare, Shirabe sets it down on one end of the counter for Annie - or her grandfather, even - to pick up and sort out on their own time. As mechanical and distant as Shirabe is in her motions and tone, she speaks without any hint of bitterness, speaking to Annie more like a colleague at a business than anything else. For anyone else with her relative youth, her tone would have been jarring, or seen as the mark of an eccentric prodigy, but, from her perspective, there's nothing special or unusual about it; it's merely proper etiquette.
Having made her delivery, Shirabe takes her now-free hand and rummages through her pocket, pulling out a simple list of items, all of them common requests at the Atelier, a topical healing salve, a few products for keeping clean. She reviews the list once, then sets it down, this time putting it down directly in front of Annie rather than leaving it to the side for her to pick up at her whim. "I need these items," she explains as concisely as possible, taking out just enough cash to cover the purchase. "You can hand the delivery fee over with my order." She adds the instructions, trusting Annie to understand them, just before again stepping off to the side, to stand along the wall rather than wait out in the open, where other customers might mill about.
"Hmm." Annie takes the chance to open the bag and take a quick peek inside. "Well, everything seems in order." It's not that Annie expects Shirabe to make off with any of the items that were supposed to go to her, especially with how few of them were usable unless you had the alchemic knowledge to work with them in full, but it never hurt to be completely sure. Even though she had yet to have any encounter like that, nor had her grandfather mentioned one.
Looking at the list, Annie nods. "Right, I'll get on it right now." Her usual lethargy towards the actual work is apparent as ever, that being one thing that Shirabe never influenced either way with her presence. Despite her apathy, though, her skill remains equally solid, Annie blitzing through the products with the quality that made it worth coming here for Shirabe.
With Annie working so quickly, Shirabe's wait is a short one. Not that a longer or shorter wait would have made much of a difference for her, all things considered, seeing as she had made this her last stop of the day. It wasn't as though anyone else coming in would have been an inconvenience, either. She was already out of the way, right where she ought to be.
One could almost miss her completely, if they stepped into the Atelier with other matters on their mind, she stands so patient and still. It's only when Annie finishes, bringing her goods back out, that Shirabe draws any attention to herself again, stepping over to the counter swiftly, collecting her things. She doesn't back away quite as quickly this time, once she has her items in hand, standing in front of the counter for a moment, glancing around the Atelier.
There's no one here, and seemingly no one coming any time soon. Annie's alone, not doing much. With the time she saved thanks to Annie's quick work, she'd return home with more time than she needed to accomplish everything she had planned out for the day... What harm was there in looking for some way to kill additional time?
Turning around, already preparing to leave, Shirabe nevertheless ventures an offer, speaking just loudly enough for Annie to hear her, keeping her voice level so as not to betray any eagerness. "Is there any work which you need someone to do here? I don't need to work for pay. I don't need any more than I have, so I could do this for free." She leaves it at that. It's not like the rest of the village didn't occasionally offer her extra odd jobs once in a blue moon, some unpaid, even. It was normal, and she wasn't putting any pressure on Annie to answer affirmatively, so she felt it a safe question to ask.
Annie leans on the counter, thinking. Her grandfather wouldn't be back until late, and it would be nice to have someone to take care of the actual tasks for her. When it came to assembling the alchemic creations she made, the actual creation thereof was always the most frustratingly dull part, and if she could simply kick back, relax, and tell someone what to do... the idea is tempting and interesting to her mind. Buuut... people would see. People would know. They would ask questions, and they would wonder why Annie had let Shirabe stay in her business for hours. It simply wasn't something to do.
"No. No jobs." Annie affirms, shaking her head.
"That's to be expected," Shirabe mutters without turning back around, just as matter of fact as she had been during the whole visit. The only hint of her disappointment is the slight lowering of her shoulders. With the matter settled, she heads on out of the establishment, struggling a bit to close the door with her hands full but otherwise making herself scarce rather effectively.
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Not but a moment after the door to the Atelier closes, a pair of rollerblades hits the ground with a thump, Shirabe dropping her skates right next to the concrete road stretching in front of the Atelier. Just why did everyone insist on calling them roads? It’s not as though anyone ever drove on them, save for the very rare tourist passing through or stopping by. For most, they were nothing more than walkways. Why not simply call them sidewalks or walkways?
The question runs through Shirabe’s mind as she sits beside the road, fiddling with the laces and straps of her skates while getting them on her feet. Struggling to get one of the overstretched straps to catch properly, she lets her mind wander away from those questions to the task at hand. After all, everyone called them roads. It must have been right. It couldn’t have been the case that all of those people were wrong, and, besides, it didn’t really matter what they were called so long as she was allowed to use them. They had a role in the community and provided utility, and everyone agreed on just what that role was. That was the important part.
Her wandering thoughts settled for the moment, Shirabe rises, gripping her goods from Annie tightly in one hind as she kicks off and zooms down the road.
Really, she was lucky to have them at all. A small village like Wilno could have easily settled for dirt roads, she acknowledges to herself as her twintails flutter in the breeze. Had the place only had dirt roads, she wouldn’t have been able to skate. While that wouldn’t have been too much of an inconvenience on a day like today, on days where she had to strap on a backpack and toss a heavy lead into it to carry back home-
Suddenly acutely aware that she’s thrown her balance off by leaning forward, Shirabe straightens up. This was the problem with thinking too much about these counterfactual scenarios. There was no reason to ponder alternatives that would never come to pass. She needed to play the hand that was dealt to her, without complaint and without gloating. Thinking about what might come to pass or what could come to pass did no good for anyone.
She whizzes past the row of buildings making up the village’s main business strip, the bag from Annie crinkling in her hand as she turns her gaze to the stretch of empty field she passes. Out in the grasses, the shouting and cheering of a group of children playing lacrosse emanates outwards unimpeded. Her eyes settle not on the kids, but on the pair of adults ostensibly watching over them who were instead conversing with one another. Without even looking up at the horizon, she can figure the sun hangs low in the sky from the shadows the figures cast. It wasn’t late in the afternoon yet, but the laid-back village would soon mostly be shuttering down for an extended evening.
Staring at the two adults standing out in the field, the black-haired skater’s mind begins to wander again, much to her annoyance. Those same counterfactual thoughts roll through her mind even as she makes it past the field and begins to pass by another stretch of buildings. Muttering an irritated “Jiii,” under her breath, she turns her head back to the road ahead of her…
...just early enough to catch a glimpse of a woman, Milena Charvatova, an older, burly woman of approximately 58, stepping out of the local library and right into her path. As Milena lets out an undignified gasp, Shirabe responds by swiftly maneuvering around her, the width of the road allowing her to pass around her with ease. The younger girl stops herself on the other side of the older woman, turning around to apologize with her head bowed, eyes directed at the ground.
“I’m sorry for having startled you.”
“Well,” the woman responds, turning around to look at the girl, “be more careful and it won’t happen again.” Having offered her light chiding, Milena turns to leave, expecting to hear the sound of Shirabe’s wheels scraping against the concrete again at any moment.
“Is there anything I should do to make up for the inconvenience?”
Milena nearly jumps at Shirabe’s sudden inquiry, already walking away and not having expected the girl to be so bold as to prolong this exchange. Without turning back around, Milena merely waves her off. “I don’t have any money to spare on charity this week. I gave all of that to the town fund.”
Undeterred, Shirabe tries again, even as she watches the woman continue on her way, equally undeterred. “I don’t need to work for money. I startled you. I should repay you for that. I wasted your time. I should give you some of mine in exchange.” Her voice remains flat, almost free of emotion.
“No, no, that’s not necessary,” Milena responds, picking up her pace and dismissing the girl with her tone. “I don’t need to have you around without reason. Besides, shouldn’t you be saving up? You can’t afford to work for free.”
Both women fall silent, the awkward atmosphere hanging over both of them broken only by the sound of Milena’s footsteps as she hurries along. Shirabe had understood the message behind the woman’s words. She knew. Milena knew. Everyone knew. She was given charity jobs that only gave her what she needed to survive. There was no chance of saving anything up, and no reason to do so, at that.
Taking it on the chin, Shirabe neither sighs, nor grumbles, nor cries, nor curses her life. Alone once again, she kicks off and continues towards the outskirts of the village.
xxx
A few minutes after the encounter with Milena, Shirabe settles in at the Tsukuyomi residence, taking off her skates and dropping them as she enters and surveys the whole of the three familiar rooms enclosed in those four walls she called home. Not a soul to greet, Shirabe briskly walks over to the kitchen counter, setting down the bag of supplies from Annie and rummaging through her pockets to pull out and set down her earnings from the day next to it. She inspects the packet of ramen and the onion laying out on the countertop, next to the unwashed pot from last night’s meal, before drawing some water for the pot and setting it to boil. As she waits, she glances around the place and runs down a mental checklist. She’d make herself a meal, head into the bathroom to apply the salve from Annie’s place to her knee and wash up, read for an hour or so, check her clothes and see if any needed mending, and go to bed early so she could report to the town hall and get her assignment bright and early tomorrow.
Dumping the ramen into the now-boiling water, Shirabe Tsukuyomi reaffirms her plan for the rest of the day in her head. Did she fully understand why this was her life? No, but that was okay, wasn’t it? Everyone agreed on what her place was. She kept to herself, and they made sure she had what she needed to survive. She had an obvious role, one which undoubtedly had some utility for the village. Someone had to do those odd jobs, right? She didn’t have to understand everything. Everyone said this was right, so it had to be right. Whether she liked it or not was irrelevant. All that mattered was that it worked, that she could play with the hand she was dealt.
Shirabe raises a hand, and the chopped onion pieces plunk as they fall into the water. Dipping a spoon into the pot to pick up some noodles, Shirabe blows on the warm noodles and takes a nibble of them, smiling just a little after getting a taste test of her dish.
Well, she’d have to get another onion tomorrow.
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