89th of Spring, 513 AV
A knock on his door. An urgent knock. Or at least it sounded urgent. Aidan couldn’t really be sure, his eyelids shedding the peaceful quiet of sleep with a great deal of disgruntled effort. It felt like only chimes had passed since he’d laid his head down to rest, but time’s passage was cryptic under the nimble hands of the subconscious mind. An immaterial sigh slipped from between his lips.
Lifting his head at first, Aidan’s hand slipped from beneath his feathery pillow and moved to his forehead where the base of his palm came to rest, fingers toiling through auburn locks of hair as he guessed at the hour. Rolling onto his back, the bed frame creaked softly on its four sturdy posts, loud enough that it gave his visitor something to consider while the dreamer composed himself.
Aidan’s eyes began to blink reality back into existence, the fetters of sleep reluctantly broken. He could feel a jab of pain running through his heart, a fondness being torn from him that had been attached to the last dream he was having. It almost escaped him, but he could recall a young blonde girl being a part of it. Someone he’d met not so long ago…
Another knock, though this time it came as a pounding, as if someone were attempting to break down his door. It‘s insistence became grating, to the point where even one so mildly tempered as Aidan found it irksome. ”I’m up, I’m up, he raised with a churlish grunt. ”Just a minute…” The knocking hesitated, then ceased all together.
Slipping his wriggling toes over the side of his bed, Aidan lurched into a sitting position with his back arched over the rest of his body. A callused hand slid down from his forehead and smeared abruptly across a stubbled face, rubbing the desire to flop right back onto the mattress far enough away where it could no longer be readily found.
Clothed in little but his skivvies at this hour, courtesy towards his guest was reserved only so far as answering the door. If they were going to be so petching incessant with their desire to see him, then let them be the ones who felt mortified by the inconvenience.
Stumbling across his apartment in the dark, the light from the hearth had long since gone out, leaving the pleasant scent of crisping birch faint in the air. Aidan’s hand fumbled for the latch to where he knew the door to be, dexterity not one of his stronger suits at this bell, as it took him a prolonged moment to properly unlock and swing the door open.
The torchlight from the hallway that breached the room was blinding enough to close one eye against it, the silhouette of a young boy quickly taking shape whose eyes drew wide at the scantily clad man across from him. The chef hung there with one hand against the frame and the other resting along the edge of the door, body leaning forward as one could almost mistake him for being heavily under the influence of more than a few of Kevith’s strongest creations.
”Whattissit?”
Aidan stared with glazed eyes, finally recognizing the familiar shape of his employer’s son Seth, hovering in the corridor with a ripe blush peppering his cheeks. The lad had aspirations of becoming a Knight some day, if Aidan‘s memory served; a profession he himself would never be caught dead in. Heroes such as they were not long for this world, after all, and someone had to consider the welfare of the widows they left behind.
“Mum…Mum’s sick,” Seth sputtered meekly, though it hardly sounded as if the situation was dire. “Dad said you need to come in and cover.” The boy was having difficulty diverting his eyes away from Aidan’s chest, though the cook sensed it was more out of discomfort than some budding emotion the boy had yet to contend with.
”Oi… Alright be downinabit.”
Without so much as a pause, Aidan pushed himself away from the frame of the door and closed it, leaving a bewildered Seth standing there for a few grasping moments while he tried to burn the image of the half naked man his father had hired out of his memory.
Back in the dark room, Aidan realized all too slowly that his room was still, in fact, dark. Dammit…
