Flashback Changing Constance

[Gomer Caitiff]

The sixth day of fall 514 AV...

Another year had passed, and yet he was still simply "Gomer Caitiff", no "Craven" at his end. It wasn't as if there was a specific requirement he had to meet, only that, of the various, ambiguous ways one might be recognized and acknowledged, he had managed none of them. Others had, all through the year, passing him by as he had become accustomed to, and while the day had been remembered by his brother with whom he had spent some much needed time in quiet camaraderie, after Godric had departed, Gomer felt the weight of his mind press in around him with a crushing force.

The failure - or more accurately denoted "lack of success" - wasn't what caught at his lungs and bore down upon his chest. It wasn't the pitiable stares he received from his cousins and uncles and aunts as they passed him in the halls. It wasn't even the poorly hidden disappointment in his father's eyes when their sparse conversations ever happened upon his training and subsequently his standing with the sisters. What ate away at him like a slow, endless rot was the guilt.

He ran a hand through his hair, mussing the fine, thickly bundled locks that were already in a state of disarray, giving him the appearance of having just walked out of a wind storm, before he pushed himself up off the side of his bed, where he had come to languish after Godric had taken his leave, and let out a slow, steadying sigh. With the sun just beginning to set, its evening light twinkling from behind the mountains in the distance, he picked up a little, yellowish pig sculpture from off of his desk, carefully setting it in a cloth and wrapping it up in his hand before setting out of his room and down the hall.

In the late evening twilight, the house creaked; its floorboards shifting under the weight of his footsteps. He proceeded down the stairs, his bare feet sending little slapping echoes about the lofty space as he descended. Making his way through the door that stood between the stairs and beneath the balcony, he quietly padded his way down the hall, taking the last door on the left that led to the manor's enclosed garden.

The air had a crisp quality to it, the sort that threatened to be chilly without ever actually following through, but he shivered regardless, pausing at the edge of the door's threshold as he uncertainly gazed out into the carefully tended hedges and rose bushes. Drawing a slow, steady, sobering breath, he set out across the flagstones, still warm from Syna's smile. His speed, which had started slow to begin with, grew ever more sluggish, his feet almost dragging as he wandered through the garden, wrapped pig held delicately in a hand that he had continually remind himself not to clench into a fist.

When he saw her, he paused again, the hesitation more powerful than ever. A small voice in his head suggested that, perhaps, she was busy - to try again next year, or maybe not at all. Just as he was preparing to retreat, finding himself not up to the task at hand after all, the rusty haired woman turned, a vacant smile on her lips as she tutted out a gentle, "Hello, young man." Feeling his throat catch at her soft words, Gomer froze in place, unable to respond and likewise unable to escape. The woman stared blankly at him for a tick or two before her sallow face turned a mellow, uncertain frown. "But you can, can't you? I... I thought you might."

"I-I can." The words finally stuttered their way out, and his feet stumbled in suit. He made his way over to her, eliciting another vacant smile that only served to make her gaze seem all that much farther away.

"You can. I can." She took his hand in her own, gently patting it with a kind but unsure touch. "He can too." Pointing upward, she said the latte in a conspiritory whisper, eyes watching for what Gomer's reaction might be, but lips already turned in preparation for a quiet chuckle.

Giving her what she wanted, Gomer wore his best smile, under the circumstances, his eyes deep and sad, as he tried out a half-hearted, "Hah." of his own. It was enough for the woman, who nodded in agreement, her own breathy laughter as wraithlike as the rest of her.

"Good good. It's good. Is it?" The question had a sort of odd, immediate desperation that tinged her features, widening her eyes and quickening her breath.

Gingerly removing his hand from hers, Gomer returned the gesture she had given him, gently wrapping his fingers around her own in a warm, loving grip. "Yes. Of course it's good." She seemed to like his response, the distress fading as quickly as it had arisen. "Let's sit, shall we?" He gestured to a stone bench that sat snug between the start of a healthy looking hedge and a slender, sturdy tree that had yet to lose its leafs. The woman nodded again, though the dull light of her eyes gave no indication that she understood. Instead, she allowed herself to be led and, when Gomer nodded encouragingly, she uneasily began to lower herself until she found she was sitting on the bench, at which point the same, vacant smile graced her lips once more as she patted the seat beside her.

"It's good, isn't it?" The desperation wasn't there; the question more rhetorical as she did not wait so expectantly upon his response. Sitting down next to her, Gomer looked down at the bundle of cloth in his hand. Already his chest felt tight, the words all jumbled in his throat, making it hard to swallow. "Ever never... never ever..." The phrases drifted from the woman's lips as she looked up at the multi-colored hues of the sunset, her cloudy eyes reflecting the scene but as if through a murky pond, much of the color sapped and leaving behind a skyscape of greys.

Opening and closing his mouth several times, each with the intention of saying what it was he had to say but stopping just short, Gomer tried to rally himself a final time before she casually laid her head upon his shoulder. Her eyes closed and she began to hum in a slow, off-key soprano. She was so calm, and the weight her head upon his shoulder lightened that upon his chest, even if for just a small time, that he instead he joined her, his own uncertain, wavering baritone following her's, their two voices softly clashing in the fading light.

[Gomer Caitiff]

As the woman slowly let the song fade with a sigh, she withdrew her head, regarding him with all the recognition of a stranger in passing. "Hello, young man."

"Hello..." His voice was nothing but a quivering whisper. His eyes glistened in the gentle light that still lazily filled the sky, though the bulk of the sun had since disappeared beyond the horizon. Swallowing his rising emotion as best he could, Gomer held up the bundle of cloth, extending it towards her. "I've-" He drew a quick breath through his nose, eyes already wet at their edges. "I've brought you a present."

"Is it a... bird?" She grinned, the corners of her eyes crinkling like those of an old woman - though she was supposed to have several decades left before such things took place. Shaking his head, Gomer couldn't manage a reply. Instead, he deposited it in her eagerly outstretched hands.

Unwrapping the cloth with her subtly shaking hands, the woman stared down at the little pig with a perplexed expression on her face. "A... A pig went down to market to sell his buttered rolls..." She lifted it out of the cloth, examining it with all the curiosity of a child, muttering further, "Rolls and rolls to sell... rolls and rolls..." Coming to a decision, she thrust the pig back at Gomer, her fingers slightly squishing its malleable body. "I don't like it."

His turn to hold out his hands, he caught it as she let it fall; the little pig's descent an apt metaphor the sinking weight of heart. His did his best to reply without letting his voice break, but it proved a task too difficult for him, just as every other he had set out to do that year. "I-It's made of marzipan, Mo-" He choked on the word, stumbling over the welling up of tears in his eyes. "You can... You can eat it, l-like this." He demonstrated by pulling off one of the little pig's legs, pushing it past his lips and forcing himself to smile.

The cracked mask he tried to keep pieced together did little for her, and the woman stared blankly at him, shaking her head and patting him on the knee. "Haven't known to be there, you see." She spoke as if the words made sense, her eyes simultaneously looking right at him and through him all at once. "That's just the way it is. All over, never ever. Ever never."

The citrusy sweet flavor of the marzipan felt ashen against his tongue, and Gomer quickly swallowed, clenching his jaw in silent protest against the swirling emotions that threatened to overtake him. Already his nose had begun to run, and the tears at the corners of his eyes threatened to overflow if he looked at the broken, empty woman any longer. He forced his eyes away, the little pig's body squished between his fingers as he felt his fists clench.

It had been an entire year since she had returned in such a state. A whole year in which nothing had changed. A whole year that, with each day that had passed, weighed heavier and heavier upon him, dragging him ever farther down into dark, unfathomable depths. He blamed himself for it - for all of it - and though Godric and his father both had assured him that that was not the case, Gomer knew, deep down, that it was.

She had never loved him - not in the way she had Godric - and everyday he found himself thinking about her, he wondered why it affected him so acutely when his brother, who had been ever the favored object of her attentions, had adjusted so quickly to her... change of temperament. He knew she had cared for him; he had not given her much chance to smile pridefully down at him, to take him up into her arms and sing rousing songs in his honor. He had been a disappointment, and she had always told him she expected more.

Now, with her eyes so glassy and vacant, her smile like those found painted upon the faces of dolls, she expected nothing. And still, she rejected him. She didn't even know him, and she could not accept so simple a thing as a gift - the only memory he had unblemished by scrutiny and malcontent. It had started as a mistake, a purchase of marzipan that she had grabbed by accident. When she realized her blunder, Gomer had been the one to whom she'd absent-mindedly passed the sweet along to, and he had taken to it in an instant.

Whether it was the unabashed excitement in which he had eaten the block he'd been told to throw away, or the bright, genuine love with which he'd looked up at her, it became the one thing that they shared together without the weight of expectation and duty. Even as he grew older, every year, not matter what else might have happened between them, on his birthday they had shared little marzipan animals and laughed. It had been the night before his birthday, the year past, when she had left, leaving word with Rune that she would return with something to "Help Gomer find his place among our family."

Now, she sat across from him, her eyes no longer looking at him as they had half done before, but past him. Tears freely trickling down his face, he held out his hand once more, the pitiable remains of the pig little more than a squashed mess of the sugary dough. "Please, p-please, Mother just-"

"And they rolled and rolled... They did that, see? It was there-"

"Mother." The marzipan fell from his hands as he took the woman by her shoulders, his eyes wide and wet with anguish. His voice broke as he half shouted, half cried at the now scared face he had once known so well. She began to try to wriggle herself free, flinching from his touch. "I'm sorry, I... I tried, I did everything they asked, I worked so hard, I... I just wanted-"

Finally breaking away, the woman staggered backward, shakily getting to her feet as she regarded him with fear in her cloudy eyes. "S-stay away!" She hissed the words; their pathetic, helpless panic cutting him deeper than any knife ever could.

He didn't try to stop her as she unevenly retreated deeper into the garden, fearfully muttering to herself. Instead, he miserably stared after her, cheeks glistening with hot tears that he could not longer hold back. In the quiet of the night that had finally settled over the Alvad sky, he let the sobs flow freely, the pained rasping of his frustration mixing with the burning shame of his own weakness. Even in so docile and gentle a state, he did nothing but make things worse for her.

"Why did you have to go..." The question fell from his lips in time with his tears, over and over and over again. He grew ever more quiet as he slowly began to fatigue even his vast stores of bottled misery, until it was just him alone upon the bench, silent and hollow.

PurchasesMarzipan pig - 1 SM

[Gomer Caitiff]

It wasn't until the moon was high into the sky that Gomer realized, with a groggy, bleary appraisal of his surroundings, that he had fallen asleep on the cursed stone bench. The salt of his tears that had since dried rubbed grainy against his eyes as he tried to clear them of sleep. Tapping at the small of his back, he stood with a muted groan, twisting to the left and right to clear some of the ache, but nothing helped that which he felt within him. Glancing down at the squished remains of the marzipan pig, he shook his head, drawing a deep, steady breath, and turned to head back toward the house.

He tried, exhausted as he was, to put everything out his head as he walked. The sound of his feet slapping wearily against the flagstones seemed unnaturally loud in the stillness of the night, and he shivered as the night breeze mustered itself, wrapping around him in a cold, unfeeling embrace. All he saw, however, was the stranger woman's fearful face. Her casual disgust. Her blank, unknowing eyes.

Too drained to do much more, he let his eyes close for a moment, slowing his breath and listening to the soft noises of the night. There were crickets, somewhere, their little chirping noises playfully reenacting a song from a performance he'd seen some time earlier that year. In the far distance, he could just make out the unintelligible sounds of an argument between what he imagined to be two woman, probably both filled to brim with spirits of the bubbly variety. Then, there was the peaceful rustle of the leaves as the breeze passed through them, their quivering refrain reminding him of the manner in which her hand had shakingly undone the cloth wrapping.

"Damn it." The words slipped out of his mouth, eyes too dry for tears, and he grit his teeth against the sharp ache in his chest. He didn't know what he had expected - in fact, that he had expected anything was his downfall. He knew what he had wanted, and he had thought himself ready for the disappointment when, inevitably, it had all fallen apart. The failure itself should have been ironically amusing - but his face remained downcast, the humor hardly bright enough to even be recognized in thought, let alone celebrated in action.

He could still see it: his mother unwrapping the little pig, light returning to her eyes, her memories rushing back to her. That had been what he'd expected, what he'd tried so hard not to think about, not to hope for. And he'd failed even that.

Forcing himself to start again towards the house, to get out of the gods damned garden, Gomer increased his pace. It was impossible to stop his stream of consciousness as it picked apart his thoughts. The best he could do was to walk faster, in the hope he might outrun his own mind and stifle it beneath the heavy fog of slumber.

What kept replaying over and over again, sometimes in images and other times in was, was he and his mother had never been close. They had shared their special moments together, making his birthdays the most treasured memories he had of her, but in day to day life, she had always seemed to regard him as a disappointment - but not even so much so that it was evident on her face. It had been subtle, more so in the manner in which her eyes so easily passed over him, fawning over Godric and often forgetting she even had a second child.

He didn't blame her. She had never treated him such out of dislike or disdain; it was purely, unadulteratedly that he was a near non-entity to her. Where Godric had been talented, charming, and driven, Gomer have been half of each if not less. Looking ever up at his brother in the light, he had been like a shadow, never able to cast one of his own. That he be forgotten seemed only logical, natural. She had cared for him as best she knew how; she had tried. He believed she had tried.

And that was what made it so much worse. That she had tried, that she had left that night for him, had cast everything he thought he knew about her into unresolvable chaos. There was no one who knew what she knew. As far as anyone knew, she taken no spirits with her and told no one where she was going. No one could tell him if she had merely done what she did on whim, or if she had truly believed she could help him, truly believed he had a place among the family.

Now, he would never know. His attempts to impress the sisters had ended in either indifference or disaster, and it felt to him the more he tried, the harder he strove, the worse things turned out. Godric had advised against visiting the woman in the garden, and like always, he had been right. Gomer felt worse than he had before, more empty, more hollow. It all felt so unbearably hopeless, and the unwavering guilt was all that was left to fill in the sider's web of cracks that splintered throughout him.

Finally reaching the door, he paused, staring into the small, foggy square of glass inlaid within the door's center. Though warped, he could make out his ruddy, enervated features and mussed hair. He looked much like he felt, and that, at least, drew a small, pitiful, scornful curl to his lips, casting the light of his eyes ever duller. With a slight tug, he pulled the door open, silently slipping inside and wishing he could leave his thoughts behind as easily as did the garden, the door swinging quietly shut behind him.

[Gomer Caitiff]

"Up late, Mister Gomer." As he hurried down the hall, turning to head out into the main foyer, his dark mood was the only thing to keep him from jumping out of his skin in surprise. Looking up, he recognized one of the servants poking his head out of a doorway behind him; a middle aged man with a receding hairline and kindly eyes.

Running through the list of names in his already jumbled mind, Gomer nodded, unable to recall which belong to the man. "Yes, I... I suppose I am."

Whether it was the distracted look on his face or that the distraction was mixed with poorly concealed loss, the man gestured toward one of the rigid couches, more for show than for comfort, that lined the wall. "If you would, Mister Gomer."

Though not particularly in the mood to speak to anyone else but neither eager to try to find some quiet corner in his mind where he might finally drift back to sleep, he did as he was bid, slumping into his seat, too spent to even consider appearing otherwise. "I'm sorry." The words just fell out his mouth and soon as they entered his head. "I don't remember your name." He was just able to keep himself from making further comment on how unsurprising that was by clamping his mouth shut and staring at the long, thin carpet that ran the length of the hall.

"That's quite all right. It's Borris, but you needn't remember it." He smiled, joining Gomer with a contented sigh. "Much better. I've been on my feet since early this morning."

Without looking at the man - at Borris -, Gomer nodded his head in acknowledgement. Though not quite the same in scope or quality, he understood what it was to be tired - perhaps never more so than in that moment.

"You know, Mister Gomer, I've worked here a long time."

"I... Yes, your face is familiar." He turned to really examine Borris, finding him not just kindly but almost nostalgic. Raising a brow at the sudden revelation that he had known Borris but couldn't quite remember the details, the servant interrupted him with a chuckle.

"Now, stable your mares and let me finish. You young people are always so eager to speak. Just... listen. I promise I won't be long."

The way his voice lilted and the manner in which he spoke all tugged at Gomer's memory, but he couldn't quite place it. His mind, focused as it was, had begun to quiet some, too busy with trying to recall who Borris was exactly. His fatigue left little energy for the thoughts to stray far, and he resigned himself to searching silence.

"Like I said, a long time. I've seen many Cravens come and go; I've even seen new ones made and old ones disgraced." He nodded sagaciously, and Gomer, in his state of exhaustion, faintly mirrored the motion. "But you, Mister Gomer, aren't special."

Borris' words hit him like a dull rock square in the face. He blinked, his eyes clearly displaying a weary shock, followed quickly by a self-deprecating agreement that burned a dull black in his eyes.

"No, no, not like that." Again, the man chuckled, patting Gomer on the knee with a steadying hand. "What I mean is: you're not the first to struggle to find your place, and you won't be the last."

The concept was simple and logical, but Gomer was too tired to accept things based purely off of such reasonable premises. Without even thinking, the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, his voice sounding dead and distant. "You've seen other Cravens lose their minds over their worthless children?" As soon as he said it, he could do nothing more than wait helplessly, staring with his jaw once more clenched shut for fear he might say something else.

Borris' smile faded into a sad, half-curve as he sighed, unfazed by Gomer's uncharacteristically candid contribution of self. "No, not that specifically... and I assure you I cannot begin to understand the pain you feel." His words sounded so genuine, his eyes swimming with a glistening compassion. "But I want you to understand, whether it be now or years into the future," He gripped Gomer's hand, his dark green eyes staring past the wide-eyed surprise and into the heart of a wounded, scared little boy. "Tragedy is a part of life. To live is to face it, to accept it, to let it walk with you and know, that no matter what you do, whether you embrace it or struggle against it, it will always be a part of you."

Having expected something uplifting or, at the very least, reassuring, Gomer stared back, his own sea green eyes awash with confusion and a small amount of childish betrayal. "What...?"

Patting his hand one last time, Borris stood up, gently pulling Gomer along with him. "It's best you got back to sleep, Mister Gomer. You've been through... far too much tonight. I think it's time you rest."

"But-" He found himself guided down the hall, stumbling as Borris helped him up the winding staircase and to his room, all the while, he tried to form the right words to make his lips move, to give voice to the confusion. "I don't..."

"Hush now, Mister Gomer." Borris patted Gomer softly on the back, casually pushing him towards his bed. "And remember: life goes on."

It was the last thing he remembered hearing before he lost consciousness, drifting off into dark, numbing oblivion of sleep at last. His weary mind and body finally at peace, if only for the night.