Hi everyone! I just want to give a big thank-you to everyone reading this, but especially to those who have commented so far:

A user of this:
tyranit: 

Thanks for your responses. They've actually been quite helpful.  

For this chapter to make sense, please read the previous ones (you can find their links below) or at least read chapter two, since that's the most closely correlated to this one.

Chapter One: >https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=75176
Chapter Two: >https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=75186
Chapter Three: >https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=75213
Chapter Four: https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=75313

And now for the story!


Throughout the throes of music sweet,
In the darkness bare,
Comes inspiration from the deep,
The smallest hope and prayer.

THE INTANGIBLE PAWNBROKER

Roulinn’s operas were in Latin.

Both Ellie and Damien had a passable comprehension of the language, but even if one grasps what an opera is about, it might still be dreadfully boring.

Thus was the case of ‘Woe is the World,’ a tragedy about a man on a quest to save his girlfriend, and his girlfriend on a quest to bake muffins. The third time the girl started singing about the puissance of perfect pastries, Ellie’s mind was understandably drifting.

To yesterday.

She felt a little sick to her stomach as she thought about the situation completely. Intangible Pawnbrokers bought Memories, then sold them to other customers. Who would want someone’s pain, suffering, or guilt, Ellie didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Well, it seemed that now someone would get Memories of her, and maybe multiple people would all have a Memory of a girl they’d never met… The idea was absurd.

Unless…

What if she bought those memories and gave them back to Baxter? It would be difficult, but doable. Intangible Pawnbrokers were required to catalog all purchases, and the Guild required open trade of records between members… She’d have plenty of records to sift through, and the chance was slim, but it was still a chance, and that made it worth it.
Though what if her Memories had been sold already? It’d been four years, after all.

No, she had to stay positive, or she’d go crazy. Staying positive was the only option left to her. If this proved a bust, she knew she’d think of something else.

Hopefully.

On stage, the song about muffins ended, and a thin man, newly dumped by his girlfriend who’d rather bake than get married, began to belt out a tune about the unfairness of it all.




The ride back was actually more enjoyable than the show.

“It was ridiculous!” Damien exclaimed. “I couldn’t care less about cupcakes!”

“They were muffins,” Ellie corrected. To the chauffeur, she added, “Hans, could you roll up the windows, please?”

“You cold again?” Damien said, and when Ellie nodded, continued, “I should buy you a new coat.” The windows slid up, the tinted glass throwing their faces back at them instead of showing the passing scenic backdrop of the road. “We could stop now, if you want.”

Ellie did need that new calculator, but she really didn’t want to do the taxes. She’d put if off as much as possible. After all, there was an electronics shop only several blocks from the house and within walking distance (as was the grocery store; most places Ellie went were less than half a mile from the house).  

“I’m fine,” she said, and sneezed. “I think I’m just catching a bug, that’s all.”

“Okay, then.” Damien grinned. “Jeez, that opera was terrible. Next time, you pick the show.”

“Next time, can it be a movie?” Ellie quipped. Wasn’t there an Intangible Pawnshop near the electronics shop?

“Please, let there be no singing in it,” Damien pleaded.

“Why? You’re such a sucker for musical numbers.” She smiled and lightly punched his shoulder. “Come on, sing one for me. Serenade me, so I may forget the horrors of the Muffin Opera.”

Hans laughed, but catching sight of Damien’s expression in the mirror, promptly stifled his chuckles. “I’m not singing,” Damien growled, blushing.

“Pity.” Ellie smirked. “I so would have loved to hear your soothing tones.”

“Why do you do this?”

“Do what?”

“Flirt!” Damien roared, and both Ellie and Hans snickered. His face flushed an even deeper scarlet than before, but instead of throwing dirty looks, Damien joined in, his booming laughs strangely subdued in the car.

Ellie leaned against the car door and sighed. It was a valid question. Why did she do it?

She honestly had no idea whatsoever, and attributed it to the pretense she’d been holding up for four years. Noticing a fog on the glass, she wiped at it, only to find the scantest trace of frost. Weird, she thought, and picked it off without a word.




“Still studying?”

“Mm-hmm.” Ellie said. “I can’t get the stages of grief down.” She ticked them off on her fingers as she spoke. “Denial, Bargaining, Anger… I can never get the fourth,  I think it’s sadness or something similar… and then acceptance.”

“Great,” Damien yawned, crawling into bed next to her.

“No, not great! I got the order wrong,” Ellie said, checking the textbook. She was sitting up in bed, her pillow wedged between her back and the headboard. The lamp on the bedside table was on, painting the bed in warm, mellow tones.

“Go to bed, Ellie,” Damien said. “It’s late.”

“What, no more studying?”

“Yes, no more studying.”

“Fine.”

She didn’t want to go to sleep. Night was the worst. At night, the mind was running while the body rested, and it ran to places where she could not restrict it.

Ellie closed her textbook and set it on the bedside table, then reached to turn off the lamp. Damien tugged on her braid before she could yank the pull chord. “You’re going to sleep with your hair like that?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Is it a problem?”

“It’ll be all ugly in the morning,” Damien said.

Damien insisted she unbraid her hair before she went to sleep, though she told him time and time again that it was absolutely pointless and ridiculous. Groaning overdramatically, she coaxed the hair tie out and began to pull the braid apart. When it was loose, Damien ran his hand through it once and asked, “Why do you almost never let your hair down? It’s so pretty.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, and it was her opinion that mattered when it came to her hair (though if Damien was really persistent about it, she knew she’d do what he wanted eventually). “Now, may I turn off the light?”

“Yes. Goodnight, Ellie.”

“Goodnight, Damien,” Ellie said, pulling the chord and plunging the room into darkness.




“Blegh.” Nido made a face and turned away from the Mirror. “Sappiness. Gross.”

“Oh, grow up,” Sable said.

Sable’s study was tiled in blue and white, the drapes deep red. Red was Sable’s color, red and black to match her ruby lips and nails, to accompany her charred and ashen heart. Standing there next to his sister, Nido did not understand her fascination with the sanguine red of flames and blackened darkness of soot, especially considering her past. He never asked, though, because Sable never spoke of the burning. It wasn’t forbidden to bring it up, but strongly ill-advised.
Nido had not yet been born, but Freyja remembered the screams.

“She deserved it,” Freyja had declared as Nido locked the cell door. Nido hadn’t been paying much attention because he was irked Sable would send him to escort a prisoner rather than get a guard to do it. However, Freyja had caught her attention when she blatantly said the burning was one of the best things she’d ever seen. Nido had to wonder why Freyja was so sadistic as to enjoy her own sister getting burnt, but admitted Sable was no better.

Freyja flopped onto her bed. She had a furnished, comfortable cell, as Sable was no brute to prisoners and considered herself as far from such abuse as possible- except for the Cubicala Tormenta, for, to be effective, torture must be brutal.
Freyja eyed him and asked, “In the mood to overthrow your sister, Nido Lokiheart?”

“Nice try,” Nido replied, “but I’ll leave the treachery to you.” He shrugged. “Besides, Sable already called dibs on being my puppeteer. You get Ellie, Freyja Kinbetrayer.”

Freyja scowled at the title Sable had thrust upon her. “Then give me the strings,” she grumbled. “A marionette’s useless without them.”

“Oh, and where would be the fun in that?” Nido challenged. “You’ve got to pick them up yourself.”

“That’s not fair,” she complained.

“Life’s not fair,” Nido quipped, kicking the door for emphasis.

“…Nido?”

Nido blinked, scattering the morning’s memory where he could easily reach it again later. Sable was staring at him intently, frowning. “I asked you a question, Nido.”

“Oh. Could you repeat it?”

“You mentioned,” she said, tapping her foot impatiently, as Sable hated repeating herself, “sappiness. Do you hate sappiness?”

“Of course.” He paused. “Why?”

“Just curious, little brother,” she said, her gaze softening just enough to disarm him.

“Why do you love red and black?” he blurted.

Sable eyed him for a moment, and turned around, answering the question with her back to him. “I hate them,” she said. “I loathe them, but they remind me.”

He didn’t push his luck by asking of what, and he had a pretty good idea anyway. “Never mind,” he apologized. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“You can ask me anything, Nido-Dido.”

Nido didn’t answer. For some reason, she didn’t seem like Sable-Waible anymore, and he didn’t feel like a Nido-Dido, but a Nido-Diedo.

A flicker of movement outside the window caught his eye before fading to oblivion. Was that…?

No, ravens didn’t come this far north.




The bell above the door didn’t tinkle as Ellie entered the Intangible Pawnshop, but rather, stridently yelled “Customer!” instead. Enchanting objects to speak a word or phrase was a relatively simple spell, and like in some many things, Ellie understood the theory but lacked the ‘magic’ needed to actually make it happen.

The bell wouldn’t stop shrieking, repeating its screech of “Customer! Customer! Customer!” as Ellie took a look around. The shop was dimly-lit, a change from her father’s, which had been far too bright. A corner of it was cluttered with old wares, as if it was an actual pawnshop, but the rest of it was strangely empty save a counter on the far wall.

“Step inside and shut the door, would you?” snapped the man behind the counter. He wore a rich, velvet cape and hat, the color seeming soft and luxurious. His hair, startlingly white for such a young man, hung over one eye in the front and was pulled into a ponytail in the back. The other eye was fixed on Ellie, and though she couldn’t tell in the dim light, both the iris and the pupil looked a sharp black.

“Are you going to stand there and stare at me, or are you going to get in here and close that door? That bell is getting on my nerves.” The voice was low and timber, feral. Her father had been, in her mind, an elegant Pawnbroker, showing the sophistication behind Intangibles. This man was the wild and feral, the mysterious.

Ellie felt her cheeks warm and apologized, realizing she was still holding the door open. She shut it behind her, cutting off the bell’s cries.

“Thank you,” said the Pawnbroker, voice absolutely infused with sarcasm. “I thought you’d turned into a statue.”

“Sorry,” she said again.

“Don’t be sorry,” he dismissed. “You’re going to pay me when this is over, unless you want to sell a Memory, which I highly doubt by looking at you.” His disapproving stare intensified. “You are going to pay me, right?”

“That depends on what you can do for me,” said Ellie, who knew better than to promise payment before results.

“Well spoken,” the Pawnbroker acknowledged. He stepped out from behind the counter and strode to her, his long legs seeming to barely bend. He walked around her in circles as if sizing her up, a famished beast assessing its prey. Ellie shivered, and noticing the weakness, the hunter pounced. “Cold, are you? Or do I scare you, Madam Morvant? I don’t forget a face like yours, oh no! I don’t keep up with politics, but it’s not every day the governor’s son gets married. I’m a social man, you see. Society’s anomalies interest me.”

“Anomalies?” Ellie managed to choke out. In truth, he indeed was beginning to creep her out, very much so.

“Oh, yes!” The Pawnbroker giggled. “Surely, you didn’t consider yourself a normal member of society, Miss Morvant,” he purred. “Oh, how I’d love to get into that head of yours.” He tapped her forehead with a skinny finger, more bone than anything else. “But as I said earlier, I doubt you’re here to sell.”

“I’m not,” she affirmed, taking a step back.

“Well, I’m not sure I have any Memories in stock that might interest you. I have mainly trivial things- rainbows, a day out, a first kiss, the like. You are not a trivial woman, are you? Unless you’re here for something more raucous, a little pain, a little suffering. There’s nothing that makes us realize just how fortunate we are than the plights of others, am I right?”

“Er, no, I’m not here for… anything like that.”

“I see.” The Pawnbroker grinned, and Ellie felt her stomach flop as she saw his teeth were pointed. This… whatever he was… was more untamed wildness, a hungry soul, than a human. “I also deal in Nightmares. Bad dreams keeping you up at night?”

“Not quite.”

The Broker placed his hands on her shoulders and growled, “Then what are you here for? It’s not for no reason. You can see in their eyes when they come with a reason. Spit it out.”

Ellie took yet another step back and removed his hands from her shoulders, shivering again involuntarily. “Records. I want to see who Baxter Giata sold his Memories to.”

“Giata… the name sounds familiar. Is he not an Intangible Pawnbroker himself? He needn’t go to someone else for his own craft.”

“You’re lying,” Ellie accused. “You can’t extract your own memories. So, can you access his records? Pawnbrokers have this- this- obligation sort of thing- to share records, or something, I can’t recall, but if you ask for deals done with Baxter Giata, you should get an answer from somebody!”

The Pawnbroker’s leer curved even further upwards, and though it may have been her own fear, but Ellie thought that the smirk was far too wide for a normal human’s. “So,” the Pawnbroker said. “So. You are familiar with the Brokers’ Guild.”

“I was an apprentice, once,” she replied.

“Of course you were,” the Pawnbroker retorted. “I suppose you didn’t have the gift.”

“I didn’t,” she admitted.

“I thought so. There are tell-tale signs, and you don’t possess any of them, except perhaps intelligence, and even that is debatable.” The Pawnbroker nodded. “You are correct. I will inquire of the Guild as to any deals concerning the Memories of Baxter Giata.” He rubbed his index finger and thumb together in the universal sign of wanting money. “So, in terms of payment…”

Never promise payment before results, even if the results seem likely.

“Records first,” Ellie said. “As soon as I see the records, I’ll compensate you for your troubles.”

“Of course. Again, wisely spoken. We’ll speak of the rate when I get those records for you, then, but I warn you, it won’t be cheap.” The Pawnbroker bowed, but it was a mocking gesture.

“I can pay anything,” she said.

“It’s not your money, is it?”

“I’ll get Damien to lend me some. Or… I’ll work it off somehow. But I will pay you what we agree you deserve.” That was as close as a promise Ellie could get.

“Understood.” The Pawnbroker made a shooing motion. “Now, get out. You should skedaddle. Come back in a week. I should have results by then.”

“Thank you.” She was nearly out the door, relieved to get out of there and as far away as possible (though she had to steel herself to come back), when she heard him hiss.

“Wait.”

She turned. “What is it?”

“If you ever reconsider selling your Memory… I could make you forget you don’t love him, and I’d pay quite a bit. Many women would sell their homes for a couple seconds of your past four years, you know.”

“How… how do you know I don’t…” was all she managed to ask.

“It’s my business to know things like these,” the Pawnbroker answered. “Marriages are Intangible. They cannot be touched, but they can be seen and perceived. Therefore, they, like dreams and Memories, come under my purview.”

“My marriage is fine,” she said, though her voice trembled a bit.

“Of course it is.”

With his catlike grin behind her, Ellie exited, and not nearly fast enough for her liking. The bell was oddly silent when she opened the door this time. She shuddered, though whether it was the chill wind and the cold or the experience she’d just had was beyond her. She sneezed. She should probably get some cold medicine soon, before it got worse.
Ellie set off for home, completely forgetting about the electronics shop. Calculators and taxes would have to wait.
It was halfway to the house that she realized she didn’t know her new partner’s name.




Ellie arrived home long before Damien would, for which she was grateful. She had more than an inkling that he would not approve of her brief visit or her plans, and she was hesitant to broach the subject with him. He would fly into a rage, she was sure of it. He’d probably say something like, ‘Aren’t I good enough for you? What do you need someone who’d abandoned you for? Let him go and be happy!’ But she couldn’t let him go, and she couldn’t be happy.

She turned the TV on in the living room, just to have a comfortable buzz of white noise in the background, then changed her mind, shut it off, and put on the radio instead. She turned it to a classical station and grabbed her Latin literature textbook, resolving to finish reading the Epic of Romulus and Remus today if it killed her (which it just might, since she had at least a hundred and fifty pages left). Ellie usually read in the kitchen while something was on the stove, because although Damien had all the money he could ever want, he preferred her cooking over anybody else’s- or so he claimed. Ellie herself didn’t think her cooking was that wonderful, and warned him that if he ever got food poisoning, he shouldn’t blame her since it was likely unintentional and she’d die of it as well.

Ellie pulled a stool up to the counter while a stew simmered and flipped to where she’d last left off, reading aloud. “‘Sanguis autem non est ligatus lupi Romuli alas aquilae, et humus eorum qui scire non possit intelligere caelum.’”
The next passage, she translated into Roulinn’s common tongue and spoke the translation aloud instead of the original text. “ ‘Bare the teeth of your savagery, Remus,’ cried Romulus, ‘and I will unsheathe my talons. Spilled blood on this consecrated ground is an abhorrent incense to our gods above, the stench-“

The doorbell rang.

“I never get a moment’s peace, do I?” Ellie muttered, placing a bookmark on the page. If it wasn’t other people bugging her, it was her own mind.

Ellie called, “Coming!” and ran to the door. Several seconds later, she pulled it open with a bit too much force and almost toppled over. I am a clumsy idiot, she thought. No one nearly trips because they opened a door. No. One.

“Hello, Madam Morvant.” The familiar-looking boy smiled pleasantly. It took Ellie a moment to place him as Derek, the shop boy she’d often seen. “I brought the milk,” he said, gesturing to the wagon behind him. “The regular boy’s sick.”

“Oh.” Milk delivery was still fairly common in Roulinn for no reason Ellie could see. Honestly, it would have been simpler to just have picked it up at the grocery store when she went shopping, but tradition was tradition. It was probably the same reason that there was still a newspaper boy as well. “Um, just leave it here, by the door.”

“No problem.” Derek unloaded three glass jugs filled with milk and placed them where she instructed. “Do you want me to pick up last week’s jars?”

“Sure. Just a moment.” She darted back into the kitchen and grabbed the jugs, returning and handing them to him.

“Thank you kindly, Madam,” Derek said. “Wow, you’ve actually rinsed them. Most people don’t.”

“Really? That’s sort of gross.”

Derek laughed. “Isn’t it?” He shrugged. “Anything else for my favorite customer?”

“No, thank you.”

“Okay, then. Happy to help.” Derek tossed his hair back a bit and grinned boyishly. “I mean it, you know. You really are my favorite customer.” He said it with such casual seriousness that it made Ellie’s cheeks suddenly feel very, very warm. “Anyway,” he added cheerily, “hopefully the regular milk boy will be back next week, but I wouldn’t mind it if he wasn’t! Bye!” He sauntered off, whistling.

“Goodbye,” she called after him.

Derek didn’t turn, but raised his right hand and waved as he pulled the wagon behind him with his left. Ellie watched him until he was out of sight, then shut the door, wondering why her legs felt like jelly and if that was necessarily a bad thing.

I think we should all stop, and appreciate the passage: “Come on, sing one for me. Serenade me, so I may forget the horrors of the Muffin Opera.”. I'm sorry, but I found that funnier than I should have.

I'm really liking the story, it's serious, silly, sad, and sarcastic toward itself. It's one of the few stories that keep me interested . I'm glad that I've been helpful . Keep up the good work!

A user of this : Sorry for taking so long to respond. That scene was fun to write. I'm glad you like the story. The mood writes itself, really.