The lady inspected several pairs of shoes from the display near the window before bringing over a pair of leather boots that lent themselves to practicality over vanity.
“Do you have these in a size that will fit me?” she asked; her voice was raspy, much like Johan’s own when it made a rare appearance.
He held up a finger, indicating for her to wait a moment, and then fetched the board he used to measure feet. She followed him over to the small bench and sat down, removing her old disintegrating shoe. Johan quickly set to work measuring her foot and then left to check his shelves.
Fortunately, he had a similar pair of boots in the woman’s size, and she paid him her money with a grateful smile on her face despite the fact that he’d been unable to muster the words for even a mere thank you. And it cut Johan up because he was incredibly grateful. The coins from the sale would go a long way towards buying some supplies for making more shoes, plus some left over for a little food if the market had any. His stomach grumbled at the thought.
When she left the shop, Johan let out a deep sigh of relief.
“Thank you,” he muttered quietly now that he was entirely alone, like the words might carry down the cobbled street for her to hear.
She turned out to be his first and only customer that day, but it was better than nothing.
Later in the evening, Johan locked up the shop and entered his workshop at the back. Scraps of material that he cut offand cast aside during the shoe-making process littered his beech worktop, and he brushed them to the end in order to make room.
Taking a seat, Johan laid out the last remaining leather and carefully measured and cut it up to ensure minimal wastage of material. The sound of his sharp scissors slicing through the leather was a soothing balm.
Shoemaking was something Johan had always excelled at. His shoulders relaxed at the familiarity of the process, along with the relief of knowing he wouldn’t have to attempt interacting with strangers again until the next morning.
Once all the pieces were cut to size, he laid them out methodically onto the workbench, ready for the following day. He would get up early in the morning and head to the market to spend the money from his sale on some more supplies. The prospect of the busy market was simultaneously a little thrilling for Johan and gave him a stomachache.
After collecting his oil lamp from the side near the door, he left his workshop and headed up the stairs to the place he called home.
The door to his little flat creaked as he opened it. His oil lamp cast a faint glow when he entered. His flat wasn’t big, and at times, it was hard to recall how he’d lived here with both his parents. A few years after they’d died from a severe case of Winter Fever, he’d finally moved to sleep on their much larger mattress over the smaller one he’d outgrown by full age.
Johan was both poor and not especially materialistic, which led to his home being quite sparse. He liked it that way, though, because when the noise of the outside world got to be too much, his little home was his sanctuary. There was nobody here to get frustrated with him when he lost his words at inopportune moments, nobody here to make unexpected noises that made him jump. But there was also nobody here when he was coldand lonely. Nobody to talk to about his day when he was able to. Nobody to share a meal with.
At the thought of food, Johan despondently made his way to the small kitchen in the corner of the room. He took a slice of bread that was going stale and the last chunk of cheese, eating the two mechanically, nothing more or less than as a necessity for staying alive.
Will I be alone forever?He thought. Johan had had one friend as a child, a boy called Christoph. He’d been accepting of Johan’s quiet nature, speaking up for him when needed, but unfortunately, when the worst of the famine had hit, Christoph’s parents had no longer been able to afford to live in the town and had left to be labourers on some land too far away for even the possibility of Johan visiting.
Six winters had passed since Johan’s parents had died. Six winters since he’d been hugged or even touched beyond a passing brush of fingers as money exchanged hands in his shop or at the market. At times, the loneliness felt almost too much for Johan to bear, a heavy debilitating weight that he couldn’t climb out from underneath.
Sometimes at night, when he would take himself in hand, he wished it were someone else’s hand wrapped around him instead. But mostly, he wished just for someone to hold during the cold nights. Someone whose hair he could stroke, whom he could maybe even whisper things to in the darkness if he were able. It felt like an unattainable dream, but was a comforting one regardless as he drifted off to sleep that night.
Two
Henrik
I
n theory, Henrik was aware that he should be relieved to no longer be held captive and forced to tolerate working endless hours until his fingers bled in exchange for scraps of food. However, with both his and Elias’ magic still bound by suppressing copper cuffs that required a sorcerer to remove them, they were now homeless and forced to resort to begging for coin or food. Both of which Henrik firmly believed were beneath what any living being should be expected to endure as a means of survival.
Henrik woke that morning to Elias shivering in his arms. They had nothing to wear except the hessian sacks they’d been dressed in at the silk mill and a small cotton sheet to cover them at night that must have dropped to the ground from one of the high washing lines in the housing district.
Due to having to remain hypervigilant lest anyone opportunistic attempt to capture them again while they were weak and vulnerable, Henrik and Elias were spending their nights inside the Dark Forest. When they’d escaped their captors only a few weeks prior, Henrik had built a den out of sticksand moss for them to sleep within, and they’d cleaned an entire blacksmith’s forge from top to bottom in exchange for having their iron shackles removed.
Henrik wrapped his arms more tightly around Elias like he could gift him some warmth that he didn’t even possess himself. Elias turned in his arms and smiled at him like he wasn’t, in fact, on the brink of dying from exposure.
“Good morning,” Henrik whispered to his best friend and sometimes lover. They had never really had need to discuss exactly what they were to each other.
“Morning, Rik,” Elias replied, pecking a quick kiss to Henrik’s frigidly cold lips.
Elias had been free with his affection for Henrik ever since they’d first lain together.
A few months into their time at the silk mill, Elias had—through no fault of his own but sheer exhaustion—made a mistake that had cost the mill a yard of expensive silk.
Elias had panicked, almost unable to breathe as he’d held the ruined fabric in his blistered hands, and Henrik had been overwhelmed with the need to protect him. Protect the elf who had been nothing but kind to him since he’d found himself dragged into the depths of hell, the elf who had taught him what he’d needed to know in order to survive. So when the overseer had returned, Henrik had snatched the silk from Elias’ hands and confessed to the error himself, receiving twenty lashings across his back as punishment.
