Weekly Writing – October 26 2024

Silence rang in the hall long after the sound of her timid knock had faded. Perhaps the guest had decided he was safest keeping a firm grip on that, on silence, as well as his dagger – watching the door until morning and brooking no intrusion through it.
But as she shuffled a step back, her first towards the painting and whatever answers it might show her, the latch clicked smartly open. Muffled just beyond the door, his voice beckoned her – “Come in.”
All of her curiosity had fled backwards, clinging cold to her spine. He might be standing behind that door with his dagger in hand, ready to destroy the threat he thought she was. If she fled down the hall, he might decide the disturbance had been nothing, lock the door, and return to his vigil.
But her mistress surely wouldn’t let her put herself in the way of that much harm. And besides, the need to know hadn’t fled her entirely. She turned the handle, and he didn’t jerk it from her hand as she had imagined he might. He stood in the centre of the room, his dagger returned to whatever hidden place he’d taken it from, every bit the portrait of the noble, welcome guest – except that the night was so deep and he still hadn’t made himself more comfortable than removing his coat.
“Yes?” he prompted her. “Is there something you need?”
She didn’t need. That wasn’t her role. She gave, filling the small needs of others. But that wasn’t completely true, was it? She had at least one need, one she had named just a minute ago – the need to know.
“I…I noticed that your light was still on,” she said. She alone – whether approving, simply watching, or busy elsewhere, her mistress was giving her no help here. “I struggle to sleep sometimes as well. I thought that, if you needed a diversion from the night-”
“I appreciate your kindness, but-”
“-you might tell me a little about where you came from,” she finished. She had never spoken over anyone before, but it wasn’t as hard as she had imagined it might be. Not like climbing over the mountain of someone else’s words, but simply not letting herself be stopped. “We never have guests here- well, almost never- and I would love to hear more about the world outside.”
He studied her as he had at the front door, when her mistress had spoken through her. Wearing her like a glove, but one that fit very different from how it did around her own mind and movements. Her mistress might speak through the servants sometimes, but would never lower herself to pretending to be one.
“You speak of the world as if you have never seen it,” he observed. “Were you born in this house, then?”
The bright, harmless smile Trina had worn like a trinket on a mantelpiece fell away. She clasped her hands like a tight, trembling egg in the nest of her skirt.
“There’s really nothing interesting to tell about me,” she said. “I’m sure you have far more fascinating tales.”
He didn’t look as though he believed it. As though he believed in her at all – but maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise, when she wasn’t even sure what she was trying to make him believe.
“All right,” he said nonetheless, a breath before she would have backed towards the door and said it was all a mistake. “A diversion – I’m sure I could think of a tale that would suffice. Will you sit with me a while, Miss-?”
“Trina,” she offered. A name like a trinket, picked up only rarely to shake off the dust. Most of her instructions came without it, or any voice at all, for that matter.
Yet, “Trina,” he said, and it seemed somehow more solid in his mouth. “Very well. Sit a while, and I’ll tell you how I came to be travelling this way. I suspect that’s what you want to know – and how I came to be travelling alone.”