Leanri Silverwind

"Don't Shoot Me Greatfather Winter..."

Kissed by sunlight and cocooned in silk, Leanri lazed. It was glorious this, the morning off. Since she’d arrived back under Kaereah’s roof, she’d been delegated to work the morning shift, sequestered from the better pay and more interesting members of the staff. Instead of the Knights, Nobles, and Magisters who came to partake in the evening hours, she plied her trade with the overnight laborers, the old men, and the rakes who made their coin in the cover of darkness.

 It was punishment of course; Kae knew how she loved the music, the dim lights, and the intrigue. How she sparkled and shined among the upper crust. This was akin to keeping a candle under a bushel basket, and it was growing thin. She understood, of course, she had to, for she’d done it to herself, but she was beginning to wonder and when the woman would let up. 

She hated getting out of bed before lunch, hated worse the hours alone in her small room with the servants, listening to the crowd and the distant call of jazz from the main room at night. It made sleeping nearly impossible, despite the scant morning that would drive her from her bed, with her hair in pins and her small clothes rumpled into soft pastel linen and more homespun - so as not to intimidate her “guests.” 

Every day she opened her closet and stared at the fine dresses and gowns she’d made, running her fingers over the her hand beading and Grenada's lace. They all hung there, mute and accusatory as much as the pearls and diamonds that filled her jewelry box.  

“If I hadn’t been such a twit, this would never have happened.” They were silent, her accusers, but she filled in that space with the truth, from her own lips, and she might as well save Kaereah the breath. Missing from that clutch of spendy jewelry was the emerald, and good riddance she thought, for it had brought nothing but trouble. 

While she was a picture of pretty with her, the pale skin, the equally pale hair, and the itty-bitty frame, there was a corvid that malingered under her hide. Somewhere within lurked a greedy creature full of guile and dark tidings that once taken with a shiny bit had a hard time leaving off. The shine could be on anything, a bit of jewelry, a glass, a pair of shoes, sometimes a person though it was harder to get at this, but she collected the notches in her bedpost with pride. 

Kae and Greneda had always chided her, tried their best to discourage her avarice, but it flowered as she grew to adulthood into a compulsion that she had not a clue how to end. With the little things, she kept a box, hidden deep in her closet for the snatched bits. When it was safe and it was, quiet she would take them out and run her finger over them, cooing and comforting herself with their presence.  

It was often mused that this strange “affliction of the mind,” had come upon her as a child, a hungry dirty little beast that slept under the eaves in Ratchet, begged or stole her daily meal and generally caused trouble. Kae had known her mother, a Wild Cat of a whore who refused to join the protection of a brothel because “they steal ri’oot a’yer pocket.”

Kae had worked with her once, under the roof of the Galesong Sisters, where eventually Lydia was put out on the street for holding back coin from their Mistresses. It wasn’t long, once she was reduced to working the roadway and had not enough coin for the contraceptive tea the house provided all their girls that she ended up pregnant, hungry and foolish. 

Somewhere in the lean years after Leanri’s birth, she conflicted with the Bruisers, caught stealing from the till of the little inn they ran down by the docks. After that, she Lydia disappeared, but Leanri remained, half-feral and as skinny as death. The sister’s took her in, washed her up, and sent her to a tutor with Aember. She hated it desperately but it soothed the animal out of her, or almost. 

But, this could not be soothed away. No amount of gold, notoriety, accolade, or care seemed to stop her itchy fingers. Sometimes, she wouldn’t even remember she’d taken a thing, only find it in her pocket when she undressed. Sometimes, she concocted elaborate methods to get at the item of her desire, breaking and entering; even pick pocketing were employed.  

The summer that Kae had left the Galesong’s employ and returned to Silvermoon, she’d taken Leanri with her, along with her own daughter Aember. The two girls were inseparable and oddly enough looked remarkably alike. It wasn't until adolescence the questions about their being sisters would stop. It was then Aember’s baby fat seemed to melt and her legs shot her upwards at such a rate she would lay in bed and cry for the ache of it. 

Leanri remembered that summer in the city, the dark and dour woman who had taken them all in, Kae, Aember and herself. It was Phaedrei, Kaereah’s older sister, a terse and quiet woman who had the knack of knowing just what you were up to, without even being there. She terrified Leanri, who upon confessing to Aember was laughed at. 

“My Auntie Phae is a very powerful woman, she’s rich too. You shouldn’t be afraid; she means to help us, you, and I. Won’t it be grand to live here in the city?” Leanri had her doubts. There were interviews and conversations with several houses that were looking to foster or adopt, the two Bitterdawn women doing their best to negotiate something suitable for Leanri and a stint at the Citadel for Aember. 

They were too old it was surmised to continue bedding down at the brothel, it was time they were away before their curiosity and or the lechery of the customers drew them down into the business of their mothers. Aember was glad to be free of the heat and the dust of Kalimdor, while Leanri, wanted nothing to do with school and sitting like a lady or lowering her eyes and dropping curtseys everywhere.  

These were funny little thoughts, the past, the winding way of it. Leanri was often puzzled by how her mind would seek any pathway to go back instead of forward. It would do her little good to revisit it. In the end, it was best that she’d gone to the Sanctum, that she’d been given a room in the barracks and that she’d spent the next several decades learning how to fight, how to heal and how to follow orders. 

It hadn’t been easy, any of it, but even she, who rarely saw the good in anything, saw the good in it. She was strong, she was healthy, she could defend herself despite her stature and the Light, was always there when she needed it. She had faith, at least enough to salve the worst of her hurts, though not quite enough to sway her habits or proclivities.  

Giving her cotton-wool thoughts a shake, she sat up in bed and threw back the sheets. Yes, it was that time of year for picking through the past, but there was a broad day ahead. One in which she hoped to meet some of her fellow coworkers, to stretch her legs a little and to find some joy in this often-joyless season.  

Her little gams pulled her to the edge of the bed and set her feet on the floor. It was cool, though not cold, for she’d managed to swipe a little rug to set there, protecting her dainty feet from the chill. Once standing she bent, found her slippers under the edge of the bed and then slid them on. There might be a rug here, but the rest of the floor was solid stone and she’d be damned if she was going to walk on it in bare feet.  

Over to the closet, mean as it was; for her dresses and costumes were shoved in so tightly she could hardly see what she had, but she’d been prepared. The night before, she pulled out her finery. She’d wear the red silk velvet dress that had a little asymmetry, the beads around the lowly gathered waist were her own design.  

The color was exceptional on her pale flesh and the shape suited her less buxom figure. She wanted to go all out, try to remind Kaereah that she could still draw the eye, that she still had the knack of getting attention. Maybe that would be all it took, just a poke at the woman in the way of presentation.  

She took the dress down from the hook on her closet door and lay it across her bed. The best part of it, was that it was comfortable. She wouldn’t need anything more than a little slip, some panties and her garters. No corset, no scratchy lace to make her night irritating. Just as she began to shimmy out of her negligee, she heard it. 

The high-pitched wail of discontent ran down the hall, filling it and under her closed door. She tensed, ears pricking and swiveling just a bit to listen closer. It could have been a love sound, some new whore who sounded like death when she was being plowed. “Don’t panic…,” she told herself, as the next wail sounded off. It came from above, exactly where she couldn’t say. She was close, at least close enough to intercede if required. 

“Ok, still don’t panic…” Grabbing up the small thin straps of her night silks in a rush she bolted for her door. One of those straps made it to a shoulder, caught just enough to keep the negligee up over her picayune bosom as she roared through her door and into the hall. With the trained single mindedness of a fighter, she reached on her way out for her weapon, a hammer that while small, could deliver a wallop to an unruly patron that would ring his bell for days. 

She took the porter’s stairs, which ascended to the second floor and were just to the right of her room. Up she went, two at a time, the Light a fine and timely augment that made her glow like a speeding bullet and shook the lethargy from her still sleepy body.  

It was a sight, at least to the others, the stragglers on the second floor, who like her had slept in, awakened by heartbreaking sobs coming from the second to last door on the hall. Leanri emerged at the top of the stairs with her pinned curls flopping wildly from the weight of their security and her negligee flying out behind her small pale legs. She barreled through their opening doors and sleepy bodies like an obstacle course.  

She didn’t know which room from which came the sound, but she knew the direction. As she reached the end of the hall, one of the fellas who bedded down there, stood in his doorway and pointed to Greneda’s door. The small whore never even blinked as she shouldered the door and took it square off its hinges. Splinters and chips flew in all directions as she burst into the inky dark room. 

“Gren!?” She hollered, squinting against the dim conditions, slowed some by the door and the dark she made it halfway across the room before she realized she heard crunching underfoot. Refusing to lower her weapon, she backtracked to the doorway, the only source of light and stood in the glow looking, assessing. 

 “Greneda Brightmorn are you in here and ok?” If there had been a troublemaker in the room, he would have announced himself by now. Some cheeky threat delivered or made a mad dash to escape. Leanri breathed out in a huff, her heart pounding hard in her chest. She turned, reached around, and found the pull for the lights, gave it a tug and winced as the carnage came under the bleak glare of arcane.  

“Oh, fuck… I … forgot.” Leanri wanted to smack herself, it was the holiday, and she knew, likely all the old timers knew that this would be a feature of the festivities, Greneda’s yearly meltdown over Vaughn. There were broken bottles and picture frames, their glass strewn in all directions. Amidst them were piles of gentlemen’s attire, though a great pile of shirts were on the bed like a nest and amidst them bare pictures free of their cold glass confinement.  

“Sweet Sun, the poor bird.” Down dropped Leanri’s hammer, thudding and crunching in the thick pink carpet. Grenada’s sobbing had softened, almost as if she were hiding, but from the cock of the privy closet door and the light eeking out of it, Leanri knew just where the woman was holed up.  

“Grenny… love? I am comin’ now don’t you punch me ok? I am just gunna slide in and help you get decent.” Through the sorrow torn room she walked, glad of the arcane lamps and her slippers else she’d have no safe path to walk. 

She could hear murmurs and the rustling of bodies behind her, the gawkers lined up in the broken door-frame, spectating. Without turning, she growled, her tone one of command. “You lot, get the fuck out of here.. And someone go get Kaereah yeah? Sun’s Bloody Light… a bunch of carrion crows; all of ya.” 

(( music - 

Part 1
Part 2