“Walk in rain, you.” First Wife spoke in Market pidgen and her voice had a companionable, familiar nag to it.
“Try fly, older sister. Don’t work,” Baffu said. He extended his hands and flapped. Carefully.
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Friday, March 20, 2009
Baffu's First Story: Part Two
The giant Baffu crawled through the service entrance, scarred knotty knuckles pounding the bone floor like mallets. First Wife rushed toward him holding a towel and once he was fully inside he sat cross-legged and bent forward so she could dry his hair.
“Walk in rain, you.” First Wife spoke in Market pidgen and her voice had a companionable, familiar nag to it.
“Try fly, older sister. Don’t work,” Baffu said. He extended his hands and flapped. Carefully.
“Walk in rain, you.” First Wife spoke in Market pidgen and her voice had a companionable, familiar nag to it.
“Try fly, older sister. Don’t work,” Baffu said. He extended his hands and flapped. Carefully.
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The giant Baffu crawled through the service entrance, scarred knotty knuckles pounding the bone floor like mallets. First Wife rushed toward him holding a towel and once he was fully inside he sat cross-legged and bent forward so she could dry his hair.
“Walk in rain, you.” First Wife spoke in market pidgen and her voice had a companionable, familiar nag to it.
“Try fly, older sister. Don’t work,” Baffu said. He extended his hands and flapped. Carefully.
The service corridor was too small for Baffu to stand up even if he crouched. The ribs overhead had been darkened by smoke until they were brown, the polished bone underfoot yellow-orange with age. Every surface had been wiped clean within the week.
First Wife was old, as old as her husband Doctors but still in full vigor, white hair tied back in a tail and the mustache she’d stopped plucking drooping down in wisps like mist. She had a man’s hands and ruled the household the way Doctors ruled his court. Baffu loved First Wife dearly but he was used to strong women; he always wondered why a father-tyrant like Doctors put up with the way she bossed him around. She was nothing like his other wives; Second Wife was plump and gentle, with a sway to her round hips, Third Wife was slender as a shoot and full of merriment, Fourth Wife was a childhood friend of Baffu’s, still a girl from the market. All chosen for their beauty…
It made for a complicated household, one that Baffu, with all respect, did not entirely approve of.
First Wife turned to drop the sopping towel in a bin made of fragrant wood she’d brought from the Outer World and handed Baffu the robe he wore when he visited Doctors, dark blue with a dragon-whale curling up the back.
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