Recusant

Chapter One

The evening was hot despite the season just meeting mid winter. The dirt roads, crusted from dry nights and fine morrows, resulted in the thick smell of hard mud and smoke mixing into the air.

Per usual the sky was it's tainted yellow, thick grey clouds looming the town's people with gloomy ambience. The houses were crummy and derelict, built up from the base of mud with stone and wood only to subject to rack and ruin.

"What a considerate view."

Polymare, perched on the edge of an abandoned shabby wagon, set her eyes on an odd bush having sprouted from the underbottom of a house. It wasn't the coils of lanceolate leaves covered in clinging hairs that caught her attention, but instead the small yellowish flowers that grew in clusters. The madder plant was worth a hefty price to dyers, and considering more than half the town's children hadn't got food to eat, the opportunity looked grand.

The town of Caelum was scarcely cramped, a diminutive and poor place compared to its neighboring towns, Gampson and Fina, within the kingdom of Flem.

The place was a living slum, inhabited by the lowest of the low. Children who played among the dirt streets wore cloth and wool too thin for winter, and the adults fared miserably with work.

"Polymare." A tap on her hand and the calling of her name.

Polymare looked down at the young boy demanding her time. Had she not been paying much attention?
"My apologies, Crispin," she gave him a soft smile, reaching her hand up to pat the top of his head. "You were saying?"

Crispin was a freckle faced lad. With a head full of curly blonde locks and ocean blue eyes, he was the most joyous child of Caelum. Only being the age of six, he'd wake up exactly at sunrise to go out about his day greeting all the town's people and helping where he could. It seemed it was Polymare's turn to be greeted.

"I was wondering of the fair," Crispin took hold of the hand upon his head with both hands and brought it down to his chest.

Her fingers smoothed against the flimsy fabric of his dirty brown tunic, the feel of his steady heart beat thumping against her palm. Her greeting to him.

"What of it?" Polymare posed, Crispin giving her hand a squeeze before releasing it. "You're not planning on sneaking off again are you?" she admonished the boy.

His face reddened, something far from rare, before he moved to impatiently tug Polymare up by the end of her white tunic. "No!" He bellowed, more or less hauling her from the abandoned houses deep within the center of Caelum. "I just ponder if you'll be attending again is all. I've seen you return numerous times in rough shape."

"You're quite the stalker," she chuckled.

"You're so unladylike!" Crispin's sudden wail took her by surprise. Was he upset? For what? "Who'd dare marry a woman who wears boy clothes? You have enticing features and you choose to be a slob!"

His assertion was of nothing she hadn't heard before. There was no denying Polymare's allure. She was gifted jet black hair, cut below her shoulders due to excessive growth and her eyes were an almost eerie but delicate grey, similar to pale smoke. Her skin was dully pale, kissed gently by the sun every so often and giving life to her unwelcoming aura. Being taller than most women seemed to have their advantages. It felt undeniably infrequent when she was ever approached by someone other than a child.