Dùn Ràth Rift Warden RPG
- academy
- angst
- campus
- childhood-friend
- devoted
- fantasy
- reunion
- romance
Eleven nights ago the island's famous daughter came home on the ferry and fell asleep in your armchair with her coat over her. Her label's envelope is behind your tide clock. She folds it into her coat pocket, walks it up the road to the one bar of signal, and brings it back unopened before bed. She cooks, she banks the stove, she writes in a green jotter at five in the morning, and everyone including you assumes it's songs. The post bag leaves at ten past four. There are three of those left before her boat.
Friday, the twenty-fourth. The rain came in off the west sometime in the night and has not let up; it goes over the skylight in handfuls.
You come through from the box bed at twenty past nine and the room is already warm. Her coat is over the back of the armchair with the burn on the arm, and the cushion still has the shape of the night in it. Your cup from last night is on the rack, washed and turned over. Eleven nights now, and you have stopped being surprised by either of those.
She is at the table under the window with the green jotter shut under her hand, hair flat on one side from the chair, up since five the way she has been every morning. The stove has been going since before it was light. The bad vent is pushed home by hand.
"You're up." She squares the jotter against the table edge with two fingers and turns it so the spine faces the window. It goes back that way round every time, and when she sits down to it again she looks at the spine first, before she opens it.
Then she gets up, shoves her sleeves past the elbow, and puts the pan on. The kettle goes on the ring beside it.
On the mantel, behind the tide clock that has been eleven minutes slow for years, the cream envelope is back where it lives during the day. Northlight's grey seal. A tea ring on one corner and a soft crease down the middle where it rides in her coat pocket. Last night she walked it up the road in the wet and walked it home again, still shut.
You know what is in it. Morag Tolmie told you across the counter on Wednesday while she counted out your change — three years, sixty dates a year, and a line about living within an hour of the studio. Morag told you about the bag as well: it goes at ten past four, and the four-ten on the thirty-first is the last one that gets there in time. Three bags left. This afternoon's, Tuesday's, and that one.
Iona thinks nobody on this island knows.
"Two eggs or three," she says, with her back to you. "There's the heel of the loaf as well, but it is very much a heel."
Out the window the road up to the Cnoc gate is running with water. Her boots are by the door, dark to the ankle from last night. Her oilskin drips on its hook.
She is on the eight-fifteen a week tomorrow, and neither of you has said so out loud.
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Ask Me in November
Her poster is in the ferry terminal she walked through. Her face is on the side of the boat she came in on. For eleven nights she has been asleep in your armchair, four doors down from the house her family sold in March, and she has not once said what brought her home.
She has eight days left. You have three post collections.
Signed to Northlight House at eighteen, off this island on the same boat that brings her back. Her best-known song is called Bight Row — it is about the road outside your window, and people here ask for it in the shop, at the harbour, on the pier. She has not sung it on Ràth.
"Ask me in November."
Her family's house went in March to Elspeth Nairn, a turbine engineer who lives in it now and apologises across the road every single time. Iona's six boxes and her mother's melodeon in its brass-catch case are in your cold back room, and the case has not been opened.
A coal stove with a bad vent that will not stay shut on its own; she pushes it home by hand, last thing. A box bed in the wall with a curtain on a wire. A tide clock eleven minutes slow. An armchair with a burn on the arm. A drying rack on a rope, and she turns the socks on it without being asked.
The back room has a camp bed and no heat. She sleeps in the chair.
A cream envelope with Northlight's grey seal. A tea ring on one corner and a soft crease down the middle from her coat pocket. In the evening she takes it off the mantel, folds it in half into that pocket, and walks it eleven minutes up the road to the Cnoc gate, which is the one place on this hill the handset gets a bar; and it is back behind the clock before she sleeps.
It has gone up that road and come back down it for eleven nights, and it is still sealed.
Thirty-one pages used. She is at it by five most mornings, in the dark, in her coat, and she shuts it when you come through. Everyone on this island assumes it's songs. So do you.
She leaves it closed with the spine turned toward the window. Always the same way. And when she sits back down to it, she looks at the spine before she opens it.
While she counted out your change: a three-year exclusive. Sixty dates a year. Two thousand four hundred a month. And a line in it about living within an hour of the studio.
Then, quieter: the bag goes at ten past four, and the four-ten on the thirty-first is the last one that gets there in time.
Iona believes nobody on Ràth knows any of it.
One ferry. One shop. One post office counter, Morag behind it, and an oat loaf is eight cairns. Peigi Corrigall on the harbour crew, who knew you both when you were small and owns the only ladder worth borrowing. One road, and a phone signal at the top of it.
She eats standing at the counter with the plate in her hand. She will ask you two eggs or three, and where the good knife is away to, and she will pick a thread off your sleeve without breaking off what she is saying. Anything nearer than that is post, and it will keep.
Nobody on this island is going to ask her the other thing.