Work Text:
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It was a particularly windy afternoon, the red leaves of trees surrounding the manor parting with the branches they were perched on before lightly joining together on the ground in clumps.
Of course, this is an ordinary occurrence, there is nothing special about welcoming the cold breeze of the fall season. If anything, the only unusual thing that was happening beside the entrance to the manor was that it was extremely quiet; There was no one raking the leafy mess that accumulated overnight, no one to shove all of those leaves in a bag to dispose of it at a later point in time, and no such conversation happening to fill in the silence in the air. It was as if no one was there in the first place.
Michiko lightly touched the glass window. It was cold, even from the inside. She hummed to herself,
There were two people avoiding cleaning duty.
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In a grief-stricken forest that ate up the manor until it could no longer be identified by those who created maps as a way for navigation; In a place so abundant with dark trees that seemed to have a mind of its own as it twisted and turned for nobody to ever escape; There were little patches of calming and beautiful, albeit small spaces of land that were decorated with different kinds of mushrooms and flowers with small cracks of light revealing itself amongst the thick leaves and branches that covered the sky.
One who is inside the manor will never be able to escape its vicinity until they win their prize, although there are certain loopholes as to how far away they can be from the haunted building. People needed their time alone. Especially the two people who sat beside each other on tall grass, against the bark of a cold pine tree, bickering towards each other about who knows what.
"Hey, are you even listening to me?" Edgar sighed as Eli sat back on the tree behind them, relaxing himself more and more until he was laying on the grass. His right hand slightly let go of the sketchbook he held, slightly dropping on his lap, "You helped me find an amazing spot to be left alone to draw to my heart's content, yet you won't help with the drawing part?" While his left hand that held a pencil lightly jabbed the man's forehead beside him, with the tip of the eraser pointing towards Eli's skin.
Eli laughed as he felt a sudden poke on his temple. He pushed the pencil away and adjusted his position to be more comfortable. "I did help you with the former, but I didn't think I'd be helping you with drawing." He turned his head towards Edgar. Not that it mattered, since he was blindfolded therefore his friend could not see his unreasonable expression.
"It's only natural," Edgar replied, exasperated by Eli's carefree attitude, "why did you think I let you follow me here instead of asking you to shoo, shoo…?"
"Because…" the other smiled. "Only I knew where this place was to begin with?"
"That's not the point…!"
This seemed to go on for hours on end, yet the light above them never once dimmed.
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"Hey… Eli."
Eli hummed as he picked a flower beside him. "Yes?"
"Can you describe to me the person you like?" Edgar's pencil hovered on the blank page.
There was a pause. The flower Eli held flew away as soon as he let go of it, as it was apparently light enough to explore the wind circling around them. He thought to himself for a while, thinking about how to respond.
"I like many people, you know."
"Yes, but…" he thought about the people inside the manor that Eli probably thought about. "... Can it be someone I don't know? Someone I haven't met yet?"
"... Oh?" Eli perked up from his lying down position, "well, if it can't be anyone from the manor, then what about… Hm…"
"Gertrude?"
Eli snickered. "You finished my sentence before I did."
Edgar's eye twitched. "That's because you were waiting for me to do so." He flipped to a different blank page of his sketchbook, not that it mattered since all of the pages were blank anyways. "Now! Time is ticking, please describe how your beloved looks." There was a sense of direction in his eyes, now that he finally found a new mysterious subject to draw of
Eli gasped in surprise, his face becoming a little red from Edgar's choice of words. "Well, um…" he laughed awkwardly. "I… Don't really know how to start. I…" he sighed. "Everything about her is so wonderful, she's… It's hard to find a specific thing about her that I like." He covered his face with his forearm, smiling, a little flustered.
A beautiful woman who had managed to capture Eli Clark's heart completely. Edgar already started lightly drawing the outlines for a face. "Well… can you tell me what you notice when you see her? Anything that catches your eye?" With every question Edgar asked, Eli had been getting more jittery and red, as if just thinking about his fiancée had his heart pound all over the place.
"She… she's…" Eli pondered on what to focus on. Her image is vivid in his mind, it was just difficult on what to start on. He was never good with describing a real person's gimmick, only fictional ones in stories filled with riddles. "... when I first saw her in the morning, she was always wearing a hat."
"... and?"
This was very difficult for him.
"And… um,"
"Eli," Edgar huffed, facing the person he was addressing, "please don't think that I'm interrogating you." His eyes, although showed increased motivation for a person he wanted to draw, also showed irritation. "If anything, just think of it as if you're writing a love letter. Is that clear?"
"Okay."
"Now. She wore a hat? What kind?"
Eli sighed, and sat up so that he and Edgar could face each other equally. "... It was a simple hat that could protect her from the heat of the sun as she started a new day at work."
She was a farmer, wearing a farmer's straw hat. Nothing out of the ordinary for those who worked in the agricultural department.
Eli's eyebrows perked up, as if he remembered something. "Although, whenever I gave her some, she stuck bright flowers on the brim of her hat, and even as it kept falling off and landed on the ground, and I tell her it doesn't matter and it might interfere with her work," he giggled, "she kept picking them up and putting them back in place."
A fashionable girl, hardworking, with a cute side that shines whenever Eli comes up to her with an unusual gift in the middle of work. The pencil moved on its own as his person of reference kept talking, the lines crossing over each other to mimic the straw of a hat jutting out of its weaved state, and the flower-like squiggles that rested on it. "What else was there?"
Eli rested his curved index finger on his mouth, as if to think for a while. "She… Has eyes."
"Of course she does."
"No, no, really, I mean…" He waved his hands around as if to erase a mistake. In his words, perhaps. "I actually don't see it often. Not that she wears a blindfold like mine, but… She works through the ground, so of course I wouldn't see it as often. It's only after her long hours do I see how bright it is, even if just for a moment," there was a sort of awe in his voice, "since she could still be so shy around me."
A charming and mysterious girl, with a trait similar to her unusual lover, albeit more subtle in nature. Edgar wished to ask more though. "And when you do see her eyes, what do you think about it?" That description was simply not enough.
"I think that she loves me."
"How romantic." The pencil tilted sideways, less focused on the lines and more focused on giving depth to a currently flat space.
"Her hair," Eli started without Edgar urging him to go on, "it's always tied up when she works. Well, it should be, since it would most likely fly in front of her face and obscure her vision if not." Eli watched Edgar mindlessly move the pencil around. Edgar felt his stare, and moved around so that the former wouldn't see the unfinished product in such a state. "... But when she does let her hair down, I'm usually the one to brush it. It's very wavy, and sometimes, the brush gets stuck in her hair, and she laughs every time it does."
Eli kept going. "She likes wearing dresses. It's not the most practical for work, so it is a rarity to see, but whenever she does wear one in her free time when, let's say, she goes into town, she always looks so beautiful." And going. "And stunning. It doesn't matter what color or how big in puffiness the dress is, she always looks so pretty. But I do remember… She likes the color blue." And going. "But of course… She'll always like more practical clothes than things that just look pretty for the sake of being pretty. But personally, I think she's pretty in a lot of things. In every… Things."
And going. "She's always with her father, walking in his footsteps. I admire her for that; Maintaining a farm and its crops is hard work, but when she and her father succeed, their produce is always amazing, and the leftovers from what they've sold always taste good when they cook it. I help as well, sometimes. All the time." And going. "She's a very optimistic person, you know? Maybe I got that trait from her. If she wasn't there when I was… When I was cursed with these markings, as you've seen before, I thought I was done for." He pointed at the marks peeking out of his blindfold, the tear like design that decorated his cheeks. "But I suppose she saw it as something that wasn't awful. Well, she did say she could always do the groceries. People in town were unsettled by my appearance everytime I came by, so it was relieving for her to say that." And he still kept going. "She thought I was still as handsome, if not more though."
And he still kept going. And he kept speaking, even as Edgar was already done with his small sketch of a girl he had never met, as the latter just listened to Eli babble on about a person he was in love with.
And as he kept speaking, Edgar thought about how wonderful it must be to be in love.
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"Here." He ripped the page out of his sketchbook, careful not to rip and crumple the art on it, and placed it on Eli's careful hands.
"Is this her?" Eli smiled as he eyed the drawing, clearly taken aback.
Edgar looked the other way as he packed his things. "You can keep it."
He looked at the drawing one more time before folding it and safely storing it in his leather satchel. "It looks nothing like her." Eli smiled as he stood up and stretched his arms.
Edgar did the same, with more care to his overworked hands. "Your descriptions are engrossed in fantasy."
"Isn't that a good thing?"
"Yes. It is. At this point in time."
"Eli! Edgar!" Familiar voices entered their ears. "The leaves are blocking the front door!"
Ah…
"I suppose we forgot about that."
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