Rare is it for Krem to remove his GAUNTLETS. Not many question
him on it, but if they do, he laughs it off with an explanation of how
comfortable they are. And it’s not as if the words are a FALSEHOOD —
they are rather snug, though his palms do grow clammy in them.
In reality, he does not like his hands.
The COPIOUS amounts of callouses do not bother him, nor is it the
jagged peaks of his nails, looking bitten off at the ends. It is the SHAPE
of them. They are too dainty, with minimal hair near the joints; unnatural.
The other soldiers had pointed them out often, and despite knowing it
could not be possible for them to suspect from that alone, his heart
would pound a HECTIC rhythm against his rib cage every time.
But he had always disliked them. Frowned at the sight of them reflected
in his father’s shaving mirror, with their awkward grip on a razor that
was not his. They looked wrong, as if not his appendages but another’s.
Krem never enjoyed entertaining such thoughts for long,
yet they
l i n g e r e d.
They had been like a gift sent from the MAKER, his first gauntlets. They
had not been all that comfortable, but he had worn them as proudly as
one might a PRIZED HEIRLOOM. They looked right pressed against a
blade’s hilt, or closed tight over a shield. He only took them off when
necessity to do arose.
Now, he has better gauntlets, and he has a bit of a COLLECTION. His
insecurity does not plague his every thought, but it is still there, and so
he dons them every morning without fail.