@madmanwithahorn / @lonelymountainson
Romi hated the fourth of July with a depth and breadth of conviction far beyond the cold sickness of adrenaline that shot her in the gut with every percussive blast in the warm indigo air of summer evenings for way the hell too long before and after the day itself.
She ought instead to loathe it. It didn’t deserve a place in her mind; it didn’t deserve to curdle the malt of good beer on her palate or make her hands shake with queasy fury til it slopped over to leave sticky trails of clear dark brown across her dusty skin.
Oh well. She needed to wash her hands anyway. Instinct made her knock back the last half of her pint - it wasn’t likely anyone would drug someone of her size and build and at this time of day, but leaving the drink unguarded was about as unthinkable as going outside in nothing but underpants. On your head.
The soap in the unisex bathroom smelled like rosemary, and Romi told herself it was appetizing. She’d ordered chicken baked in rosemary, after all. Hell of a thing to serve in a pub, that, and a hell of a thing to order for someone who’d lived off MRE’s for months at a time and, more recently, whatever she could forage in the mountains - quite a bit, really, thanks to her training.
Maybe she should move to Portland and get a fucking swallow tattooed on her wrist. Maybe the food would smell good, then, and she’d like IPA or wine better than stout, and she’d only hate the 4th because it played hell with battle-born PTSD.
She puffed a short sharp laugh as she paused (instinctively, again) at the edge of the line-of-sight from the lobby of the pub to the entrance of the hallway from which the restrooms (windowless) and the kitchen (site of the un-alarmed employee door) branched off. She sounded like a bitter old fart, like her father, whom she would never say aloud was a bitter old fart, who sat in a plastic chair in the stale living room back on the reservation and drank weak beer and groused about everything except his daughter the warrior.
Gods, and self-centred, too, as well as bitter. Someone had settled on the barstool next to hers, she heard them moving, smelled some tastefully spicy scent and, stepping out, saw a slender dark woman, in a light jacket with a fuzzy white trim about the top, to whom, she decided wryly, she would do her damndest to be pleasant and reasonable and not in the least Standard Grumpy War Vet, Youngish Female Edition.
She slid the other woman a crooked smile as she settled back into the bench, opened her mouth in greeting, and, to her horror and amusement, heard her own voice say:
That wasn’t a faux fur trim at all.
“Berúthiel, actually,” Berúthiel said, amused.
She reached up a hand and scratched behind the ears of the small white cat who was, in fact, draped around her neck like a purring collar, and looked at the woman sitting beside her. Big, broad through the shoulders in a way which spoke of hard-earned muscle, upright posture which just about screamed military, features and skin which said First Nations, maybe. And something haunted in the eyes. That was all right; Berúthiel didn’t mind haunted.
She had more than a few ghosts of her own, after all.
It was some patriotic holiday or the other; it meant little to her. She was not, after all, American, as her accent – mild, hard to place – would tell. But they had called it variously the Fourth of July (which sounded to her merely a date!) and Independence Day, which perhaps had its appeal to her soul. Independence. It was better than freedom. One who was free might still be… lost, perhaps weak. One who was independent had confidence, strength. To celebrate independence seemed to her a fine thing indeed.
And so she had thought to treat herself a drink and a meal. The tavern was not so very far from her apartment, and boasted of a wide window which opened to look out upon the summer streets, letting in the hot air. She enjoyed both the view and the taste of the outside which came with it, even if she did not much enjoy American beers.
The approach of the young woman behind the bar – pretty, tattooed, wearing a tanktop with some obscure logo – distracted Berúthiel briefly. “I would like, please, an old fashioned. You will use the Four Roses bourbon. And also the house hamburger to eat, cooked to medium. I would like it still just pink inside.”
The young woman nodded and moved off with fair alacrity to see to the order; Berúthiel turned back to the woman beside her.
“But of course, you were not asking my name, but referring to my friend.” A shift of the weight upon her neck and Tiriel mewed quietly. “She is called Tiriel. You may pet her, if she allows it.”