Ayan
This sort of hospitality was familiar to him.
They had also had strange guests sent up to their home because the town knew they had warmth and food to share.
Elias never thought he would know what it was like to be on the other side of it.
How alienating it would feel to be so far from home that the sight of another family simply living made jealousy and tears stir up in your throat.
Elias swallowed hard and forced himself to eat the chicken. He couldn’t tell what the sauce was made of and hoped it wasn’t hiding sugar. He had so little pine left.
“Eet.”
Elias shook his head. Not even for politeness could he eat this vegetable.
“Letim’ alone, Ayan,” Moira murmured.
Elias did not have the words in English for this. “Das kann ich nicht essen. Zucker . . . ,” he said softly. Apologetic.
Ayan huffed angrily, then turned from him, muttering. Despair welled in Elias’s chest. He felt awful being a guest, a rude one at that. There was nothing he could do to help it.
He wanted to leave immediately. Elias swallowed again and his throat ached, and he could feel tears warring behind his eyes like fire ants. The thread inside him vibrated harder, sending this to Victor, and Elias was forced to close his eyes to gentle it.
When he opened them, the table was quiet and everyone was looking at him.
Elias couldn’t do this. His cheeks burned.
He began to stand “Dankeschon—”
Ayan placed a hand on his shoulder to press him back into the chair. When his palm made contact, Elias flinched. Ayan drew his hand away, brow furrowing.
Moira picked up his dinner and scraped the turnips onto her own plate. Then, to his horror and embarrassment, she slid an untouched portion of chicken off her own plate to his and placed it before him.
Ayan flicked a look up to his wife but said nothing.
“D-Dankeschon,” Elias repeated. His throat was so tight, he didn’t know if he could eat this.
But he had to. He had to.
He chewed as the entire family watched. Emotions flashing by on Ayan’s face like quickly passing seasons. Moira turned back to Isla and said something that made her get up and go to switch the dinner cauldron with a pot of water.
Isla scampered back to the table, yelling something excitedly. Moira smiled at her and pinched her cheek, then let her be dismissed.
When Isla had disappeared, door slamming behind her, the couple turned back to Elias. A tear dripped down Elias’s nose to land in the sauce.
Ayan steepled his hands on the table in front of him. “Italy, Scochtlund, Ayrlund . . . ,” he said, thinking.
Elias wiped his face with one hand and continued eating.
Moira got up when the pot began to bubble and poured them all hot mugs of water.
She went to the larder and came back with tea.
Elias stood and Ayan let him this time. He went to his jacket and came back with his small, nearly empty container of pine needle powder.
Moira and Ayan watched curiously as he returned and poured the rest in the water.
“German?” Ayan said, snatching the glass jar from the table as soon as Elias put it down. Ayan sniffed it hard, then stared at the remains of the powder. No this . . . wasn’t entirely a German custom, but Elias couldn’t explain so he just shrugged.
Ayan exchanged a glance with Moira and got up. “Elbe bach.”
He disappeared deeper into the house, leaving Elias alone with his wife. Moira gathered the dishes into a stack and placed them in a basin for washing later. Then she returned to the table. She sat in Ayan’s seat, pulled it closer to him, took Elias’s hand, and pressed it between the two of hers.
“Ahr yewahl richt?” she asked softly.
Elias knew her question from the tone. He shook his head, and more tears came.
His chest felt like it was full of bees.
He wanted to hide his face. The smell of pine, food cooking, and tallow candles was too much like home.
Isla loudly playing was too much like Gida.
The plush weight of Moira’s hands was . . .
Elias wiped his face and took a shuddering breath. “Ich wollen nach Hause zu meiner Familie gehen,”* he said out loud for the very first time. Admitted it, helplessly, like a child.
Moira clearly still did not understand him, but she clucked her tongue and pet the top of his hand in sympathy. Somehow it felt safe to say these things to unhearing ears.
“Ich vermisse mein Mama,”* Elias choked. He covered his eyes and sobbed, just the once.
“Yore mama?” Moira asked sadly, then crooned to him.
Elias pushed his tea away so he could hide his face in his arms properly.
Moira released his hand and, after a moment of hesitation, brushed through the spikes of his hair.
Elias tried to be quiet. He held his hand over the thread inside him and willed it to keep from shaking.
The vibrations were hurting him, but he could not let Victor share in this. It was humiliating.
He let out a soft keen, and Moira kindly gripped the back of his neck as he shook.
Ayan returned. Elias looked up at the sound of Ayan’s footsteps and wiped his face quickly.
Forcing down his grief. Ayan was holding an armful of slim pine branches.
He dumped them on the table and settled into Moira’s chair.
His eyes flashed at his wife, but he didn’t tell her to stop comforting him.
Instead he began to strip the needles from the branches and place them in a tidy pile. Moira joined him in the task, pushing a few branches over to Elias to help.
They stripped needles by the quiet crackle of the fire for many moments. Elias kept his eyes on the metal of the table and on his task.
Eventually they finished and Ayan got up. He took the large knife from the wall and began to chop the needles into more manageable pieces. Not as good as if there was time to dry and powder them but enough that Elias could fit more of them into his little glass jar than if they’d gone in whole.
“Alain Cloutier,” Ayan said suddenly. “Ist whise, fore ahl hees a richt khunt.”
Elias just looked up at him. The Scottish alchemist blazed red by the light of the hearth. He pointed to Elias’s chest, then gestured between him and his wife. Elias didn’t understand. He shook his head.
Ayan rolled his eyes, clearly giving up on communication. Moira tried instead. She pressed a hand against Elias’s chest, then pointed to herself. “Victor Frankenstein.” She placed her other hand over her heart.
Elias flushed. He shook his head.
“Nein. Nein.” He did not know exactly what they were implying, but whatever it was gave way too much weight to the relationship he had with that madman. Current or otherwise.
Moira shrugged. “Kommunikation. Unterstanding.”
Elias frowned and looked away.
“Victor Frankenstein ist ein Monster,” he whispered.
Ayan snorted. He poured the pine needles from his bowl into Elias’s jar and pushed it across the table.
“Ye rik off blut,” he replied with a wary glare.
That Elias understood, but he had bathed so many times between the last time he was covered in blood and now. He wasn’t even wearing the same clothes, besides his harness. He couldn’t understand how these people were so attuned to it.
Ayan went and picked up Elias’s things. He held out Elias’s harness until Elias put his arms inside and shrugged it back onto his shoulders. Then he handed him his jacket.
“You khant stayheer, vith Isla,” Ayan said gently. “Danke yew fore de warning.”
Elias nodded. He bowed to Moira and to Ayan. He looked longingly at his book, which was still on the table.
Ayan sighed and picked it up and handed it back. Before Elias’s fingers could make contact with the cover Ayan shook it at him.
“Dangerous,” he said sternly, then pushed it into Elias’s arms.
Elias nodded and turned to go, then he remembered something.
“Brogan?” he asked.
Ayan brightened. “Brogan!” he said cheerily, then smirked. “Kilmeaden.” Then he shrugged. “Spakes German. Shoodt be yessier.”
Kilmeaden. “Kilmeaden,” Elias said again.
“Kill-MEE-dehn,” Ayan clarified. Elias repeated it until he got the accent right.
Ayan opened the door for him and to Elias’s surprise followed him out into the night, closing the door softly behind them. Elias looked up at Ayan, fear beginning to well in his heart, but the Scottish alchemist just humphed low in his throat and reached out to Elias’s face.
Elias’s tears had long since dried in the heat of the fire, but Ayan’s stout grubby finger traced their paths anyway.
“Aye’ll venge ye,” he said, soft and stern.
Then he chucked a kind fist against the edge of Elias’s jaw, as if to make even with his own tenderness, and disappeared back into his home.
Elias stood there by himself, in the cold, and closed his eyes.