NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 35, His Room, His Home
They’ve seen a wyrm and one of the Four (two, counting himself) and they hadn’t even confirmed the existence of dragons? Ah, then again, dragons were rather rare. And strong, as well. Still… “Yes?”
“Holy shit. Holy shit! That’s-, why’d you kill dragons?? What’d they do to you, Kreig? They deserved to live!”
The first one had been a rather young one that was terrorizing the area around the Kingdom. The second had appeared on the battlefield between the Empire and the nation of Bagland, forcing the two armies to work together to kill it. The third one had been in Kreig’s way as he and his party tried to escape the Empire. The fourth one had appeared mere years ago on a dare to kill Kreig. “They had to be destroyed.”
Sam growled. “Grr. Fine! But only cuz I’m happy that dragons are real!” With her piece said, Sam proceeded to show Kreig the rest of her room, all while wearing a pout to rival any tantrum-throwing toddler.
The dragon-shrine was actually the top shelf of a line of similarly cluttered shelves, none carrying books. This shelf was in turn next to a desk and a chair, upon which a screen was seated. Sam explained that it was a ‘computer’ and that the keyboard flaring in sixteen different colours had cost her more than the screen itself, but not anywhere near the webcam perched atop the screen. The use of the web camera eluded Kreig entirely, mostly since he couldn’t imagine that a profession such as ‘streamer’ could exist in modern times. Aside from that, the entire area around the window was filled with healthy greenery. She had a green thumb.
“I’d show you more but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion you’d try to burn my back-up dragon posters,” Sam said, shrugging dismissively. And all of a sudden Kreig almost regretted killing those dragons.
Almost.
A door closed in the hall behind them and George appeared. “Am I to assume you’ve finished showing him what an obsessive dweeb you are?”
Sam turned red in a mere second. “You-, hey! Shut it! I’m an adult woman, I can decorate my room however I want!” She made a solid point, but the finger-pointing sullied it a bit. “If you’re all done with the whole guest-room thing, why don’t you show it to Kreig? If you think he’ll like it, that is. Heh.”
A very weak clap-back that only made George grin. “Of course. I’ve been decorating all day. Come, Kreig, follow me.” Apparently, the confidence George held in the guest-room trumped any doubts Sam could possibly sow in his mind.
Kreig felt like a very ill-fitting third wheel, but followed George to the guest room nonetheless.
As George pulled open the door and gestured for Kreig to enter, the first thing that hit Kreig was the scent. The overpowering smell of chemicals seemed concentrated beyond the apartment as a whole, infiltrating his nostrils and making them burn with the stench. But beneath that, there seemed to be a somewhat hidden scent, like that of mushrooms. But not any kind of mushroom he’d ever smelled before, or in any large doses.
“...Yeah. This room used to be… Sam used to have it for the private use of-, of psychedelics. That was long ago, she’s off the stuff. Just… ignore that smell if you can,” George said, stepping inside the room fully.
Kreig tried, but the smell was surprisingly distracting, despite the many flowering plants placed here and there in the room. It really was a nice room. With a large bed and a desk and a few paintings here and there on the walls. There really wasn’t much detail to it, nothing too personal, nothing too expensive. A perfectly normal room by modern standards.
And now, it was home.
The luggage he’d been dragging around for the past few hours seemed so little. It was just paintings. Paintings of people he’d met, paintings of people he didn’t want to forget… Oh! He’d almost forgotten! There was one painting unlike the rest, one he’d spent a whole night making, one he’d been questioning whether or not he should even give it at all. But he had to. Now that he was home, he had to actually make it his home.
He walked inside the guest room, his room, placed his luggage on the bed and popped it open. There were only three paintings inside, all three of them dressed in a thick layer of bubble wrap and tape to keep them safe and sound during the travel.
Three paintings he had chosen specifically for this. The rest would arrive at a later date, but these… These were special.
He removed one, and from the small size and general white-ness, he could tell from a glance that it was his picture of the White Pope. Finally, after so many years, he would be allowed to properly portray his personal saint of choice in his own room. The second was smaller, darker in colour, and would probably seem a bit uncouth to any outside viewer. It was the painting of when Kreig first laid eyes on Gerald. A precious memory now, a mundane moment then.
And then, thirdly, the largest out of the three. Warm colours with green and orange undertones. Comforting like a pie of pears.
Kreig took the painting in both hands, still wrapped in bubbles, and handed it to George.
“Huh? Is this-, is this a painting or something? Wait, did you…?” George’s eyes lit up and he twiddled with the bubble wrap for a few seconds before peeking his head out of the doorway. “Hey, Sam! We got an-, uh, wait. Despite my curiosity, I must say that we should save this for tonight. After we’ve had the welcome party.”
Sam poked her head out of her room. “The fuck are you on about now?”
George ignored her fully and instead looked back at Kreig. “This is a gift, right? For us?...”
Kreig nodded. “May it please you.”
George smiled timidly. “I… I’m sure it will, Kreig.”
That was the only response Kreig needed. He turned back to the bed and removed the bubble wrap from his painting of the White Pope. What a pretty man. He’d been appointed Pope only days after first joining the church. People called it a miracle, and Kreig felt no different. There was something very alluring about the white pope, something about his eyes that held everything inside like a soft, warm crib. A beautiful man in every way.
“Would you like to hang it up?” George asked, already brandishing a pair of nails and a hammer. Kreig nodded, and George wasted no time hammering up a pair of nails for Kreig’s paintings.
The White Pope on the left, beautiful as ever, and Gerald on the right. Kreig already felt more home than he had in… Lord, too many years to count.
The last time he’d even had a house of his own must have been as Captain of the Royal Guard. It had been a small cottage in the middle of the city, nothing much to look at, but it had been home. He’d even had thoughts of marriage, but once he started being thrown into wars, any such thoughts had been abandoned. There weren’t many fair maidens on the battlefield. Just blood, death, and-,
“Kreig? You alright?”
Huh? Oh, he’d been in the middle of something. Kreig shook off his thoughts like rainwater. “Yes.”
“Mrm. Sure. Say… come along, I’ll show you my room. I’ve got a question.” The way George said that last part made Kreig’s hair stand on edge. Questions. Hopefully, whatever George wanted to ask him wouldn’t be too bad. Kreig followed him out of his room and into the hallway, and inside a previously closed room. It smelled nice, probably due to the dozens upon dozens of blooming cacti all around the room.
But that wasn’t the main thing about the room.
In the middle of the room, hanging from a thread beneath a lily-pad shaped lamp, right above the bed, there hung a small porcelain girl with insect-wings and long ears. The bedcover had a similar girl on it, with black hair instead of wheat and wings of gold. The walls were covered in posters of the same sorts of girls, the mat on the floor had them as well, and a shelf seemed completely overrun with small statuettes of them. “Say, Kreig… Fairies wouldn’t happen to exist in the otherworld, would they?...”
Fairies? What the hell were-,
“You know. Small girls with wings and maybe even long ears. Pixies. Winged elves.” The smile that bloomed on George’s face made Kreig feel deeply unhappy in having to admit that he had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Humans couldn’t be that small. And even if they were, what’s with the wings? To fly? George made a very strange face. “You know. If big lizards with wings exist, what’s stopping little girls with wings? It makes no sense that one would exist and not the other.”
Kreig didn’t answer for a moment, hoping his silence would jog a memory proving that fairies did, in fact, exist. But when the silence just became awkward, he decided that the best way to relieve the situation would be to leave the room.
“Hey, Kreig! That’s-, curses.”