Disclaimers: Rysher: Panzer/Davis owns Darius; I blame
Shrewreader for Gray; the other characters are likely mine.
Lyrics provided by Beej and located at the bottom. Any errors
of fact are, of course, my fault, and I'll happily correct them if
notified.
Rated: G. Gen fic, sorry. No sex, no violence, only a different
kind of hunting, and a different kind of prey, than usual in this
fandom.
Watering Hole
It's only a local tavern, when all's said and done. The
building is stone and wood, like the others around it; smoke
tumbles whitely from the chimney most days. Bern is
stone and wood surrounded by running water and rushing
mountain winds. A fire and a good beer (or something
stronger) cut through the damp very nicely. And if this
particular tavern counts a priest and his dog among its
usual patrons, well, what of it?
Father Darius and Gray don't disturb the other patrons with
their presence. Oh, the locals are a little quieter than usual
when he's there, they drink a round or two less than they
might if he weren't there, but the owner doesn't mind. The
Old Bear isn't a church. Confession, well, that's between a
man (or a woman), and the priest, and God. A quiet word
at a back table in the Bear with a glass of beer or wine
apiece, and a snack between them--that's informal.
Unofficial. Safer. And, as a result, the traffic at that table
tends to have a high turnover. No one begrudges buying a
glass of wine or beer on their way to talk to Father Darius.
If Jean-Paul went out of business, who knows if the next
owner would be so reasonable? Why chance it?
Most parish priests wouldn't dare come to a tavern
uninvited, for that matter. The parishioners might wonder
if he has drinking problems, if perhaps their secrets are less
safe than they should be. Darius, though, walks in with
Gray every second or third day, and no one thinks twice
about it. He's been doing it since the first week he came to
St. Mathieu's. The parishioners are used to it after six
years.
Father Darius comes in and sits at the back table, the one
between the fireplace and the wood hutch, always. If the
fire needs to be stoked, he handles it. A courtesy, he says,
for their kindness. He drinks perhaps two glasses of wine,
three on a busy day, and pays Heidi promptly. On days
when he's heard through the grapevine that her children
have been sick, or her father, a bit extra may be left on the
table. She complains it's too much from a priest, but Darius
only smiles and suggests another herb that might ease a
cough, or a bit of brandy to help clear her father's lungs.
Gray lies by his feet--near the fire, in the winter, lending a
homey scent of damp dog to the tavern; near the woodpile
in the summer, tail thumping as people scratch behind his
ears while talking to the father.
Because Darius comes in so often, however, his presence at
the tavern is routine and unremarkable. Because he's never
yet wavered on his way home, no one fears careless words
will spill their secrets to the wind. And because they've all
needed to talk to him, or had a relative who did, if Darius is
at the back table with someone, the nearest tables stay
empty and people stopping by the fire to warm up move on
quickly. Some things, perhaps, should remain secret, and
next time it might be their secret, after all. They're not
fools.
Darius brings The Bear extra business. He brings a certain
measure of propriety, and far less trouble in the bar. Less
furniture to be mended; fewer fines from the city elders as
well for staying open late, for who'll chase off a priest
counseling a troubled man? And there is a certain added
measure of safety from having such a large dog there, one
who growls at customers starting trouble and never at other
times. Customers drop by to see if the Father is in...? and
buy a glass of beer or a coffee regardless. Jean-Paul
doesn't object at all to being an off-the-record office for the
local priest.
Tonight, Darius has waited later than usual. Normally, he
comes by in the afternoon and stays an hour or three,
sipping his wine and talking to those who need it or want it,
or reading one of his innumerable books if no one needs
him. He leaves at four to hold evening service, and
sometimes comes back for an hour afterwards. How he
knows when someone wants to talk to him, no one
speculates. Most times when this happens, someone comes
to sit and talk for thirty minutes, an hour, and frequently the
person will end up sleeping in the father's rooms overnight
while Darius makes up a pallet across the doorway.
'Sanctuary,' the old women say, nodding slowly with
wisdom or memories of the dark years before even the
Great War roiling behind those sharp gazes.
So, tonight, when Father Darius didn't stand up to wrap his
heavy coat around himself and walk back to the church, a
few people raised eyebrows or nodded to each other but
said nothing aloud. Instead, he sent young Francois to ask
the junior brother at Saint Peter und Saint Paul to please
come cover the Mass. Father Darius sat at his table and
ruffled Gray's ears and read and asked for some of the stew,
and accepted another glass of wine although the last had
taken an hour to vanish.
This glass goes no faster as Darius watches the door,
glancing up periodically as he reads slowly in his book.
Outside, the night is growing dark and cold and the bar's
usual clientele is changing slowly. Some of the larger men,
the respectable laborers who rarely come to church without
the stains of their work still showing on their skin, have
started drifting in. Their wives wondered who the Father
was waiting for and why he's drinking so little, and
remembered how dangerous some of his visitors have
looked, distraught or not. Distraught, perhaps, worries the
women of the parish more than large and dangerous. So,
they send their solid, respectable men to sit and sip their
own drinks and simply... be there.
Darius smiles a little, seeing it, and only nods to those he
knows and makes no effort to call them over or stop the
gathering. He watches the door and waits, patient and easy
as ever, reading from his book now and then as if he only
wanted an evening to himself, and perhaps he did. The
night rolls on, and the air is thick with fog off the Aare. In
the distance there's a rumble of thunder, there and gone, not
to be repeated.
The tall stranger steps through the door, not frowning,
really, but his is a face meant for smiles and they are
nowhere to be seen this night. Tall and broad, dressed in
the sturdy wools of travel and carrying himself lightly, like
the blacksmith when he's not burdened with his tools. The
local men eye him suspiciously until he looks at them and
nods absently, as if another night he'd have stopped and
bought a round. That casual courtesy wins him a moment's
breathing space as he looks around, and by then Darius has
stood up and come to greet him, Gray rising to his feet as
Darius goes but not leaving the fire.
Darius reaches for him, and the stranger clasps both hands
around one of his as if he's finally caught a lifeline. Darius
waves him towards the table, tells him to shed his coat and
rest, and they sit down. The stranger drapes his coat over
the chair rather than hang it on a wall peg, and manages a
smile for Heidi when the barmaid walks over with her
pitcher. She fills Darius' mug and a new one for the
stranger as well. It's the strong, sweet red wine that the
locals like to drink with bread and cheese and olives, and
he drinks and begins to relax. Gray noses his head under
the man's hand and gets a wider smile and both hands
combing through his ruff.
The men watch sidelong, unwilling to insult Darius by
staring at his visitor, but unwilling to go home and tell their
wives and mothers and sisters that they sat by and let some
stranger injure their priest. So they glance occasionally,
and try not to listen, and only slowly realize it wouldn't
matter if they did. The stranger's speaking some foreign
language--Greek, Lorenzo murmurs, who ran away to be a
sailor when he was young and should know--and Father
Darius is listening, odd, light eyes intent on his visitor. His
face, as ever, gives away little of what he thinks, but the
visitor's voice tells more than he meant, most like. Pain,
and grief, both new, and a problem too heavy for him to
carry, and a pressing need for advice. Pressing the breath
and joy out of him, from the looks of it.
Darius finally puts coins on the table to pay for both of
them and stands and for a moment the stranger looks lost.
Until Darius beckons him up, using Italian again to tell
him, "Come. You'll be wanting to talk longer than Jean-
Paul will wish to stay awake. And after you've talked, old
friend, you need a good night's sleep." Darius wraps coats
around both of them and an arm around the stranger's
shoulders. He is barely shorter than this unknown man,
both fond of him and worried about him. The stranger
allows it, too, grateful for it as a man for his father's clasp
on his shoulder's or a brother's support. The worry on his
face is easing, leaving behind a mouth used to smiling and
faint wrinkles around his eyes such as a man gets staring
into the sun.
Gray walks on Darius' other side, his tail wagging in
anticipation of a walk in the fog. That tells the Bernese
what little they still needed to know. So Jean-Paul nods to
them both on their way out, as does Salvatore who can
steady the marble tables where they shape the chocolate,
and small Ritter whose grip was honed by bracing tools to
break stones. Darius nods in return as he passes, and not
even his eyes comment on who has missed Mass too many
times of late. After they've gone, the tavern grows louder
with drinking and gossip, for the storm has passed, but it's
still cold out and the wine and coffee are still flowing. And
every man there is grateful that the stranger's pain is not in
their eyes in the mornings, and that they do not have to
travel however many miles to get advice from such a priest
as they have.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Lyrics provided by beej; lines used marked with *
HANDFUL OF RAIN
by Savatage
The night is growing dark - *
From somewhere deep within
It shelters like an ark
That always takes you in
The barmaid walks on over *
And pours another round
For a lost soul at the corner
Who prays he's never found
And the mind goes numb
Till it's feeling no pain
And the soul cries out
For a handful of rain
Wash your women
In your Whiskey
When your future's
In the past
And you're staring
Up at heaven
From the bottom
Of a glass
And you need some insulation
From the years you've
Had and lost
And you feel the perspiration
As you're adding up the cost
And the night rolls on *
Like a slow moving train
And the soul cries out
There's a land beyond the living
There's a land beyond the dead
If it's true that God's forgiving
Of the lives that we had led
In the distance there's a thunder *
And the air is thick and warm *
And the patrons watch with wonder
The approaching of the storm
And the night rolls on
Like a slow moving train
And the soul cries out
For a handful of rain
There's an old man in the corner
And he's smoking all the time
And the smoke is drifting upward and it's
Twisting in my
Twisting in my
Mind
In my mind
The whiskey's getting deeper
And I use it like a moat
There's a blues man in the distance and he's
Lost inside his
Note
His note
The night is growing dark
>From somewhere deep within
It shelters like an ark
That always takes you in
And the night rolls on
Like a slow moving train
And the soul cries out
For an handful of rain
=====
Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you
claim for yourself. - Robert Green Ingersoll
**The Eyrie has moved! New URL below.**
Fanfiction: Rhi's Eyrie -- http://rhi.moonlit-eyrie.com/
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