Short Story: Of Closets
Jun. 9th, 2011 07:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xhesikaPosted on DA, just wanted to keep it here for references.
Suddenly "Y" strap suspenders are attractive.
One of the things I like the most about writing childhood Kamen and Artemis is that it requires me to do a lot of research. Matches, the curses Kamen uses (I teetered on him using the word "bollocks" but decided that he wouldn't use it in front of Artemis), hatpins, and suspenders (American term) vs. braces (the British term that would have been used in that period).
The game sardines, its like hide and seek but one person hides while the others seek, then as people find the hider they join them, so after a while the hiding place becomes painfully obvious. The last person to find the hider has to hide in the next round. I don't know for certain how far this game dates back to, but my research dates it back to at least 1700's, then again, it's my story and I can say what I want really.
Also, anyone remember that episode of South Park where Tom Cruise, R Kelly, and John Travolta are in the closet? Yeah I totally watched that a few times while writing this.
Something else also interesting. This was pushed out in a few short days from scratch and with a very vague idea, it's referenced only once in the trilogy by Kamen in Book 2, but it still manages to just fall short of 5,000 words. This is why NaNoWriMo was so easy for me to get through I guess.
Of Closets
"Kamen!" Artemis pounded on the door, shut tight and held in place by the boy outside the closet, "Let me out!"
"Marry me. Promise." Kamen smirked from the other side, his back firm against the door and legs bracing him in place.
"You're being awful!" Artemis pouted, clinging to the doorknob in the cold dark closet, and jumping slightly with a gasp when one of Lord Covington's winter frock-coats brushed her shoulder. "Please!"
Kamen turned to the door, making the mental note to himself that Artemis would never be able to break down the closet door with the key in the lock, and bracing himself against it was overkill for such a delicate captive. "I'm not letting you out until you promise."
"But I can't!" Her voice faltered with a small hiccup, the tears forming in her eyes now evident in her voice, and the terror of the darkness of the small closet that now seemed endless and full of creatures free in the shadows caused her fingers to grip the ornate panels of the door in desperation. "Please don't leave me in here!"
Kamen's ears pricked at the hiccup, and his eyes widened slightly. It had never been his intent to cause her grief, and now he listened to her sobs on the other side of the door, now crying because of his selfish desire to hear her promise herself to him.
With a small sigh, Kamen turned the key in the lock and opened the door, but held the side of the jamb with his hands to block her escape.
Face streaked with tears, Artemis' hands shrank back when the door was pulled from her. She took a few deep breaths with the light that cast out the shadows of the closet and turned to prove to herself that the room was indeed just a small closet and there were no creatures from the underworld poking their way through the shadows. She looked back to Kamen and slapped his chest lightly, "You brute! You know I don't like…wait, no!"
Artemis pushed on Kamen as he took one step into the closet and closed the door behind him. She let out a small whimper as the light gave one last dying trickle through the crack of the door until Kamen had pulled it shut completely. She took one step back before feeling a coat brush her shoulder, and with a yelp she flung herself forward—the side of her head crashing into Kamen's chest.
"Open the door!" Artemis pleaded, her head buried in Kamen's chest with her hands grasping the fabric on his hips
Kamen rested his chin on Artemis' head and set his hands on her shoulders, "I'm not letting you out until you promise."
Artemis shook her head and clenched her eyes shut, "You awful brute! You can't just keep me in here."
"I'll wait with you. I can wait all day." He chuckled.
Artemis let out an angry sigh and strengthened her grip on the waist of Kamen's trousers, "It's cold in here, too. As if it couldn't get any worse."
With a small smile, Kamen moved his hands from Artemis' shoulders to wrap his arms around them, leaning back to let his back rest on the door, pulling her slightly with him. Part of him had been curious of her in the dark; clad in nothing less than white and sunlight, unfettered innocence and divine justice—he had half thought that she would radiate light in such circumstances.
They had run off on their own, his sister Lillaine had been held back by Lady Covington for a full array of the latest and greatest elixirs from the lone peddler that meandered into the countryside, and the bohemian gypsy that insisted that Artemis had fallen from a star and would take no coin because of it.
The fourteen year-old girl now shivered in his arms and he reached up to the coats with one hand, feeling the various fabrics and buttons for his own frock-coat, and recalling that she had been fond of its softer fabric. His eyes widened slightly when his fingers found the sleeve, and rather than letting Artemis go, he gave the sleeve a swift couple of tugs until it came down.
"Thank you." She mumbled as Kamen set the coat around her shoulders and went back to his embrace.
He nodded slowly, then smiled slightly, knowing she wouldn't be able to see the gesture.
"I wonder if Lilly is looking for us now." Artemis said softly.
Kamen scoffed, "She'll never find us."
Artemis pressed her hands to Kamen's chest, attempting to look into his face in the dark, "She will if I scream."
He laughed at the idea, "You're going to scream your head off in the closet?"
She pursed her lips thoughtfully, "I might."
Artemis took one step back and drew a deep breath before opening her mouth and letting out an adolescent ear-splitting peal.
Kamen flinched as if he had been hit over the head with a blunt object and let out a low growling scream of his own. His hand shot out over her mouth in a matter of seconds and he pulled her against him, her screams now a series of heavy breaths through her nose.
"Crazy hellcat, what do you think you're doing?"
Artemis growled from under his hand.
After shaking his head slowly and letting out a small sigh, Kamen immediately worried that she would be bold enough to bite his hand. "Calm down." He let out another small sigh and flinched slightly at the pain still radiating in his ears, "I'm going to take my hand away from your mouth, and you're not going to scream."
She slowly nodded.
"Alright." Kamen hesitated in his action, but slowly took his hand away, certain that if he hesitated too long she would have begun to claw at him. "Now. That promise."
Artemis groaned, "I can't, don't you understand? I'm promised to someone already, back home, that was what I was trying to tell you before you pushed me in here."
Kamen felt his chest tighten, having never thought of the possibility that she would have had some sort of betrothal before they met despite his father mentioning on more than one occasion that she was of blood nobler than theirs. "You're engaged?"
Artemis nodded, then gave a small: "Yes."
"You? Mousy, pouncing through the gardens, screaming at the top of her lungs in the closet, and you're engaged?" He scoffed, hiding his frustration with this new information.
His words stabbed at Artemis and she turned to face him, her eyes now slightly adjusted to the dark and the small sliver of light that trickled in from under the door, "I wouldn't marry you even if I wasn't. I doubt you'd want a hellcat, anyways. Now let me out!"
Kamen took one step to the side away from the door handle and crossed his arms over his chest. Artemis reached for the brass handle and spent the next few seconds fighting with it in a series of wiggles, pushes, pulls, and occasional pounds on the door itself.
Kamen furrowed his brow at the small girl.
Artemis turned to Kamen angrily, "You dolt! You locked us in!"
"What?" Kamen reached for the handle and gave it a firm tug and push, almost certain that it have merely become jammed and Artemis hadn't used enough force, "Oh bloody hell."
"Now we're trapped!"
"It wouldn't have happened if you would have just agreed."
"You awful oaf!" Artemis glared at Kamen, certain that he was smirking at the situation, and her frustration.
She was right.
"Scared little mouse!" Kamen laughed, he couldn't say he was too torn up over being locked up in the closet with Artemis. The day had become incredibly gray and it had been raining outside since before they woke up that morning, and spending it locked in the closet seemed to be a much more enjoyable alternative than watching the red-head bury her nose in a book for hours.
"You're cruel!" Artemis gave the door one final pound, "Really Kamen, first you stole my breakfast, again, then you shove me in a coat closet? Please tell me that you don't have any other plans for the day, because I think I would rather be locked up here until supper if that's the case."
Kamen rolled his eyes, "Great, I'm being lectured."
"So I'm hungry, and its dark, and I'm still cold." She pushed her arms through the sleeves of Kamen's frock-coat and flipped her hair out from under the collar.
"You act like there ought to be a candle left burning in every room." Kamen mumbled, recalling the five candles that had burned all the way down the night before in the room that Artemis shared with his sister.
"It's never dark back home." She said with her voice much softer than it had been during her lecture.
Kamen glanced over to her, standing with her cheek against the door with the vague light from the bottom of the door creeping up and outlining the both of them. "Sunlight all day?"
She shook her head, "No, I mean…well it's never this dark." A small smile made its way across her face, "I suppose it does get dark in the country, but where I live the light from the city is always bouncing off of the buildings. People are awake all day and all night."
"That's silly. Even London sleeps."
"I didn't ask for your opinion. If I wanted it I would have asked." She said coldly, then added in the same tone: "I'm hungry."
"You're always hungry."
"Because you steal my food, you petty thief." She poked his chest.
Kamen shrugged, "Yours tastes better than mine." He wrinkled his nose, "How exactly does light bounce from building to building, they're made of brick, aren't they?"
"Different bricks. More like glass. And colored, a lot of the buildings are dark green."
He blinked twice, "That's silly."
"And," She said while glaring at him, her voice self-important, "We have tiny machines that you can listen to music with and talk to people who are far away with, and we have dragonfly machines that you can fly on—"
"And you're crazy."
She rapped the back of her hand on his chest, "You're one to talk, did you forget that we're locked in the closet?"
Kamen let his back hit the door once more and he crossed his arms over his chest to shield it from any more of her assaults. He glanced into the darkness of the closet and the plethora of coats hanging, "I wonder if there is something we could use to pop the key out of place."
Artemis' ears pricked, "You mean pushing it out from the keyhole on this side? That's a great idea! …What do we use?"
Kamen shrugged, "I don't think I would be able to bend the hooks of these clothing hangers, but maybe if we search the pockets we'll find something?"
Artemis glanced into the further reaches of the small dark room before swallowing the lump in her throat, "Well good luck with that."
"You aren't going to help?"
"If you think I am going to go rummaging through dark coat pockets in the dark closet, you are sorely mistaken. What if there's a mouse in the pockets and it bites my hand?"
"Then it's a terrible cannibal." Kamen reached out to the coat that Artemis had burrowed herself into and began to rifle through the various pockets for something that he might have forgotten.
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him, "Oh, that's not funny."
He pulled out several small slips of paper and then pushed it back into the pocket, uncertain of what it read, but unable to read it with no light nonetheless, "What makes you think the mice would be here at all? Wouldn't they be in the kitchen?"
"They're scared of Michealis." She carefully reached into the breast-pockets and stifled a smile at the small wrapped chocolates, immediately taking one and stuffing it into her mouth.
"I don't see why, he's harmless." It would only be later when Kamen would understand the irony of his statement—the key of the door that they were now locked behind had indeed been turned by the mischievous butler.
"Hmm." Artemis mumbled with her mouth full.
"Anything in the inside pockets?" Kamen asked.
"Nope." She barely managed to get the single word past the chocolate, and Kamen's eyes widened as he realized what she found.
"My chocolate!"
"Serves you right." She said as she chewed. "Why would you keep chocolate in your coat, anyhow?"
"Why wouldn't you keep chocolate in your coat?"
She reached back into the pocket, "There's one left, did you want it?"
"One?" Kamen exclaimed, "There were five!"
Artemis swallowed the confection, "Well you stole my breakfast and I'm still hungry."
Kamen groaned, "Fine. I don't care. I'll get more later." He reached out to the coats on the rack, "I wonder if my father keeps a pipe in one of the pockets."
"Your mother's hatpin." Artemis mentioned offhandedly.
Kamen looked back at her slowly, "What?"
Artemis shrugged, "It's worth a try. The pretty gold one with the red bird? I think she keeps it in her black coat."
"They're all black in this light, Artemis." He said, un-amused.
"Well then you've got a lot of searching then, don't you?" She retorted arrogantly.
Kamen groaned and began to pat down the coats rather than taking the time to search through each individual pocket. He was quite familiar with the hatpin that Artemis spoke of, but he had to admit that he wasn't as astute in his observations to remember where his mother kept it when not in use. He would have thought it would have been with her hat in the boxes next to the various shoes along the floor.
"Ah! Got it!" Kamen exclaimed as he retrieved the pin from his mother's coat pocket.
The two drew close to the keyhole of the door and after a small bit of maneuvering of the pin in the lock by Kamen, the key popped out and hit the floor on the other side of the door with a clang.
Artemis froze, "Now what?"
Kamen turned back to the coats, "Now we use the clothing hangers to hook it under the door and pull it to us." Kamen pulled down the hanger that his own coat had hung on, and he pushed the hook under the door as quickly as he had dropped down.
Artemis leaned down to watch the boy struggle first to see where the key was, and then with a flick of his wrist…
…The key shot out of reach and across the floor of the foyer.
Artemis stood straight and swallowed once, watching the lightly outlined boy get to his feet and scratch the back of his head.
"Fucking prime." Artemis stated with her arms crossed over her chest.
Kamen flinched, "What did you say?"
"Of course I couldn't trust you to be patient with the key, you just had to shove it out of our reach, and now we really are trapped." She gasped, "And I just ate the last chocolate! Oh we'll starve!"
Kamen gaped at her, "We are not going to starve, they'll find us."
"I'd never even been to London! I'll never see any of the places I wanted to!" Her breaths came faster, "I wish I was a mouse, I'd slip through the crack and out of this dark closet."
"Who's wishing?" Kamen scoffed, his smile brimming once more.
She let out a huff, "I can't believe you did this."
"Me?" He snorted, "I didn't turn the key, I don't know how we got locked in here."
Her voice staggered and Kamen's ears pricked at the sobs that had started once more, "I know, I'm sorry. It isn't your fault. I just want out of here, and I'm blaming you because I'm frust—"
Kamen pulled Artemis back to him, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, "I'm sorry. Go ahead and blame me."
She shook her head, "I don't want to anymore."
"Fickle woman." He smiled.
"Hellcat. That was what you called me."
He groaned, "I didn't mean it—well, what would you have called yourself? Screaming your bloody head off in the closet?"
Artemis didn't respond to his question, and was silently grateful that he had been much kinder about it than the people back home would have been. Screaming her head off in a closet—no matter how small or dark—was something that a Princess of Clovis simply didn't do, let alone a daughter of Celeste. Then again, getting locked in a closet was something that she should have never allowed to happen in the first place.
She had absent-mindedly laced her fingers above the "Y" of his leather braces, and her eyes widened slightly at the gesture before retracting her fingers and becoming curious about Kamen's cavalier attitude towards it.
"Your fiancée," Kamen began, "Is he better than me?"
Artemis scoffed, "He's a gentleman, older than I am, but I suppose that's how these things work. My Nonna calls it fate."
Kamen rolled his eyes, "Is that how they justify it?"
"You're making fun of me again."
"Ah, sorry. Truce? While we're stuck here?"
"I suppose." Artemis shrugged. She continued, "I hear strange things about him a lot of the time, I'm going to have to try to form my own opinion of him when I go home."
"Very wise." Kamen droned.
She tilted her eyes up to him, his cheek on her forehead stopping any abrupt movement, "And what about you? Lillaine has the Marquis, but you're eighteen now, shouldn't you be looking for a wife? Your parents married when they were younger than you."
Kamen laughed, reaching a hand up to twirl the thick white silk ribbon in her hair, "I think I'll die old and alone without you, when everyone else is gone and no one is left to mourn me."
Artemis grimaced, "That's not funny, no one deserves to die alone."
He pressed his mouth to her forehead in a poor excuse for a kiss, "Come visit me then, when I'm old and alone. Leave your gentleman husband to visit your old brutish-friend."
"I doubt Cassie would mind in the least." Artemis smiled; unsure of whether or not her words were the truth, but the moment she had said them she immediately doubted them. She recalled several events where Caspius Van Dean had outright refused for her to make a visit on her own to anyone apart from Great Mother Celeste in Jannah.
"Cassie." Kamen repeated thoughtfully, leaning his cheek back on her head, "I think I'll kill him."
Artemis almost coughed from the shock, "What?"
"And where about does the fellow live?"
"Kamen!" She tilted her head up to look at him, and his head flinched slightly as it lost its support, "You can't just go about killing people."
He rolled his eyes, "Honestly, I wasn't going to really."
Remembering the truce, Artemis bit the inside of her mouth and offered a single word in retort rather than the string of insults, "Good."
Kamen glanced down to the crease of light at the bottom of the door, "How did you get so afraid of the dark, anyhow? There's nothing in here that's going to hurt you."
"I'm not afraid of the dark, I just don't like it."
He rolled his eyes, knowing that he should have expected a retort of that sort before even asking the question. She would have given the same answer had he asked about high places, small spaces, and the whole plethora of creepy-crawlies that the world had to offer. It seemed however that of all things that the young girl was frightened of, fire—one of the more deadly and incidentally one of few things that Kamen could attest that he was frightened of—was of no concern to her, and she could often be found playing with the flames of the candles she burned late into the night.
Fire.
Kamen pulled his posture straight and gave Artemis' shoulders a quick pat. "One second, love."
Her ears pricked at the endearing name, immediately identifying it with how Cassie called her, and she blinked a few times in a state of semi-shock as Kamen unwrapped her from himself. He took a few steps to the coats on the rack only to be pulled back by the small hands that had once again wrapped their fingers around his braces.
With a small smile, he looked back to her despite only seeing the vague outline, "I remembered something."
She released the braces and let her back hit the door, her greatest fear at that moment being stuck in the center of the darkness with nothing to grasp onto.
"Ah ha!" Kamen exclaimed, reaching his hand into his father's coat pocket. There was no pipe in the fabric, but the small box of safety matches had been stuffed into its usual breast-pocket. He pulled one of the red phosphorous-tipped pine stick from the box and rubbed it across the striking surface.
Artemis' face brightened in the dim match-light, "Perhaps we should remember to keep candles in our pockets from now on."
Kamen nodded and laughed, his breath causing the small flame to flicker out, "And rations."
He went to light another and upon hearing the small box open, Artemis held her hand out, "We might need them later, who knows how long we'll be stuck in here." She wrinkled her nose, "Besides it smells funny. The fire back home doesn't smell like that."
"It’s the sulfur and phosphorous." Kamen shrugged.
Artemis paused, "That means nothing to me."
"The chemicals? The match tip and how it ignites?"
She shrugged, "We don't use matches, we have little vials that it comes out of."
"Here," He lit another match, "When you strike the match head on the box the friction ignites the dry chemicals on the stick."
She rolled her eyes, "Yes, I know how it works. I could tell you all sorts of things about how it works, like how the striking box has powdered glass on it, or how the red phosphorous is much safer than white, but what I'm saying is that this sort of technology is primitive where I'm from."
Kamen furrowed his brow curiously as the match extinguished itself and he lit another, "You have small kerosene lamps?"
Artemis shook her head, "Not exactly. They're small enough to fit in your pocket, about five matches in diameter with a little push-switch on the side, and it doesn't use kerosene. The liquid inside isn't actually flammable at all without the device at the top, so there's no worry about it bursting in your pocket."
The boy hummed curiously, "It's an interesting idea, but it ranks up there with your dragonfly-machines. What did you call them?"
"Mechaflies." She crossed her arms over her chest, "And I don't see why I should tell you all these things if you aren't going to believe me."
He lit another match, "For curiosity's sake, what if I did believe you? Would you tell me about them?"
She turned from side to side, twisting slightly with her hips, arms still crossed over her chest, and hands grasping the fabric of Kamen's frock-coat's sleeves. "You have to promise to not make fun of me for it later."
He raised a hand, "I swear."
"It isn't proper to swear."
"Then I promise."
She let out a small sigh with the next match he lit, wondering just how many had been stuffed into the small box. "It's made of metal, and glass, and it has beautiful wings that you can see through, and they come in all different colors. They look like dragonflies, and you ride on their back and hold onto their antennae."
"Anyone can ride them?" He asked earnestly.
"Well, almost." She hummed, "You have to be trained properly, and if you aren't the mechafly will know and they won't let you ride them."
"I thought you said they were metal and glass?"
"Well yes, but they still have a mind to choose who rides them or not, but they're created for people to ride, it’s their reason for life so they have no desire to do anything else. If you granted one of them freedom they wouldn't know what to do with it."
"Do you have many machines like that? Who can think for themselves but choose to serve?" He lit another match.
"Not in my country, but in one of the countries far to the north they live freely."
"You just told me they didn't want to be free."
"Those were mechaflies, now I'm talking about the other mechanical beings." She huffed at him for interrupting, "The others live and work just like any other person, and the country they live in is very cold and snowy and frozen all the time, so they usually have jobs that you or I couldn't take on. They can spend long hours in the cold, and since they don't eat or sleep, they can work longer and harder."
He lit another match, "If they're so superior to us then why don't they take over? They could easily overpower their ruler."
Artemis shook her head quickly, "But their ruler, Jadis, is the one that created them. She made every last one of them with her own hands, and they adore her."
"What if one of them went wrong? What if there were one or two that didn't love her?"
She heaved a sigh, seemingly annoyed that he was unaware of the lore of her home, "Then they would lay siege to the ice palace and be met with hordes and hordes of iron sentinels loyal to their Queen." She watched him light another match, "And why any of them would even wish to rebel even if they didn't love Jadis is beyond me. She is a very good Queen, and she is wonderful to them."
There was a small click in the door behind Artemis and Kamen quickly blew out the match he had just lit, putting the half-full box into the pocket of his trousers and stuffing the spent matches into his other pocket as if he had been caught with something he shouldn't have.
Lillaine pulled open the closet door, "There you two are! I searched everywhere for you, then I smelled the fire and checked here." The blonde girl tilted her head and scowled at her brother, "Kamen! You're just an awful sort of gentleman! Why didn't you tell me we were playing sardines?"
Suddenly "Y" strap suspenders are attractive.
One of the things I like the most about writing childhood Kamen and Artemis is that it requires me to do a lot of research. Matches, the curses Kamen uses (I teetered on him using the word "bollocks" but decided that he wouldn't use it in front of Artemis), hatpins, and suspenders (American term) vs. braces (the British term that would have been used in that period).
The game sardines, its like hide and seek but one person hides while the others seek, then as people find the hider they join them, so after a while the hiding place becomes painfully obvious. The last person to find the hider has to hide in the next round. I don't know for certain how far this game dates back to, but my research dates it back to at least 1700's, then again, it's my story and I can say what I want really.
Also, anyone remember that episode of South Park where Tom Cruise, R Kelly, and John Travolta are in the closet? Yeah I totally watched that a few times while writing this.
Something else also interesting. This was pushed out in a few short days from scratch and with a very vague idea, it's referenced only once in the trilogy by Kamen in Book 2, but it still manages to just fall short of 5,000 words. This is why NaNoWriMo was so easy for me to get through I guess.
Of Closets
"Kamen!" Artemis pounded on the door, shut tight and held in place by the boy outside the closet, "Let me out!"
"Marry me. Promise." Kamen smirked from the other side, his back firm against the door and legs bracing him in place.
"You're being awful!" Artemis pouted, clinging to the doorknob in the cold dark closet, and jumping slightly with a gasp when one of Lord Covington's winter frock-coats brushed her shoulder. "Please!"
Kamen turned to the door, making the mental note to himself that Artemis would never be able to break down the closet door with the key in the lock, and bracing himself against it was overkill for such a delicate captive. "I'm not letting you out until you promise."
"But I can't!" Her voice faltered with a small hiccup, the tears forming in her eyes now evident in her voice, and the terror of the darkness of the small closet that now seemed endless and full of creatures free in the shadows caused her fingers to grip the ornate panels of the door in desperation. "Please don't leave me in here!"
Kamen's ears pricked at the hiccup, and his eyes widened slightly. It had never been his intent to cause her grief, and now he listened to her sobs on the other side of the door, now crying because of his selfish desire to hear her promise herself to him.
With a small sigh, Kamen turned the key in the lock and opened the door, but held the side of the jamb with his hands to block her escape.
Face streaked with tears, Artemis' hands shrank back when the door was pulled from her. She took a few deep breaths with the light that cast out the shadows of the closet and turned to prove to herself that the room was indeed just a small closet and there were no creatures from the underworld poking their way through the shadows. She looked back to Kamen and slapped his chest lightly, "You brute! You know I don't like…wait, no!"
Artemis pushed on Kamen as he took one step into the closet and closed the door behind him. She let out a small whimper as the light gave one last dying trickle through the crack of the door until Kamen had pulled it shut completely. She took one step back before feeling a coat brush her shoulder, and with a yelp she flung herself forward—the side of her head crashing into Kamen's chest.
"Open the door!" Artemis pleaded, her head buried in Kamen's chest with her hands grasping the fabric on his hips
Kamen rested his chin on Artemis' head and set his hands on her shoulders, "I'm not letting you out until you promise."
Artemis shook her head and clenched her eyes shut, "You awful brute! You can't just keep me in here."
"I'll wait with you. I can wait all day." He chuckled.
Artemis let out an angry sigh and strengthened her grip on the waist of Kamen's trousers, "It's cold in here, too. As if it couldn't get any worse."
With a small smile, Kamen moved his hands from Artemis' shoulders to wrap his arms around them, leaning back to let his back rest on the door, pulling her slightly with him. Part of him had been curious of her in the dark; clad in nothing less than white and sunlight, unfettered innocence and divine justice—he had half thought that she would radiate light in such circumstances.
They had run off on their own, his sister Lillaine had been held back by Lady Covington for a full array of the latest and greatest elixirs from the lone peddler that meandered into the countryside, and the bohemian gypsy that insisted that Artemis had fallen from a star and would take no coin because of it.
The fourteen year-old girl now shivered in his arms and he reached up to the coats with one hand, feeling the various fabrics and buttons for his own frock-coat, and recalling that she had been fond of its softer fabric. His eyes widened slightly when his fingers found the sleeve, and rather than letting Artemis go, he gave the sleeve a swift couple of tugs until it came down.
"Thank you." She mumbled as Kamen set the coat around her shoulders and went back to his embrace.
He nodded slowly, then smiled slightly, knowing she wouldn't be able to see the gesture.
"I wonder if Lilly is looking for us now." Artemis said softly.
Kamen scoffed, "She'll never find us."
Artemis pressed her hands to Kamen's chest, attempting to look into his face in the dark, "She will if I scream."
He laughed at the idea, "You're going to scream your head off in the closet?"
She pursed her lips thoughtfully, "I might."
Artemis took one step back and drew a deep breath before opening her mouth and letting out an adolescent ear-splitting peal.
Kamen flinched as if he had been hit over the head with a blunt object and let out a low growling scream of his own. His hand shot out over her mouth in a matter of seconds and he pulled her against him, her screams now a series of heavy breaths through her nose.
"Crazy hellcat, what do you think you're doing?"
Artemis growled from under his hand.
After shaking his head slowly and letting out a small sigh, Kamen immediately worried that she would be bold enough to bite his hand. "Calm down." He let out another small sigh and flinched slightly at the pain still radiating in his ears, "I'm going to take my hand away from your mouth, and you're not going to scream."
She slowly nodded.
"Alright." Kamen hesitated in his action, but slowly took his hand away, certain that if he hesitated too long she would have begun to claw at him. "Now. That promise."
Artemis groaned, "I can't, don't you understand? I'm promised to someone already, back home, that was what I was trying to tell you before you pushed me in here."
Kamen felt his chest tighten, having never thought of the possibility that she would have had some sort of betrothal before they met despite his father mentioning on more than one occasion that she was of blood nobler than theirs. "You're engaged?"
Artemis nodded, then gave a small: "Yes."
"You? Mousy, pouncing through the gardens, screaming at the top of her lungs in the closet, and you're engaged?" He scoffed, hiding his frustration with this new information.
His words stabbed at Artemis and she turned to face him, her eyes now slightly adjusted to the dark and the small sliver of light that trickled in from under the door, "I wouldn't marry you even if I wasn't. I doubt you'd want a hellcat, anyways. Now let me out!"
Kamen took one step to the side away from the door handle and crossed his arms over his chest. Artemis reached for the brass handle and spent the next few seconds fighting with it in a series of wiggles, pushes, pulls, and occasional pounds on the door itself.
Kamen furrowed his brow at the small girl.
Artemis turned to Kamen angrily, "You dolt! You locked us in!"
"What?" Kamen reached for the handle and gave it a firm tug and push, almost certain that it have merely become jammed and Artemis hadn't used enough force, "Oh bloody hell."
"Now we're trapped!"
"It wouldn't have happened if you would have just agreed."
"You awful oaf!" Artemis glared at Kamen, certain that he was smirking at the situation, and her frustration.
She was right.
"Scared little mouse!" Kamen laughed, he couldn't say he was too torn up over being locked up in the closet with Artemis. The day had become incredibly gray and it had been raining outside since before they woke up that morning, and spending it locked in the closet seemed to be a much more enjoyable alternative than watching the red-head bury her nose in a book for hours.
"You're cruel!" Artemis gave the door one final pound, "Really Kamen, first you stole my breakfast, again, then you shove me in a coat closet? Please tell me that you don't have any other plans for the day, because I think I would rather be locked up here until supper if that's the case."
Kamen rolled his eyes, "Great, I'm being lectured."
"So I'm hungry, and its dark, and I'm still cold." She pushed her arms through the sleeves of Kamen's frock-coat and flipped her hair out from under the collar.
"You act like there ought to be a candle left burning in every room." Kamen mumbled, recalling the five candles that had burned all the way down the night before in the room that Artemis shared with his sister.
"It's never dark back home." She said with her voice much softer than it had been during her lecture.
Kamen glanced over to her, standing with her cheek against the door with the vague light from the bottom of the door creeping up and outlining the both of them. "Sunlight all day?"
She shook her head, "No, I mean…well it's never this dark." A small smile made its way across her face, "I suppose it does get dark in the country, but where I live the light from the city is always bouncing off of the buildings. People are awake all day and all night."
"That's silly. Even London sleeps."
"I didn't ask for your opinion. If I wanted it I would have asked." She said coldly, then added in the same tone: "I'm hungry."
"You're always hungry."
"Because you steal my food, you petty thief." She poked his chest.
Kamen shrugged, "Yours tastes better than mine." He wrinkled his nose, "How exactly does light bounce from building to building, they're made of brick, aren't they?"
"Different bricks. More like glass. And colored, a lot of the buildings are dark green."
He blinked twice, "That's silly."
"And," She said while glaring at him, her voice self-important, "We have tiny machines that you can listen to music with and talk to people who are far away with, and we have dragonfly machines that you can fly on—"
"And you're crazy."
She rapped the back of her hand on his chest, "You're one to talk, did you forget that we're locked in the closet?"
Kamen let his back hit the door once more and he crossed his arms over his chest to shield it from any more of her assaults. He glanced into the darkness of the closet and the plethora of coats hanging, "I wonder if there is something we could use to pop the key out of place."
Artemis' ears pricked, "You mean pushing it out from the keyhole on this side? That's a great idea! …What do we use?"
Kamen shrugged, "I don't think I would be able to bend the hooks of these clothing hangers, but maybe if we search the pockets we'll find something?"
Artemis glanced into the further reaches of the small dark room before swallowing the lump in her throat, "Well good luck with that."
"You aren't going to help?"
"If you think I am going to go rummaging through dark coat pockets in the dark closet, you are sorely mistaken. What if there's a mouse in the pockets and it bites my hand?"
"Then it's a terrible cannibal." Kamen reached out to the coat that Artemis had burrowed herself into and began to rifle through the various pockets for something that he might have forgotten.
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him, "Oh, that's not funny."
He pulled out several small slips of paper and then pushed it back into the pocket, uncertain of what it read, but unable to read it with no light nonetheless, "What makes you think the mice would be here at all? Wouldn't they be in the kitchen?"
"They're scared of Michealis." She carefully reached into the breast-pockets and stifled a smile at the small wrapped chocolates, immediately taking one and stuffing it into her mouth.
"I don't see why, he's harmless." It would only be later when Kamen would understand the irony of his statement—the key of the door that they were now locked behind had indeed been turned by the mischievous butler.
"Hmm." Artemis mumbled with her mouth full.
"Anything in the inside pockets?" Kamen asked.
"Nope." She barely managed to get the single word past the chocolate, and Kamen's eyes widened as he realized what she found.
"My chocolate!"
"Serves you right." She said as she chewed. "Why would you keep chocolate in your coat, anyhow?"
"Why wouldn't you keep chocolate in your coat?"
She reached back into the pocket, "There's one left, did you want it?"
"One?" Kamen exclaimed, "There were five!"
Artemis swallowed the confection, "Well you stole my breakfast and I'm still hungry."
Kamen groaned, "Fine. I don't care. I'll get more later." He reached out to the coats on the rack, "I wonder if my father keeps a pipe in one of the pockets."
"Your mother's hatpin." Artemis mentioned offhandedly.
Kamen looked back at her slowly, "What?"
Artemis shrugged, "It's worth a try. The pretty gold one with the red bird? I think she keeps it in her black coat."
"They're all black in this light, Artemis." He said, un-amused.
"Well then you've got a lot of searching then, don't you?" She retorted arrogantly.
Kamen groaned and began to pat down the coats rather than taking the time to search through each individual pocket. He was quite familiar with the hatpin that Artemis spoke of, but he had to admit that he wasn't as astute in his observations to remember where his mother kept it when not in use. He would have thought it would have been with her hat in the boxes next to the various shoes along the floor.
"Ah! Got it!" Kamen exclaimed as he retrieved the pin from his mother's coat pocket.
The two drew close to the keyhole of the door and after a small bit of maneuvering of the pin in the lock by Kamen, the key popped out and hit the floor on the other side of the door with a clang.
Artemis froze, "Now what?"
Kamen turned back to the coats, "Now we use the clothing hangers to hook it under the door and pull it to us." Kamen pulled down the hanger that his own coat had hung on, and he pushed the hook under the door as quickly as he had dropped down.
Artemis leaned down to watch the boy struggle first to see where the key was, and then with a flick of his wrist…
…The key shot out of reach and across the floor of the foyer.
Artemis stood straight and swallowed once, watching the lightly outlined boy get to his feet and scratch the back of his head.
"Fucking prime." Artemis stated with her arms crossed over her chest.
Kamen flinched, "What did you say?"
"Of course I couldn't trust you to be patient with the key, you just had to shove it out of our reach, and now we really are trapped." She gasped, "And I just ate the last chocolate! Oh we'll starve!"
Kamen gaped at her, "We are not going to starve, they'll find us."
"I'd never even been to London! I'll never see any of the places I wanted to!" Her breaths came faster, "I wish I was a mouse, I'd slip through the crack and out of this dark closet."
"Who's wishing?" Kamen scoffed, his smile brimming once more.
She let out a huff, "I can't believe you did this."
"Me?" He snorted, "I didn't turn the key, I don't know how we got locked in here."
Her voice staggered and Kamen's ears pricked at the sobs that had started once more, "I know, I'm sorry. It isn't your fault. I just want out of here, and I'm blaming you because I'm frust—"
Kamen pulled Artemis back to him, wrapping his arms around her shoulders, "I'm sorry. Go ahead and blame me."
She shook her head, "I don't want to anymore."
"Fickle woman." He smiled.
"Hellcat. That was what you called me."
He groaned, "I didn't mean it—well, what would you have called yourself? Screaming your bloody head off in the closet?"
Artemis didn't respond to his question, and was silently grateful that he had been much kinder about it than the people back home would have been. Screaming her head off in a closet—no matter how small or dark—was something that a Princess of Clovis simply didn't do, let alone a daughter of Celeste. Then again, getting locked in a closet was something that she should have never allowed to happen in the first place.
She had absent-mindedly laced her fingers above the "Y" of his leather braces, and her eyes widened slightly at the gesture before retracting her fingers and becoming curious about Kamen's cavalier attitude towards it.
"Your fiancée," Kamen began, "Is he better than me?"
Artemis scoffed, "He's a gentleman, older than I am, but I suppose that's how these things work. My Nonna calls it fate."
Kamen rolled his eyes, "Is that how they justify it?"
"You're making fun of me again."
"Ah, sorry. Truce? While we're stuck here?"
"I suppose." Artemis shrugged. She continued, "I hear strange things about him a lot of the time, I'm going to have to try to form my own opinion of him when I go home."
"Very wise." Kamen droned.
She tilted her eyes up to him, his cheek on her forehead stopping any abrupt movement, "And what about you? Lillaine has the Marquis, but you're eighteen now, shouldn't you be looking for a wife? Your parents married when they were younger than you."
Kamen laughed, reaching a hand up to twirl the thick white silk ribbon in her hair, "I think I'll die old and alone without you, when everyone else is gone and no one is left to mourn me."
Artemis grimaced, "That's not funny, no one deserves to die alone."
He pressed his mouth to her forehead in a poor excuse for a kiss, "Come visit me then, when I'm old and alone. Leave your gentleman husband to visit your old brutish-friend."
"I doubt Cassie would mind in the least." Artemis smiled; unsure of whether or not her words were the truth, but the moment she had said them she immediately doubted them. She recalled several events where Caspius Van Dean had outright refused for her to make a visit on her own to anyone apart from Great Mother Celeste in Jannah.
"Cassie." Kamen repeated thoughtfully, leaning his cheek back on her head, "I think I'll kill him."
Artemis almost coughed from the shock, "What?"
"And where about does the fellow live?"
"Kamen!" She tilted her head up to look at him, and his head flinched slightly as it lost its support, "You can't just go about killing people."
He rolled his eyes, "Honestly, I wasn't going to really."
Remembering the truce, Artemis bit the inside of her mouth and offered a single word in retort rather than the string of insults, "Good."
Kamen glanced down to the crease of light at the bottom of the door, "How did you get so afraid of the dark, anyhow? There's nothing in here that's going to hurt you."
"I'm not afraid of the dark, I just don't like it."
He rolled his eyes, knowing that he should have expected a retort of that sort before even asking the question. She would have given the same answer had he asked about high places, small spaces, and the whole plethora of creepy-crawlies that the world had to offer. It seemed however that of all things that the young girl was frightened of, fire—one of the more deadly and incidentally one of few things that Kamen could attest that he was frightened of—was of no concern to her, and she could often be found playing with the flames of the candles she burned late into the night.
Fire.
Kamen pulled his posture straight and gave Artemis' shoulders a quick pat. "One second, love."
Her ears pricked at the endearing name, immediately identifying it with how Cassie called her, and she blinked a few times in a state of semi-shock as Kamen unwrapped her from himself. He took a few steps to the coats on the rack only to be pulled back by the small hands that had once again wrapped their fingers around his braces.
With a small smile, he looked back to her despite only seeing the vague outline, "I remembered something."
She released the braces and let her back hit the door, her greatest fear at that moment being stuck in the center of the darkness with nothing to grasp onto.
"Ah ha!" Kamen exclaimed, reaching his hand into his father's coat pocket. There was no pipe in the fabric, but the small box of safety matches had been stuffed into its usual breast-pocket. He pulled one of the red phosphorous-tipped pine stick from the box and rubbed it across the striking surface.
Artemis' face brightened in the dim match-light, "Perhaps we should remember to keep candles in our pockets from now on."
Kamen nodded and laughed, his breath causing the small flame to flicker out, "And rations."
He went to light another and upon hearing the small box open, Artemis held her hand out, "We might need them later, who knows how long we'll be stuck in here." She wrinkled her nose, "Besides it smells funny. The fire back home doesn't smell like that."
"It’s the sulfur and phosphorous." Kamen shrugged.
Artemis paused, "That means nothing to me."
"The chemicals? The match tip and how it ignites?"
She shrugged, "We don't use matches, we have little vials that it comes out of."
"Here," He lit another match, "When you strike the match head on the box the friction ignites the dry chemicals on the stick."
She rolled her eyes, "Yes, I know how it works. I could tell you all sorts of things about how it works, like how the striking box has powdered glass on it, or how the red phosphorous is much safer than white, but what I'm saying is that this sort of technology is primitive where I'm from."
Kamen furrowed his brow curiously as the match extinguished itself and he lit another, "You have small kerosene lamps?"
Artemis shook her head, "Not exactly. They're small enough to fit in your pocket, about five matches in diameter with a little push-switch on the side, and it doesn't use kerosene. The liquid inside isn't actually flammable at all without the device at the top, so there's no worry about it bursting in your pocket."
The boy hummed curiously, "It's an interesting idea, but it ranks up there with your dragonfly-machines. What did you call them?"
"Mechaflies." She crossed her arms over her chest, "And I don't see why I should tell you all these things if you aren't going to believe me."
He lit another match, "For curiosity's sake, what if I did believe you? Would you tell me about them?"
She turned from side to side, twisting slightly with her hips, arms still crossed over her chest, and hands grasping the fabric of Kamen's frock-coat's sleeves. "You have to promise to not make fun of me for it later."
He raised a hand, "I swear."
"It isn't proper to swear."
"Then I promise."
She let out a small sigh with the next match he lit, wondering just how many had been stuffed into the small box. "It's made of metal, and glass, and it has beautiful wings that you can see through, and they come in all different colors. They look like dragonflies, and you ride on their back and hold onto their antennae."
"Anyone can ride them?" He asked earnestly.
"Well, almost." She hummed, "You have to be trained properly, and if you aren't the mechafly will know and they won't let you ride them."
"I thought you said they were metal and glass?"
"Well yes, but they still have a mind to choose who rides them or not, but they're created for people to ride, it’s their reason for life so they have no desire to do anything else. If you granted one of them freedom they wouldn't know what to do with it."
"Do you have many machines like that? Who can think for themselves but choose to serve?" He lit another match.
"Not in my country, but in one of the countries far to the north they live freely."
"You just told me they didn't want to be free."
"Those were mechaflies, now I'm talking about the other mechanical beings." She huffed at him for interrupting, "The others live and work just like any other person, and the country they live in is very cold and snowy and frozen all the time, so they usually have jobs that you or I couldn't take on. They can spend long hours in the cold, and since they don't eat or sleep, they can work longer and harder."
He lit another match, "If they're so superior to us then why don't they take over? They could easily overpower their ruler."
Artemis shook her head quickly, "But their ruler, Jadis, is the one that created them. She made every last one of them with her own hands, and they adore her."
"What if one of them went wrong? What if there were one or two that didn't love her?"
She heaved a sigh, seemingly annoyed that he was unaware of the lore of her home, "Then they would lay siege to the ice palace and be met with hordes and hordes of iron sentinels loyal to their Queen." She watched him light another match, "And why any of them would even wish to rebel even if they didn't love Jadis is beyond me. She is a very good Queen, and she is wonderful to them."
There was a small click in the door behind Artemis and Kamen quickly blew out the match he had just lit, putting the half-full box into the pocket of his trousers and stuffing the spent matches into his other pocket as if he had been caught with something he shouldn't have.
Lillaine pulled open the closet door, "There you two are! I searched everywhere for you, then I smelled the fire and checked here." The blonde girl tilted her head and scowled at her brother, "Kamen! You're just an awful sort of gentleman! Why didn't you tell me we were playing sardines?"
