Kale Family history: prt 1
Mar. 20th, 2007 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hellsbountyhunter1795
Massachusetts Territory
NOTE this is an interpretation. Want facts, check out the actual comics. PBS and etc are selected because they made sense. If you're a die-hard fan and you read this and find something wrong, ping me quietly, but at the same time understand that this was fun to write. Ahem. Thank you. On with the show.
Men from the far east made fire leap into the sky and take shapes, women danced seductively, and hawkers plied their wares from tents. In the center of it all sprouted the crooked tree, leaning like a drunkard after a long bout. Dante fixed his gaze upon it, but Noble had moved on to examine a strange device from the orient.
"Do you have any idea how angry Father will be if he finds us here?" Dante Kale rubbed his hands together and blinked at the woman beckoning him from one of the tents, "-Among these-these-harlots? These Magicians? It's a sin!"
"...Our chores are done for the day." Noble Kale was nineteen on the verge of twenty, with closely shorn blond hair and a solumn pair of green eyes, "Father has nothing to complain about. No one knows we're here." he grinned, "Do I need to remind you to relax Dante?"
Stopping his brother in front of the sign reading "Quentin Carnival", Noble Kale smiled, "...Be at ease my brother. Please. I only wanted a quick look. No one from our quiet town would dare come any closer. We will not be missed."
"But Father-"
"Father." Noble said, mustering as much steel into his voice as he could, "Is not god. No matter how much he pretends to be. If you spoil my birthday Dante, I shall have to hurt you. And you know I always win when we fight."
The two brothers shared a grin as Dante smirked, stretching his stocky frame. The two were a study in opposites, dark while the other was fair, swarthy while the other was lean.
"A birthday?"
Their repartee was interrupted by a curious voice.
She was shorter then the two of them and dressed in white, sharp contrast to the night of her skin. Her eyes were wide and dark as the night clustering in like a beast around the carnival. Her movements rang as she studied each of them with utter frankness, "Who's birthday is it?"
Noble's tongue grew fat in his mouth before Dante blurted, "It's his! He's twenty."
"...Twenty!" The girl's eyes lit, twin gems in the dark. Her smile brought the lights of the gypsy carnival to life as men moved about grumbling-working with what little business they had, "Business here has been poor, and a noble birthday such as 20 deserves a gift. I being poor have nothing to offer but my humble skill at reading the cards goodmen."
She met Noble's gaze boldly, "If you would dare to hear truth spoken."
Dante paled, stumbling toward his brother, "The cards? The Cards? Cards are bad Noble. I don't like this. Back off brother, please. what would father say?"
"....He's not god." The girl studied Dante in puzzlement, "Did I not just hear your own brother speak these words? Would your father not approve?"
"My father be damned." While Dante studied her figure, Noble couldn't take his eyes off her face, her smile, the gems that were her eyes. He ran a hand through his shortened hair, suddenly feeling very self conscience about his appearance. He had come straight from chores and waded through the fields-did he smell all right? Look all right? What about his-
"Noble!"
"....What a cruel son." The girl said, her smile turning wicked, "To damn his own father for being narrowminded."
"You are a wicked woman to convince me that doing so is the only course of action." Noble grinned, "....Once upon a time I would have damned myself with him for not seeing the possibilities that life has to offer."
He damned him all right. He damned them all for not being her. Those lights in her eyes, the cat-like nature of her smile-
"Noble! Please!"
"I promise to return your brother in good condition." The girl said gently, "I'll read your fortune too if you like."
Dante paid his brother no heed, "Noble! Think of father!" He moved to grab his brother's arm. Drag him away from this harlot and back to civilization. Back to sanity however painful it might be." He'll beat both of us within an inch of our lives!"
Strength born of desire surged through Noble Kale as he pushed his brother away, ignoring Dante's startled cry as he fell to the ground.
He was doomed then. For the first sin and the oldest is the sin of lust. Out of man came woman, and into man woman must eventually return. Scientists argue for a genetic need to repopulate the species. In this time before reason, Noble Kale only knew that this woman was beautiful, and that he desired her.
And somewhere, forces beyond their comprehension smiled.
------
"The Death card?"
"...It's not bad." The girl said quickly, "It means change. Transition."
Noble fixated on the image of the skeleton imprinted into the paper. It rode a horse, raising a scythe to the sky in defiance.
The girl stopped turning the cards, "You look distant."
Noble swallowed, "I'm thinking."
"...About your brother."
"He's right." Noble said, "My father'll beat both of us. If he finds out I spent my 20th birthday being idle. Going here will be the final straw upon the mule's back."
"Your father hits you?"
"What father doesn't?"
"The good ones." The girl crossed her arms over her chest.
By way of response, Noble offered her his arm, rolling up his shirt to reveal a patch of ugly purple and gray bruises across his upper bicep.
The girl said nothing.
She climbed out of her chair and stood on it, balancing precariously for a moment before hiking up her skirt to reveal a long mis-mash of scars. Beneath them, seared into the flesh, was a set of initials, SL.
Noble dropped his arm, "...Your father did that?"
"No. My Master did."
----
She was born in Africa, though she had no memory of the country that should have been her home. Her mother had come with the British Officers during the Revolutionary war, her infant daughter slung over her back. When the British fell out of power, driven out by the first seeds of the United States, her mother went to the county clerk singing a song of loyalty to the fledgling nation. She was given a chance to provide information, acting as a spy. In return for this she was freed.
"...What about you?"
"I? I was sold. I was sold long before any of this happened to a family in South Carolina."
She was sold as a tiny child. That she remembers. She captivates the pastor's son with the story of her final goodbye with her mother, her mother's tearful promise that she'd find her someday when this land became somethin' worthwhile and good, " I was a house slave to a family named Lee. The Master was a drunkard who liked to think we were plotting against him. He had us branded so that we'd know we weren't human. We were property, he'd say. And We belonged to him."
Slaves are becoming few and far between in the Northern states. Though they still exist. His town was small, and Pastor Kale did not allow such base matters as buying and selling flesh. (Any form of such misconduct. the Pastor murmured Is a GREVIOUS sin)
For the first time in his life Noble appreciated his father's radical ideal, despite it's basis in his own twisted interpretation, "How did you escape?"
Escape came with Taoti Dalma, the old wise woman of the plantation. "She taught me to read the cards and promised me that when I foretold we would escape she'd make sure we did. On the day I told her the cards told me that we'd escape-she died. The house slave Kati put me in her coffin. I was carted to the graveyard and ran like a bat from hell." The men from the graveyard were so scared that they didn't chase her.
"...So the scars-"
A primal look crosses over the girl's face, "I will not be owned." Her voice is strong, "I have tasted the freedom that this wide land has to offer. There are veins of the country I never knew in it. It will be great one day. No man in such a great place should be owned by another."
"...Or woman?" He teased.
"...especially a woman."
------
He learns her name is Magdelena.
"That's not my name." She murmured, "That's my house name. But I wanted to be Sarah. Sarah sounded normal. Taoti was called sarah, even though her true name was Taoti.
"They gave us all names like that. The Master was a devil when it came to the Bible. He'd read it and regale us about what life would be like in Hell when we got there. "
"....I know the feeling." Noble kicked dirt away from the tent with his boots.
"Took me a month on my own to learn that 'twasn't set in stone what would happen to me. I got a chance to earn my place. Then I embraced the Christian faith fully."
"...Despite the fact that it preaches you're inferior?" Noble blurted, "Despite the fact that your countrymen are bought and sold like pumpkins at a harvest market?"
"I don't believe I'm inferior." Magdelena said bluntly, "But essentially what your lord Christ preaches none of your pastors follow. Judgement based only on sins that you yourself cause. Love for all creatures. How could I not come to love a creator that understood that it was not the color of my skin that mattered, but the content of my soul?"
----------
He tells her about his mother.
Virgin Kale, with eyes like the wheat before they harvested it. There was something otherworldly about her that Noble still remembers.
"You remind me of her sometimes."
She smiles, "....How so?"
He frowns, uncomfortable, "Your words. Your ideas."
"The only words I ever took from my Master were these. "Monuments crumble. Buildings vanish with time. Words endure. Ideas that make both are more powerful then either. Don't leave behind monuments or buildings. Leave behind words and ideas."
"...He'd then speak on the doings in the government and how this government wouldn't last a year, let alone a decade. He was very old. And very senile."
The statement stays with him as he laughs.
When she laughs, the bells that she wears mingle with the music of her voice, and he can't help but be spellbound.
------------
The carnival leaves. By then, the Pastor's son is whispered about in the town as he leaves every day before evening Mass to visit the place it was. Is she gone? She can't be. She wouldn't leave him.
"...Noble.." It's the first time that Dante's come with him again, "Brother-brother it's for the best..."
Noble doesn't hear him. He tears through the grass like a wild animal. It frightens Dante, who hadn't said a word about his brother's dealings with the gypsy folk.
"...Keep her in your heart brother." Dante has never seen his brother so distraught, "She'll live on there-"
"Live on?"
Noble turned to face him, "How dare she live on without me by her side?"
"....An eloquent argument."
A foot swings down from the crooked tree and she jumps to the ground, a purple sack slung over her shoulder, "...More then enough reason to stay."
No words for this moment. Noble abandons his frantic searching and embraces the shadow. In realizing that he might never come to see her again, to hear her voice and her laugh, he realizes that he has fallen in love with her.
And from the way she returns his embrace, it becomes clear that she has fallen in love with him too.
Dante Kale can only watch in horror as they kiss-two shadows melding into one. Night deepens around them, giving life to the otherworldly quality of the scene. On the one hand, he is pleased that his brother has found a woman to love. The girls fell for him in their villiage. Noble was too aloof, his father said.
something crawls into the pit of Dante's stomach as Noble takes his love's hand and leads her back toward town. It burrows down deep as he watches them leave, leaving him beneath the tree.
It is the voice of reason. Go Cautious it whispers, Bid them be cautious and not so open. As free as they think themselves, it will not go over well. She is different in more ways then one. People here are narrowminded. Warn them. Warn them to be cautious.
Dante thinks back to their fights and how Noble would manage to win by talking to him.
He would not listen.
He would not listen, and there was nothing for his anxious brother to do but follow the lovers back toward the lights of their village, worrying all the while.
Massachusetts Territory
NOTE this is an interpretation. Want facts, check out the actual comics. PBS and etc are selected because they made sense. If you're a die-hard fan and you read this and find something wrong, ping me quietly, but at the same time understand that this was fun to write. Ahem. Thank you. On with the show.
Men from the far east made fire leap into the sky and take shapes, women danced seductively, and hawkers plied their wares from tents. In the center of it all sprouted the crooked tree, leaning like a drunkard after a long bout. Dante fixed his gaze upon it, but Noble had moved on to examine a strange device from the orient.
"Do you have any idea how angry Father will be if he finds us here?" Dante Kale rubbed his hands together and blinked at the woman beckoning him from one of the tents, "-Among these-these-harlots? These Magicians? It's a sin!"
"...Our chores are done for the day." Noble Kale was nineteen on the verge of twenty, with closely shorn blond hair and a solumn pair of green eyes, "Father has nothing to complain about. No one knows we're here." he grinned, "Do I need to remind you to relax Dante?"
Stopping his brother in front of the sign reading "Quentin Carnival", Noble Kale smiled, "...Be at ease my brother. Please. I only wanted a quick look. No one from our quiet town would dare come any closer. We will not be missed."
"But Father-"
"Father." Noble said, mustering as much steel into his voice as he could, "Is not god. No matter how much he pretends to be. If you spoil my birthday Dante, I shall have to hurt you. And you know I always win when we fight."
The two brothers shared a grin as Dante smirked, stretching his stocky frame. The two were a study in opposites, dark while the other was fair, swarthy while the other was lean.
"A birthday?"
Their repartee was interrupted by a curious voice.
She was shorter then the two of them and dressed in white, sharp contrast to the night of her skin. Her eyes were wide and dark as the night clustering in like a beast around the carnival. Her movements rang as she studied each of them with utter frankness, "Who's birthday is it?"
Noble's tongue grew fat in his mouth before Dante blurted, "It's his! He's twenty."
"...Twenty!" The girl's eyes lit, twin gems in the dark. Her smile brought the lights of the gypsy carnival to life as men moved about grumbling-working with what little business they had, "Business here has been poor, and a noble birthday such as 20 deserves a gift. I being poor have nothing to offer but my humble skill at reading the cards goodmen."
She met Noble's gaze boldly, "If you would dare to hear truth spoken."
Dante paled, stumbling toward his brother, "The cards? The Cards? Cards are bad Noble. I don't like this. Back off brother, please. what would father say?"
"....He's not god." The girl studied Dante in puzzlement, "Did I not just hear your own brother speak these words? Would your father not approve?"
"My father be damned." While Dante studied her figure, Noble couldn't take his eyes off her face, her smile, the gems that were her eyes. He ran a hand through his shortened hair, suddenly feeling very self conscience about his appearance. He had come straight from chores and waded through the fields-did he smell all right? Look all right? What about his-
"Noble!"
"....What a cruel son." The girl said, her smile turning wicked, "To damn his own father for being narrowminded."
"You are a wicked woman to convince me that doing so is the only course of action." Noble grinned, "....Once upon a time I would have damned myself with him for not seeing the possibilities that life has to offer."
He damned him all right. He damned them all for not being her. Those lights in her eyes, the cat-like nature of her smile-
"Noble! Please!"
"I promise to return your brother in good condition." The girl said gently, "I'll read your fortune too if you like."
Dante paid his brother no heed, "Noble! Think of father!" He moved to grab his brother's arm. Drag him away from this harlot and back to civilization. Back to sanity however painful it might be." He'll beat both of us within an inch of our lives!"
Strength born of desire surged through Noble Kale as he pushed his brother away, ignoring Dante's startled cry as he fell to the ground.
He was doomed then. For the first sin and the oldest is the sin of lust. Out of man came woman, and into man woman must eventually return. Scientists argue for a genetic need to repopulate the species. In this time before reason, Noble Kale only knew that this woman was beautiful, and that he desired her.
And somewhere, forces beyond their comprehension smiled.
------
"The Death card?"
"...It's not bad." The girl said quickly, "It means change. Transition."
Noble fixated on the image of the skeleton imprinted into the paper. It rode a horse, raising a scythe to the sky in defiance.
The girl stopped turning the cards, "You look distant."
Noble swallowed, "I'm thinking."
"...About your brother."
"He's right." Noble said, "My father'll beat both of us. If he finds out I spent my 20th birthday being idle. Going here will be the final straw upon the mule's back."
"Your father hits you?"
"What father doesn't?"
"The good ones." The girl crossed her arms over her chest.
By way of response, Noble offered her his arm, rolling up his shirt to reveal a patch of ugly purple and gray bruises across his upper bicep.
The girl said nothing.
She climbed out of her chair and stood on it, balancing precariously for a moment before hiking up her skirt to reveal a long mis-mash of scars. Beneath them, seared into the flesh, was a set of initials, SL.
Noble dropped his arm, "...Your father did that?"
"No. My Master did."
----
She was born in Africa, though she had no memory of the country that should have been her home. Her mother had come with the British Officers during the Revolutionary war, her infant daughter slung over her back. When the British fell out of power, driven out by the first seeds of the United States, her mother went to the county clerk singing a song of loyalty to the fledgling nation. She was given a chance to provide information, acting as a spy. In return for this she was freed.
"...What about you?"
"I? I was sold. I was sold long before any of this happened to a family in South Carolina."
She was sold as a tiny child. That she remembers. She captivates the pastor's son with the story of her final goodbye with her mother, her mother's tearful promise that she'd find her someday when this land became somethin' worthwhile and good, " I was a house slave to a family named Lee. The Master was a drunkard who liked to think we were plotting against him. He had us branded so that we'd know we weren't human. We were property, he'd say. And We belonged to him."
Slaves are becoming few and far between in the Northern states. Though they still exist. His town was small, and Pastor Kale did not allow such base matters as buying and selling flesh. (Any form of such misconduct. the Pastor murmured Is a GREVIOUS sin)
For the first time in his life Noble appreciated his father's radical ideal, despite it's basis in his own twisted interpretation, "How did you escape?"
Escape came with Taoti Dalma, the old wise woman of the plantation. "She taught me to read the cards and promised me that when I foretold we would escape she'd make sure we did. On the day I told her the cards told me that we'd escape-she died. The house slave Kati put me in her coffin. I was carted to the graveyard and ran like a bat from hell." The men from the graveyard were so scared that they didn't chase her.
"...So the scars-"
A primal look crosses over the girl's face, "I will not be owned." Her voice is strong, "I have tasted the freedom that this wide land has to offer. There are veins of the country I never knew in it. It will be great one day. No man in such a great place should be owned by another."
"...Or woman?" He teased.
"...especially a woman."
------
He learns her name is Magdelena.
"That's not my name." She murmured, "That's my house name. But I wanted to be Sarah. Sarah sounded normal. Taoti was called sarah, even though her true name was Taoti.
"They gave us all names like that. The Master was a devil when it came to the Bible. He'd read it and regale us about what life would be like in Hell when we got there. "
"....I know the feeling." Noble kicked dirt away from the tent with his boots.
"Took me a month on my own to learn that 'twasn't set in stone what would happen to me. I got a chance to earn my place. Then I embraced the Christian faith fully."
"...Despite the fact that it preaches you're inferior?" Noble blurted, "Despite the fact that your countrymen are bought and sold like pumpkins at a harvest market?"
"I don't believe I'm inferior." Magdelena said bluntly, "But essentially what your lord Christ preaches none of your pastors follow. Judgement based only on sins that you yourself cause. Love for all creatures. How could I not come to love a creator that understood that it was not the color of my skin that mattered, but the content of my soul?"
----------
He tells her about his mother.
Virgin Kale, with eyes like the wheat before they harvested it. There was something otherworldly about her that Noble still remembers.
"You remind me of her sometimes."
She smiles, "....How so?"
He frowns, uncomfortable, "Your words. Your ideas."
"The only words I ever took from my Master were these. "Monuments crumble. Buildings vanish with time. Words endure. Ideas that make both are more powerful then either. Don't leave behind monuments or buildings. Leave behind words and ideas."
"...He'd then speak on the doings in the government and how this government wouldn't last a year, let alone a decade. He was very old. And very senile."
The statement stays with him as he laughs.
When she laughs, the bells that she wears mingle with the music of her voice, and he can't help but be spellbound.
------------
The carnival leaves. By then, the Pastor's son is whispered about in the town as he leaves every day before evening Mass to visit the place it was. Is she gone? She can't be. She wouldn't leave him.
"...Noble.." It's the first time that Dante's come with him again, "Brother-brother it's for the best..."
Noble doesn't hear him. He tears through the grass like a wild animal. It frightens Dante, who hadn't said a word about his brother's dealings with the gypsy folk.
"...Keep her in your heart brother." Dante has never seen his brother so distraught, "She'll live on there-"
"Live on?"
Noble turned to face him, "How dare she live on without me by her side?"
"....An eloquent argument."
A foot swings down from the crooked tree and she jumps to the ground, a purple sack slung over her shoulder, "...More then enough reason to stay."
No words for this moment. Noble abandons his frantic searching and embraces the shadow. In realizing that he might never come to see her again, to hear her voice and her laugh, he realizes that he has fallen in love with her.
And from the way she returns his embrace, it becomes clear that she has fallen in love with him too.
Dante Kale can only watch in horror as they kiss-two shadows melding into one. Night deepens around them, giving life to the otherworldly quality of the scene. On the one hand, he is pleased that his brother has found a woman to love. The girls fell for him in their villiage. Noble was too aloof, his father said.
something crawls into the pit of Dante's stomach as Noble takes his love's hand and leads her back toward town. It burrows down deep as he watches them leave, leaving him beneath the tree.
It is the voice of reason. Go Cautious it whispers, Bid them be cautious and not so open. As free as they think themselves, it will not go over well. She is different in more ways then one. People here are narrowminded. Warn them. Warn them to be cautious.
Dante thinks back to their fights and how Noble would manage to win by talking to him.
He would not listen.
He would not listen, and there was nothing for his anxious brother to do but follow the lovers back toward the lights of their village, worrying all the while.
