Tuesday Tickle: The story with no name

I started this one when I had some weird psychological things to work out, right after hubs passed. I kind of wondered what kind of relationship someone could have if the person they were in love with couldn’t understand emotion. It’s morphed into a thrill set in a middle eastern influenced fantasy world. Don’t look for this one soon, since it’s going to take a fair bit of reading and research to pat it into the shape I want it to be in.

The subtle clink of chains woke Rholid from sleep. He smiled and waited. The room was still dark, though he could see the first graying of the sky through the shutters if he turned his eyes far enough to the left that it bordered on painful. A breeze blew in through the slats, the smell of salt water and rotting seaweed like a gift, a memory of home brought on the breath of the sea gods.

Thaon’s hiss of frustration as he failed to pick the locks on his chains was like another gift, though this had to be from whatever local god protected the lives of the city’s tradesmen from born killers. In the five months since he’d won the slave on what he’d thought was a lucky hand at cards, he’d learned exactly why the young man’s owner had bet so high on a lousy pair of ravens.

“You can’t pick them,” he said aloud into the dawn air. The clinking stopped. Rholid waited to see what tactic Thaon would take this time.

“I don’t like sleeping alone.” Thaon had a beautiful voice, expressive, like the best of entertainers. Right now the emotion it held made Rholid’s heart ache with loneliness and need.

“If I could trust you not to choke me to death in my sleep, you could sleep with me. But I like to live, so you get the floor.”

A sad sigh, and then the chains clanked louder. Rholid rolled over in bed and propped his head up on a pillow. The pale glow of Thaon’s moonlight hair showed over the foot of the bed, though his face remained in shadow.

“I only did it the once. I didn’t know you then,” he complained, crossing his forearms on the straw tick and resting his chin on them. “You’re being very unfair.”

Oh, the things that live in my mind…