Page 68 of Badmouths & Bards

“You were a heartbreaker even as a kid?”

Casimine shook his head. “No, nothing like that…I…my mother used to read fables to me as a child. A lot of them had stories of princes. Some of them were good but an awful lot of them were bad. My sister’s would complain that they weren’t very princely, and we would argue what it even meant to be a prince. I don’t know when it happened, but I remember wanting to prove them wrong. That anyone could be a prince, even a poor boy like me. They didn’t believe me, so I swore to my mother that I would show them.”

“Did you?” Tala peered up at him, dropping her hand to her side. “Did you manage to show them?”

Casimine stared at her.

“I don’t know.”

“You haven’t talked to them in a while?”

The question wasn’t invasive, but it still made Casimine tense. Fans and bards alike had asked Cashmere Fantasy about their upbringing. Curiosity was normal, especially when people wanted to know where their talent came from. The misconception that creativity and skill were inherited and not something bards and artists had to actively work on wasn’t new either. Yet, whenever those questions came up, Casimine always avoided them. It had helped that Ameriden had been just as vague—though Casimine still had his suspicions when it came to his partner’s background. Ordinarily, Casimine would find a way to continue the story without ever mentioning his family.

But Tala wasn’t ordinary, not even in the slightest. She was strong, beautiful, and whip smart whether she believed it or not. No amount of self-deprecation from her lips would ever convince Casimine otherwise. Beneath her tough exterior was a heart that was learning to be vulnerable. It only required someone to be vulnerable first.

“I talk to them all the time,” Casimine said. “They…just don’t talk back…because they’re dead.”

The last time Casimine had admitted it out loud, it had been to Ameriden. They had been living together on the streets for a year at that point. Casimine singing for gold while Ameriden hummed a melody and hoping that one day they would have enough to pay for college. Young, hopeful, and scared of being caught for sleeping in stables in condemned shacks outside of the city.

“Shit,” Tala said. “Casi, I’m—”

Casimine shook his head, “You don’t have to say it…I don’t like to talk about it because I don’t want people’s sympathy.”

Anyone could give sympathy. A few words of comfort that did nothing but remind Casimine of what he had lost. Sympathy was for other people, not people like Casimine. “I’m sorry” didn’t mean anything when it was a greedy landlord kicking his mother out of her ancestral home. It didn’t help when she had been forced to take a less than desirable dwelling, and it didn’t help when the earth rumbled beneath their feet in the middle of the night. Not even when his mother had brought her concerns to her new landlord, all she got was an, “I’m sorry”.

Nothing could be done about reinforcing their home. Nothing could be done about the sense of unease that fell around them days before it happened. Nothing could have been done when the earth finally tore through the land and buried his mother and sisters beneath the rubble. And every sympathetic glance and word spoken since Casimine woke up at the local orphanage had never brought him comfort.

“How…”

“Earthquake,” Casimine said. “I was eight.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

The silence that followed felt as suffocating as the looks of pity Casimine would receive whenever townsfolk passed by the orphanage. More sympathy, more empty words of comfort, more broken promises. Casimine hated all of it. He wasn’t prepared for Tala to press up onto her heels and take him into her arms. He wasn’t prepared for how tightly she squeezed his shoulders, or how the familiar scent of saffron and spices could so easily unwind the tension in his body.

Casimine sank into her, clutching the fabric and lace at the small of her back. The overwhelming chaos of emotions were still there, but so was the love he felt for Tala. The longer she held him, the more Casimine wanted nothing more than to stay with her. To keep her with them, to keep her forever.

Selfish, he thought. I’m so terribly selfish. I want them both and I want to keep this dream alive.

“I feel like an asshole,” Tala said against his shoulder.

“What?”

Tala pulled back and it took everything in Casimine’s body not to prevent her from leaving.

“I feel like an asshole because here I am, thinking about all the ways my family fucked me over while you’re dealing with losing family that loves you.”

Tala hadn’t needed to tell him that her relationship with her family was strained. Casimine had realized it when she parroted the near exact same sentiments that Ameriden had when it came to family. Although he didn’t know the exact details of either of their situations, he didn’t fault them for having living relatives.

“You’re not an asshole for having family issues, Tala,” Casimine said. “Your problem is just different than mine. The same way Ameriden’s is different. I don’t like talking about my family because it hurts, so I try to put that into my songs. I try to keep their memory alive by being the person I promised them I would be. I’ve dedicated my life to becoming a world famous bard and I can only hope they’re proud of me.”

The sudden press of Tala’s lips left Casimine surprised. He wasn’t sure what he said that warranted her risking it, but he was thankful for it just the same. In the quiet of the garden, Casimine angled his head to kiss Tala properly. Here he wasn’t a bard mourning the loss of his family, but a man enjoying a moment with a lover. A secret meeting that was just for them and no one else.

“I’m not the wisest person around, but I’d bet money that your family is damn proud of you,” Tala said against his lips. “You’re a good man, you know that right?”

“Careful, Tala. You’re beginning to sound awfully optimistic,” Casimine teased.