#so I wrote almost 4k words of Glarthir Being Treated With Compassion By The Narrative And Also Other Characters

[ehlnofay]

Glarthir doesn’t realise it’s beginning to get bad again until he finds himself dropping to a crawl whenever he walks by the mirror. (He’s crawling underneath, should he be crawling underneath?)

It’s high, on the wall, hung up by a hook, dangling; the frame is nice. Black wood. It isn’t normally a problem, out of the way in the hallway, in the shadows, but now he’s thinking about moving it because it’s inconvenient to have to drop out of its view every time he tries to move around his home (can’t a man be safe, secret, secluded in his own home?) and the shadows make it worse because it’s hidden. It needs sun, so it can’t hide, so it has to be seen or get out – but is it even daytime? When will the sun be out next?

Anyway, to put it out in the light he’d need to carry it out – and he’s now realising that it’s been some time since he left the house.

(It felt too much. In some ways it’s better not to go out, because if you’re out and about and among the people you can see who’s looking at you, staring eagle-eyed, and it’s worse when it’s just people, when it’s just people who should be on your side; and on some level he knows, and he doesn’t want to go out and start worrying all about the people because he’s worked so hard not to be afraid of them and starting again would ruin it all. Better to stay in, curtains drawn, skittering across the floorboards under the mirror; he still has an audience, he knows, he can hear the chattering, feel the prickling on the back of his neck, but at least this way he only has to worry about the most secretive watchers and not the people he’s trying so hard not to mistrust.)

(It’s hard to keep his worries reasonable. But he made a list of things some months ago – a year? Some amount of time – when the windows were uncovered and he was making sure to go for walks every day – that were never true, could never be possible, all the never-evers that he can’t believe no matter how believable they are because he knows he’s not good at finding that line that others seem to see so effortlessly. He knows that the boundaries of reality are shifting for him, spongy, like the surface tension of water. Everyone else leaps in from a great height and gets hit by it painfully; but Glarthir has spent what seems like his whole life swimming. And he knows that he wrote that list and no-one else because he put the code at the top, secret, secure, and no-one else knows that one, no matter how loud his thoughts get it’s locked up tight. And one of the things on the list is that people can’t see what you’re doing through stone walls. Not without a spell, and his neighbours aren’t mages, he’s already checked. So he knows they’re not the ones watching him when the curtains are drawn. It’s all the ones hidden in the shadows, the cupboards, the warped glass of the mirror. It’s why he hasn’t opened the pantry.)

Maybe he should check the list. Gauge where he’s at. But it’s pinned to the upstairs wall and that’s where it’s flimsy, why would he put it upstairs, that’s not a good place, that’s not where it should be. It should be in the basement with the old notebooks, and now he can’t go look at it because the walls are too thin up high. He knows that no-one can see him even through the upstairs walls, but that doesn’t mean he believes it.

Now what?

What to do? Glarthir sits, hunched over, (he’s sitting all squished) in the shadows below the mirror, notebook in his pocket – oh, he’s been writing in it more than normal, hasn’t he. Damn.

He’s been writing more than normal and he hasn’t left the house and he hasn’t looked in mirrors, which combined is likely not good. None of it ever stops, always there, lurking, incontrovertibly true, in the background, but recently he’s been better able to set it aside. When did he stop setting it aside? Why didn’t he notice? He has no idea what time it is because the curtains have been drawn so long. Is it really a problem? He knows it’s bad sometimes but he doesn’t feel bad, not now. He doesn’t feel swimming, hazy, like the lines are so blurred he can’t see what he’s stepping on. He feels fine.

Well, he feels a bit terrified, but he’s a bit terrified all the time.

It’s so hard to tell when it’s different.

What to do? He doesn’t know what’s to be done. There was something he was going to do before he got distracted thinking about hiding from the mirror but he’s forgotten it in favour of moving hastily around the ground floor of the house, trying to get his bearings, thoughts moving in circles (he’s gone behind the armchair, look, he’s in the corner now) – he hasn’t stood up, still crawling out of view of the mirror, there’s dust on his hands, why didn’t he stand up? He doesn’t stand up. He stays hunkered on the floor.

There’s a plan for this, he knows, he remembers. They made a deal. Bernadette made him promise he’d come see her if he started getting nervy again, if he wanted to barricade the doors of the basement, which he hasn’t wanted to but thinking about all of it is only making him antsier and honestly it sounds nice to be in a comfortable private space, dirt and cobble beyond the walls, no windows, no points of entry except the door, barred and blocked with the dresser. Shit. Bernadette would definitely want him to go see her.

But what time of day is it, anyway, where would she be? He can’t just open the door or draw the curtains without a plan, go out among the strangers pretending like he doesn’t know they’re talking about him, like he doesn’t know someone is keeping tabs. He needs to know what he’s getting into, be prepared, stay calm. Going out in a crowd like this makes it worse, he knows that much, he’s sure of it; because if it’s not as real as he thinks it riles him up, and if it’s just as real as he thinks it puts him in danger, keeps him observed. So that’s a bad idea regardless.

But he promised, and he knows he trusts Bernadette even if he doesn’t believe it (he didn’t think it at the time, but why did she convince him to make that deal? Why was it so important that she know when he’s confused and vulnerable?) He knows he trusts her, or tries to, and she always leaves when he says to go away, and when he had a cold she brought food. That was sweet. He was a bit worried but he ate it and there was nothing wrong with it, just a pot of vegetable soup. She’s never shown him anything but kindness, at least to his face, and she doesn’t push, and he’s mostly sure that she’s safe.

Not completely sure, but when is he completely sure of anything?

He promised, and he’s mostly sure, so he should go to see her; he promised. And now that he thinks about it he would like not to be lonely. He would love to be alone, but somehow he’s never alone and always lonely. It’s all mixed up, everything.

Should he look out the windows? Or just open the door? On the one hand he would like to be prepared. He needs to know what to expect. He hates being surprised. But on the other he’ll have to open the door to get out – the windows don’t open, and he can’t smash them, then he could never close them again and everything that should be out will get in and everything that should be in will get out – so he has to open the door already and isn’t that enough trouble? If he draws the curtains first that feels doubly unsafe. He’s already opening the door to all and sundry – letting the curtains gape too is practically an invitation.

Just the door. Better that way, more private, he can slink through the crack and close it behind him before anyone notices. So it’s settled.

Glarthir nods, decisively, and moves toward the front door, crawling under the mirror but standing up when he’s far enough away it can’t see him. The doorknob is hard to turn – has it rusted shut? Is he not supposed to go out? – but then it turns, and the door swings open – too quickly, honestly, wider than he meant it to – and he sees outside. (He’s standing, now, stiff and still, in the open doorway.) It smells nice, nicer than his house. And it’s dark.

Nighttime. That’s good. The roads are uncrowded and the only light he can be seen by are the streetlamps. (It’s easier for people to hide. To shadow him. But he can be sneaky when he wants, he’s learned well enough to avoid them, and he’s only crossing the road, it will be fine –)

He crosses the road (he’s going across the road), cobbles wet under his feet, acting like he can’t see the shadows shifting out the corner of his eyes. They’re too fast, run and hide when he looks dead on, but he’s used to that, has learned to keep his focus on his peripherals. (He’s not looking at them. He’s going to Bernadette’s house across the way –) There’s a window in her door. With the light of the streetlamp winking behind him, the wobbly glass looks mirrored, a staring silhouette reflected back at him. Glarthir ducks (he ducks) and crouches, out of view of the window, and pounds on the wooden door, hands bleeding into the rectangular carvings, until he feels moulded with its graven face. The sound echoes, vibrating through the wood of the door and the stone of the house and the damp ground and his skin, like it’s all just one thing. The door to Bernadette’s is better than the mirror in his home. That just hangs, watching, and at least the door is part of something. It never goes outside but it can always see outside. The mirror’s only ever been in the hallway shadows. (He’s knocking on the door.) He likes doors. They never make him nervous. Never take up too much space. He could do without the window, of course, but sometimes they say windows are good things.

The door swings open and he almost falls (he’s falling!) into the hallway, too much weight leaning on it. He looks up.

Bernadette’s face looks a little wobbly, same as the glass, lit by flickering light, a little candle held in her hand, above his head, wax threatening to drip into his hair. Her face contorts.

Glarthir shouldn’t have come. What to even say? He’s not even sure that anything is wrong, yet, really, just the mirror thing, and now she’s staring and he can’t have that. Can’t put up with it. Why is she staring so? He wishes she wouldn’t – he hates it. He wishes he’d never come, because now he’s crouching on her porch and she’s just watching him crouch, all the things that might-might-not-be wrong written so clearly on his face, screaming all round the inside of his skull. She’s going to know. No she won’t, he thinks to himself fiercely. That’s on the list of never-evers too; people can’t hear his thoughts, not ever, no matter how loud they are. It’s on the list.

He's crouching, and Bernadette says, “Glarthir, what are you doing?” and he doesn’t know how to begin answering that question – the mirror or the notebook (not the notebook, that’s private, it’s all the privacy he has) or the rattling nervousness that’s been building in his chest – but she doesn’t even give him a chance to try before she says, “Get in out of the cold! Julianos preserve us, you’re going to freeze yourself to death.”

(He’s thinking, you know. He’s not sure whether to go in or not.) Glarthir stands and follows her into the hallway. “Careful,” she says, “you’re dripping on the floor,” and oh, she’s right. His nightshirt was wet from all the rain on the cobbles and when he crouched right to the ground the hem was drenched. “You can’t go out in this weather in your nightclothes, love, you’ll get a chill.”

Bernadette’s bustling around her kitchen now (he’s standing still in the doorway, out of view of the kitchen window). She stacks some kindling in the hearth and gets it lit. (He’d forgotten he was in his nightclothes.) He watches the little candle she’s set on the table. Bernadette isn’t looking at him.

“Are you feeling cold?” she asks, throwing a glance over her shoulder. He thinks hard about it. Shrugs. She sighs and crosses the floor over to the table. “Right. Sit down?”

Glarthir looks at the table, the little dancing candle, wax trickling into the wood grain. (He’s talking to her now.) “Can you close the curtains?”

Bernadette turns her head so she’s looking out the window. “There’s no-one out there,” she says, and he opens his mouth, and she cuts him off before he can start: “I know, I know, I don’t have Bosmer eyes, I can’t see so well as you can. I’ll close them if that’s what you need to feel safe.”

“Can you close the curtains?” Glarthir repeats, and she does.

He sits, traces a hand over the tabletop, eyes on the spiralling patterns of the wood. He wishes she’d given him the other chair, so he could see the door. It’s behind him, and now he feels like he has to keep looking over his shoulder, but he also feels like he shouldn’t, she won’t want him to, and if he sees something she won’t and it could turn into an argument and he doesn’t know if he should have come.

(He’s touching the table.)

Bernadette smiles.

“I was hoping you’d come by,” she says, which takes him quite by surprise. He didn’t expect – well, that she’d be glad to see him. She giggles a little and adds, “Though I admit I didn’t expect it to be past twelve.”

Glarthir’s head twists to look at the window, though of course it’s covered by curtains. (Purple ones. They’re nice.) It had been nighttime, outside – he hadn’t fully realised it, he was focused on the shadows inside the house more than the shadows out. “Oh. Yes, it’s late. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise. I was wondering where you were, I hadn’t seen you in a while. I knocked on your door, the other day, but you didn’t answer.”

He doesn’t remember that. Perhaps he was in the basement – he likes it there, it’s comfortable, no windows and walls on all sides – or perhaps it was drowned out with the other noises. There’d been a knocking under the stairs, and scratching. And the chatter. It’s thicker, outside of the house. Makes him have to strain his ears to understand what she’s saying.

“Oh,” he says, hands tracing the gnarls and creases of the worn tabletop.

The fire is crackling, chasing the shadows from the corners of the room. Glarthir taps at the table. His nails scrape at the grain. Bernadette rakes her fingers through her hair and asks, “Was there anything you wanted to talk about? Specifically?”

(He’s sitting staring at the wood of the tabletop.) Where to even start? It’s hard because there isn’t, really – not anything specific – just the mirror. Just the feeling, agitated and antsy, like some animal’s gotten loose in his chest, scratching at his ribs. Something’s just not right, but when is it ever? It’s so hard to explain.

“I’m not feeling quite right,” he manages, but any elaboration gets stuck in his throat. He doesn’t know how much he should reveal, how much is too much, how much he can say. Whether he can talk about the ragged feeling he thinks he’s getting again, like his edges are fraying; how his thoughts are huge and fast and slip like fish out of his grip, take up too much space. They seem to exist outside of his head. He just doesn’t know how to explain it in a way that will make her understand. People don’t ever seem to understand.

Bernadette is silent for a while, doesn’t speak until his tapping at the table grows faster, a rapid and unruly tempo. “I’m glad you came by.”

“Well.” Glarthir shrugs, then kind of stays like that, shoulders hunched up around his ears. “You asked – I said I would, didn’t I? I’m a man of my word. My bond. I don’t go back on it.” He prides himself on being reliable. Others may mess about, confuse him, say one thing and mean another and never follow through, but he would never stoop to their level, he keeps his word.

Bernadette is looking at him in a way that makes him want to hunch his shoulders until his face is tucked behind his collarbones. Squinting, tongue poking out between her teeth, she says, “You think you’re having a bad spell again?”

“That’s what you’d call it.” That’s what she always calls it, though he can’t often see much difference. Maybe he’s always in a bad spell. Maybe he is a bad spell. All he knows for certain is that he’s covered the windows and avoiding the mirrors and spending all day writing again. “I, ah, I noticed I was crawling below the mirror again.”

Bernadette’s long hair is falling in her face. She makes a soft tutting sound in the back of her throat. “How are you feeling?”

Glarthir tries and fails to shrug his shoulders higher. (He’s sitting all hunched in the chair in the shadows. He looks quite silly.) “I mean – normal. Nervous, but normal. But the windows, and everything – and you always say about holing up in my house – but I didn’t want to go out, because I know they’d be watching, and it’s too much to be watched by people who are supposed to be doing other things. It’s better inside. Watchers only in the corners. But, I mean, I don’t feel too wrong. Just nervous.”

He's got his fingers dragging over the table in a simple pattern, now, not following the grain, just back and forth, back and forth. It’s calming. Nice. Anchors him to the chair and the table and the wall. His thoughts won’t fly off this way.

“Have you been forgetting things?” Bernadette asks.

It’s a bit of a stupid question. “How am I to know what I forgot?”

Bernadette laughs. He drags his fingers back and forth over the table. “Fair enough,” she says. “Have you been sleeping?”

He thinks.

He actually doesn’t know. It’s hard to keep track because he doesn’t know what times it’s been, the curtains have been drawn, the only light his lantern. He doesn’t know if he missed a night of sleep or not. He can’t actually quite remember what he was doing an hour ago.

“I don’t know,” he admits. He’s pretty sure that’s not a good thing.

“Eating? Keeping the house clean?”

“I couldn’t open the pantry.” He didn’t like the look of the kitchen shadows. He didn’t like the jars.

Bernadette pulls a face and stands. “Right,” she announces. “I’m getting you some food.”

Glarthir digs his fingers into the table, drawing back into the wooden rungs of his chair. “Thank you. I’m not hungry.”

“Then I’m making us both some tea,” Bernadette says with finality. “I’m tired. You need to get some water into you. Do you think you’ll sleep tonight?”

He barks a laugh. Sleep. Even if he were tired (which – is he, actually? It’s awfully hard to tell), where would he sleep? He doesn’t want to go upstairs, which is where the bed is, but the chatter is louder in the basement, keeping him awake. Anyway, something always happens, someone always says something to wake him up. He can’t sleep even if he tries.

Bernadette laughs too, ruefully. “Honestly,” she says, hanging the kettle over the fire, “I didn’t think so. Mind if I draw the curtains for a moment to get some mint from the window box?”

Glarthir lets her. She pushes the window up. He stays a bit behind the purple drapes and looks out.

He can feel them there, blurred in the dark, bright eyes fixed on his house.

But they mostly don’t know he’s here, and they leave Bernadette alone.

She locks the window again and draws the curtains and sits, toying with the sprigs of mint in her hands. She asks, “Do you want to tell me about it?”

(He’s got a hand on the notebook in his breast pocket.) People never listen – say he’s rambling, say he’s wrong, say he’s off his head. They’re either in on it or they’re clueless – maybe both – he can never decide which – but he’s learned not to say anything. Not worth it.

But Bernadette’s asking, and she’s not clueless, and she isn’t part of it, she’s not.

(He’s thinking about talking about it. That’s a bad idea.)

He tells her a little – not much. Maybe one notebook page’s worth. Just while the kettle boils. They soak the mint leaves in her pink mugs – he watches the leaves curl up in the hot water – then Bernadette spoons honey in from a jar, amber-gold and slippery, and he watches the spiral patterns it makes in the yellow-green water. Same as the pattern of the wood grain. He pinches the shrivelled mint leaves out with his fingers.

He only ends up drinking half the tea, but it’s sweet, and the steam smells nice.

“I think you are having a bad spell,” Bernadette says. “That’s how it looks from where I’m standing,” – and Glarthir shrugs, hands curled around the warm mug. Bernadette asks if they can make another deal that she can come and see him in the mornings and make sure he talks to somebody; he’s not sure if he wants to go and have a conversation on the porch; she says they can talk through the door.

He's not sure. Not in the mornings. People might notice Bernadette on his veranda, talking through his front door, and if they start watching him when he tries to talk with his friends then there’ll never be any peace. But Bernadette gets up early, she says. She says she can get up a bit earlier. She won’t mind – it would mean she could relax on her trip to work.

“Really,” Glarthir tells her, “You don’t have to. I feel normal.”

Bernadette smiles over the steaming rim of her mug. “I know. But that isn’t the same as feeling well, is it? I want you to feel well.”

Glarthir has not felt well in a very long time, perhaps ever; but as he watches the patterns of the curling steam and Bernadette asks if she can tell the grocer at the market that he’s doing all right, just taking some time away from people (the man he buys his vegetables from was worried about him, she says, in his absence, and he wants very much to believe her), he thinks that maybe, in a roundabout way, he’s getting there.