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—Ondine territory, Alfheim.
There was a half empty street that stretched from one end to the other.
And there was a sun half set.
Workers trickled home here after a long day’s labor.
A single girl, neither young nor old, fair skinned, and tied up hair which shone the same shade of the sunset, pushed through the door into a dingy small coffee house.
Tiny twin bells jingled as the doors gave way and the aroma of roasted coffee beans spilled out like a pleasant wave.
The grey haired barista, a fey old man of Ondine origins, drowsy from the orange colored lights spilling through the hazy glass panes, nodded up and down without hearing the jingle of the bells.
Tap, tap, tap.
With the tiniest of smiles present on her face, the girl drifted in slowly and quietly, as if being extra careful on the hardwood floors not to wake the barista– or that was simply just how she walked normally.
“Good evening, miss. Welcome to Antonio’s. My name is Antonio and this is my humble little coffee house.”
The barista came back to sobriety eventually and pushed his round spectacles, hazy with age, higher up the bridge of his nose.
“It’s getting warmer now, isn’t it?” the miss replied, glancing out the windows.
“It’s the coming of spring after the long bred winter,” the old barista nodded slightly, causing his spectacles which he just pushed up to again slide down. “Will you be having anything this evening?”
“What do you have?”
“We have coffee, and we have tea also. For the misses who like to say that tea is healthier for their skin.”
“I will have coffee.”
“Coffee it is then,” saying this, he filled a kettle with water and lit the stove before reaching for a tin placed on the edge of the counter. But, as though having a sudden change of mind, the old barista stopped and instead bent down and pulled a neat little contraption from beneath the counter with both hands and placed it on top with a heavy thud. Being heavier than it looked, it was an antique coffee grinder, made using ebony wood imported from a far off place and had a decorated handle made out of pure gold, though blackened with coffee smudges and concealed from the years of use.
It was something which was out of place and far too luxurious for a small coffee house like this. As an antique, it was likely worth more than the price of the entire establishment by itself.
“You know? I’ll make it fresh. It just feels like the right thing to do,” Antonio finally explained his actions.
Behind Antonio was a cupboard mounted on the wall. He opened the lower right drawer and pulled up a very small ornate red container just the size of two closed fists put together.
“These are my favorite,” he said, “I received these as a present from my grandson before he left for good to pursue his dreams. It’s not something I offer to customers. And even then, I would only mix these in small amounts with other beans. But right now, it just feels like the right thing to do.”
The girl watched in complete silence as the old barista counted a flat ninety beans out of the container– the last remaining ninety beans– and poured them into the funnel of the coffee grinder.
“Coffee,” Antonio continued, “somebody once said that coffee was like gold, the common man’s gold. For like gold, it brings to every person the feeling of luxury and nobility. But I find that might be just a little silly, I think.”
“Why do you say that?” the girl hummed, resting chin over knuckles.
“Because gold is something that can tear even family apart. It is not something the common man should have.”
His tone carried undeniable sadness, but to most people it also something which could be easily mistaken for just the weak voice of an elderly.
“But if gold sets aside the common man, then would you not cease to be a common man once you obtain gold?”
“No, never,” Antonio answered without hesitation, “because I am a common man, I can only act like a common man before gold.”
…
“I used to have a friend. This was back many years ago, eighty now if I can still remember properly. I was only just a fledgeling then, and this town was nothing like the way it is now. She and I lived in different worlds, quite literally. She was a traveler who came from far away— and when you think ‘far,’ think even farther, and it would still not be far enough, but we were friends, and lord she was a special one indeed… I never met another one like her in my entire life since.”
Antonio’s eyes became heavy in remembrance. His hands even stopped turning the crank to the coffee grinder.
“No amount of gold could sway her. Not a bag, not a casket. That was just the kind of person she was, a traveler who already had everything she ever wanted out of life. But though gold could not sway her, it swayed me. And like a common man before gold, greed was the only thing which filled my crevices of my heart and I ended up making many foolish decisions. Not a single one of which I have stopped regretting, even now.”
It was a riveting thing for anyone to witness, how a single man could go through so many different emotions in just a few spoken thoughts: Fond nostalgia, boastful pride of a treasured friend, sorrow at the thought of the bygone past, and then lastly, regret. Deep, heavy, regret, as though a lifetime of penitence would not absolve him from his sins.
“I apologize, miss. I’ve gone and said some unnecessary things. Your coffee. Let me pour it now,” saying this, Antonio shook his head and reached for the kettle which had just about reached a boil. From there, the old barista went through well practiced movements: first wetting the filter, dumping out the wash water, scoping in the coffee grinds, and finally the slow circular movements of his hand as he poured into the pile. The process took no longer than four minutes, and when it was finally over, it all accumulated into a single cup of coffee, poured in a porcelain cup, and plated over a saucer.
Carefully, he pushed the cup in front of the girl’s hands, and then sat, as though in eager wait for a master’s appraisal.
Gently, the girl picked up the small cup and smelled the roast, then—
“Do you ever think about seeking forgiveness?” she asked suddenly, her deep eyes watching the reflection on the surface of the coffee.
“Every day of my life, with each cup of coffee that I brew,” old Antonio lamented. “But I don’t deserve such forgiveness. I was the one who let her fall. If my hands had simply slipped, then some twisted part of me might have reasoned it an accident. But it was by my own hand that I cut the rope. No amount of hard reasoning can overturn that hard fact. And all this for what? Some measly gold in exchange for a lifetime of eternal guilt? That gold, in the end I couldn’t even spend it, and it remains with me to this day as a reminder of my foolishness.”
…
“If that is the truth, then just this once, piccino, you may have forgiveness.”
Antonio trembled.
“Egads… You… could it be?” unsteadily, he rubbed his eyes just to make certain. “Eighty years… and you haven’t aged a single moment since that fateful day. Is that you? Is that really… you?”
That singular person within his wistful dreams of childhood— the girl, neither young nor old, looking neither foreign nor local, with skin which shone fair in the light, and a head of the most gorgeous hair which was permanently dyed with the eventide glow of sunset.
…
…
…
…
A half empty street that stretched from one end to the other.
A sun half set.
Workers trickling home after a long day’s labor.
Tiny twin bells jingled as the doors gave way and the aroma of roasted coffee beans spilled out like a pleasant wave.
The grey haired barista, a fey old man of Ondine origins, drowsy from the orange colored lights spilling through the hazy glass panes, nodded up and down without hearing the jingle of the bells.
“Old man Antonio!”
“Good evening!”
“The usual please, just the way you always make it!”
Many pairs of feet clattered against the hardwood floor.
“You’ve gotten old, Antonio,” a bright blond haired man, a regular, laughed, “it seems not even coffee can keep you awake any longer.”
When no response was given, the man grew worried and came up close to check.
“Antonio?”
Antonio, with a half-sipped cup of coffee beneath his nose, had already stopped breathing since long ago.
…
…
.
Fairy Song 