AGE: 35 GENDER: MALE RACE: HALFBREED
P O S I T I O N A N D T R A D E
Born a slave, shall forever be a slave, though he walked out his plantation one noon a free man. Reuben bears stronger resemblance to his human ancestry, enough so that he could mingle amongst them unnoticed. Humans often make disparaging remarks about elves in his presence, prodding him to contribute scathing remarks of his own, unaware the friendly chap didn't suddenly remember he left his stove burning at that instant. Reuben lives in constant fear of being discovered an elf impersonating human origin, as he knows of few who have tried and fewer still who did not suffer dire consequences in said discovery. He has never experienced true acceptance amongst elf nor human, though he harbors a deep resentment towards his human lineage, and regards his visage more so a tool than anything of pride.
Reuben is poorly educated as one could expect. His dominant hand’s able to write little more than his signature, though his calloused palms can work a ranch and its husbandry with great efficiency. As of late, Reuben’s relegated himself to working with pirates on dangerous heists, even joining a brigade of scoundrels and bandits on his mission to gather a bottomless supply of coin.
Eyes a sparkling blue like the waters surrounding his native swamplands. Skin bronzed to a golden peach under bright sunlight, and softened to a pale brown in gentler ambiances. Reuben trims his hair every morning to display the human contour of his ears. He stands at nearly six feet, bound by muscle, and often clothed in the same outfit day by day.
P E R S O N A L I T Y / V I C E S / B O O N S
Reuben is a man-sized teddy bear – as his daughter would tell you. Elsa loves resting her golden head on his broad hairy chest, the thud, thud, thud of his big heart throbbing at her earlobe, the broad circumference of his belly that her small arms can barely wrap around. He may be able to shoot a bandit from a horse 100 feet away but Reuben isn’t one to resort to violence. The first time he killed a man still follows him, ruins every pleasant dream with a snapshot of his exploded mind matter glowing in a crimson puddle. Reuben is a man who will empty his shallow pockets for a soul in need if it meant sleeping under an awning behind a local tavern than getting a good rest in one of its straw beds. But Reuben has also seen little of the world around him having been cloistered on an island plantation his whole life. One could beguile a Reuben as easily as one could trick a child. His defenses against manipulation are nonexistent, and many a time has he caught himself attached to the strings of a nefarious plot when it was too late, when the damage had already been done. Entrusting in the good nature of others may very well be his downfall.
His personal mission in life is to acquire enough money to buy out the plantation from his Master, and eventually the entire island of Barbosa where several elf families have been enslaved for generations. Achieving such a lofty goal has proven rather difficult, as anyone could imagine it would be for an uneducated man of undignified birth to secure himself stable employment. Hence he has relegated himself to pursuing dangerous work offering a higher wage than being a street-sweeper, often serving on pirate crews that looted the mansions of rich families and dignitaries in the dark of night. Reuben has warmed a few prison benches for his offenses, and the deep regret lowering his head in shame persisted even as he walked out his cell doors. Thoughts of his wicked behavior, of regretful encounters on his war to freedom. He may no longer work the plantation but he has never once considered himself a free man.
Reuben experiences heightened synesthesia on occasion – certain words can shift the colors of objects within the vicinity, sensations trigger memories in specific body parts, numbers become colors, names become vibrant tastes. He keeps this secret well-guarded as he wishes not to be regarded insane, or worser still, accused of peering into a magical realm. He has little idea where this condition came from but it has followed him since childhood. Reuben may actually grow to dislike someone because the colors of their name form such a vomit inducing array of color that it will literally leave him feeling sick every time that individual comes around, to which he will insist they take on a more pleasant nickname. As anyone could imagine, Reuben named he and his wife’s daughter, and renamed several of the dishes his wife cooked within their shack so as not to lose his appetite.
Reuben carries little more than the skin on his back, the boots on his feet, and whatever torn shirt or leggings he could snatch from the nearest clothesline. He always slips a coin under the front door of the next man to discover his clothes missing. The handle of a rusty flintlock peers out the back of his waistband, and a switchblade rests beside his calf within his boot. Though he cannot yet read the delicate cursive, he carries with him a small children’s book his wife read to his daughter and he at night. He would sooner give up his knife and gun than to hand over this little book. Reuben also carries the snipped corners of his ears within a leather coin purse.
HISTORY
~ The Isle of Barbosa ~
Thunder shot colorful birds from thrashing tree canopies towards the misted mountains above as sparks of electricity scattered across the exploding sunset and marched crabs across the blowing sands to the nearest algae-covered rock – Barbosa was an island as beautiful as it was dangerous. Crashing waves yanked sand creatures out to rolling sea. Thatched roofs blew off in the howling winds. Beach shacks shook upon their wooden stilts, waterfalls pouring down their abused roofing onto any warming fire combating the nippy tradewinds. When the storm gave way to a tangerine sunrise bursting over the horizon, fallen palms buried anything that wasn’t swept away in the monsoon. The elves of this land stepped out their huts and strode their worn sandals over fallen debris cluttering the wetlands. Here on the Isle of Barbosa spanned a lucrative cane field roasting under the sun, elven hands snatched up her sugary husks as their owners squatted within her murky waters. The water was fresh, but almost tasted a salty bitterness from the sweaty temples bent over these fields day in and day out, with their almond eyes risen to the stucco mansions watching them atop green mountains. These manors of esteem were carved from hardened earth and brimstone to withstand the worst of Barbosa’s mood swings, and draped elegant vine curtains down their massive fronts. The elves could only hope to trade up for such estate, or at least wet their marble floors instead of standing knee-deep in floodwaters.
Master Rockinney
~ De Wilt Plantation ~ Master Rockinney rarely grazed a silver-toed boot through his coastal wetlands, preferring to stare through the silken curtains of his villa patio upon every back bent over the crop fields. Though his features always hid behind a wild curly wig, his ivory cheeks still burst into flames under Barbosa’s unrelenting spray of sunshine. Local boys prowled the murky waters in his place, necks browned as the slaves they oversaw – Hound Boys, he called them. It wasn’t until the Mistress Rockinney threw her last glass of champagne on her bastard of a husband that he could be seen in daylight, cloaked in shadow under an umbrella of ferns. The Master was a fearful sight to behold strolling amidst the early morning fog with that skinless hand gripping the stalk of his weapon against the sun and his corpse complexion shifting its red eyes over the elves squatted before their canes, pretending His breath wasn’t blowing over them. But they couldn’t ignore His face watching them from the water. It was the face of
El Chulo, a walking disease sloughing its skin into flesh puddles throughout the jungle deep, eager to melt the next man down to a wet spot in the forest. If you believed in the elven tales you knew never to let the Master touch you. Though Master touched whomever He pleased. Stared at whomever He wanted with those eyes bulged forward like a hen, cheekbones sagged down with fat, the bone structure of a sinking ship distorting his peeling face. When a man of such homely features took elven wives for himself no one questioned it: nary a human lady would lay with him, riches, status, and gold or not.
Reuben de Wilt
~ Bastard Son of a Slave Master ~ Mother Reuben was torn from her natural husband to serve as the Master’s wench for a night. Nights turned into weeks. The swell of her belly grew, but the space within her shack had shrunk when her fifth child entered the world. On the dusty floorboards slept four other of her children, curled up inside scratchy blankets with their pointy ears peeping out. In the far corner, huddled against the iron stove was little Reuben. He knew never to lay his comforter down near Seamus – his mother’s husband. His heavy foot would fall off his hammock and stomp the boy’s shoulders, shoving the child’s nose into the floorboards as if he wished him to suck his last breath. A swift pan to the dome struck the man out his murderous intent, though Marisa’s loving hand dabbed a wet cloth to the scar forming near her husband’s scalp. When her words would not speak loud enough she had no choice but to beat reality into him: Reuben may be half an elf, but the boy was fully her son.
Morgana de Wilt
~ Wife, Mother, & Cook ~ Morgana jumped the broom with good old Reuben mid-way through their teens. The elven woodsmiths hammered together a beach shack for the newlyweds, it stood inconspicuously amongst the other shacks along the coastline, though what lied beneath the sands made this one unusual.
Morgana tended to the Master’s kitchen, cheeks reddened over the smoke of a pan fire as her nimble hands scraped a knife over a dripping tomato, narrowing her eyes at the hot oils popping back at her bare face. Those same hands soaked tubs of meat within the sink for a company’s worth of men until the tips of her fingers grew wrinkled and pruned and sore. Those same hands carved out turkeys into a shell of meat, enough to feed the Master’s visiting cousins, and curved enough knives around the body of a potato to suffer a bloody nick or two by sundown.
A rubbish bin sat outside the smoking kitchen doorway, catching papers from educated hands drifting through the back hallway. Many a time Morgan grabbed the hem of her billowing dress and sunk down to the floorboards in a swift snatch at whatever crumpled parchments lay atop the pile, shoving them within her swollen bosom on her trek back to her shack. Sometimes these papers were ruined by champagne spills, other times she would spread them out across the floorboards of her shack, revealing a detailed map of the nearest landmasses. Reuben’s eyes could hardly believe the vastness of the world surrounding him. He knew nothing of the Star Kingdom, of anything outside the folklore passed down the generations. All he knew was this island and the life of a slave. Reuben hungered to see these wonders for himself, the meteor showers over Grimwald Canyons, the twin waterfalls of Bunbury diving hundreds of feet into the earth’s core, to travel the world a free man with his wife at his side. He was going to do it. Morgana laughed at the thought, though she could see the determination in her husband’s eyes. She resented his plot, calling it dangerous and stupid, to which even he himself agreed – but it was worth a shot. For the sake of the elves tied to this plantation.
He decided to cut the corners of his ears.
The Plight of Reuben de Wilt
The son of the plantation’s blacksmith arrived to their hut. In his gloved hands two metal pieces smelted into the shape of a human ear. Though the gangly teen found the proposition distasteful, a mockery to his proud elven blood, if this boy could shoot, stab, or bleed something he would do it. Reuben sat upon the edge of his hammock, his wife’s comforting fingers running down his back as his eyes narrowed on the blacksmith’s gloved hand stabbing those plates into the smoking belly of their stove. He slammed the stove door shut, and flicked a wrist over at Reuben’s older brother standing in a shadow. He snatched his brother’s head into a headlock, slipping a brawny palm under Reuben’s chin to clamp his jaw shut. One holler and the blacksmith threatened to leave him looking a true halfbreed bastard indeed with only one ear standing. Reuben stared up at him wordlessly. A lifetime of beatings couldn’t compare to those red-hot plates squeezing his earlobe, torching delicate skin into smoke, dribbling a stream of waxy cartilage down his cheek like a melting candle once those plates kissed each other and snipped his upper earlobe off into his lap. If the terrible pain did not stop his heart, fear of his brother snapping his neck nearly did as his mouth struggled to open into a scream.
Every strand caressing the exposed skin stabbed like needles. If bending under the burning sun after heavy rocks embedded in the soil and rolling them up the winding cliffsides of the mountains in sweat-heavy rags dragging down his limbs did not shorten his breath enough, every wind that coasted by brought tears to his eyes. Morgana tried to rub a salve over the open wounds but Reuben couldn’t withstand the touch of her fingertip. He wanted to bring a knife to the sides of his scalp, though the woman urged him to keep his length in fear the Master would see what he’d done to himself. He was the man’s property, after all, and had no permission to do such a thing to himself. If women could suffer childbirth surely he could suffer this. He agreed with those sentiments, but he almost regretted doing it. Almost.
When Sunday spilled her morning rays over the croaking wetlands, the slaves were given a hearty serving of turkey stew to carry into their shacks. Rueben’s tongue dragged over every corner of his wooden bowl, snatched his wife’s bowl to his face when she was through, and even licked his daughter’s dish clean of its meaty gravy – though Reuben had made it to the second decade of his life he was still fed the same rations as a teenage boy. His stomach sometimes growled in the early hours before he was called to labor and exhaustion then took the place of hunger.
The Master and his company strode indoors to entertain themselves, abandoning a picnic table crowded with the porcelain dishware of a full-course meal seated along a delicate white tablecloth. A silver bowl sat at the head of the banquet, housing a thick turkey thigh dripping fat into a moat of gravy. Reuben found his lips curling into his mouth at the sight, urging themselves to stay that way. He folded his arms behind his back, and looked over each shoulder as his bare feet inched towards the long table, allowing his nostrils to swell around the succulent fats coasting in the breeze. With haste, both hands dived into the bowl of leftovers, and his feet carried him off towards the banana grove.
Master Rockinney returned with a raised brow – though he had eaten himself full, he was now peeved by the sight of an empty bowl that most certainly wasn’t left that way. His blistered hand clasped onto the offensive bowl and lowered the rim to the sniffing nose of a hound dog, and the beast shot off towards a row of trees overlooking the ocean blue. Soon a pack of hounds rushed through the banana leaves whipping at their snouts until all six of them howled and yapped up one tree in particular. The Hound Boys caught up to the ruckus and began shouting and yelling obscenities as they dragged Reuben down to the soil, and threw his body against a wooden fence overlooking the picnic table.
Reuben stared at his toes under His Master’s stare, knowing a damning grease to be buttering his cheeks, caked under the bed of his nails, saturating spices into the wet stain down his shirt. A rough hand tugged the back of his shirt past his shoulders, and as one of the overseers swung a wooden board overhead there came a shout, “Don’t you dare hit that man! Can’t you see he’s a human being?!” A delicate hand caught hold of the overseer’s wrist and fought with him to lower the board. The boy knew better than to struggle against a Duke’s wife and tossed the wood to a patch of grass. All attempts to inform the madam of the halfbreed’s dirty blood fell on closed ears – apparently she was an expert on such matters and had never seen one so unabashedly human in all her days. Her ruby mouth crumpled with disgust to think humans enslaved amongst elves on this godforsaken plantation and she stormed off down the dusty driveway with a Master Rockinney bowing at her heels like a slave, imploring the duchess to heed his words. A toothy smile spread over Reuben’s face to be spared a beating, but when he saw the faces of the other elves, his expression faltered. They looked at him like he was a traitor.
That night salty rumors spread throughout the plantation – Reuben getting spared beatings now? Marisa’s son, the halfbreed? Surely he thought himself too good to be an elf. Why else would he cut off the only feature he shared in common with us? Reuben pleaded that though the Master had let him off, once the duchess and her company departed he wasn’t spared an inch of the Master’s wrath, just like the rest of them. They dismissed his words. Whenever company came round the other elves sweated under the blazing sunfire, while Reuben stayed inside his shack save more misunderstandings arise. He was even handed a tray of bread rolls to stave his hunger lest he repeat last time’s offense. According to Reuben those damned rolls were stale as a rotting foot, but the other elves weren’t having it. Who in their right mind would complain about the quality of bread rolls while his ‘compatriots’ are out killing themselves in the heat? Hell Reuben had it easier than the women when the Master’s Masters rolled through, his hands weren’t marred with nicks and scrapes but covered in butter and jelly.
Reuben started to act up around the plantation – throwing pineapples at the Hound Boys, urinating in the cane water – proving to the other elves he wasn’t above being punished. The Master did not take kind to the disturbance, and debated what to do with this troublesome elf. He decided to throw this fool out of his plantation, under command that he never return if ever he wished to see his wife and children alive someday. Knowing Reuben he would come crawling back to the Master’s feet, and indeed he was found standing behind a tree down yonder for several days, he had not moved a step from where he was dropped off, his arms wrapped tight around the thick birch to support his weary frame. The Hound Boy who spotted him came with news from the Master: he could return to his people, but only after fulfilling a dangerous request. The word danger sent his eyelids opening, but he followed after that boy like a leashed animal in hopes of seeing the faces of his family again…
THE CONTRACT
~ A Dangerous Request ~
“You planned on leaving this place someday. Here I am fighting to stay.” – a yellow stench painted every syllable to drool off that tongue, a putrid yellow as the teeth that spoke them, a rotten-smelling yellow as this room would be without the windows hovering above their sills. The plush furniture seated throughout the burgundy boudoir became fertile grounds for unpleasant sound-scents: the wash bowl resting beside a hand-crafted nightstand cupped purple water, purple like the crushed herbs inside mama’s ointments, one could feel a familiar sting whenever a cloth splashed into the water. The vanity clicking against the back wall had blackened its mirror, and its groaning cherry hardwoods desaturated to a malevolent shade of ivory, white as the bones its handles were carved from. Only one man had a mind to envision such landscapes, as to anyone else, this master suite was as elegant as they come from the clawed feet of its silver oil lamps to the majestic curtains flowing down the bedposts.
There were only two men left in the room – one staring into a corner, and another who’d become the skeleton under the bedsheets. His veined hands scraped down the crisp linens like a drowning fool grasping at water as he would hard earth. The mattress squeaked upon the four corners of its king-sized bed, then fell silent amidst a backdrop of thunder. Lightning flashed behind the massive windows and the winds threw their ruby curtains open, bleeding a patch of moonlight onto the maple floorboards as a spray of droplets wet the mist curling through the boudoir. This mist too was yellow, and smelled of cat urine the blacksmith’s son carried at his hip to ward off spirits.
Reuben’s curious habit of seeing sounds colored the dark corner he was told to stare into, though the corner of his eye watched a shadow painted on the wall, the silhouette of a deflating man slumped down a mound of pillows. A trembling hand raised a tissue to its cheek as the shadow wheezed out, “Those ears would only get in your way, it’d be the first thing people saw when they looked at you. I know your reasons for doing it. Blood is telepathic.” Reuben could hear a smile in the man’s voice, and for the first time in thirty years – no, not even after a hundred years would he ever have a father.
A wet cough punctuated the thought, “You and I both look forward to never seeing again.”
A soft click touched the nightstand, a nectar splashed into the bowels of a ceramic cup, then a single gulp rinsed it down which worsened into a series of coughs as though the medicine was somehow too thick to swallow. A fist pounded at the shadow’s chest before a heavy sigh blew into the room. “Long before the roses return at the end of the season this room will have become my coffin. The doctor is aware himself of a remedy for my ailmen—” As if to introduce itself, the shadow heaved forward into its napkin, a sickly explosion shooting out its mouth. The trembling hand dragged a tissue down its black face, “My skin is sitting in a bucket at my bedside, and more flakes to these sheets with every passing moment. An immunity to the world’s dirt is damn near impossible without its protective coat, a casual sneeze becomes a death sentence, though I shan’t overwhelm your mind with such talk.”
Master Rockinney grew silent for a few moments, save the tempest rasping out his nostrils as if a furnace took the place of his lungs. “No one…no one has yet found it. I’m in need of a rare bush that grows vertically down a cliffside – the Boulder Lily, it only grows during the hunting season when vultures take roost in the mounts, plucking at whatever fool dares climb up there.”
Reuben crinkled his brow as the cawing of vultures colored his space to a soft pink. His thick fingers curled inside his palms at a hot steam blowing over his hands as when his child fingertip glowed pink from tapping at the red-hot cooktop. The memory was extinguished by the mist speckling onto his wrinkled forehead, and the shadow jerking forward into another coughing fit, every other word from the Master was another cough, until he collapsed back onto his fort of pillows. “Boy…do you know why I chose you?”
Reuben merely stood there. He never spoke a word to his Master in all his life and wasn’t apt to start doing so now.
“There’s a chance I could die from this remedy, a ‘good chance’ as those who resent me would say. Most men are highly allergic to its fragrance, a mere touch of its petals can guarantee death.” The shadow dotted a rag along its hairline, “I need you to tear off one of the petals and eat it. If you live long enough to make it back to this plantation I will know you have immunity. And when the brew has been made, you will drink of it as well. As you have my blood there is a fifty percent chance that if you eat it and live I might be able to withstand it.”
Reuben’s hands clasped together, and his mouth sat upon their calloused knuckles as a sigh blew through his nose. He knew the man fathered four children who dwelled within this estate, Reuben remembered calling out to them as a child to throw his coconut ball back to him, and how they walked past the slave child as they would a ghost. Emmerson, Max Griffin, Manuela, and dear Lemontia were all too precious to touch their lips to this strange remedy, even if their blood was a closer match by virtue of being fully human.
“Prove successful and you will be able to return to this plantation and live amongst your kind even after all the trouble you’ve caused me. I will be gracious enough to overlook it.”
Reuben did not nod his head in agreement, nor offer a word of consent, as the Master was laying down His law, His terms of agreement – Reuben could take it or leave it, do as He said or suffer a lifetime of loneliness.
A soft click struck the nightstand, followed by a spoon clicking against a porcelain rim. “As you depart these doors you will be handed a parchment including a list of names, contacts who have a good mind as to where it may live. I advise you save the one titled The Employer for last – my men knew nothing of this gentleman, where he came from, or what work he had in mind in exchange for the nearest direction to my cure, though this contact responded to me with utter confidence. Save him for last.”
The heavy bedroom doors groaned open into a golden foyer, and a pair of soft hands grasped Reuben’s shoulders, escorting his boots sideways across the room so that he never laid eyes on the prideful master withering away on his bedsheets. Reuben’s broad palm was opened before him, and in it slipped a folded parchment. The folds opened up into a detailed sketch of the exotic flower, smaller depictions from several different angles, and even a diagram of its usual placement within rock formations. Below were only a few accompanying words written in crimson script. Reuben could almost believe one of the master’s grandchildren wrote this text, as if written by a child for another child, or a grown man with the reading comprehension of one. After squinting his eyes down at the words, Reuben reminded himself to burn the parchment on his way out. Reuben may be a slave – but he was not fool enough to surrender to his master’s compromise. He was going to contact The Employer first.
Gentle hands steered Reuben through the grand foyer, his brilliant eyes swept over the lofty ceiling, counting all the tropical birds etched into its rainforest mural as his broad shoulders were driven towards the grand entrance doors. His chin turned towards his shoulder so his eyes could fall on a thicket of blond hair peering around a corner, and curved his mouth into a smile, to which the bashful maid puckered her lips at her husband. His gaze dropped to the pretty faces that followed him to the door, and brought his mouth close to their daggered ears, “When I return, He nor any of his sons will have dominion over you. That I promise.” The maidens widened their glossy eyes at him for a moment, then twisted the golden handle of the front door, and saw to it that Reuben saw himself out.
