KIPLIN LIBERTINE :: D4 :: DONE

Empty bones, you once held a heart that beat- scurrying rat- and a mouth that spoke- warbling bird note- and a mind that felt- human emotions, because you were so almost human. Now, bowed, bleached, broken, you are nothing. Vertebrae missing, ribbed cracked, you are worthless. Perhaps where you mint condition, properly constructed and set up on a base, your mammalian frame work could be purchased for a couple dollars by some rich oddball who liked the look of you, but more-than-likely you would collect dust on some shelf in the shop for years, taking up room that could display something with worth.

Skittery fingers poke through the sand to uncover more shards of fractured bone- the lower jaw, a femur, a fleck of finger. Grey cloud meets grey sea meets grey sand- one two three- three shades of bound heart and ribboned emotions that compose a district-song. The white skeleton stands out. It’s funny that dark death could be such a pure white.

“Poor lonely thing” he says, small words from a small mouth, too-big adult teeth in the front, and too-small milk teeth in the back. “Had I all the money in the world, I’d give it for you.”

After all, value is only what someone would pay.

And so he collects each little fraction of white that he can find, and cups them in the wool of his jumper and takes what used to be forever back to the dim shop that is his whole world.

A mess of dark hair bobs it’s way through the skinny roads that smell like sweat and sea-spray. Inky eyes dart this way and that, little beetles that catch the light and run away with it. They miss nothing- each detail is important, each detail pulls together the threads of a story. He’s skinny, of course- his days are spent scampering, directionless, like a confused rodent- the same type as he holds in his sweater. But his limbs are long, slender branches of a thirteen-wintered tree, as if one day he could be tall. For now, he’s not. He’s the baby brother, the little cute one that doesn’t really have a purpose.

A tarnished brass bell sings out as the door creaks open and, two footsteps later, swings shut behind him. Engraved into the instrument’s burnished sides is a horror-story, a whole world, but no one has time to read it. Everything in the shop has a tale to it, but no one takes the time to ask about them.

“I do.”

No one, that is, except Kip. He prides himself in knowing everything he can find about each little nick-nack that finds it’s way into the gloom that he calls home. A ring, the fossilized remnants of a dissolved love, or an arm chair, sold to pay for the funeral of the man it once comforted, a final farewell. They all had stories behind them- he could practically see the emotion- a lithe fog- dancing through them.

Perhaps that was why the Ripley boys have always fascinated him so much. They came through the blanketed night- they always do. Satchels full of plots that he could taste, yet not read, their items were silent. Often, he asks where they came from- “Jude, where on earth did you find a shell with carvings like this?”- but the answers are always the same- “Oh, shut up, Kip.” He doesn’t mind that much. The items come in, and he makes up his own versions of their narratives. He gets lost in names and syllables and precise times that mean nothing to anyone but him. Gold coins jingle, songs like that of the seabirds that perch on his roof in periods of rough swells, from the hands of his father to the Ripleys, and the customers to his father, and his mother to the shopkeepers. That’s all the family is ever searching for- goods to sell so that there was enough money to put food on the table. Eight mouths, even in the relative wealth of district four, are not easy to feed.

In particular, he likes watching those who came into the shop to buy. The ones who come in to sell their goods smell like poverty and have downcast eyes, faces unreadable, words spelt out in their objects and the money that was exchanged for them. He likes the way his father can read someone by their clothes, and knows instantly what their lowest offer would be, so that he could make the best possible margin, the most potatoes and herrings to be purchased with the earnings from one simple little locket. But the ones who want to take from their little pawnshop, crammed to bursting with odds and ends that could just prove valuable to someone, they flaunt their stories. Cut hands from pearl farming, or a faint whiff of prawns, they like to show off where their money comes from, and what they can spend it on, too. And they buy the strangest of things- a dolphin statue missing its tail, or a biscuit tin- just for the sake of buying something.

Money has always fascinated him. The way a new-but-used item is worth very little, but something from the dark ages is worth such a lot- he lets the numbers rot cavities into his teeth. He likes the way that a kilo of tuna had a very set price, until there’s a shortage and everyone scrambles coins and notes at the shopkeepers, who are then able to choose the best price like an assortment of sweets. How his father is be deathly-certain of a price until a potential customer turns their back, how putting a ‘SALE’ sticker on an item suddenly increases the likelihood of someone taking it home. He can’t understand why the human mind has such an obsession with saving money to be spent on other nothings, but he loves it.

But mostly, he likes how stories can influence coins. Once, word got out that they were auctioning the jewellery of some past Victor, Game-fortune spent on liquor and Morphling. And although the pendants and earrings were not dissimilar from those that had been sitting in the counter-cabinet for over a year, the price of these particular items pin wheeled, a tidal wave gaining momentum. That spring was a comfortable one for the Libertines, and all for the fact that people wanted to wear a little bit of a story that had once captivated them.

The shop has always been his whole life. That never worries him, either- the ever changing ocean of pawned goods has always fascinated him. He loves the way that it brings the family together, that without being told they all have their own little jobs to do- except for himself. He always finds that when he does to do a job, it’s already been done- one of his older sibling has taken on that responsibility. He feels like he’s just a drag on the family, an empty chest-of-draws taking up precious room, never being sold. Very rarely does he help with the sales, or with the purchasing- mostly he just sits around inventing adventures in his mind.

For a boy with such an obsession with value, he certainly has very little.