Rache (unfinished)

* * * This isn't finished. It was for a class and was supposed to be awesome, but I was way too tired and too late-starting to make it so. So fill in your own pieces.* * *1

Our old house had seemed lonely of late. It was a gray, excessive thing situated precariously upon a jagged black cliff that leaned out over a sprawling valley in the heart of the Alps, pride of Switzerland. The mountains rose up high around it, peaking up to some 8,000 feet and further topped with snow and a blanket of firs and pines that were home to black-horned chamois and ibex.2

I rode a faithful mare up the path that wound up the cliff to home, completely solitary, carefully steering through the muddy stream that formed from the mountains' glacial water and mixed readily with gray soil behind our house.3

I stepped off my mare and guided her by the reins to our little wooden stable, confirmed she was properly fed and watered, and walked up the steep incline to the house.4

Swinging the back door open, I was immediately greeted by a wave of warmth and the sweet smell of bürli.5

"A little late in the day for a breakfast bread, wouldn't you say Nadja?" I said, struggling to shut the door as a frigid gust of wind fought to keep it wide open.6

Nadja, our head housekeeper, whipped her head around from the kitchen stove to face me.7

"Of course, Herr Vagel! I was making the bürli in advance for tomorrow's breakfast since you prefer it cool. Tonight I'm preparing rippli, fresh from the butcher in town."8

I sighed. "You know me too well!"9

"I should hope so- I've only been working for Vagels since your father was a child." She turned back around to face the kitchen countertop, liberally applying herbs to the aforementioned rippli.10

I chuckled and strode through the kitchen, mentioning lightly that the sooner the ribs were ready the better, and made my way through the sprawling house to the front porch.11

The second I creaked open the door I was accosted by a gust that chilled me to the bone. I stepped out quickly onto the porch and shut the door.12

The deadly mountain temperatures were worth enduring for our cliffside view of the valley below. It was at once empty and full- though it was mostly made up of grass and boulders, a man could stand studying that vast bowl until his blood turned to ice. I remembered the way Svendja, my bride, suffered nearly a year before she grew accustomed to the thin air the house breathed but would entertain no thought of leaving the place.13

Svendja... how I missed her moody presence in our great house. I turned my gaze downward to firs and pines that had once seemed to me so bendable to human will...