Reaping the Harvest Party.

Reaping the Harvest Party.

Postby catch » Mon Sep 02, 2013 7:17 am

It was to be an event like no other. Invitations made personally had gone out two weeks before, and after strange stutters and starts, it was ready to begin. Those who would come begin arriving to the gold-and-blood flapping of Darkenhold's banners, the courtyard that was an explosion of colored flowers, tawny lion lilies and crimson poppies, to match the Lady's colors that flew. The fortress was impregnable, save for one front. That front had long ago been corrupted.

Earlier in the day, they had come by the wagonsful, packed in with linens and decorations, lean but clean folk who were eager to prove themselves, the cooks and cleaners, maids and servers, that Ariane had needed. All it had taken was a word, a clever-word from a well-dressed lad, borrowed quietly from Ariane, since a man upon a poster may not make further visits.

As the day came onto evening, they came then by carriage, by horse-trap, fancier modes of travel, large surreys with far more beautiful decoration, pulled by fine-bred horses. Not as many came. The ones who took Catch's invitation face-to-face with the man had looked upon the posters with a knowing air. But the rich, the swain - they would not be dissuaded. There was a party, of that there was no doubt, and what if the man had fallen out of favor, done some horrible crimes? For here was Darkenhold, ready and waiting, her terraced gardens and paper lanterns that glimmered like jewels, gentle crickets that peeped their songs unseen, late fire-flies that flickered in the wet, manicured underbrush.

There is gentle music. One may wander and hear the murmur of other guests, yet may never see them through the veil of crisp jasmine. Paths sprinkled with mica-shells, to make them glimmer like stars, led to little clearings, where one may gather with one's peers, and admire great, arcing cakes, crisp and cool sandwiches, mulled punch and wine, and nothing as base as beer, mead, or ale.

It was quiet, and genial, and perfect. The night could stretch on to day, and night again. A man or woman may gather in gentle-colored tents, and find there resting-places of soft pillows and stuffed mattresses, no need to worry of being robbed or molested.

Who would notice the man, with a strange, bulky eyepatch, slipping into the stables? A man who whispered into a pitch-black ear, before he slipped the catch of a loose-box lock, and let the beast follow him, if it may, if it could understand his plea, his plan.

A plan to clear Myrkenwood of the swain, if only for a little while.
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Re: Reaping the Harvest Party.

Postby Rance » Tue Sep 03, 2013 3:34 am

She wanted to meet the Lady.

Dame de Lanz arrived on foot, her tiara-and-vine brooch gleaming underneath her chin where she had pinned it to her lapel. Across a swath of yellow-died fabric at her breast, a single droplet of blood -- she'd pierced the tip of her finger with the tiny pin, but that was a sacrifice she would make to attend this: a party, a ball, a celebration of the positive changes made in Myrken Wood.

You look like a plain old fop, Crisken had told her.

I look splendid. I look quite like a keeper. A Lady's keeper. Don't you think?

A cooled cider. A pastry whose powders she refused to get on her autumn-colored garments. The professor's wife shared laughter with the other attendants, trying to hide the mud on her heels beneath her red skirt -- if they'd known she'd walked here, without carriage or accompaniment, they might think her off, a poor woman, nothing more than a Lady's ardent admirer. She drank red and gold-hued drinks until her head got very light and her stomach got very bloated, but she drank still more, talking of the Foundation and why, it would be so fine for every child to attend an academy and the Lady's blooms have been planted; the seeds are in all our hearts!

Dame de Lanz had never been a part of anything before. She was only a morsel amid Myrkentown's forgotten. At fifty-four years of age, she'd never walked more than two thousand steps beyond the border of the township--

--but Darkenhold, under the Lady's grace, was a beautiful, foreign country, and she drank in the graces of prosperity until she was nearly blind.
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Re: Reaping the Harvest Party.

Postby catch » Tue Sep 03, 2013 10:15 am

They came, one by one. And when Madame de Lanz straggled in, when she whisked away with footmen to the proper party-grounds, when the guards - who were only too happy to relax, save for one or two men - left their posts, to have a quiet basement-party by themselves, there was no one to see the two guardsmen struck by a heavy hand. There was no one to see them gently placed, like children, into the guard-house, with food and water, and the door carefully locked. It was a big, iron key, and it burned his hand to touch it, but Catch did not care. He locked the door.

With a beast's strength, he dragged the gates to Darkenhold near-shut.

In all of this, an inky, black shadow followed him. A great horse, his red-rimmed eyes aflame, his nostrils quivering with fresh air that he has not tasted, and his haunches quivering with a need to run. Catch did not touch him, but he held out his hand, a hand that hovered over the great, blasting nostrils.

"Keep them in, Hrimfax," Catch whispered to the horse. "Keep them in, and c-c-call me if they - if they rise."

The town is left with a skeleton-crew, a small group of servants and the un-swained, of folk too poor to be noticed. There are no parties. The tea-houses see little business - but then, most of the more vibrant places of business are carefully locked up, "Out To Holiday" scrawled on drunken signs.

As fate spins on, the swain sing, and they dance, unknowing prisoners in an unknowing Gaol. They could not come to their Lady's aid.

And Catch would wait at the Dagger. He would wait for Agnie, covered in blood, triumphant.
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Re: Reaping the Harvest Party.

Postby Rance » Tue Sep 03, 2013 1:40 pm

This was how it played for the first few hours:

A drink. A mulled punch. The finest little flower-cut berries floating in its depths. A dance. She had a dance with a very sweet fellow who stank of so much cider and perfume.

"My husband had a bitch. Sad old bitch, suffering thing that it was. I've naught the attention or patience for hounds, for all their--" she must choose the right word, "--impropriety. Always dragging in mud. Dead old cats and rats. Terrible thing to have in the house. Hemorrhaged while giving birth to a litter."

"My word," he said, drunk and Lady-glazed.

"My word indeed. Indeed. You dance quite well. You dance like a good gentleman. Shall we have a drink."

"Dame," he said. "You're Dame de Lanz, aren't you? Fine brooch you have. Fine drinks we're having. Very fine ball this is."

"Fine music," she said.

"Shall we no longer talk of your bitch," he said. "Lady Burnie might verily disapprove."

Autumn did not always bleed into the conversations as well as it did white fabric.
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Re: Reaping the Harvest Party.

Postby catch » Thu Sep 05, 2013 6:17 pm

Hours? A day, now, two, and three, and the festivities see no surcease, save for the very end of a night, save when musicians must rest weary lungs and fingers. And even then, there are always a few revelers to be found. Stretch out on luxurious mattresses, and in the morning there are tables of cold eggs and sizzling sausages, cooled melons and fine, delicate ciders and wines. There are the ponds and lakes, basins and baths to bathe in, fresh changes of clothing. Even those poorer folk, the ones who had only one, good, Sunday outfit, could be fitted with something fine and passable while their clothes were cleaned and pressed, ready for the next day.

Dame de Lanz' fine companion had spoken of nothing but the Lady, of the Flowers, of the vintages and of others, how they used to be before the Lady's grace touched them, and how much improved they were, now -

And it would, surely, become extremely tiresome before much longer.

Chivalrous and utterly shallow though he was, he and the rest of his ilk, still they would find themselves from the party, the gentleman holding her in his strong arms, his lips pursed for a chaste kiss, more than drunk and a swained mind too addled to realize it. he did not go for her with an animal lust, but a gentle one. A kiss upon her brow, her lips; a brief brush against her throat, and almost her collar-bone before he stopped, his dull, lifeless eyes gazing, with interest, past her.

"Look," he clucks. "Someone's fine beast has gotten loose," and indeed it had. It was a grand, proud stallion, black as midnight, black as sin. It was grazing on what grasses it could get, close to the great, grand courtyard, where the doors remained shut. The stallion lifted his head, and small, red-rimmed eyes focused on them, it's ears perked. It was almost as if it held a cool, strange intelligence, though after a moment more, it lowered it's head once more to graze.

"Do you know much about horses," the man asks, faintly perturbed, brows gathering in his face. It could break a leg, or something equally horrid that would ruin the Harvest Party. "I'm afraid I don't know much about horses."
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Re: Reaping the Harvest Party.

Postby Rance » Wed Sep 25, 2013 12:20 pm

Hours went on. Days. Until this moment, when his lips were lascivious and she did not refuse them because a lady in autumn colors must not; Crisken would never know, should never know, and he was such an old boring sack of grain anyway. No, a kiss was nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all, even with a man whose name she'd not yet gotten. She'd a brooch that shone with the Lady's grace and he tasted of cider and smoke. His lips were leeches and hers were dry twists of leather. A few drinks and the laughter was worth it all; this place was exempt from the rules of her household because it throbbed with the greater grace of the Lady--

So he kissed and she grew hot with a blush, scarcely aware that the grass became thicker beneath them or that she ventured to brush a breast with clumsy affection across his forearm.

"I don't know a thing about horses. I know that they might be ridden, that they might pull a plough. This fellow looks like he could do it all. Such a fine beast," she whispered, never looking toward the muscular steed at all. But at the man who touched her. At his chest, at his hands, at all the parts of him that did not make her feel like a webby-skinned loon too white of hair and aching of hip to have a bit of fun.

The musicians played again. They would play for days and days. All the greatest songs. Tireless lutes and wild dulcimers.

"I could stay here forever," Dame de Lanz said. "It's like our own little world. I simply wish the beast weren't here; I simply wish we could take a stroll somewhere quieter. Don't you?"

Dame de Lanz didn't want to know his name. It might shatter the ephemeral gold-and-red beauty of the moment.

"The Lady gives us pleasures," said the professor's aging wife to her younger liason. "But she doesn't have to be the only one who knows how to please."

Over the following days, as the ball became a weeklong fancy -- a tiny nation filled with all she could want and ever need -- she drank until the guilt washed away.
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