The Art of the Possible

The Art of the Possible

Postby Glenn » Fri Dec 13, 2013 3:05 am

Myrkeners enjoyed a show. Their lives were hard. Their education was base (though not as base as it was a year before. Literacy rates had risen and that was an odd, strange gift of the last many months). They were dirt farmers and low craftspeople and merchants just getting by. They knew how to find enjoyment in life where they could and when that entertainment came to them, even better. The posters were only up for a day. The criers only cried for a day. This was a people in need of answers almost as much as it needed food and warmth. Even more than that, though, this was a people who needed an escape.

What was more entertaining than hearing the Governor speak?

At the allotted time, he would emerge to a hastily built stage in the market square. He used a cane. He was gaunt and pale. Each step seemed to cost him something, but he visibly paid the cost, teeth grit, determination in his eyes. He was dressed simply in his earth tones. Nicely made clothes that were hardly to be considered nice, not by the standards of this last season, that was.

There was strength in his voice when he spoke but strain as well. "I stand here before you, before my people, my very reason for living, for standing my ground, for fighting over the least few years. I stand here before you and i look at your faces. What do I see? Loss, pain, hurt, betrayal. Most of all, though, I see resolve. I see your hearts and your spirit in your eyes. I see survival and I see endurance. We survive. We endure." Known for his strength of breath, for his long sentences, he had to pause now and again. He did so dramatically. They endured, but... "I wanted something more for you though, for all of us. I wanted us to thrive. I wanted us to succeed. I wanted us to be something more than we ever had been before. Perhaps I wanted it too badly, because I knew, better than anyone, that we deserved it so very much."

The wind was cold and the sky was clear. His face had already become flush. "We reached higher than before. We dared in the face of history and menace. We took the hurt of years past and used it as fuel and drive. We dared to dream. We were not fools in this. We were not unprepared. We learned from our past. There were checks in place. There was groundwork laid. There were mechanisms contrived to push back against the darkness.

"Yet still, the darkness came, as it always does. It came in the form of a fae creature, a storyteller, a gnarled and twisted old thing, glamoured by beauty, and hiding, devilishly enough, in a frame that matched its true self. This creature fed upon us, upon our pain and our dreams. It distracted us with fantasies, shards of glass that contained our truest, most secret, desires and with beasts, wolves, and horrors that meant to distract.

"Ultimately, it meant to take our children, an entire generation, our future." His tone oscillated. This was a man who knew control, but could not hold it in the face of what had happened, not with the wind buffeting him, not with the physical weakness constraining him. Anger and offense seeped in. "We've known such horrors, but this time we had the means to fight back, to not prevent a tragedy but to contain it. We were able to bring the creature to justice, were able to punish it. When the Ashfiend struck, it was a year and countless deaths before we were able to end the threat. Here, the capture was within a day." Lives were lost, yes, but they were a drop in the sea of what had been lost before, what might have been lost. He still wore the pain of even one dead child under his regime on his face, sunken eyes staring out at the crowd with fire behind them.

"It came at a cost, however." His voice softened, weakened, but just for a moment. He would make those in the crowd strain to hear, before finding a second wind and projecting once more. "The girl who was Rhaena Olwak cared as you care, as I care. She went to barn dances. She befriended farmgirls. She chose Myrken over her own home. She suffered at the hands of Drow, at the hands of what befell Myrken. It was more than that though. Through her power, she felt the pain of others. She could not block it out; it was always there, a dagger pressing into her skull. When you hurt, she hurt. Imagine years of this. It left her broken, twisted, unable to deal with reality and unable to deal with life. She ran from reality and helped in what ways she could. She was harmless until the Creature's final spell took her saccharine fantasies and turned them outward. The Creature unleashed a madness within her. It turned woman into Monster. Rhaena now wanted to end the pain no matter the cost. She no longer saw how the pain shaped us, how it revealed our humanity and how our triumphs mattered all the more because of it. She lost sight of why the fight matters in the first place."

"Due to the Creature's vengeance, we traded one monster for another." So many words and so much emotion behind them, so much darkness and truth. It wore upon him, but he gripped his cane more tightly and continued onwards. He had been so young that even now, looking years older, he still seemed a young man, if one that had just been through a war. "Change, growth, progress, improvements in our lives and that of our children take generations and sacrifices. Rhaena had become blind to that. She no longer cared about the worth behind such things but only about the shiny exterior that life could be dressed in. She wished to bypass all of that work. She would hollow out Myrken and leave nothing but a beautiful, empty facade. All that was good and caring in her had been twisted and made into a mockery. She had become a Monster inspired by acts of kindness and goodness," and where else could such a being exist with so much verve and visceral impact than Myrken Wood. It made monsters out of all of them eventually.

"This happened gradually, and shamefully I was blinded to it." He pressed the cane down upon the stage, pushing back against it for support. He grit his teeth but did not look away from the crowd. "We were connected on a primal level and for a time she was able to distract me. As I dealt with more immediate threats, she was able to pass laws to others, warping their minds to think this was done in my name. Many ends that ultimately benefited you and your families were enacted through her twisted means. We are, on a daily basis, unraveling this web of corruption, for when dark actions benefit us as a people, we are likewise darkened by them. Just as we must not lose our humanity, just as we must not give up on one another, we also must not stoop to the levels of the monsters and creatures that would prey upon the innocent and the helpless." Finally, with a grunt, the cane fell and he stood tall, controlling his expression but not the pain that gleamed in his eyes. "We must be better than that. She was not, and we will have to rebuild our character and our spirit in response. I will not rest until this corruption is stamped out once and for all and we are better once again."

Having divested himself of assistance, he was left adrift on that stage with no support, with no aid. All he could do was stand as tall as he was able and endure. It's all any of them could do. "Ultimately, when her madness reached its apex, it was her goal to transform your minds in one fell swoop. All of Myrken would change forever in an instant. Despite further distraction, this time from the Crowd, I was able to permanently prevent this, to limit her power; however, I was betrayed and captured, tossed aside to where the Creature itself had been imprisoned. Her plans had been foiled so she was forced to turn to more mundane means, transforming one threat at a time, and devising whatever means available to influence or terrorize others.

"The good people of Myrken opposed her, the Marshall amongst others, but they were captured or transformed." Another pause, and a wipe at his brow. He was as human as any of them and this was too much, too soon. He had asked for time and some was purchased for him, but Burnie knew on some level, even if perhaps not deeply enough, that being away from public life had a cost of its own. With a breath, he would continue, voice booming even more loudly than before. "Agnieszka Kaczmarek, your daughter, your sister, your cousin and as much as a Myrkener as anyone, in a last ditch attempt to stop this madness, seized power. She had become the greatest threat of all and the Monster Olwak seized upon her, taking her mind with all of the power she had left. Agnieszka, however, continued to fight back. She continued to push her will and stubbornness and frankly, bullheadedness against the magical sieve that constrained her. She continued to try to fight free where no other could, even as the Monster Olwak forced through laws in her name.

"Even as you suffered in her name, Agnieszka fought for you and for herself." Another breath was needed and for a moment it seemed like he might collapse then and there. He blinked, a rare thing on this morning, and he exhaled and he continued on. "With a few others, brave souls that had gone to liberate me, including our adopted brethren Cinnabar Calomel and Gloria Wynsee, a man of strength and a young woman of the people, we destroyed the Creature I had been imprisoned with. At that same moment, Agnieskza finally broke free." His voice did not drop in intensity even as the pain within it mounted. "I was still loosely connected to the Monster that had been my betrothed on that day, you must understand. I saw it through her eyes and I remember what you do not, what even our sister does not. For Agnieszka Kaczmarek cared. She cared about her family, her home, her people and her duty so much that she was able to do what no other could. She broke free from the Monster Olwak's control and drove a blade into the heart of the beast that was strangling Myrken. Though she knows it not, it was she that saved them all."

He would let this revelation drift through the crowd, but only for a few scant seconds. There was more to be done and he only had so much strength left. "We were vulnerable because we had dreams. We were a worthy target for the Creature because we dared for something more. We saw those dreams contorted and twisted, the meaning behind them forgotten and discarded through the evil of Monster Olwak. Despite that, we cannot turn back. We cannot give up. We cannot lay down and wait for the next beast to rip and tear at our spirits and our lives. The dream is still worthwhile. There is more to life than just being beasts who breed and eat and die. We have seen the worst of it and now we can search again for the best. We will learn from this. We will work together and we will continue to push forward while ensuring it will never happen again.

"The winter will be hard. There will be hunger. There is a need to rebuild, but we know hunger and we know loss and we have rebuilt before, each time better and stronger than the last. There is nothing more human than compassion and there is nothing more Myrken than helping one another when times are darkest. We are Myrken Wood. We survive. We endure. We strive for something more. The darkness comes but we push back against it each and every time, and it will take more than this to end our dreams and break our spirit." Even with the last word his voice rang out. There was nothing innately special about Glenn Burnie. He did not have Cinnabar's silver hair or strength. He did not have Catch's size or even his scar. He did not have the warm beauty of a Zilliah or the cold, northern, handsomeness of Ariane Emory or Agnieszka Kaczmarek. He did not have Treadwell's mass or Gloria Wynsee's foreign thickness. All he had was his breath and his words and his spirit.

Today, like every day, this average seeming young man, looking very much the worst for wear had given Myrken Wood all that he possessed. Before it had not been enough. Would today be any different?
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby catch » Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:14 am

In the silence that followed, a man's silence, a herd's silence - full of coughs, ragged breaths, and the undertow of humanity - Glenn's words lingered, not a noise or word uttered during his speech, or even after, as if every ear and every brain must make sense. The information was much. Not everyone knew the story. There are some heads that nod, some that turn to one another and mutter how it was sort of right, wasn't it? To want to better themselves, to build up enough to rival Razasan in size and glory. Misguided, perhaps, but now Glenn's plan could be theirs, and what could go wrong? They had faced Baie, and Drow, famine and sickness, Spires and Mad Dreams. The dreamers among them thought this. The rich ones, those untouched by Rhaena's madness, thought this.

There is a disturbance at the front, nearest the podium. It is a man, a man already made thin by the lingering food, a rag-and-bone man who made his scant living fetching ashes and chinks and half-burned refuse from the pyres of the rich for the soap-makers and the taverns and bars who were cheap, and thrifty in spending. His children sold matches in the winter-time, and flowers in the summer. He pushed one ahead of him now, an urchin, a creature that shook and looked about him, empty-eyed and drooling. The man was wary of the constables that ringed the podium, wary of the minotaur in constable's clothes that stood there, firm as an ox. But he was not to wary to speak, a fanatic's tone in his voice, and his eye glittering in rage.

"They done this to my boy," he demands, lifting his voice above the mutter and murmur of a crowd. "They done this, SHE done this, an' you an' your pretty dreams! The fuckin' Kaczmarek Witch touched 'im, and what future be there for my boy?" His voice is a high-pitched scratch, rat's nails on the wood, lifted into an angry howl. "Where's your future for my boy! How's words gonna feed us? How's words gonna fix 'im! She done it, didn't she? The damned Witch?"

Rhaena was beyond their reach. Rhaena was gone. There was another Witch who remained, and there are hungry eyes in the crowd, hungry eyes and lips curled over teeth. There are those that shift in discomfort, but the way their eyes turn from the Governor, the way some are already leaving, determination remaining - not in Glenn, for Glenn, but in themselves. To them, here were the excuses. Here were the brave words, and they would have to deal with things themselves, as Myrkeners always did, without their Government.

"They done this to us, the fat, smart-ass bastards!" The man still raged on, the silence around him becoming more of a dull twitching, like a great beast trying to rouse. "This ain' no Baie, no Drow, but our own - flesh an' blood - an' they needs pay with flesh an' blood!"
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby Tolleson » Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:19 am

Glenn Burnie, a man of many words, but always the right ones, with the right cadence, in the right order. It was touching to hear him speak of Rhaena, inspiring to hear him speak of banding together, and all the while unsettling to watch.

Genny stood beside the platform, near but out of the light and out of the way. Her eyes never left him, watering as he spoke of Rhaena, of strength, endurance, and thriving. Her eyes wide as the cane fell away. She jolted forward at once to aid him but stopped before even a step was taken. He had wanted this. This was his moment to explain, to apologize, to regain the hearts and reawaken faith.

She chewed her lip, listening, watching the crowd as he finished. It was true, though he is handsome enough and a surely capable fighter, he had very little now beyond his mind and words. But today and for many days before, however unapparent, he had the clumsy redhead on his side. A silent supporter, no more, and perhaps even less gifted, as she lacked even the mastery of words; she would, if she were able instill in all that stood before him the same fundamental faith she had in Burnie. But she was not Rhaena, not in beauty, in power, or talent. She would give him her strength, if only she knew how. So, he is left with an unwavering support, little more than the breath, those words, and his unflagging spirit. But she did know what he did now, she knew how much he gave just to speak, just to walk, just to stand alone before them and she would be there, someone used to falling, to catch him if he should fall.
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby catch » Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:49 am

It was not that he had other things to do. He had work at Darkenhold, trying to drag too-little food out of Airy Ann's green-house. He had work to do with his sampler, still struggling with it, despite his new, strange desire. He swung his sword, his horn, like an axe, trying to find a way for his crooked hands to solidly grip it, and a way to move that did not make shoulders, or back, scream in pain. But aside from these things, Catch was too shy to embark on his Knighthood.

Aside from these things, there was no excuse for him, when Cherny spoke of Glenn. Nothing but a a deep anger, a deep and sullen denial. Glenn had not cared for him, about him. Glenn had left him alone, when he needed him most. Because of that, he did not need Glenn, did not want him. Did not want to see him.

Except that he did.

He was nervous around the crowd, jittering fingers that played along a boy's legs, for he had hoisted Cherny - light as the boy was - onto his humped shoulders, to give the Squire a better view, and gripped soundly those precious legs, so that Cherny would not fall off. His eyes roved over the crowd, to see if they had any brass-headed cudgels, any canes to use against him.

"He has a c-c-cane again," Catch says, for it was all he knew to say, despair and distaste. He had smashed the last one to bits, and that was where it belonged. The addled man shifted his weight, for not only did he have Cherny, but he had his horn, too, tied with clumsy twine to his back, bulging under the Constable's coat that Cherny had got for him. Glenn's words came through his ears, and out another. They were nothing to him. All he could see, all he could focus on, was that cane. That cane was Glenn's words, his world, and they tapped against his brains. Against the brains of others.

"He n-n-needs to stop that," Catch says, twisting his head around to gaze up at Cherny, anxiety pulling his lips up and over his teeth. "All th-th-that tapping. Everyone hates it. D-d-did he say he has food to g-g-give? Wh-wh-what is he fixing?"
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby Rance » Fri Dec 13, 2013 6:14 am

Here and there, pockets of confusion, men and women turning to one another to ask, “Saccharine?” as if requiring clarification; others gripped the forearms of their fellows, saying, “I’ve heard this before, I’ve heard it a thousand times,” and, “It’s convenient he went missing -– it’s convenient he’s giving this speech right now,” as though the world around them was comprised of some grand conspiracy. It was so fine, the speech; the criers had been shouting out for hours, calling attention, promising--

“Relief! Merriment! The Governor’s return!”

The seamstress had come, but with stiff motions and stony legs. The fear of the crowd was a gem in her eyes. Jernoah had had its masses, its commonfolk, those converged around a single podium while one voice, one mind, one pair of eyes dictated reason and purpose to them. Jernoah had its bloodthirst, for to say the wrong thing was to ask for neck to be stranger to the head, and to champion reason against rebuttal was to open one's arms and breast freely to the violence of a violent people.

Glenn Burnie stopped speaking. She breathed as though the air were thin and her was chest compressed. There were people behind her, nudging up against her spine, nearly folding her over with their presence. At her sides, at her front, there were Myrkeners too, a sea of people who -– if they did not speak aloud their aspersions and displeasures -– certainly wore it in their eyes as though insult were an insect that had crawled into their skin and glowed within them.

She’d heard fragments, explanations, and pieces.

I wanted, Glenn had said, with so many possible permutations between that verb and the sentences’ caesurae.

He spoke of eleven children, eleven.

A woman several feet away let out a gasp, the kind fettered by swollen lips, refusing emotion.

And then he said her name.

Gloria’s wrist, just beneath the cuff of her tattered glove, stirred awake with an old, burgeoning ache. A memory written across the skin. She tugged at the sleeve of her dress, yanking it down to cover an unseen disturbance despite the fabric's protest against the bend of her elbow. Turned left, then right, dancing her gaze across the rest of the audience crushing in around her, their hot breath mingling in the air like so much steam or smoke. Lost the remainder of his words as her heartbeat started to rush against the thin membrane of her inner ear.

The heartbeat stuttered, sounds given shape to histories in her mind, and she thought it murmured, with iambic patience--

(Calamity, Calamity!)

--but she wasn’t sure, she couldn’t be sure.

In the distance near the riser –- was that Genny Tolleson there, silent and standing by, a mane of red like fire? -– a man snarled on behalf of his boy, payment of flesh an’ blood, and the rest of the crowd was energized by it, throbbing with agreement, all of them a thin sheet of saturated parchment bending, flaking away, a dam against a surefire tide.

A scar caught her eye. Tufts of platinum hair. Not so far away, Catch, Mister Catch. Cherny.

She dragged her bonnet down, bent it against cheeks and forehead as if to hide beneath its swarthy fabric, then began to shoulder her way through various tense bodies towards the beacon of her friends, hoping no one would look at her, that they wouldn’t match her face with--

(Today, we mourn the death of a Calamity, and the birth of one)

--the name the Governor had spoken only moments before.
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby Treadwell » Fri Dec 13, 2013 8:41 am

It's funny to hold the position of Acting Governor when the real, genuine Governor returns to his post.

All this is meant to be Glenn's moment. It's Glenn's chance to explain everything and set it all to rights.

Thus, Aloisius Treadwell comes nowhere near this makeshift stage mere yards from his toy shop door. For one, he doesn't trust its construction to be any sturdier than the one that dropped him through its floorboards in 170. At least this stage doesn't look to be rotten, but the workmanship! Hasty, shoddy, creaky.

Treadwell stands, instead, in the doorway of his toy store, warmly dressed in a red velvet robe and hood with white gloves and sash. He listens. He grunts quietly to add emphasis here and there in agreement. He, too, leans on his cane, though not from malnourishment and physical tortures and captivity. Far, far from it!

And then the audience begins to react. Some faces relax, reassured. Others? Fat, smart-ass bastards. Calls of vengeance against their own--against fellow Myrken folks.

None of this truly bodes well.

Just over half of the Tubbian Church's stores and just under half of its pigs (already slaughtered and prepared for cooking) have been safely distributed from the doors of the meetinghouse in recent weeks, overseen by Treadwell, prepared by Tubbians, and protected by what constables he could manage--mostly a decorative presence, of course, but a necessary one to prevent from hunger leading to madness. The meetinghouse had been deemed a safe spot that wouldn't interfere too much with the dwindling shops in the market, a place where a system could be created to help, for now, with caring for the welfare of the hungriest families. A mental note is made to ration another quarter of the food and drink and kill for more pork, to be given out during next week.

The townsfolk need stability. They need reassurance. Filling up their bellies and their mouths is a good way to stall, if not prevent, any undue and hasty actions.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby Jirai » Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:12 am

A speech by the Governor. This, of course, could not be missed. Few things could, really, but speeches like this especially. Cat had done a bit of scrabbling to get a perch with a good view, unobstructed by irritating things like adults. The urchin had also been sure to distribute a few other of the remaining street children - much better fed and educated than they had been a few months ago - throughout the crowd to ensure that nothing was missed. After all, the reactions of others would be just as interesting as the speech itself.
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby Cherny » Sat Dec 14, 2013 7:15 am

It's a different perspective, perched on Catch's shoulders, and after uncertain protests - b-but your back, you, your bones - he'd found himself with a view clear across the market square to the podium. Normally he'd be looking for a box to stand on, or squirming through the press of bodies in search of a spot closer to the front, but from up here he can see everything. Habit has him glancing to the rooftops - counting crows, as the Marshall had half-joked - but thereafter his attention is for the stage, and the distant figure of the Governor.

His thin fingers absently work their way into Catch's curls, palms pressed to the scalp beneath - warming his hands or cooling the madman's brains, it's hard to say which - and he listens intently, features solemn. The Governor speaks and speaks, and the boy struggles to snare meaning from the river of words. Plucking out the important parts, passing them on to the addled man in terms he knows and can understand.

"He's t-telling stories." Murmured for his friend's bestial ear, and there's a note of distaste in the boy's voice. He recognises the cadences, the patterns used in the weaving of tales. "About h-how the L-lady took over and, p-put him in a h-hole, and put her fingers in everyone's h-heads." Things he knows already, things Catch knows already. Perhaps news to others in the crowd, perhaps simply confirming suspicions.

"And s-saying how things'll b-be alright. If, if we're brave and w-work together."

Platitudes. Platitudes and reassurances.

What follows has him frowning, though, has him hesitant to continue, unsure that he's properly understood the meaning of the Governor's words.

"He... he s-says the, the Worm-woman killed her." Doubt, disbelief in voice and features as he reports this, and a slight press from his hands upon the addled man's scalp. "H-he says ev-everyone forgot - everyone went inside th-their heads except h-him and, and he s-saw the W-worm-woman do it and, and she s-saved everyone."

A tension in thin limbs, tight anger in pale features beneath the brim of his blackened pot helm as he remembers the months of fear, of Rhaena Olwak's creeping influence, the changes wrought subtly at first, and with increasing brutality in the final days.

An angry voice lifts in protest, far away to the front of the crowd, and though it's difficult to make out the words the timbre is clear enough - accusation, outrage, derision. The Governor is done talking for the moment, and the people of Myrkentown murmur among themselves while the boy searches the podium for other figures - one in particular - but to no avail. His hand drops briefly to grip at Catch's fingers, twisted and ill-healed, and when he speaks again it is a furious hiss.

"He's n-not telling stories."

Cherny had been little short of awed when first he'd met Governor Burnie - a man as renowned and distant as any creature of myth or heathen god, a name to whom appeals might be made and grievances directed. The boy had been honoured when asked to assist the Governor, to ride beside him and hear of his grand vision for Myrken Wood; he'd been proud to do his part in pursuit of that vision, to make the necessary sacrifices to build something brighter. For the better part of a year he's slept with a dead man's bones for a pillow because the Governor asked it of him, entrusted that responsibility to him, a mere mill-boy.

And then he'd gone. Disappeared, leaving Myrken Wood at his lady's mercy, to reappear only long weeks after she'd finally been overthrown by the efforts of others. Those who'd remained behind, those who'd suffered and struggled and hoped for Glenn Burnie's return through the red-and-gold summer. Who'd waited for him to end the Lady's misrule and set the land to rights.

So what is this, this piece of empty mummery, this recital of brave platitudes and hollow reassurances, but one more failure, one more betrayal to go with the rest?

The boy's voice is raw with betrayal, with the hurt of this latest disillusionment. Had he really revered this man, this half-withered scarecrow who sways and struggles on the stage, who speaks for so long and yet offers nothing?

Had he really been so easily-impressed? So trusting, so naive, so stupid?

"H-he, he's telling lies."
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby channe » Sat Dec 14, 2013 8:29 am

Not many people would have really noticed the girl with the scarf on her head. She walked carefully, with a cane half-supporting her weight, and a nondescript man in browns, carrying a sword and a dagger at his belt, beside her. A guard. Obviously -- obviously a guard, someone people might recall as a member of the Militia. Maybe not many people would have noticed, then, the girl's strangled sob when Agnieszka's name was first mentioned, and the way her hand flies to her mouth, how she bites down on her gloved hand. How she shakes her head.

It was Ariane, she thinks. It was Ariane, it had to be, it was the only thing that made sense. Not me. Not me.

And then the mood of the crowd changes.

She would not have had Glenn say these things about her to a crowd -- not when she was in the middle of the crowd. Not now; not ever. She knows the mechanics of a crowd; knows how changeable they can be. She grew up in crowds, angry crowds, terrified crowds, hungry marketplace crowds. The mood of a crowd was shaped by its loudest members, and within seconds of the man's utterance she knows at the bottom of her roiling stomach that she wasn't going to get the sympathetic treatment. No; no, not after she killed her best friend, not after she drove her sword through the heart -- and oh, there was so much blood -- of the woman she'd adopted into her heart next to Nela and Trudy.

No. She was now Agnieszka Kaczmarek, kinslayer, and rather than thank her for staking her soul for their salvation, they were going to make sure she was sent right to hell.

There were things to do. Many things. She'd promised Ariane a week, and she wasn't going to go back on that promise. She had to see Glenn and strangle the shit out of him. But first -- and this was the hardest thing, she thinks -- she has to get out of this crowd.

She nods to the man and they begin an exit towards the side-street.
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby Rance » Sat Dec 14, 2013 9:07 am

The crowd was an ever-changing presence, an amoebic, shifting, leaning, pulsing presence, fat with confusion and pregnant with varying levels of discord. A swath of people abruptly cut her off from Catch and Cherny as people flowed forward to congregate with others in the crowd. One of them inadvertently hooked her elbow, struck her with his own, spun her, trampled the hem of her skirt beneath farmer-heels, and turned her in another direction.

Her cheeks were hot, burning. What if they recognize Cherny as Elliot's squire? What if they turn to look at him and misdirect their aggression? But Mister Catch was there, a predefined lunatik, a pariah whose muscles and presence could do more to a crowd than hers ever could. She was one girl; Catch was a mountain, a proper protector.

Behind her, a path opposing the tide of people began to form. A hobbling figure, lean and scarf-hidden, moving abruptly away from the masses. This, she recognized, because she wanted to leave too.

Cowards, she thought, knew cowards.

Seamstresses, she thought, knew the width of shoulders, the curve of hips. It was not the sword or blade that gave away the disguised Militia-man, but the carriage of his arms, the straightness of his spine -- she'd taken all of these factors into account when bloodying her fingers with measurements, designs, and patterns. That was peculiar; that was particularly strange, because why would he not be looking more formal, why would--

Her attention shifted toward his limping compatriot and the click of a cane-tip against the damp cobbles. None of these were identifiers, nor were they even remotely familiar, but the Jerno's dim attention alighted upon one particular quality: again, the arc between shoulders and neck, a spacing that could not be hindered by scarf-wrap or nondescript clothing.

She knew the measurements and quantities, how many stitches it would have taken to cover that arm and those hips in a soft, striking fabric, how to shape cloth over her, fit her in a dress.

Several hard strides. A downturned chin, dull stare cutting out from beneath a bonnet's slatted rim.

A gloved hand leaped out, tried to grip for Agnieszka Kazmerrik's elbow, wanting to wrench her, turn her around.

"You tell me if what he's saying is true, or if it's all some lie. You tell me and you tell me now. You look into my eyes and give me the truth or -- or I swear to the Nameless I'll be a young woman of the people and scream your name as loud as I can."
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby channe » Sat Dec 14, 2013 9:44 am

She whirls on Gloria, withdrawing her hand almost immediately; the guard steps in, aiming to put himself between Agnieszka and the seamstress.

"Oh, it's true," she says, her eyes flint and the faintest edge of nastiness in her voice. "Not that any of you care about true. But, hey, why don't you just go and jump off a cliff into your own conclusions like the rest of them? You already have, once. Hell, look at that. You're a Myrkener already. So easy, huh? Bein' a young woman of the people? So, go. Say, 'oh, poor Elliot,' and 'oh, the poor Lady Marshal,' but all that happened to them was they got to live all nice and shit. Me? Oh, what she did to me..."

She leaves that sentence hanging in the taut, cold air between them. "You watch the fuck out, because this?" She waves her gloved hand in the air. "This could be all about you someday. Like my mama says, there before the Grace of God go we." And: "Come on," she says to the guard, shaking off Gloria's hand and attempting to move for the exit.
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby Carnath-Emory » Sat Dec 14, 2013 9:54 am

She was not supposed to be here.

That was the final request of a man whose wife she'd meant very much to murder; whose self she'd very much abandoned during the weeks that led him to the Underdark and an experience which scoured his soul. It was the well-measured request of a Governor better acquainted with her predilections than anyone ought to be, of a man who - before he was Governor at all - was simply her student, brilliant with his steel and frighteningly precious. I owe him, she'd whispered to Agnieszka just a night ago, but her very real desire to heed that request had so little to do with 'owed' at all.

There was no place on that podium for her; neither did she climb the short stairs to place herself at his side despite. She'd come for this against his protests, she'd done that much, but - My untruth, he'd said. Mine to tell, and in matters of state and stage, she'd every reason to reckon the Governor's instincts better than her own. She was not a figure upon the stage; neither was she much a face in the crowd, a casual sort of anonymity suiting her purpose here better. That purpose being to listen, rather than contribute; to witness and to see what might come of a governor's half-described intents. Sometimes a hand might catch against her shoulder, her elbow, and she would turn to catch a solemn nod from a familiar face - a militiaman, a constable; for the most part, though, the crowd remained held beneath the weight of their Governor's words, and a Marshall casually-clad was able to move the bodies unremarked upon.

There were smiles, sometimes. Sudden and grim and hard, speaking more of quick acknowledgement than actual pleasure: that being what came of it, when a Governor described Myrken's resolve. Sometimes a sharp shake of the head, thin-lipped disapproval for the idea of New Myrken's audacity - and it was always the older ones who wore that grey foreboding. Hadn't they always said as much? A governor, an architect, a guard: years, they said, generation after generation before it begins to really change, and in those moments she saw it with her own eyes. But they were gripped, unmistakably. Gripped by the sight of a Governor who came before them broken but unbowed, and proclaimed this a wholly Myrken trait.

Ashfiends. Captures. Baie, he'd written two days ago, to a woman who understood very well that part of his intention; it was the mention of Renne, of Dhrin, that had frustrated her. Tell me who you'd have each of them represent, she'd wanted to write - and refrained, snared by the urgency of his questions and distracted by the one phrase that stung like a wound -

There is a point at which his speech begins to diverge from the purely abstract. A point at which it ceases being a speech at all and becomes instead a history, and how intent are the faces amidst which she wanders. There is a point at which his history begins to lead away from the truth - as she understands it - and when he speaks the name of Agnieszka Kaczmarek, the Marshall begins to understand what she should have known all along; what she had, but in a sense that was only abstract, an idea that was yet to be given practical form.

A fist , he'd said, needs something to hit.

And she'd splashed black ink right over her protests.

It is a breath drawn slowly between bloodless lips. It is a narrow body losing itself silently amongst a crowd that is not quite silent itself: quiet questions here and there; a smattering of applause, the occasional cheer. It is a woman quietly glad to be nothing more than a shape amongst so many others, as the Governor's speech reaches a conclusion which is suddenly stunning; which was inevitable, from the moment he'd spoken Agnieszka's name. Except that this time it's she who sometimes catches an elbow with her hand, bends her head for a murmured word; who taps fingertips upon a particular shoulder, who tilts her chin in indication of a particular direction. Who catches sight, very briefly, of a distant Cherny - all the way over there; who bites back her shock on glimpsing the Chairwoman.

That she is here at all.
That she has one guard with her, only one.

A little more quickly, now. A little more haste measured into her motions. And this time when she reaches, it is to touch gloved fingertips to Gloria's elbow, and when her head bends it is to murmur: "You take this elsewhere. You take this elsewhere if you want to have it out with her, unless you particularly care to start a riot."
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby Treadwell » Sat Dec 14, 2013 10:25 am

A quiet click of lock and slightly louder clunk of bar are the only remotely audible signals of the toy shop's closing up for now, its proprietor having sneaked back inside with a grave frown growing. Window shutters have been closed all along, so there's no need to draw those at the moment.

All in all, Acting Governor Treadwell has decided he wants to be nowhere around a scene that might just grow rather ugly, rather fast. He's seen enough unruly crowds turn into unruly mobs in his day to know when to waddle away.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby Rance » Sat Dec 14, 2013 10:33 am

So, go. Say, 'oh, poor Elliot,' and 'oh, the poor Lady Marshal,' but all that happened to them was they got to live all nice and shit. Me? Oh, what she did to me...

"What she did to you," the girl hissed, her round face contorted with displeasure, "was no different than them; I stood by none of it. None of it. You fought? You resisted? Don't lie to me about lies, Agnieszka Kazmerrik."

"Do you think I want to one of his names? You recall what happened as -- as well as I do. You're not stronger than I am. She pried into your brain with her fingers, changed you, raped you, and you were no different from Ariane, from Elliot. You aren't special. You aren't a beacon. You're a frightened little girl--"

And like Gloria knew cowardice and seamwork, she knew terror, meekness, understood it, wore it in the wideness of her eyes--

"--and I just wanted to see it for myself."

When Agnieszka shook her elbow out of the seamstress' vicegrip, there was a moment in which she considered the merit of parting her lips and screaming that name, Agnieszka, Agnieszka!, but for all her hot-blooded bluster and the tarsweat carapace, she was no fool. Her heart beat a rapid, fiery cadence against her ribs, and though it might have been a reasonable diversion -- steal their growing anger away from false recipients, away from Cherny, away from herself -- she thought back upon what she'd seen hanging in the crisp air from a gnarled oak, stiff little toes and hard-worked hands clenched in the tension of death, and--

A touch to her elbow. She turned. A gloved fist clenched at her side. Her arm strained against a sleeve, bending, ready to hit. Her stare was frantic, labored, and there might as well have been burning sand crunching under her heels, shouts for a Calamity, Calamity! rending the air, a raised glass-knife edge and Sisters and Brothers conducting everything, everything.

"Ariane."

The digits unfurled, four fingerpads rathering to clutch her skirt than offer a threat.

"You think it won't become that?" the seamstress asked the Marshall, for this was all done in whispers, a secret inside the belly of a throbbing Myrken beast. "Do you think words are pleasing, calming, soothing? You've overheard enough talk of rhetoric between the Proctor and I to know that lies convince no one, that -- that falsifications breed mistrust. No one remembers anything. Not Agnieszka, not you, not me, not even the Governor.

"People will -- will just keep hanging."
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Re: The Art of the Possible

Postby Carnath-Emory » Sat Dec 14, 2013 11:27 am

It was written right there on the page. Black ink, abruptly bathed in so much more of the same that in the end there'd been no making out the words unless the eye was careful and the mind was patient - and when had Ariane Emory, purveyor of brutality and general thug, ever actually written something worth being patient for?

"I don't - think," she murmurs. "Recall?" A month-ago conversation; no, not even that. Just words, words spoken almost in passing, for there'd been no time for either of them to elaborate. No time to properly speak about this matter at all. "Because I insist to take time upon forming an opinion - of that Hour," it being that of which they'd spoken then. "Of this," and with a narrow tilt of her chin towards the stage upon which a governor's narrative had begun. "Reacting - that is what an animal does, given a trap or a threat or a meal. Sometimes a person will do this too, mn? Me, I prefer to - examine. To reason. To - think," and she's loosed a thin chuckle; her eyes, all the same, have tracked the Chairwoman's departure as often as the fluctuation of Gloria's own gaze.

"But there is no time. Hangings. A government's reformation. Civils playing at streltsy thuggishness. This - here," a quick jerk of her chin towards the crowd which surrounds them. "Becoming a violence, becoming carnage - that, as well. I manage this - now - so that every person here leaves whole and unharmed. Despite what anger they might feel, despite what outrage, what relief, what disquiet; despite how their hearts react. They will return to their homes. They will, I hope, think. And so shall I."

Her hand was not unkind, where it held the girl's elbow. Her hand is nothing but gentle now, when it loosens and comes away.

"So. Go with her, if you insist to. Speak with her - where she goes. See what you both will think of this, or find me later and we speak then - but not here. This moment. These many people. You do not stir this into violence."
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