Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Tolleson » Tue Jun 10, 2014 12:15 pm

It was a penetrating hunger with no motivation or desire to eat, which left only a rolling and empty pain in the depth of her stomach. There was the very real pain of eating sparsely, neglecting her physical body as she retreated into herself; looking under the beds and in the closets of her mind for where the lost memories might hide. It was as if they were keys, knowing the look of them, the weight of them, where they ought to be, knowing they were there, but where? And there was also a great and painless void, a depression that filled her, that surrounded her, that held her in place, that made her unable and unwilling to move, to read, to write, to leave. For nearly two months she had remained silent, her last real words with another living thing not herself, had been with Glenn Burnie. The words he had were plain, and from him, ever so gentle and ever so sweet. Still, it completed the story of the time she had lost. He could have lied, but he hadn’t. How could she tell, she couldn’t. But she believed him, and for her, these were the facts. Genny had done to Gloria the very thing she had rejected, condemned and abhorred in Rhaena, she had violated privacy and trespassed into the seamstress’ mind. She might never know how, or recall, for herself, why, but it was simple and it was everything.

The realization of responsibility revealed several things, the first of which was that she possessed an immense power. The second, that she had no idea how to control it. Of course, there was guilt. She had so adamantly refused the notion, knowing in the pit of her that she simply could not have done to Gloria what the seamstress claimed. Not that her morals were infallible, though it was a difficult notion even for her to grasp, but rather, she knew without doubt she simply did not possess the raw power or reach to do what all facts said she must have done. Rhaena had never taught her this, Zilliah had never shown her, how then?

It was a question that had settled upon her much like the dust in this room. For long weeks the Inquisitory had been mostly empty, many of the staff had been long dead or disappeared, returned home to help with planting and healing the wounds left by a terrible summer or fighting to survive a hungry winter. There was nothing here but books and dust, and her, there was no need anymore, Glenn Burnie’s secrets were the least of worries. She’d slept here more than she hadn’t, clinging to the last few things in the world that made any sense; though a ghostly figure, with red hair might have been seen every now and again in the dark, pre-dawn hours, coming and going from the apartment above the bakery.

But for all Myrken knew, if any even cared, Genny had vanished. There were no missives or notes, no meetings or investigations, no visits to the Constabulary, as she had made customary. There was nothing for two solid months. And then, very suddenly, there was Daryl. A young, shaggy-haired Inquisitory Page who had often carried communications for Ms. Genny, now appeared at the Dagger, asking after one Miss Gloria Wynsee. This was either his first stop or there were a good, many missives as there were several folios yet tucked under his arm, sealed with wax still fresh.
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Rance » Tue Jun 10, 2014 2:03 pm

She was there reading a book.

A speck of powdered confection was smeared on her upper lip. The remnants of a cake acquired from one of the colorful booths at the Spring Fair were sprinkled across her lap. The girl sat at the bar, perched on one of the barstools. The heels of her wooden-soled boots were mounted on the naked rungs. With the budding heat of summer, she'd foregone her bonnet for a cloth headband. The red, sweat-dampened strip of fabric gave height to her forehead and a wild bristle to her coarse, black hair. A shortened arm, the sleeve of her dress tied in a careful knot, lay across the brittle pages of the volume.

She examined him in the dull light of the morning. She'd encountered the boy a few times in the Inquisitory, often blustering past him with an apologetic smile or nudging her way beside him to retrieve a book from among the disorganized and dog-eared tomes. But she, like so many of the other Inquisitors, had been absent as of late.

"Daryl," she said, inclining her head toward him. "I -- I have not seen you in some time."
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Tolleson » Tue Jun 10, 2014 2:38 pm

It wasn’t often, or ever, that he had seen Gloria without her bonnet. So, when he turns from the maid near the door to spot the young woman calling his name there is a gentle surprise. Hustling to her he nearly skips to close the distance; dust billowing out from his well-worn shoes with each clap on the floorboards. “Gloria! Miss Gloria! Oh! You went to the fair didn’t you – I can tell, you had cake!” The mop atop his head jumped and twitched with every movement. Despite missing a key tooth his smile was wide and pleasant and simple. “Aye, aye… it has, it has been a while,” he says somewhat breathless, as if he had run all the way here from where she might guess the letter had come from. “Sorry, I hope you didn’t need me Miss Gloria,” his face backed away a little, looking worried if only for a moment. “I brought you a letter, from my lady,” he seemed to second guess this phrase, “well she isn’t really, but it’s easier to say that,” prattling on he retrieved the folio from his arms with Gloria’s name scrawled above the seal. It was Genny’s seal and her penmanship. He extended it out to her with a very large and exaggerated gesture. “I’m sure it’s important,” he said, as if he needed to encourage her to take it from him.
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Rance » Tue Jun 10, 2014 2:56 pm

"I had cake," she responded, her smile widening. Her teeth were woody, off-color nubs. There was a gap beggared the lower row where one had been missing for some time. For their grins, they were equals. Her capable hand -- the fourth finger scarcely more than a lump -- nudged a bit of honeycake toward him, the waxed parchment rustling against the bartop. "You can have the rest, if you'd like to."

For what few interactions she'd had with the boy, she was fond of him. He was sweet, always peddling some hyperactive story or tittering on about his adventures, his triumphs in games and little brawls. She was old around him, a crone that necessitated a Miss, a teenager who might as well have been an adult. But for all his cheer and excitement, his words wended their way toward purpose:

I brought you a letter, from my lady.

When he lofted the letter, she hesitated. The lump in her throat pronounced itself. She turned on the barstool, the tips of her boots peeking out from beneath her embroidered skirts. She took the letter, pried it open with a trembling thumb, and flattened it on the bar to read.
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Tolleson » Tue Jun 10, 2014 3:22 pm

There is smug satisfaction at being right about the cake, but then she pushes the remainder out so he can see it and somehow he managed to smile more.

The letter is released and without the polite trepidation of someone refusing something they desperately want, he pulls the treat near, slides onto a stool beside her and begins to pull sticky, crumbling pieces to his lips. “Fank-ou,” the thanks is spoken through a mouth muddled by gnashing and filled with cake. But he swallows watching her flatten the thing on the bar. “Three cakes in a day, Miss Gloria! So, it’s probably the best day ever,” he grinned, crumbs sticking to his lips and cheeks.

The letter:

Dearest Glour'eya,

I offer you my utmost and sincere apology. There is much still I cannot know. While I yet do not recall, I am now certain of my fault in the matters between us.

Though I know of no way to right such a wrong, I felt you deserved the truth.

Gods be good to you,
Genevieve Tolleson


There was nothing more, no post script, no second page, no crossed out passages, no summons, not even drops where ink had spilled. It was just this simple page and the grinning boy with honey covered fingers.
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Rance » Tue Jun 10, 2014 3:33 pm

Her eyes were hard pins on the letter. She read it over several times. But because Daryl was just a boy, a smiling, unbroken child, she willed her remaining hand to be still on the page and even raised her eyebrows at him in jest.

"Three cakes? Where did you get the other two? Too many more of those," she said, placing the back of her hand beside her mouth and whispering across it as if sharing a secret, "and you'll get nearly as fat as I am, and then Mister Treadwell will try to recruit us both for his menagerie of the blubbery and rolly-poly."

What her smile never said to the boy was that the letter drove a hard spike of ice just underneath her sternum. Somewhere below that invisible spear, the faint, almost imperceptible swell of her belly was a cold lesson. She closed the letter in the dusty pages of her tome. The Mysteries of Faithe was forced, with some convincing, into her hip-side satchel. Her boots clapped down to the floor. She offered her brown palm out to the boy, her own skin unafraid of the stickiness of his.

"There'll be one more in it for you," she said, "if you take me to see her. It's probably the best day ever, and another cake couldn't do anything but make it more fantastic."
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Tolleson » Tue Jun 10, 2014 3:55 pm

She lifted her eyebrows to him and by then the cake was gone. “My lady didn’t want hers either,” he grinned as if he had managed to talk her out of it in some cunning fashion. “Tubbians,” his voice chimed with a know-it-all tone, still his face contorted into distaste. “You’re not as fat as the tax-man Miss Gloria, you’d have to eat every cake in the world!”

She offered out her hand and he stopped, staring blankly for a moment as if trying to make a very important decision. Soon he was licking his fingers, his other hand clean and safe around the remaining letters, Ariane was the top, but the way he held them the second could not be seen. “If we’re quick, I’ve other letters too.” Yes, he could do both, especially if it meant more cakes. And maybe the others would have some they didn’t want as well. Ever a young gentleman, he wiped the spit covered, still somewhat sticky palm on his britches before offering it to Gloria.

“I think she’d like that,” he nods, agreeing with himself and sliding from the stool, “says your name a lot, sometimes even when she’s sleeping!” His hand was still small, but not small enough he couldn’t clasp hers tight and begin to pull her out the door.
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Rance » Tue Jun 10, 2014 4:10 pm

"We'll be quick," she guaranteed. "I wouldn't want to tarry you in your work, Daryl."

...says your name a lot, sometimes even when she’s sleeping!

She took the boy's hand without hesitation. His spittle and the crumbs of cake were a paste between her knuckles and his. Her palm was a roughened loomwork of rigid skin. But it was warm to the touch, her blood a hot furnace underneath her skin.

Her heartbeat throbbed in the channels of her hand as she let the boy lead her through the mud-thickened streets of Myrken Wood.

* * * *

She paid Daryl with a sweetcake -- slightly crushed at the corner where The Mysteries of Faithe had depressed it in her hip-satchel -- and stood with him on the rickety staircase. She imagined that when the second story of the bakery had been constructed, they must have simply unraveled the stairs like a tongue from the doorway. Here, as she had months before, she lingered in front of the apartment's portal, leered at the crease between two of its boards, and raised her hand to knock.

With her cheek pressed against the wood, Gloria Wynsee said, "We ought to talk. If you're in there, Menna Tolleson, I'd very much like you to open the door."

Moments like these, she was grateful that she'd only one hand.

It was far easier to keep four fingers from shivering than it had ever been with ten.
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Tolleson » Tue Jun 10, 2014 4:52 pm

Outside the apartment they waited, the soft gnawing from Daryl, the creak of old wood beneath them, and the silence from within. Gloria’s cheek pressed against the wood and words were spoken, finishing the cake he watched and began to suck at his fingers. Every last morsel of the cake, until he simply pushed past and turned the knob. Within was the chair and a desk, just as they had been months ago, fresh soot in the fireplace, cool from a fire several hours dead. The sealing wax on the desk was the same as the letter Gloria had received and the nib of the pen still had a smidge of ink not yet dry. She had been here, perhaps not long ago. But this time, in the corner of the room there was a proper bed, a smallish one, with Daryl-sized clothes spread neatly out over a fine but dingy blanket. On the walls were papers pinned, some held long paragraphs of hand written text a small, fine script that would be nearly impossible to read. But the vast majority were drawings, rough, scribbled impressions, pinned from floor to ceiling, laid end to end across three walls. One bled into the next and together they seemed a map, but it was an impossible labyrinth of nonsense. There were drawings that might look like the Golben and the device Berdini had shown her, of things only Ariane would know, of things terrible and beautiful, melting walls, the horn, Zilliah’s eye, and the scene of Rhaena’s death. Otherwise, the room was cold and empty.

“Figured, she doesn’t stay here much,” he smiled coyly as if it had been his plan all along, another cake perhaps to find her properly?

He doesn’t ask, it’s Gloria after all and he knew her from the Inquisitory, or rather knew well enough not to push his luck. Before she can even offer or protest, he will take her hand, lead her out, close the door and take them down the steps. Past the bakery and down the road, a left turn at the corner and a right at the next, dash past the mean fish monger, a turn here and a turn there, follow the narrow alley, hop over the cobblestone chasms, and avoid the little road lakes. It is only a few minutes of dragging her along that they arrive at the ruins of the old library, half collapsed, boarded up and surrounded by a fence of rope and board, under which he easily ducks, holding it up as best he can to let her through.

His hand would grab hers again without a word, leading her to a cellar door, nearly flush with the ground around what would have been the side of the building. But here the passage is dark, one board over the stone frame, and uneven steps leading below that seem to vanish into an abyss. "Come on Miss Gloria, she'll be below," he tugs at her hand as he fearlessly ventures onward and downward.

The air is musty and cool and in the darkness he holds her tight, he leads on until it gives way to the dim yellow light of hanging lamps. The lamps illuminate the hall; one, then another, and another. They would pass a dozen such small lights, casting eerie shadows that revealed their path and doors to the sides of them. Some doors lead away, some to stairs going down and some up, many collapsed and inaccessible. Finally, they came to where the hallway ended and the floor became a set of stone steps leading down to a bright light. Sticky hands glued together, he pulls her still, down and into a great, round room. In the center, at the top of the rounded ceiling there is a partially destroyed oculus and wooden boards set to cover sections of the roof long eroded. The sun filters through and fills the space with light and warmth. In one spot the wall had almost entirely collapsed, the rubble and ruin spilled out, mud and weeds had accumulated, dust and debris lay everywhere. In other spots, great wooden beams supported the wall where noticeable fissures had grown. It was no small room, some fifty feet tall and a thousand square feet of floor space, the walls that stood were lined with books in all manner of disrepair. Some sturdy where they had likely sat for a hundred years and others threatening to fall with the slightest breath. Many lay burned or mold ridden, strewn across the floor. There were fallen shelves with rotten wood, and a good number still standing, brimming with dusty tomes.

And there, her red hair loose, laying in wild waves and curls, was Genny. Her eyes closed and head resting on a volume half as big as she, thin and pale as a ghost, clad in grey, she sat on the floor, asleep and surrounded by piles of books.
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Rance » Thu Jun 12, 2014 3:06 pm

Inside, there was nothing.

The seamstress did not linger long. The apartment had been devoid of that swollen, calming love of home that seemed to permeate placesslumbers and repasts were taken. The apartment was an abyss, one that held no answers or comfort. From the wall she retrieved several of the parchments: one depicting the angles and endless hedgerows of Golben, one with the sweeping lines of a Horn, and the last artfully representing a headless corpse laying bloodied amid fallen doilies and wind-beaten curtains.

Such things should not be left around.

* * * *

Gloria had been hesitant, at first, to follow Daryl near the derelict remnants of the library. The odor of moldering books and waterlogged pages sank into her, clinging to her flesh like a film even as she stood on the outskirts of the crumbling edifice. Once, this library had been a place of peace, examination, and exploration. Now it was a corpse. A black stain against the squat skyline of Myrken Wood, the library had an aura that begged passers-by to avoid it. The air was redolent with fermented urine and rotten parchment, for beggars with no roofs of their own had made beds out of torn paper amid the studious bones of the building.

In the cellar, following the wisps of lamplight, they found Genny Tolleson. Here, a thousand books had escaped the fates of their brethren. In the middle of them all was the woman's frail body. For the length of a breath Gloria thought the High Inquisitor was dead.

You know what she can do. You know being here alone with her is dangerous, the Jerno part of her prattled in her mind.

She squeezed shut her eyes, killed that morsel of her doubt, and then opened them again. She withdrew her hand from Daryl's and said quietly to him, "Your letters can wait, Daryl. Run back to the Inquisitory, gather up a ceramic pitcher, fill it with water from the well, and bring it here to me. I don't have any more cakes," Gloria regretted, "but we -- we can certainly get one together later. Consider yourself in my debt."

When the boy had run off -- if begrudgingly, knowing his payment would not be immediate -- she retrieved one of the lamps and squatted down next to Genny, the seamstress' skirts a burgundy puddle around her. The minute bulge of her belly, for the meantime, was hidden.

Her heartbeat thrummed, a drum that was impossible to silence. Wolves had teeth; Genny Tolleson, however, had invisible fingers.

The seamstress' only hand brushed against the longknife sheathed against her hip.

"Genny."
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Tolleson » Thu Jun 12, 2014 4:01 pm

There is gravity to how she approaches, to the place, to how she regarded his lady; but it isn't something he understands, he can't know what troubles Gloria. Nor does the putrid smell of the place seem to bother him. She gave him orders and begrudgingly indeed, he hesitated.

He more than hesitated.

He looked to his lady and then to Gloria with an expression stern and studious, as stern and studious as his young face could manage. There was a very serious matter of cakes, but he made no words to challenge her bond. Half turned, and already two steps back to the hall he called to her. “You shouldn’t wake her up,” he chided, perhaps he warned. Most of all, he seemed rather protective.

***

The echo of Daryl’s footsteps had gone and the seamstress was left in silent company of books and Genny. A meager thing, she lies so thin and pale, the gentle rise and fall of her chest barely a movement at all. How simple it would be in this moment, little more than bone and skin, the knife to slide under her thin flesh, to dive straight her and find the mud floor on the other side.

She doesn’t move. She doesn’t wake.

The waves brushed the sand, whispering and the sun touched her cheeks, there is gentle warmth and simple happiness. “Genny,” he said, she heard, but where was he? She turned and great, voluminous clouds threatened, thunder rolling far in the distance, and his voice.

‘Tenny?’ Genny’s voice came, Gloria might hear it; but Genny’s lips did not move.

She doesn’t move. She doesn’t wake.
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Rance » Thu Jun 12, 2014 4:28 pm

Genny called in her wistful unrest...for him.

I am your consequence. You could do far better and you always will. I know this.

Daryl had levied a warning to her, but when the boy had left, she'd turned back to the sprawled woman. Genny Tolleson was a girl, here; she was small and fragile, a bent and twisted little scarecrow. Gloria knew she could have broken her, even listened momentarily to that urge -- for Rhaena Olwak had lost her head for invasions of the mind, had paid dues of her blood for memories stolen away, dashed apart.

(And that word, the name, Tenny, Tenny, Tenny, echoed in the canyons of her mind, never given life by breath. It had been only a husk of a thought, a leaping fancy that jumped from the Inquisitor's mind into the seamstress'--)

No.

Her fingers fell away from her longknife. The lump of malachite worked into its handle by dwarven industry became visible again.

"Genny," she said. "Your -- your brother isn't here."

Her warm, sweat-blackened palm reached out to touch Genny's cheek. A thick knuckle slid hair off the other woman's brow.

"Be still, but look at me. Look upon someone who once was your friend."
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Tolleson » Thu Jun 12, 2014 4:49 pm

‘Genny’ the voice came again.

‘Tenny, where… don’t leave!’ Strained as if she cried it, her voice comes again, quivering and afraid. It isn’t just her voice this time that reaches, it is a feeling, a projection, a hand. While her body lay still the hand of her mind, the hand of a child reaches, searching. And then it’s gone, abruptly vanishing, retracted. Waking, the small muscles twitch and the big muscles breathe.

Soon to follow, her eyelashes flutter; green and groggy her eyes dull from sleep, rise up, searching and finding, sharpening upon Gloria in the cool, dim light. Still, her lips don’t move, the words that come an unspoken communication.

‘Gloria?’

Her eyes darting as the waking state settles, she'll survey the room. With comprehension panic begins striking as she puts a small distance between them.

‘Gloria, why are you here?’
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Rance » Fri Jun 13, 2014 3:12 am

Gloria, why are you here?

The lips didn't move. Neither did she see the flash of teeth or the occasional sliver of a tongue shaping themselves to the hum of expelled air. The seamstress' eyes flashed in the slivers of light that spilled in through the ribs of the decrepit cellar. She stared not at Genny Tolleson's eyes, but at her mouth--

Gloria, why are you--

--here,
a memory stirred up from a shadow that spasmed beneath a fold in her brain. Hedgerows chewed apart by the bitterness of winter. A flash of silhouettes that spoke. The world moved sluggishly. Time expanded with one beat of the heart then constricted and withered with the next. She had in her hand a knife. Or was it glass? She saw her own reflection in it, teeth tightened and eyes wild. Down it went. Her elbow ached. Her fist impacted against something.

A warm spatter. Blood.


Caught between some bubble of phlegm that clicked in her throat, her breath came out as a desperate, frightened gasp. Gloria scrambled back across the filthy floor. Her lone hand fell across a book. She grabbed it, then thew it with a sweep of her arm. The leather-bound book splashed against one of the walls, cracking like a thunderclap. Pages fluttered to the ground like leaves shed from an unseen tree.

Behind her brown teeth, she almost screamed. Gloria refrained,swallowing down the noise until it become a shudder in her body.

Could Genny Tolleson control these things? Did she choose to be like this?

"Speak with your voice," the seamstress whispered. "Minds are sacred places. Mine is no exception."
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Re: Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

Postby Tolleson » Fri Jun 13, 2014 5:17 am

Minds are sacred places.

Shock seizes Genny with ferocity, clammy and pale, sweat begins to bead on her as an anxious heart leaps. The movement of her rising chest is far more noticeable now, alive and frantic she shudders at the thunder clap of the book. Her eyes stare, wide and startled the green of them an island and the black at it’s center, a sharp point focused and following Gloria’s retreat.

Otherwise still, she makes no advance, no threat, no sound.

A sharp fluttering of bird wings follows, the book’s smack into the wall a reverberating, fading echo against what hard surfaces and catacombs remained. There is confusion for a moment, and silence for a fair time longer.

Did she know she hadn’t spoken? Had she seen the memory, the shadows? Had she felt the blood? If so, she hadn’t meant to. Could she control these things? Did she choose to be like this?

If she had, if she could, would she be here?

At first, it is a ragged breath, barely more than merely breathing. But eventually wind finds song and sound and words emerge. Barely.

“I-I… I’m… s-s-s-s… s-s-sor-sorry… p-p-p-p… p-plea-pl-pl-please d-d-don-don-don… don’t,” every sound fell out of her, energy leeched with every staccato syllable. Blood peeked through fresh cracks in her lips, lips that had forgotten movement, cracked and dry from dehydration. It was taxing, visibly so. But was it just the speaking that was difficult?

“wh-wh-wh…. Wh-why d-d-did… ya-y-y- you… c-c-c-co-come... he…he…he-here?”
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