A Silent Rage

[Tolleson]

“I can give ‘im a note myself,” the mop-top young boy protested with all the indignation of a child not entrusted with an important task. He was not overly well dressed, but his clothes were neat and clean and on him in the proper order. Even without the now outdated emblem designating Inquistory employment, he was recognizable, spry, and presentable; good qualities for a young carrier of missives.

He held the door with his foot. His face changed from stubborn upset, to a pouty acceptance as he looked back to the interior of the Dagger. “But, won’ we be interrupting some supper?” His voice called back.

Twilight approached but the day still burned its last golden minutes, and they were bright. Too bright for eyes that held books in candle light and had become accustom to the filtered sun that barely reached the bottom of the dilapidated library. Stepping out behind young Daryl, she immediately released one side of the black sash she had been clutching tight as a hood, and held up her hand to block the searing sun from her eyes. The gentle breeze of a summer evening caught and played with her now free hair. Not that it mattered what mischief the wind made, the red locks were wild. Tiny curls and frizzy bits glinted in the remaining sun, small braids peeked out from under loose locks; she had the look of someone who had fallen asleep with damp hair without a care to tame it.

“Must be at home!” Daryl chimed with some surprise as he took the young woman’s hand and they took slow, deliberate care to descend the steps. Though she loomed at nearly twice his height, she held his hand, allowing the boy to lead her. At the base of the steps Genny smiled and Daryl’s brown eyes looked up, their exchange half silent to the world. “You think? I suppose the gardens are on the way,” he said skeptically, though he was already leading her to them and hopefully a visit to Catch, long overdue.

[catch]

Many times he is hard to find, set loose in wood and scrambling over bramble'd hills, or plunged into the seething humanity of Myrkentown, a place that fascinated him even with several years familiarity. To a creature where everything was fluid, the Town was never, ever the same. But he is not in the Woods, nor in town, or even in his little shack, which still clung to the forced civility of that terrible summer past, all pretty white plaster poking from between thick trumpet-flower vines. He is in the first place they look, the Gardens.

The Gardens have taken on his wildness, his wild life, no longer set in neat, little rows, but blossomed into a veritable and lush jungle, snatching at stalks and vines like greedy and ill-mannered children, each seeking to vigorously steal from the other, though all thrived. Like regular Golden Cities they looked, and Catch's heart ached to see it, though he could not stay away. His pale, hunched form was a clear glimmer in all the green, flashes of broad, tasseled corn, thick-fleshed pumpkin, and giant's turnips seen within. He flitted from plant to plant, wild row to wild row, a silver hummingbird of movement.

What stills him is fire, at the corner of his eyes. Catch turns towards it, a moth to flame, his head canting in animal movement. His Mood is wild, and fae, and it speaks in every motion of him, in the way he does not even greet Genny and her helper, though his lips twitch and his throat trembles to do so. He cannot, not quite yet. It is too unexpected.

[Tolleson]

At the very edge of the garden her soft steps stop and her hand tugs on Daryl’s, bringing them to an abrupt stop. Flitting to and fro, it is mesmerizing to watch and for a long moment she observes quietly. But what is more, she is struck with awe, her eyes drifting from plant to plant as if seeing each for the first time. Eventually her eyes fall to Catch, already looking at her, lips twitching and silent.

The young messenger is not so filled with wonder at the verdant landscape no prone to silence. “Ser Catch? M’lady Miss Genny came ta’ see you,” his cheerful voice is somewhat serious and breaks the silent spell.

She squeezed his hand, some small reprimand for speaking. But still, she nods, “Ca.. Ca-Ca-Catch,” her voice is broken and soft.

“M-m-m-m may I, I, I c-c-come i-i-in?” Into the garden she meant, but her words are in pieces and come out with audible strain.

[catch]

He thinks that they come to him as they ought, beggars to his Golden City, bowing and scraping and asking permissions. It is an unworthy thought, spontaneous, and Catch shakes his head, looking as if he is telling them no, no, to Genny's request. How many asked Catch permission before they ask things of him, do things to him? It is not often. It is a strange feeling, and his mismatched eyes tremble and roll from Genny to her hair to the impertinent little boy and back again. His skin seems to shimmer as it twitches, responding to some stimuli, some slight change on the wind.

"You c-c-c-can," he says, finally, finding the proper words just in time, unconsciously mimicking Genny's broken speech and adding it to his own lisp. That wasn't proper. She was big, and she was strong, and Catch gazes at her in his confusion, lips and ruined brow drawn down. He knows that she has an Eye. That should only make her stronger.

[Tolleson]

She too mimics the curious tilt of the head, watching Catch shake his head, understanding the ‘no’ before she heard the ‘yes’. Her hand is gently pulled free of Daryl and he gives her a look, within a moment his shoulders slump. “Fine… I’ll wait.” Dejected, he shot a threatening glace to the madman before turning and trudging a few steps away with obedience to a silent command.

Beggars to his Golden City, weren’t they? Disheveled and nearly an apparition in her old pie-maker’s dress of blue, cut too short so that her ankles showed. She might well have been a ghost with her fair skin and gaunt figure, but she hadn’t the grace to appear floating. She plodded forward, careful of the growing treasures, but still her boots’ laces flopped. Each was tied at different heights so that the tongue lolled out more on one and nearly matching stockings peeked through.

“I… I…,” stuttering or hesitation arrested her words until she stopped nearly an arm span away. She would have liked to reach out, to hug him. But she does nothing.

“Y-y-y-you… y-your ga-ga-garden l-l-looks l-l-love-lovely,” there was a sweet smile, but she was pained to see him. More perhaps than she thought she might have been. Those eyes that said ‘no’.

[catch]

To hug him would have been folly. They are no longer so relaxed with each-other - or, perhaps, it is fairer to say that Catch is no longer so relaxed with anyone. Months, an entire year of hurts, has taught him his natural wariness, the caution that so many have tried to instill in him. The lesson is a hard one to see in the wariness of his eyes, the way his crooked body cocks, ready to spring away if he must.

This is Miss Genny, but he dared not hope.

"It's a t-t-terrible thing I've done," he says, quite honest about the Garden, his hesitant words full of sorrow. Catch watches the boy so that he might need not keep his eyes on Genny, but they are drawn inevitably back. "Your sh-shoes are a state," he says again, just as awkward in this conversation as she, commenting on her boots while he wears none. The tense expectancy in him is high. He cannot imagine why Miss Genny would want to see him, after all this time alone.

[Tolleson]

Perhaps she knows they have been apart so long, or her own state, or other knowledge. Regardless, she stands awkwardly, pained. “It-It-It … it is f-f-f-fle-e-e fleeting, y-yes,” she mourned with him, but not half so much as he. Even as his eyes had abandoned they would return to her, to find she stared at him.

“S-sh-sh should I-I I t-t-take t-th-them off?” It seemed a reasonable question, perhaps the garden wasn’t a place for shoes?

“I… I m-m-m-meant t-t-to br-bring a p-pie,” she lamented quickly, perhaps picking up on his confusion, as if a pie was reason enough. “b-b-but i-it b-b-b-b b-burn-burned,” had she ever burnt a pie before? Having made dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands, she must have, but even Dulcie would be hard pressed to have found a time the kitchen was filled with smoke and the too sickly sweet smell of burnt sugar.

[catch]

It was wrong. It was all wrong. She looked the same, tall and pale, and hair like fire. Yet here she was before him, misunderstanding, her voice fractured and splintering against her lips. By her own admission, she has burned a pie. Such a silly thing. But the fear Catch felt was ice-cold against his spine, and it was very, very real. He could never trust his senses. The addled giant all at once stoops, unanswering, and he does his best to wedge his broad body into the springy foliage, wending vines around with his hands to hide himself, though the silver of him was too pale to mask. In quietness he does, this, desperate quietness, the kind that a rabbit might perform on scenting the cat, and yet knowing it's hole is too far, and so does what it can, though it be plainly visible.

A moment later, the thrashing ends; there is a single, wide eye that gazes out and upon Genny, and he fears that she will fall to pieces any moment.

"You aren't Miss Genny," he tells it, the apparition. "She - she's important, and she has m-m-many important chores, and she is t-t-too busy to come."

"And she doesn't b-burn pies."

[Tolleson]

It was wrong. No. Yes. This was true, but it wasn’t.

Wedging and thrashing, recoiling away. She tenses, her eyes stay with him but her feet fumblingly take her backwards one step and then two. The third fails to purchase ground as his eye catches her and she does fall, but it is a soft thud into moist dirt.

Entirely intact she looks up at him with wide eyes.

“N-n-no… y-yes… I d-d-didn’t m-m-m-mean t-t-to,” her hands scramble to find a means to push her up, only to push her back the distance of the third step.

“I am… I am,” she spoke desperately, as if trying to convince more than just accusatory silver rabbit of a man. But still she scrambled as if once she stood she might turn and run as well.

[catch]

"You'll turn to blood!" He shouts at her now, desperate to convince himself. It would be better, much better, if this was not the real Genny. Better to keep his illusions of a girl who saved him in Thessilane, who baked him pies, who read him stories. Now she was so much more, too. She held an Inquisitory together. She would denounce Maggot-Glenn, putting her name to parchment. She was much too busy to come to him, and he knew it, and he admired and hated her for it.

And so this could not be her.

"You'll t-t-turn to blood, and maggots, and fire! I'll k-k-keep you in my head. You'll, you'll stay in my head, and you won't hurt Miss Genny!"

Even there there was raw love. He would keep all the horrors to himself, if only to spare Genny. He does not lunge at her, but he thrashes as if he might, rattling the foliage to be as frightening as possible.

[Tolleson]

Was she so brave now?

Scrambling to stand she cowered under his words as if they unleashed a physical pain, each one a lash. And she winced her head shaking at first in simple denial, but then more punctuated and violent.

He was frightening, but not because of his rattling and roar. He is frightening, because he is not her Catch just as much as she is not his Genny.

The little bells chimed in her ears, louder than the rustling leaves, as loud as Catch yelling at her. “Y-y-you're r-r-right. B-b-better l-l-left... S-stop… s-s-stop,” her plea is almost pitiful, shouted much louder than she intended because there is such a cacophony in her head.

In her struggle to stand she drops to her knees, covering her dress in soil and mud.

There is a sharp crack, but it isn’t her head and there isn’t a stage. The air was silent, there is calm empty field where soon a small trickle of here-and-there memories from a broken mind began to grow. It barely precedes the crashing wave of her anger. The dark, silent depths of her rage in motion, they crush against the stone barriers, they tear through so that any receptive mind might feel the sheer weight of her presence. Like water as it rushes a beach, the undertow that pulls, the wave that rises and falls drastically, and the immense weight of an untamed mind.

[catch]

She shouted at him, matching his voice with her own, and for a moment he is even more afraid - more afraid, because she would never yell at him before -

But that was before the world tore itself apart.

Receptive. Susceptible. And he was all these things, and more, with his scar a scant membrane to cover the broken, shattered brains within. Her mind is like wildfire, like her hair, and her hair erupts on her head, true-fire this time, and not just a trick of his eyes. Or was it? Catch does not know when he became flat on the ground. Time came and went and went and came, and the sun passed over head in rapid dancing with the moon, and his mouth felt full of blood. The pain was something he could barely begin to comprehend, much less express. It left him mute on the ground. It caused his skin to ripple like waves against her sea, all-colors no-colors shuddering like skin-flaps, in lurid patterns. It tore the skin from his face; it broke and cracked his lips, so that fleshy fingers were forced to grope for his lips, trying to hold them on, hold Himself in, even as his skull bulged and his crooked ribs rattled like chimes in the wind. His back was all wrong, and it would not change with the rest of him.

"Help," he says, not a shout, but a whimper, a whimper tinged with the whisper of his Voice, even as the rest of him bulged and rippled, limbs contorting in a macabre dance against the loam.

[Tolleson]

He writhed and changed before her and she sunk further, tears like gallons added to the ocean.

The tinkling bells, Rhaena’s bells, chimed incessantly, deafeningly. ‘Stop, stop,’ a small voice cried. ‘I was afraid, I only meant to…’ ‘Gloria took advantage of Catch,’ Zilliah’s voice echoed. ‘Friends,’ Gloria declared, her face so cheerful, so deceptive, so readily remembered; her hot breath and a kiss intended for someone else. Flashes of too visceral memories blurred incoherently.

Anger surged as the overlapping voices grew louder, despite her straining effort to fight them down.

No sooner had he spoke the words and the world obeyed, the waves cleared the voices stopped as if he commanded them, but she did not change. Here she is closer now than she was before. Had she crawled to him? Swam? Did she stand now, upon the water? Stronger. Lovelier. Her true-fire hair licked her face and danced over her shoulders, emitting no heat and whose flames did not merely reach skyward.

‘I’m so sorry,’ the single voice came, it was hers but so faint for how close this Genny stood; her hand, reaching to gently cup his face.

[catch]

It was stopped. It was stilled. The pain was... manageable. It was recognizable pain, now, and pain he knew in plenty, and knew how to bear it with some dignity. The noxious, rippling colors, like a pool disturbed, slowly faded. As the agony throbbed in his skull, other stimuli could filter past the scattered, screaming bouncing of individual thought. He has shamed himself, soiled through his good, clean trousers, and this is a Thing he can focus on, so that - when Genny turns his head up - this is why he weeps, thick silver tears oozing down his face, flushed pink from his crying and his shame, trying to move his eyes away.

But his face was not human. His broken body had resisted, but that strong, too-bred face was ever eager. The eyes, the cleft, these are the same; his nose is the nose of a beast, long and roman, a graceful arch squeezed into a muzzle that ends in fleshy pseudopods. They tremble from his nostrils, his lips, themselves like mucous and smoke, dripping and reforming and clinging lustily to Genny's fingers, her wrist, and they are feather-soft and probing, like blood-worms seeking a wound.

"You n-n-need your Horn." It is hard to speak, with the tendrils gumming his lips together, the very architecture of that vague, equine face making speech near impossible. His eyes stray to the glory of her hair, and he is lost in it, entirely lost. He is clay, in her hands - if she asked but anything, he would do it, if only to bring Miss Genny back.

[Tolleson]

His shame is hardly noticed, his tears though, they tear through her. Every rampant thought and voice is halted, no stutter, no puttering stop. It is sudden and definite. This flame-haired woman lifts her hand only slightly to wipe the silver tears. When his eyes roll to find her there is no judgment or fear, no horror upon her face. Despite a gentle kindness, she is hollow, no pity, no sympathy, no words. He clings to her wrist, feels for her and she stills to give it to him. This was his Genny, the Genny he once perceived, her reincarnation of his memory of her.

‘I have no such thing,’ her voice said, it grew closer, but still the flame-haired girl did not speak.

‘Sh, quiet now. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you,’

‘How badly this has gone. But in truth, I knew, please understand this is why I’ve stayed away,’ a young girl no older than eight stepped beside the flame-haired Genny. This girl was plain, her hair a regular sort, red and long, and Genny’s voice coming from her.