Target Practice

Re: Target Practice

Postby Rance » Wed Aug 12, 2015 2:06 pm

"That fellow invaded your space, your—" her bread circles in the air as she tries to find the right word, "—your gri'ilith. A woman ought to have the confidence that her body will remain sovereign unless she chooses otherwise."

Gloria sucks a dollop of marmalade from her thumb, arching one of her black smears of an eyebrow.

"Even if she did take property that belonged to someone else."

And that moment, that had led them here, hadn't it? The book; the blue blood. Now, they're sitting in the shifting shadows and sunlight of the furthest end of the day, enjoying a breeze and unlikely company. For all that Gloria proclaims that they're the same, the same, the two of them couldn't be more different: Niabh is slight and plain, and Gloria, cumbersome and common, is her diametric opposite. Insufferably unfeminine. Brash. And stuck here in Myrken Wood.

When her helping of bread and marmalade is finished, Gloria mounts her palm on a bent knee and starts to stand, the tattered hems of her underskirts sticking sloppily out from beneath the sprawl of her dress. "Your desire to stay hospitable, Niabh, will vanish soon enough. And the longer you stay here, the more inevitable it will become that you must spill blood."

She doesn't inquire about the cantrips, the magic she'd seen. Instead—

"It looks like you're preparing yourself well enough. I won't tell anybody. This is our secret. The bread, however, has been a welcome repast."

The girl sucks in a breath.

"But I don't — don't want to think about mad dogs or teeth. I don't want to think about that at all."
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Re: Target Practice

Postby Niabh » Wed Aug 12, 2015 5:46 pm

"I had my reasons to take the book," she said calmly, not a trace of guilt in either voice or demeanor. And, moreover, her reasons had worked, though they'd taken the long and winding path about it, and though the end result had looked more like bear-baiting than anything calculated. The important thing was, she'd won. "The man was rude even before he laid a hand to me. He was a bad hunter. That one I took upon myself." She shrugged a little, as if it were only a passing concern. "I'll admit, stealing the book was bending hospitality a little, but it ended well."

The word hospitable pricked at her. Her chest shook a little as if from silent laughter, and she flashed Gloria a playful grin. "Believe me, there's nothing in me that desires to be hospitable. If I had my own way, I'd be a troublemaker right and left. But place and custom forbids it, and as I said--it would be rude." She shrugged a little and grew more serious. "This place took me in. It gave me bread, gave me shelter, treated me fairly, and asked me no questions." She gestured to the remains of their meal, spread out before them as an example. "Those are great things. That means I owe it decency. But not loyalty. My loyalty's sworn to another; I can't wear both yokes at once."

Thoughtfully, she raked her fingers through the grass, down to its roots. Her grave dark eyes turned down. The dappled shadows seemed at once too cool, her clothes too thin, and she shivered in spite of the sunlight. "Blood doesn't cross my eyes. But I won't have my hand forced to it."

Almost to her horror, a voice spoke in her head: tell her. Tell this one. Like a scab begging to be picked off, like three notes of a song when you can't remember the rest of the words. Tell her. She ground her heel fiercely on the nasty little worm of an idea. The girl had more manners than most, but what of that? She was still tultharian, common as dirt. One person already knew by blind luck, and that was one person too many, and even he knew only the edges.

She rose when Gloria rose, in one smooth movement. No mad dogs...no teeth. "Then we won't speak of them," she assured the other girl. "I...thank you for your discretion. I'm twice in your owing now. I don't know quite how to make up for that, but if you should ever have need..."

Tell her. The same little voice, almost a plea. It gave her a sick, queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, the bread and jam all knotted together in a thick, sticky wodge.
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Re: Target Practice

Postby Rance » Thu Aug 13, 2015 2:31 am

"I won't criticize you for taking it; I've known thieves, know thieves, have occasionally been a thief myself—" Perhaps that explained the missing hand? "—and taking it doesn't make you any different. But this place?" She reached up into the air, tightening her fingers around something unseen. "It'll force you to wear different yokes, after a time. And then it'll force you to break free of them.

"I used to be a Jerno," Gloria says. "Used to be a choirgirl. Used to whip slaves with rubberwood. Used to work an expert seam. Used to be so scared of knives," the girl laughs, a hearty and hollow laugh, "I'd have to scrub my smallclothes just having seen one. Used to be loyal, too; don't know who to, but I know I was. The way you say you are.

"But now I'm here; I'm a Myrkener. Just like the others. So you ought to be a bit of a troublemaker, don't you think?"

Just enough of one so you don't lose yourself.

Gloria retrieves her wicker from the ground, but stops mid-rise to watch Niabh. Because what she sees with her dull, Sun-bleached eyes, is a woman whose face is written all over with thought. Without even using her nose, Gloria could smell the hesitation, the twisting conflict of something that bats and swipes and parries its own doubts behind Niabh's face. She's thinking, thinking desperately, struggling; the seamstress doesn't know what about, but she is, that much is clear.

Of the things Duquesne had taught her, this had been the most useful: to watch another's face for the truth and the words they chose not to speak.

"Save it," the seamstress says under her breath, wielding a surprising patience. "We'll have time again to talk, and — and you don't yet know if I'm worth trusting."

Her teeth couldn't have been more pathetic and brown; her smile, however, refused to lie.

"I've kept you too long from your killing. Thank you for — for sharing your bread with me."
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Re: Target Practice

Postby Niabh » Thu Aug 13, 2015 8:08 am

Niabh's brow went up, but she nodded, with her hand trailing off into the air to indicate that the offer still hung between them, if there was need. In her mind, trust had very little to do with owing. Owing was what happened when you didn't trust someone--to cut things off at the pass, to make your own offer before the other party had a chance to set a demand. You couldn't take anything from someone who already owed you, not if they simply handed it to you first.

But the woman's hollow laugh rang in her eyes, and she was wary. This is how far you could end from what you were, if you let the tultharian into you. "Well. If it will happen whether I would it or not, so be it. I stand fair warned. I'm not entirely opposed to things changing." It was a testimony to her resolve that she was even able to say such a thing with an entirely straight face. Not opposed to things changing...nor to changing things.

Well, had not the woman just invited her to be a troublemaker? The urge rose in her, an old fine familiar bubbling behind her breastbone as she sized up this strange girl, her dirty lumpishness so at odds with her pretty manners and her honest concern. That hardly seems fair, does it? And you owe her a favor, don't you? You could do something...nice for her. She actually had to squeeze her fist and dig her fingernails into her palm to stop herself.

Still she returned Gloria's smile with a small, almost shy one of her own. "It was good to have someone to share it," she said, and meant it. And perhaps that little was enough for now.
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Re: Target Practice

Postby Rance » Mon Aug 17, 2015 6:09 pm

"Then should you ever want to share more, you — you need but seek me out. I've a room at the Broken Dagger, as almost everyone does."

Niabh is a collection of wonders and curiosities, and Gloria cannot begin to approach them with the levity and simplicity of her mind. Some mysteries, the seamstress decides, must remain that way; she doesn't ask about the vanishing men, as she would come to call them — the intangible images enchanted over the wood, the people-but-not killed by well-practiced arrows. The pudgy girl doesn't retrieve her sampler: it stays on the ground between them, its edge occasionally peeling up with a hot breeze, threatening to flutter away or escape on a freeing wind. She hoists her basket, legs it hang in the crook of her mutilated arm, and throws a glance back to the woods.

Her remaining fingers pick up the tattered edge of her skirts. She billows them, crosses her ankles, and dips into a poor counterfeit of a courtesy. When she dips her head, a few coils of black hair escape her bonnet and cling like melted wax to her sweat-darkened cheek.

"Perhaps next time, I'll warn you more appropriately of my presence. And perhaps," she smiles, "you'll teach me that clever bit of magic, that I might learn to hit something more forgiving than a wall.

"Until then, Menna Niabh. I like this," Gloria quickly adds. "I like that we've started fresh. Like proper ladies. And not like crude savages, stealing off with clothes from the lakeside."

Her callused palm lifts in a haphazard wave. Then, with dull, muddy skirts swaying in her wake, the girl turns to clamber off the way she came: she bats aside briars and ferns with a fearless hand, and eventually plods out of sight.

Leaving Niabh with her bow. With her glamoured ghosts.

With a stitched square of fabric still laying on the ground, scattered with crumbs.
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Re: Target Practice

Postby Niabh » Tue Aug 18, 2015 6:16 am

Some of the white-hot fever, the frustration, had seeped out of her; she had no stomach for any more practice today. The glams were only glams. They could not speak unless she gave them words. They could only die when she gave them leave. It was...pleasant to talk to people. Anyone. Even tultharian.

Yet oddly enough, despite Gloria's assertions to the contrary, she did not quite fit into Niabh's mind as tultharian. Perhaps because they both came from the other side of the sea. She found herself turning the girl over, trying to make her fit into one of the neat cubbies she knew, so that she could be easily labelled and stowed away and this curious, unsettled feeling could be dismissed. There was no word for not-tultharian. Magic? Gloria wanted to talk of magic; here was some. Mother was right: breaking bread changed things. Civility could weave a spell.

A breeze caught the sampler's edge and it flipped in half against itself, lazily, as if preparing for a nap after its service was done. Niabh dropped a quick foot down on the edge to prevent it from escaping, then stooped to gather up the embroidered cloth, to give it a brisk shake to dislodge the crumbs, and to stretch it flat between her hands. As she had longed to do, she took a moment to admire it, to feel the tiny fine threads catch lightly against the burr of her fingertips. Then she quickly, neatly folded it into quarters, and from quarters to a neat triangle. She'd left it deliberately, there could be no doubt, but Niabh's grudging, ever-present sense of balances could come up with no adequate reason for the gift. Nevertheless, she slipped it into the bottom of her satchel. If she was asked, she'd give it up; if it was forgotten, she would give it to Mother if she saw her again, and so pass on the dangerous taint of owing. Mother would appreciate it more than Niabh. She could do something pretty with it.

You thought 'if.' Not 'when'. When you see her again.

The realization cast a chilly pall on her. She kissed her thumb to ward off the bad luck, and then hurried herself to gather her gear and hurry back to the Dagger, where someone doubtless wanted her by now.
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