Tapestry: À Mon Seul Désir [Log]

Tapestry: À Mon Seul Désir [Log]

Postby Niabh » Thu Oct 04, 2018 1:35 pm

[22:15] <@catch> The Dagger's garden was clinging to the last long leaves of spinach, kale, the low vine of squash and pumpkin, and thrusting spears of garlic. Littered throughout, breaking up the dusky green, clots and clutters of golden and red leaves skittered through the jungle-like rows. Catch doesn't mind when they fetch up against him. He crouches in the vines, looking up at the ink-black sky, his mismatched eyes quivering back and forth through the stars. Point to point. Sometimes clouds billowed across them, and then he was lost, his gaze blank and aimless as he waits for the stars to come back.


[22:27] <@Fionnuala> In the starless sky, the raven was a deeper blotch of blackness, occasionally pumping his black wings to gain more height. The denser, cooler air pushed back against him like the lake's water (not that he would have much experience with that, but you heard things; hell, there were ducks, weren't there?), dragging at his wingtips at the one moment where he counted on his speed. He had to dip lower to catch a brush of warmer air from the ground, hoping to ride it temporarily and gain some time.

But the gleam of white tucked behind the Dagger caught his eye like a lighted candle. Praise the gods. Some luck. He eddied in two short circles, high above Catch's head. "Hey! You! Big guy!"

In a rush of black feathers, the raven gracelessly plunked himself atop a mottled yellow pumpkin and regarded the addled man with agonized mistrust. "Hey! Remember me?"


[22:40] <@catch> He was looking for wings. Not small, drawing black fingers across the black sky, but large and white. The water-dragons had all gone off today with a fanfare of dipping, and honking, and flapping of great and muscular wings. They were long gone, stars in the sky, their stretch of Lake quiet and murky and ominous. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust.

The Raven is unanswered, unacknowledged, for what is likely a rude amount of time. He doesn't mean it. It just happens that way. Moving through mud, the man's chin tilts down, eyes struggling to find the speaker on the pumpkin. "... do I?" he asks, for a moment confused, tongue thick against the roof of his mouth. His eyes then widen a little, and he does not know if he should smile or frown. "Glenn Burnie."


[22:52] <@Fionnuala> The raven took one look into that dull face and felt his faint hope ebb. Still, the big guy remembered. He tried to reward him for the effort by fluttering his wings and cocking his head up eagerly. "Aye, I was in Glenn Burnie's room when you showed up and did the head-bumpy thing. Look. I got a problem."

And then he found himself stymied by the simpliest, stupidest of blunders: he had no idea what name she'd given Catch. It was time to break a professional oath. "It's the queen. You know. The queen?"

He peered for a glimmer of recognition in Catch's vacant face. His hoarse voice was tense, pleading, hopeful, as if through pure power of will he could press his urgency through the gap in the big guy's head. "She's hurt. She's in the woods a little ways up the road and she can't get any further. Can you help? She's gotter get back to her den, or to that doctorin' place, but I can't do it alone. Can you please?"


[23:02] <@catch> Someone has taken the time - perhaps Cherny - to shear Catch's hair and beard short, and what can be seen under the peek of his shapeless cap is blown every which way, the curls far wilder, electric, a halo with minds of their own as they clap to his skin, the cap, anything they could reach. The Raven speaks of Queens, and he listens very intently, catching the urgency of the bird's rough voice. He doesn't question that this is happening to him, not at all. It only makes sense. Catch hugs his arms tighter around his knees, rocking closer to the Raven, head tilted as he listens. "... the Q-q-queen of Cats?" he asks, stuttering after the plea for help. But there are not many questions. Another man might have a list of them, but not he.

Catch lurches to his feet, towering over the Garden. There's a thrill in his heart, a sharpness in his eye that has not been there through the Summer and the Locusts - ever since Glenn Burnie was here. "Yes."


[23:11] <@Fionnuala> The raven wobbled on his domed perch in alarm, reaction plain as words: there's a queen of cats?! Not that he couldn't take care of a cat, mind, with a single stab of his beak, but still. Good thing to keep an eye out for. His own need was more pressing than a potential. "Nah, the fairy-queen. The pretty one with the hair. You know her," he insisted, although right now he wasn't sure just how well Catch did know her. Maybe she knew him a lot better than he knew her.

In any case, he'd rousted the man off his feet. Maybe he'd understand when he saw.

He bobbed rapidly when Catch stood, looming above him. "Right. This way. Follow me."

His vast wings pumped. He hovered briefly above the pumpkin, raising himself to Catch's eye level, where he hovered in impossible defiance of gravity.


[23:19] <@catch> "In the Woods. Up th-th-the Road."

He follows the Raven, and every step seems to make him a little paler. Nothing significant. He is no corpse, no bloodless thing. But he just looks paler - brighter - as if he is his own moon, his own reflected light held tight under his skin. "I know her."

It is a statement, not a question. In the chill of the night, he inhales sharply. Again. He snuffs at the air like a beast, and his stride lengthens. "Yes. Yes, I d-d-do."


[23:29] <@Fionnuala> The new mare, Tintreach, a sleek and quick-limbed thing whose ribs still protruded in ridged shadows from her red-brown hide, cropped the damp grass nervously. She disliked the dark, and disliked more the thick stink of cooked flesh that pervaded this quiet little grove. Occasionally she raised her head and snuffled at the air, then shivered all over, with a quick stamp of her foot.

Propped against a wet tree, Fionn put a piece of bread to her mouth and listlessly tore off a chunk. She chewed it for ages, over and over, until it was no more than liquid pulp, and still it took three swallows to force it down. Her gaze fell listlessly upon the chunk still in her hand. The curious idea came upon her that this was some weird sort of punishment: given a magical lump of bread that never got any smaller, and she trapped here until she'd finished it all. Her stomach lay like a flat stone, but the raven had brought her food and bidden her eat. She had to have something in her belly to take the medicine, but the very act of chewing felt like such a chore. Blue blood had stiffened to black upon her torn, damp green gown. Her other arm lay slack against her thigh, cold and dead as if it belonged to some other person entirely. She had given up trying to lift it.

We were never meant to be here, she thought mournfully. One little scrape. That's all it takes.


[23:47] <@catch> Bright as he is, large as he is, he suddenly fills a space that he should have occupied minutes earlier. Tintreach, first. His hand reaches out, bandaged fingers hardly brushing against a bony shoulder. He would not touch her without her knowing, but he does want her quiet, calm. Perhaps the Raven has fluttered on ahead, so that his first action with her - her first warning - is not the heft of his bulk settling suddenly next to her, his blood pulsing with the light under his skin.

"I d-d-didn't know," he whispers, "Th-that you're a queen."

There is nothing but warmth in his voice, the faint edge of a laugh. In truth, he feels almost delirious, light-headed. It is a dangerous way to feel, especially around her.

Catch takes a deep of her, and he grimaces. "You smell like Cities."


<@Fionnuala> And she was not surprised to see him--or perhaps as she was now, she was not surprised much in general, greeting the world with dull acceptance. At the end of her strength, she was only tired and limp, too tired enough to rest and gather strength for the next lap of the journey. At most the sudden soft brightness pierced her thin eyelids, making her wish she had a second set to close. But she pried them open, knowing, inevitably, who must be there. Perhaps the light, perhaps a change in the taste of the air.

She raised her chin from her chest and managed, almost, a smile. "Hallo, mo leannan." Then her head sank down again, eyes floating shut. "I told you. I thought I told you. I don't remember. Mayhap it was Other You." Her cold arm flopped in her lap as she tried to pull herself straighter, for his sake.

"I hate Cities," she announced. "I hate them, I hate them, they all smell like privies and no one has any manners. They've erased the stars there, Catch." She blinked, her vast and feverish eyes fixing on him, as though this fact above all others was vitally important for him to know. "I didn't think that they could. But now I doubt them nothing. They're terrible. You should never go there."


[21:11] <@catch> Bandaged fingers reach out, plucking, seeking, flat things of scars and hard horn. They dare not touch, but they hover, uncertain, unable to return to his crouching knees yet wondering if this was something he could do. Perhaps the Raven should have found another. She smelled of cities, of another world; he smelled of Myrken, all wood-smoke and lavender and pine.

"I've b-b-been to Cities," he says, his tenor voice quiet, roughened by the struggle inside him. "I'm n-n-not over-fond. I d-d-didn't - I wouldn't d-d-do well. You haven't d-d-done well." His hands rove the air, fingers twitching impatiently. Then; "How c-c-can I help you?"


[21:30] <@Fionnuala> Gritting her teeth, she leaned forward as far as she could bring herself to stretch her back, reaching up to rake aside a tangled, filthy mat of curls, and showed him: the smooth silk across her shoulder was rent, and in the middle of it, a livid purple-green mouth gaped, oozing bluish slime. The skin around it was shiny and hot, ready to split open at the pressure of a fingertip.

She could hold the pose no longer than a few seconds before she flopped back against the tree's trunk, with a tiny whimper when her shoulder struck wood. "Iron," she panted. "I cut myself. The raven...he brought me dulaleigheas--medicine--but I don't think it's working anymore."


[21:43] <@catch> It's blue. Her blood is blue, and he's not certain how he has not noticed it until now. It's very strange. It is a ruinous mess, it is no doubt painful, yet Catch's fey-fogged mind flits somewhere else, a giggle rasping in his throat. "Ser Suede," he says, the honorific still in place even after years and Tricks, "T-t-tried to say that Drow taste like blueberries, instead of m-m-maggots. Do you t-t-taste like blueberries?"

The tip of his tongue set against his bottom lip, and he is close enough, now, that his ruined forehead can barely brush hers. "It's Iron," he says, and his voice is suddenly deep, vibrant, a question. If she could see his eyes, then she would see pupils so wide that they devour all the colors of his iris. His hands come to either side of her head, hesitating only a moment before they touch her skull, digging through matted hair to find the firmness underneath, thumbs seeking to settle against her cheeks. Part of him is afraid, terribly afraid. The last time he has done this, Rhaena burned so many souls.


[21:56] <@Fionnuala> Her head rocked bonelessly upon the pivot of her neck, tipping upward without resistance--which terrified her, because she was resisting, trying to twist her face away. She had left the last of her strength somewhere on the road, leaving her a wooden doll with creaking, stiff joints. She knew what was coming, remembered it from last time, with her arm--remembered too, all too vividly, whatever it was that Gloria had done to her that had half-ripped her chest apart and left her spewing blood from her mouth. Already her stomach surged in dread anticipation. Her hand crept up to cup protectively around the soft vulnerable spot at the base of her neck where her collarbones met, but she could not wrench her face from his hands or her own black eyes from his own.

"Ildathach," she whispered, in horror and wonder, still trying her best to squirm backwards while the ancient oak cut off her escape. "Catch...what are you...."


[22:07] <@catch> There is a Song vibrating in his throat. It is tentative, hesitant, and the only warning she may have is the way the tips of his fingers curl inward, gentle yet unyielding in their pressure. The Raven said she needed help, help, and it is so obvious to him - once he pushes past his terror, his Memory of Rhaena, Rhaena, Rhaena- what she needs to ask of him. And he does not mind. He does not begrudge Giving her everything. His ruined head presses against her, and it is all Color, all Song, all Smells. He is there, inside her, outside her, an inexorable wave. Mist, liquid and fogged and all-color, an extension of the Song, is manifest in the way it reaches out to her, touches her, soft and gentle until it isn't, and they bore unmarked under her skin.


[22:25] <@Fionnuala> The Song built its slow pressure deep in her ears, its vibration rattling in her skull until the fissures threatened to shake and separate. She squeezed her eyes shut but could not stop seeing colors, all of them, vibrant greens and oranges that didn't seem possible to exist, the capillaries in the backs of her eyes swimming with color. Worse than all, worse than anything, the vibration settled in the depths of her throat, spreading through her lungs, until it felt that she was smothering in sound.

"Nnnn..." Both hands clamped down on his wrists, purple-black nails scraping silver-pale skin, as she tried to twist away from the implacable hands gripping her head. "Nnnnnooo!"

Abruptly both hands dropped away. Her eyes sprang open, wide and unseeing. Her spine arched upward, head flung back, chin pointed straight upward. Her lips babbled soundlessly.

The soft triangle in her throat, the spot she had tried to protect, flexed and bulged, a shape beating against the skin, a birthing through sealed flesh. The brown skin ruptured, and a blunted bone tip, blue with blood and slick with inner slime, thrust triumphantly through the rend.


[22:37] <@catch> He couldn't stop. He kept the Song so tight in his lungs, in the pit of his belly, that - now unleashed - it refused to be kept. Some part of him still screams that this was not right. That he should not do this to her. She screams no, but the Song never falters.

The mist-tendrils under her skin grip at protruding Bone, suddenly and inexplicably frenzied by its sudden presence. They pull her apart; they put her back together. Around them, under them, Flowers perfume in the air, and rotten worms putrefy in waves. His Eyes are gone. For the moment, he is not even there, and the drag of her nails split his skin, only for it to peel back together as if nothing has happened.


[22:47] <@Fionnuala> There was nothing. Consciousness fled, nothing left but a fierce and spitting spark shedding filaments of red and gold, fighting back against the tearing, violating tendrils. The physical body jerked and jerked again, core-deep contractions that forced the bone-spire further from the wound.

In its long habitation within her chest cavity, veins had grown around it like vines, and they popped free, spurting blue sap as the thing worked its way free: a long, slender spiral, impossibly long, too long to be concealed in a woman's torso. In a final striving thrust, it spilled free, rolling backwards over her shoulder.

No sooner than it was gone than her head snapped upward and she gasped. Her fingers scrabbled against him again, over his shoulders, this time not to force him away but to regain her balance by pulling herself upward and against him. Weak, trembling, her weight slouched against him, shivering in relief like a frightened child.

[23:00] <@catch> He - It - Something knew when It was free. Something knew when it did not need to tear, to knit. Catch's own body spasms as the Song crackles to its inevitable end. He was a pillar of strength; now, one by one, the tendrils vanish into mist, dripping up into the sky, Catch is nothing. Even the faint shimmer of light under his skin is dimmed. He leans into her, just as she leans into him, his hands sliding down, arms drunken on her shoulders.

He is dazed, he is gone, a thin, twin trickle of silver-studded blood dripping from his nostrils, into his moustache, off his gaping lips. Everything in him hurts, and his sightless eyes cannot leave the thing that has thrust itself from Fionn's chest.


[23:11] <@Fionnuala> Her arms locked around him, hand clutching wrist behind his back as if he might flee her, and the point of her chin rested against his shoulder. All she could do was breathe: deep swooping breaths of sweet, clean evening air, like a parched woman sucking up cold wine. As if an iron band had compressed her chest so long that she had forgotten it was there, forgotten what it felt like to draw a full breath. Her head spun in the sweet, drunken whirl of too much drink and too much dancing--something you'd regret in the morning but there in the middle of it, it was wonderful.

The thickening cold of iron was gone. She could barely remember what it felt like.

Abruptly, the old warning occurred to her: don't touch Catch, you should never, ever touch Catch, and suddenly, guilty, her arms sprang open, eyes widening in alarm, scooting on her bottom back from him.

"Catch? You're..." She shook her head slowly, in disbelief, at the silver rivulets from his nostrils, at the blank stare in his eyes.


[23:19] <@catch> She is warm. The stench of Cities, of Iron, is gone. Sounds filter back into him. There is the uncomfortable tramping of the mare, the rattle of the wind in the trees, the hundreds and hundreds of Wooded animals asking what was that? what was that? as they cowered, or questioned, or smelled the air, according to their natures.

Their mutual support is gone in a moment as she realizes, remembers, their mutual taboo. On his knees, he crouches for a moment longer, poised, beastly, ready to flee. He's Touched her. The Wormwoman Agnie's accusatory words are sudden and harsh in the ringing of his ears. He still does not grasp her outrage, but he knows that he has done something terrible - to Rhaena, to Gloria, and now to Fionn.

He sags against the ground at the weight of it, his eyes finally tearing from the Horn, bandaged fingers digging into the autumn loam as his shoulders shake.

"M'sorry," he gasps, his throat bloody and raw, barely able to force the apology past a thick tongue and the buzzing aftermath of the song. His eyes seek out the Horn again. It drives a terrible pain into his skull.


[23:30] <@Fionnuala> Amazingly, impossibly, her chest rippled. No pain. No anything. Muscles and tissues working away in silence as they had every day of her life without a care or a thought. The laughter bubbled out of her effortlessly, delighted, though her hand flew at once to the hollow of her throat out of pure caution, just in case. But the flesh was firm and sealed.

"Ah, no, no, no, shh, what are you sorry for? Look." She bent her deadened right arm up and down, up and down, to demonstrate, then wiggled her fingers. "You fixed it."

But something else was fractured. Something soft as fur, strange, slithering around in brain and under her flesh. Her skin felt oddly sensitive as they trailed down the row of ribbons down her front, tickled the cool grass tips as if she had never felt grass before. Those restless, questing, newborn hands reached for him.

Her head gave a sudden quick twist, following his gaze to the Horn, lying there bloodied and beslimed as a new child. She snatched for it.


[23:40] <@catch> "I -" His throat bobbed as he swallows, unable to say the words, unable to complete the thought of Agnie's words hissing against the ruin of his brains. He looks, made obedient in the afterglow, because obeying was driven into him, and it was easier, now, than thinking. He fixed it. The sour tang of Iron was gone. The little Song that was about her was gone. She was still there, because she was Tuatha, and she plucked at him like nothing else. But the whisper was out, gripped by out-of-season flowers. Everything for her was new; everything for him was old, monochrome, gripped by crippled bones.

He, too, reaches for the Horn, but he is far slower and clumsier than she. "- why -" There is a question wrapped around that word, but he cannot even begin to express it.

Child-like, he drags his knuckles across his lip, smearing blood against his skin.


[23:57] <@Fionnuala> Beneath the scrim of pale blue jelly, beneath the dying veins still wrapped around its surface, the Horn was both more and less than she remembered it, smaller and more frail, but realer than it had been when she had glammed a copy for Glenn. Her fingers slipped as they clenched down on its fluted spiral, the thought hot and fierce in her back-brain. Mine. Mine.

The grip slacked slightly as she looked at him, at his docility, at the strange shame that seems to cling to him. "You knew it was there," she whispered. "It knew you were there. All this time. Whenever it felt you near, it hurt me. Trying to get out. I know not if it was trying to go to you or get away."

But it had tried to escape Gloria, too, hadn't it? Tried to escape the tendrils that flowed from her mouth. The same tendrils that he had driven into her brain. The ones that healed. The ones that hurt.

She shook her head, squeezed the Horn to her chest. The burden was out, a giant splinter finally drawn so that the hole could seal. "Catch, sweetness...you're bleeding."

And, as she had for Glenn, without even consciously recalling the gesture, her fingers wrapped around a coil of hair. She settled herself on her knees and, leaning forward, gently brushed at his upper lip.


[00:10] <@catch> You knew it was there. "Yes." Never in a way he could articulate. He knew they shouldn't touch. Like Kacela's wolf, lurking under her skin, the Horn had been ready to erupt. Catch hadn't known he could Fix it. "It's n-n-not mine," he whispers.

Her hair dabs at his face, and it seems almost blasphemous. His hand lifts, his arm making a small movement, as if he wants to stop her. Instead, is fingers curl in the air, and he holds very still. "It's all r-r-right, if it hates m-m-m-me. I d-d-don't mind."

But he reaches for it anyway. Not for any reason that he can articulate. It does not Sing to him, not now. It is quiet, acquiescent. But there is a raw sort of yearning, a desire to touch, the way he craves to touch others.


[09:40] <@Fionnuala> The hand holding the hair instantly dropped from the corner of his mouth. Both hands yanked back to clutch the Horn, her shoulders hunched defensively, as though it really were a thing she'd carried and given birth, in need of her ferocity and protection. "No!"

And then she looked down at her hands, her two whole hands wrapped around the Horn with a grip that should have cracked the fragile shell. Horror and shock softened the reaction of hot fury. She unfolded her left hand, turned it over, staring into the lines of her palm. Even by moonlight, the two smallest fingers seemed pearl-grey in contrast with the sun-kissed darkness of the rest of her hand.

Her head jerked upward, lips quivering. "Catch, did you--"

And the full enormity collapsed on her, stunning her to silence. Her head still whirled, now a dangerous wheel spinning out of control toward nausea. What else had he fixed? The old crescent-shaped gouge upon her knee? The silvery stretchmarks on her stomach? Whose body was she even in now?

[23:03] <@catch> She wouldn't show him. She wouldn't share. His breath catches in his throat, and his hands flash back, curl away, pressing palms quickly against his chest. Catch wasn't certain what he had expected. Gloria had acted the same way when it came to Soodsy. For a moment there is something hot in him, something suggestive in the upward tilt of his chin, the way his eyes shadow. A shifting storm of Beannaithe on his features. Command. It is gone as quickly as it had appeared, and his chin drops to his chest. Did you? "It was Iron," he says, and his voice is very small.


[23:21] <@Fionnuala> Her breath caught like ice in her throat. At once she seemed to shrink, to cringe. Her fingers curled around the Horn, pressing it to her folded thighs, but the grip was no longer white-knuckle and frantic. Torn in two terrible and equally powerful directions: she wanted to protect it, as she'd promised. She wanted to please him. It was hard to gather herself, to remember who she was in this strange new form that both was and was not her own. To forget who you are under the glam is suicide.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "Sorry, sorry."

Tentatively, as in a peace offering, she stretched the glamourie between them. The moonlight took on a pinkish cast, hung with the faint scent of cherry and almond blossom. Quietly the autumn grass turned to palest green with the texture of velvet. Blue flags unfurled, and crocus, and sprays of white flowers in a foamy carpet.

She rolled the Horn up and down the silk, polishing it. She could not meet his eyes. "Don't be like this," she said. "You saved me. You fixed me. You've done me a great favor, mo leannan, and I am in your owing."

Her teeth gnashed nervously at her bottom lip. Finally she blurted out, "What would you have of me?"


[23:43] <@catch> She said sorry to him. Catch was not expecting it, and his head jerks up as the first strands of the glamourie soothed against his skin. He kept his palms flat against his chest, cautiously looking around, nostrils flaring at spring-smells, eyes glittering at spring-sights. He watches the flick-flicker of pearly bone as her nervous fingers play, and his mismatched eyes stray to the pale newness of her digits.

Slowly he tilts back, shifting off of numbed feet and cramped legs, landing in the not-there flowers and sweet grass. It is testament to his exhaustion that the action deprives him of all breath.

"No," he says - breathes, really, once he is able. Then, louder. "No. No. You - you're n-n-not for the owing." He doesn't want that. He doesn't ever want that, and the mere thought is causing him to panic, struggling to breathe. It was what he has done, it is the glam, it is what she infers and asks. The whole of his great, solid frame trembles. "Nothing," he answers, the words thick over his chattering teeth.

[00:08] <@Fionnuala> Her brows arched up, both amused and a little put-out. "Nothing?" Under everything else, she was still queen, and still sensitive about having a gift turned aside. "Am I nothing?"

Quietly, uneasily, she laid the Horn aside, cushioned safely in the deep grass. The green gown had gone bright scarlet, glistening with golden beadwork--the very gown she had planned for the ball in the city. Her hair untangled itself, cascading in red-gold ripples down to the middle of her back. Like a great scarlet cat, she lowered herself to hands and knees to creep to his side, stretching herself out upon the grass, her head propped on her elbow.

The air shimmered like a veil, and all at once, little white puffs began to fall. Warm snow, gentle snow, snow that blanketed but did not freeze, did not kill. The shape of the trees above spiraled lazily into more pleasing configurations. This new skin brought with it an eerie ease to the glamourie; it seemed to drift out, needing no attention from her to shape itself. The tingling in her veins and behind her eyes was pleasurable, but frightening; it did not feel like herself shaping the world.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Her hand, newly whole, rested itself lightly upon his heaving chest, and her brow creased in puzzlement at his labored breathing. "Did it...did that hurt you?"


[00:23] <@catch> "No!" His response is immediate, gasping out in horror that Fionn could even think such a thing. There is a faint plucking at his ruined brains, the spread of her glam befuddling his senses, a glittering, glimmering overlay that struggles to reconcile with one other. Autumn-dead grass, the faint and earthy whiff of decay, Fionn's dried blood and torn garments fight for control of his senses, arrayed again red, so much red, gold and white and blue-green.

"You're n-n-never nothing. I d-d-don't want to - to - to have you owed. Owned." His palms peel away from his chest, the bandaged heels pushing far too harshly into his eyes. Her touch, light as it was, brought a gasp; but he still didn't, couldn't, look. They are touching, he knows, fumbling for a reason why they shouldn't. The reason lay, free and uncaring, on the grass. "I don't know if it hurts. It's Loud. If I look, you - you m-m-might be in pieces. Th-there might be eggs and flies."


[00:42] <@Fionnuala> "Nonsense," she replied briskly, and pushed herself up with her arm, leaning to look down on him. Nothing human in her face now. The very bones had taken on impossible construction, sharp angles, a tilt to the eyes them seem both innocent and vaguely insectile, like a bee's. "You fixed me. I'm all in one piece. I have considerably more pieces than I started with, actually." Her fingers tapped playfully on his chest, and she tried to coax him out with a tiny smile.

"Owing does not mean owning with me," she said gently. "Owing makes things more complete. It is hard to explain. It's...it's only a way to tell you I am happy with you, is all."

There was a silence, her hand stilling warm and tender above the vast volume of his heart. It reminded her of leaning low to Toirneach's neck, feeling his hoofbeats and heartbeats as one against her cheek.

"I was frightened," she said slowly. "I was afraid I would die here, and no one would ever know what became of me. Back home...there's a beautiful hill of white stones overlooking the sea. It's called Cnoch-na-Niall. The Hill of the Nialls. That's where we put our queens, when they go under the hills. That's where my grandmother is, and her mother before her, and all the Niall queens back to the First Days, when we came over the seas. I am but a little queen, but I want to lie with the rest of them when my time is on me. Not here, where no one knows me. It's terrible to be lost, Catch. But you rescued me. That is no small thing." Leaning down closer to his face, her hair dangling down upon his arm, she whispered. "You. Are. Wonderful. Let no man tell you different."


[10:03] <@catch> Having her near, having her touch him, was just as confusing as the dual sights and sounds and smells. It grounded him, but that made all the other things even more insistent, more unreal. Her fingers tapped in tandem with his heart, and - even now - there was something that moved between them, from he to her. That he couldn't help himself, and continued to give. Niall was a word, a name, that he knew, but its context was different, here. His hands drag themselves up, past his eyes, into his ruinous hairline, and it does not stop, the cap inexorably swept from his head. His ruined skull lay bare, the Cleft a knotted, pale, sweated thing, from just between his eyes to the very nape of his skull.

"You c-c-can't go under the hills," is all that he says to this. Even Solena said that he dare not think of himself as anything except wonderful. He does not feel wonderful. Right now, he feels fear, and fierceness, and he reaches out his hands to attempt to take Fionn's face between his hands once more. "I won't let you. I won't ever let you."


[10:33] <@Fionnuala> Just as she had long since learned how to predict an incoming kiss, and to duck her head or lean in to intercept, according to her whim, she raised herself a little higher on her hand to prevent him from taking her face again. There was danger there this time. Not to heal, but something else, something dark and abhorrent to her nature. Still she was gentle, lightly scolding, as with a child: "Ah-ah-ah...shh, no."

Her hand stayed against his heart, but this time her dim fire flared and pushed back against the power that flowed from him. It was that same black, silken, luxurious feeling that enrobed her mind before, so many vaporous dark scarves drifting like ribbons of smoke upon the air. They seeped out of her mouth, her nose, out of the corners of her eyes, forming invisible fingers. Like wrestling a pup with one's hand, the power was playful, teasing, purely for the joy of the game. It was something she had not been aware she could do with him, something she would not even have considered before, and it made her want to push even harder--to see how far the game could be taken.

That he pushed his cap away, revealing that silver-pink indentation, was enough to distract her from trying. She didn't want to look at it, could not remember if he had ever revealed it fully before beneath the succession of ragged caps. Her fingers trembled to trace it, to test the texture of the skin. That, at least, she knew better. But it was enough temptation that she quickly darted her gaze downward to her hand on his chest rather than his head.

"I will go one day," she told him firmly, no room for argument. "I must, else my daughter will never get to be queen and it should scarcely be worth having a child at all. But I promise I will not go until I am very old and tired of playing."


[11:12] <@catch> She slips from him, she pushes, and it is... unacceptable. But it is not the normal kind. If Catch had to form words, then no-one would ever truly grasp anything he tried to tell him. It was a primary cause of his and Glenn Burnie's failing. Glenn required Words. He needed, and he should have, explanations that Catch would never be able to provide. Where once his pupils had been blown wide, now - like a cat's - they shrivel, shrink, visibly pinpricking under Fionnuala's playful assault. How dare she. How dare she do this, how dare she deny him even the very littlest thing.

But it was wonderful, fantastic that she did. This was not Gloria, exerting her will with Glass Words, and her Jernoa people with Black Milk. This was not Rhaena, or Glenn.

In a sudden burst of movement that denied his very real lethargy, Catch's broad, hard hands seek to wrap around her wrist, the one holding her black-fogged fingers to his heart. His own Light pulsed, and all-color mist seethed from between parted lips and clenched teeth. "I don't care about your daughter. I care about you." His stutter is gone.


[11:51] <@Fionnuala> Who but a Tuatha would dare? She gasped, startled by his strength, his speed, when he clutched her. The small bones ground in her wrist, but she burst out laughing in spite of it, even as her hand wriggled like a rabbit in a snare to be free of him. Her white grin spread wider, pinpricks of canines showing at the corners of her mouth. The glam battered back against the Light in red-and-gold sparks that were immediately absorbed, dispersed, became part of his spectrum--ineffectual, but inexhaustable.

"I care about my daughter," she replied, prim and smug, before the hand suddenly quieted, settling tenderly in place. "I care about thee as well, silly thing. Will thou stand against the way of the world, old as tha' are? How is it that I who am so young know the truth of things better than thee?"

She sighed, fingers stroking his shirt. "For thee, my leannan, I would run, I would dance, I would sing, I would wear silly tultharian dresses with too much underwear--" she gave her skirts an irritated shake "--I would braid flowers into your hair, I would make spring out of bare winter, I would fold myself up at your feet. So long as you never command me, you would never have any need to command me."


[13:12] <@catch> "I can't help it." He has not thought of the Red One in a very long time. His memories are ephemeral things, and yet - now - the memory of her question comes to him, her desire, her need. Matched in strength, they were, He and the Niall and the Serpent, and perhaps one of them was stronger than the other. But why ask that question? That was a human thing, a human failing. The drive to defeat, to dominate, enslave, in whatever way the other would accept. The Red One had asked in all practicality. She could breed, but it would be Death, and - no matter what the townsfolk would claim of her - such a death was absolutely abhorrent to her. She did not Force, though she could have. It had taken Gloria for that.

His hands loosen as Fionn struggles, utterly willing to let her slip between his fingers, even as he leans into the physical contact he so craved. There was nothing sexual about it. He was so alone, so restrained by his physical appearance and society's demands, so relieved that he could touch her, and she him, without ruin.

"I - I have t-to Fix it. All of it. You know I do." All these things she says she would do, and do for him, make his eyes glimmer with tears and Light. "Never." He says it before he even thinks about it, a breathy promise that he's not sure that he could keep. The sort of reckless promise a child would make.


[13:50] <@Fionnuala> "Ach. You and Glenn Burnie both. Always wanting to fix things."

She flopped down on her side once more, curling toward him, her cheek pillowed on her hair. He let go her wrist, but she did not jerk the hand away. "Some things are lovely as they are. Some things...could be improved, true. So we meddle. Meddling's a bit different, though. Nudging things toward a different path, that sort of thing."

Turning her head, she buried her nose into the crook of his shoulder and sniffed deep, deep. Beneath the smell of stale sweat and wet wool, woodsmoke and accumulated layers of dirt, only one person Here smelled of rich black earth and fresh water: the smell of the downs after an evening rain. Nothing like the tultharian, who always smelled of the blackened wick of a candle just snuffed. Their own lives burning away, so pervasive that they could not even smell it. She sighed in contentment.

"I know you do. You can't help it. It is what you are. You are very good to try not to, for their sakes. It shows your kindness to them. They're afraid to be changed." A smug smile. "I change them, a little. But not like you. Mine is all surface things, skin-deep. Sometimes I change their minds, too, and their hearts when I can. But nothing real. Nothing forever." She shrugged and snuggled her cheek down again. "It does not trouble me. They are such little things."


[14:46] <@catch> She leans into him, and he into her; it does not matter, suddenly, if they lay in the rotting of Autumn or the glam-fueled field of soft, blue grass and white crocuses. His arm is hesitant as it slides across her shoulders. Brief pressure.

"They break if you change them," he says, his voice heavy with memory, regret. He can say nothing about Glenn Burnie, but his heart under her hand may pound harder for a beat. "They break, and then they - they hang themselves from the trees." That hadn't been him. Only, it had been. He had Fixed Rhaena, and she broke anyway. He doesn't want to think about it. "I j-just want to be good."

Catch suddenly shifts, pulling away from her. Only for a moment. It is his turn to curl into her, his ruined head tucking against her belly - without Light, without Mist, only a solid, physical object. His eyes close, and there may have been more words, but there is only a gentle exhale of breath, the last remnants of a cloud between his teeth. It smells enough like Flowers that he can pretend it is Spring, instead of feeling as if the world is dying around him. And there is Fionn, hot and cold and as real as a Tuatha can be.


[15:06] <@Fionnuala> She was silent, lips pursed, sorrowful for him. She knew a heartfelt wish when she heard one, recognized a powerful and pervasive wanting that resonated in her own nature. But to be good eluded her. Still her fingers curled around his shoulder--not quite daring to stroke his hair and risk brushing that dread scar--light as feathers.

"To be kind, to be gentle, to be generous, to refrain, but to be good? Whoever could, even you? Things are, according to their natures. The best any of us can manage is to do good, when the opportunity presents itself, and when it suits us."

The words came out in a murmur, her eyes half-lidded. She wanted only to luxuriate in the radiant heat so close to her skin, the size and strength of him contained, however briefly, in her lap. Her hand shifted to the soft, shorter curls at the back of his neck. "Oh, my dear. I've wanted this for ever so long. I was afraid of hurting you. You're not hurt now, are you?"


[16:15] <@catch> She is right. All of it is very right. Solena had said something similar; Iron Shoes as well, though she had been a little more cruel. But that had been her. Iron Shoes. She was Iron and Blood and sharp, filed teeth. He thought no more to change her than he would a wolf. Faeryl was another.

"Isn't that good?" His question is drowsy, because - despite his show of strength - he is bone-weary, bone-tired. Because this feels so very right. "Isn't that what being good is?" Kind, gentle, generous. When it suits. But Catch is no Glenn Burnie. He cannot philosophize. He especially can't with the smell of fresh flowers, supplied by the glam, the drone of a bluebottle bumping about them in confusion.

"What?" he mumbles at first, because he doesn't understand what she's asking, or why. Why would he hurt, ever hurt, with her? "My bones. My skull. It's - it's good. You're good. It feels good."


[17:10] <@Fionnuala> It had been a long, long ride, most of it in a clash of confuse, distorted by fever and pain and punctuated by wild bursts of panic in the absolute certainty that she was being pursued, that whatever had stolen her satchel in the city was now on the hunt for the rest of her. Ultimately these brief, intense delusions had drained her still further, her pounding blood pumping iron-poison faster along her veins. Now she felt nothing. Neither well nor ill. Only sweetness, and a bone-deep relaxation in all her limbs.

She closed her eyes and let her head fall back upon the grass, her fingers still raking and tickling the nape of his neck. "Some things are good," she agreed. "This is good."

She glanced down at her hand, then to his face, and then, uncertainly, began to press, just as she had with Glenn.

Poor little stumbling black-haired Niabh, all knobby knees and great dark eyes, trailing behind a Grand Catch like an orphaned gosling. Lost with love, unable to speak, sticking her fingers in her mouth to keep from touching his hand. Catch himself, grand and white and gliding like a cloud in a clear sky, trailing flowers, lost in his own ruminations. Unwillingness to trouble him further. Seeking him out, then holding herself apart. Wanting something she could not keep.


[17:44] <@catch> His eyelids flutter at thoughts, impressions. Once he grasps what is being shown, what is being offered, his eyes fully open. Mismatched eyes seek out Fionn's, wide and uncertain. "What is that?" he asks her, dazzled, unable to understand. "You aren't like that. Am I - am I like that?"

He reaches up, a finger seeking her cheek. It is slow, clumsy. He is so very tired. "I'm so sorry -"

There are tears in his eyes. She is so small, like Eater, small and dark and hopeful, and he doesn't know why he doesn't see her.


[18:03] <@Fionnuala> Tears made her hands shake. She never knew what to do with them, or about them. They were all, even him, full of tears, overfilled buckets ready to slosh out and spoil everything. Of all things, she couldn't bear to see this spoiled, not when he was finally so near. She rubbed her cheek against his hand like a cat rubbing in scent, reassuring. "Don't be sorry. That's only how it felt, betimes. That's how you seemed to me. This is much better, though. This is real. Here."

The hand on the back of his neck gently guided him to her belly again. "You can stay here, if you want. For a little while. I...I don't mind." She raised an arm, her hand giving a lazy twist in the air, and the snow tapered gently to a halt. The grass was powdered, the flowers standing up unruffled in a field of white. "I am like a lot of things, my Grand Catch. This is me, though. The real one. Or very close to it." She wrinkled her nose. "The real me has freckles and I hate them. I'm called Fionn."

[18:16] <@catch> He knows he shouldn't cry. It upsets others. Iron Shoes had slapped him, telling him with her harsh sort of love that Men do not. And the men Catch knows, they do not cry either. He senses that this must be true for Fionn, too. He bites the inside of his cheek, struggling to bring it all under control. It helps when she guides him. It allows him to squeeze his eyes shut, let them stew until it is dryer - dry - no longer a threat.

"I th-think freckles look very nice," he says, very seriously. His hand drops into the thin blanket of snow and flowers, and his breath - once ragged - begins to even and slow. He does not sleep. He doesn't need to. But weariness pulls at his limbs, and this is very nice. "Shouldn't tell me your name. It's not real, is it?" His tongue is thick with drowsiness, but it is still concern.


[18:38] <@Fionnuala> "Fionn's my favorite name. It's what all the people who love me call me." She hoped she wasn't hinting too hard...but then conversely felt her heart squeeze, hoping he would catch the hint. By his side, all else ebbed away: the memory of pain, the fear that had pursued her. She, too, began to feel the stir of sleep, or at least a restful watchfulness--her catnap doze. Somewhere she was aware that she was ravenous, her tongue craving all foods from her childhood--deer brains fried with butter and juniper berries, sticky seedcake sucked off her fingertips, salmon fresh from the river, its belly sliced into red finger-lengths and popped in her mouth even as its speckled body lay gasping in the grass--and smiled to herself, a little self-conscious in case he could hear her stomach gurgle. The traces of tears glittered on his pale cheek, and she felt the scalding heat of them soak through her gown when he turned his face against her.

"Glenn Burnie," she said lightly, stroking his hair, "says that people cry to know they are alive. I say he is silly. There are much better ways to know one is alive. Just a few heartbeats past, I feared I would be dead. Now I am here with you, and it is as alive as I ever felt. Alive in all my limbs, life in the air, in the ground. And you here."

She smiled down at him. "I went to see him, you see. Glenn. Because he had done something very foolish and given me his name. I gave it back to him. I think...it strikes me, that Glenn Burnie has only felt alive in his head, not with the rest of himself. I wonder if they are all like that, and that is why they weep."


[18:48] <@catch> "It feels tight in my chest," he says, after a long while. "I - I don't know what its called. It makes my eyes burn. So its tight, and it burns, and I have to - to scream to make it all come out. If its bad, sometimes - sometimes you have to do both."

Her eyes are black. She doesn't need to feel tears, and the tightness in her chest is out, pale and glittering in the greenery and the snow. Under her stroking hand there is a tenseness. Catch's muscles have clenched, and he trembles once more. Glenn Burnie.

"You went to the City to see him." Statement, not question. "He knows Maps and Places. He needed - he needed Rhaena to draw out people." Quiet, again. "They made him draw maps. Its what they bought him for."


[19:02] <@Fionnuala> Her hand paused its idle stroking. Her other hand drifted to her chest, to the untorn place from which the Horn had emerged. She blinked, her face going a little slack and surprised. "Oh." The hand resumed, teasing out the knotted muscles. "Is that what is is, then? I know that feeling. It swells up in your chest, and it's too big to fit and it hasn't anywhere else to go. Like a black thunderhead." She frowned, her nose crinkling. "I still don't understand why it comes out of people's faces, though. Mostly it comes out through my finger-ends." Her fingers rolled across her breastbone, and she glanced down at him thoughtfully. "He told you all that, too, did he?"


[19:34] <@catch> "I don't know. For men, it isn't supposed to." It is a confession. He trusts Fionn so much, this much, that he can let her know this terrible secret. It would be within her right, entirely, to punish him for it. To slap him harshly across the cheek, the way Iron Shoes would have. "Eyes are a way out, m-maybe. Maybe it's the only place where chest-things can escape."

Glenn Burnie had told him so many things that it was all difficult to keep straight. He runs down those lines, reluctant, but doing so would help answer her question. "Glenn Burnie is. He." It is frustrating that he cannot articulate. It was even more difficult than normal, because he is so tired and Fionn's petting was a comfort. So he leans into it.

"He knows what to say." Finally. "Rhaena could change things, but he can make you do it with words. He tells you about him, so that you want to tell him about you. He spreads out your skin, and he draws a map of you on it."


[19:54] <@Fionnuala> Instead she smiled and reached down to cup his cheek, risking the sticky residue of tears for his comfort. "I have too many things in my eyes already. Perhaps there isn't room for more."

She felt his trembling frustration vibrating along her ribcage, and her hand moved to squeeze his shoulder. This was a most odd position for her. No desire beyond the sheer physical comfort. No need to seek more. Not a lover. A beloved, mayhap. She lay still, letting him burrow into her, letting him speak. Quiet brooding fell on her brow. No Tuatha likes the idea of being pinned to a page. The thought of all she had said to him, echoed in Catch's innocent earnestness, brought an unwelcome thread of darkness to the perfection.

"Paugh. He's full of wank." The raven's word made her let out a rich, naughty two-note chuckle. "That comes of feeling things only in your head. You think everyone else does it too, so that if you know their heads, you know all of them. But, mo leannan," she concluded lightly, "Glenn Burnie has no place here. He is far, far away, and we are here. Because I have learned another thing about Glenn Burnie, that not even he knows of himself: he cannot find a moment. He is either moving ahead or looking behind, and cannot see what is right before his nose. So long as we are in this moment, he cannot find us, not even if he stumble over us. So be ever so easy, and rest."


[19:59] <@catch> Catch wants to give her more warning. A better warning. Right when one may believe they have figured out Glenn Burnie, that was when the man was at his most functional. That he was tenacious, that he picked and picked and picked, even if it was a thick scab needing to stay in place for healing. That he wielded words like a sword, and tied knots into gold. He couldn't say these things.

Burrowed into Fionn's lap, perhaps he sleeps; if it is not like a sleeping, then it is a fair enough semblance of one, breaths deep and even, hands curled to his chest, long lashes settled against his cheek.
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
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