Tapestry: White King, Red Queen [Log]

Tapestry: White King, Red Queen [Log]

Postby Niabh » Mon Sep 16, 2019 6:01 pm

<@Catch> There could be problems. There would be problems. He wasn't used to thinking of problems. He wasn't used to stretching his thoughts ahead. There was the stretch of now-empty beach where the Water Dragons made their nests. It was warm, now, a false Summer before the Autumn came crashing down, but they were not fooled and had gone their way. It was overgrown, quiet, safe. It was not the horse truff that Eater had shown him, out in front of the Dagger. Here there would not be many to pry as he threw away gore-ruined clothes, scrapped blood and brains from his skin, set himself naked and adrift into the freezing water, looking at nothing but the dusk-heavy sky heavy with grey clouds.


<@Fionnuala> Shortly after sunset, from further down the bank, came a rhythmic charivari of creak-rattle-thump, out of tune and coming closer, brushing over the tops of the grass. An enormous bundle of withies balanced across one of the woman's broad shoulders, bouncing with her every step, and she smiled to herself. A bit like a man she'd seen in Myrken who played a tin whistle while beating a drum with his knees and clattering a pair of wooden spoons with his free hand.

On the verge of setting words to the tune, she took a step, then went stiff, still. Electricity shot down her backbone clear to her heels, rooting her to the spot with pure outrage.

The smell struck her first: clotted blood, thick as smoke, unmistakable. Then the queasy realization of a more subtle undertaste, sticky on the back of her tongue. Sickeningly familiar. For some reason an image flashed before her eyes: looking down the mouth of a dead woman, a gummy pink-grey hollow into nothing. Not a poacher dragging his prize to her side of the lake to clean it. Please not what she thought it might be.

It was impossible to dump the withies silently, so she did it in one hard swift slam, bow leaping to her hand as she stormed forward and burst through the last length of tall grass to the sandy bank. If not for the blood, if not for the sickly liquor of anger flooding her mouth, perhaps the other smell, the good smell, might have been stronger. She would have known sooner. There was a white shape in the water--like one of the pesky swans, thankfully departed for another year.

She took another step closer, the bow pointed downward. "Catch?" Usually that question was joyful. Now it sounded querulous, the voice of an old woman. Another step nearer, water rippling in rings around her ankle. "I didn't know you could swim."

It was a stupid question, but the best she could do with her stomach sinking. The bloody stink came from his clothes scattered on the sand. Even through the dusk, she could not mistake the stains.


<@Catch> Everything was muffled. He could feel the creak of his bones, but he heard it more than he felt it, a clik-clik-clik with each twitch of his fingers, each subtle shifting of his arm or his leg. It is not the withies he hears, the swift string of a bow, subtle steps, even the calling of his not-name. Fionn. He didn't know if he could look at her yet. Her smell was unmistakable, strong, something he certainly could not ignore.

He tips himself, the water swilling from his ears as he, in eerie silence, breast-strokes towards the shore, his pale form cutting the water with hardly a ripple. "I can swim." Subdued. He is clean, but the skin of his chest, his arms, is red and scored by his nails. His Scar lies raw against his scalp, unable to hide with his hair glued wetly to either side.


<@Fionnuala> "So you can," she breathed, and the clenched fist in her stomach eased. A little. The arrow flipped back into its quiver, the bow swung back to her shoulder, and her hand pressed against the triangle at the base of her throat where nothing turned anymore but the safe strong beat of her own heart. But still her hand went there when she was nervous. Why was she nervous? Aye, true, it looked pretty bad, and his chest--his chest! The ugly red ripples in his skin only made her nostrils flare and her jawline harden, not because he was hurt--Catch was never truly hurt--but because someone had tried to hurt him. And now there was a heap of bloody clothes and the story resolved itself, hard and clear as a diamond. The details didn't matter. Not really.

Her black eyes found his face but caught first on the ridge of the scar and skidded away, unable to match it for long. Perhaps if she could have met his eyes, she would have seen sooner. She spoke slowly. "Catch. Is there something that needs taking care of?"


<@Catch> "Yes." Because he couldn't lie to her. No. That's not correct. He couldn't lie to anyone. But not because he was afraid, not anymore. The fear that he had once felt when he thought about Lying simply wasn't there anymore.

The mud is an unpleasant feeling between his toes, the reeds clinging to his thighs as he wades through the shallows, untouched by the cool evening breeze. Here was something he had not thought of - new clothes. He is naked before her, but unbothered by it, watching her closely. But he doesn't know what else to say. He couldn't stammer anything out, because it was all neatly ordered away.

He looks over her shoulder, then - and up - at the clouds again, as if looking for the words there. "... I forgot clothes."


<@Fionnuala> As he waded out of the water, her eyes gave him a quick, darting once-over, looking for any other injuries, trying not to linger to long on anything particular--failing--and like a snap of the fingers all the blood shot to her face, her ear-tips so hot they felt sunburned. She flinched, ashamed and a bit shocked at herself, before she tried to dismiss both with hasty purpose.

Her boot sank in silt to the ankles as she stepped forward, hands extending to lead him out. "Don't worry about clothes, you can wear my trousers, they won't be too much too small, but what I meant was is there something--"

And she stopped. Could not go forward. That dead static wall that turned her path in the Woods had risen between herself and Catch. Was keeping her away from him. How dare it?

Distressed, she looked into his face, as if he could help her, and felt something twist in her guts. "What happened to you?" she whispered. Not a trace of fear in her face or voice, only a tiny, terrible concern, like a child who realizes she is about to be disappointed. "Where is...what happened?"


<@Catch> He didn't like this. He caught her reaching hands, not afraid to touch her, but he would not hold her if she wished to escape. Nothing could hold her, should hold her, least of all himself. As confident as he wished to be, there was still something fumbling about this, about him, uncertain about how to proceed. Fionn was not Gloria. He did have to thank her, and that was a constant thought in the back of his mind.

"You gave me flowers," he says, and for the first time that small bit of familiar uncertainty crept onto his tongue. "You Sang to me."


<@Fionnuala> She gasped, and her fingers curled into half-fists, but she did not try to pull away from his grasp. Why would she? But the static wall buzzed ominously and grew more solid; she feared if he tried to drag her thought that barrier, she might dissolve into a cloud of gnats and scatter. Her breath sped up. "The flowers are all sleeping for the night," she said, quick and fast, "but I will sing for you again later, an it please you. But for now--"

For now what? Usually it was she who nudged him toward where he needed to be, which right now was clothes and perhaps a hot drink, then burn those blood-stained rags, then coax from him whatever else might need burning tonight. Her Catch. She was supposed to look after him.

One look into his face and all that good, practical reason faded away. Her fingers curled again, this time around his knobby wrists. She swayed a bit in the water, hanging on his arms for balance, as the world turned in a slow, sick revolution. Almost like dancing. "I. I believe we've spoken like this before. Haven't we?"


<@Catch> "No." If they had, he could not remember. And he hated not remembering, because what had he said? What had he told her? Had he lied to her, had he chittered on in Madness, had he reached backwards? Or forward? For a moment, if he stopped to think about it at all, even He felt a moment of his own vertigo, his own world spinning, so that he found himself pulling an equally-imbalanced Fionn to him. If she does not resist, then he would hold her close, seeking comfort in her closeness, her smell, her familiarity. He takes a deep breath to steady himself - another. "... I love you."


<@Fionnuala> She shut her eyes. Well. So that had happened. Slowly her head tipped forward, her shoulders leaned forward, and her brow rested upon the edge of his collarbone, light as a kiss. The wind could have shaken her loose.

"Catch," she began, in a weary tone that suggested she was about to correct him. Then she stopped herself. Everything smelled of green lake water and blood, and her blood, the ganconner's blood, felt like the force that turned the world. The throbbing settled in the back of her closed eyes, pooling in the tips of her fingers so that even smooth skin felt like sand.

At last she lifted her head, eyes glittering, one sharp corner of her mouth turning upward. "Well. An you love me, then you may kiss me."


<@Catch> And what was it? Request? Permission, he wanted to believe; that she gave it to him, equal to an equal. He remembers, then, a request in the Dream, the Red Queen who Asked where Gloria had Ordered. He is in a moment in that Remembering, marveling that he can do this thing - his eyes are dark and distant, yet still here as he searches her for the answer.

He leans forward, and there is nothing harsh or grating about his beard as his lips press against the corner of her mouth. It is not a kiss; it is a gentle pressing of his lips, which could be construed as such, but it felt more akin to the velvet touch of Tintreach.

"You brought me back," he murmurs.


<@Fionnuala> The kiss...evaporated. There seemed no other word for it. It melted away like seafoam and left nothing behind--no answering echo, no desire to see it linger. Just to be sure, she pushed her lips more firmly against his, eyes still wide open and curious, but the kiss was like a penny down a well: dropped down in the dark with nary a splash. She might have even gone on fiddling with it, adjusting angles until she found something that sparked, when a bright voice in the back of her head, one which sounded something like her own, remarked This is Catch, as if introducing them.

Her head snatched backwards, with a quick gasp. Her hand flew to her lips as if those velvet lips had scrubbed off the hide. "What? Catch, what?"

The hand slowly lowered. "Leannan...where in the world did you go, that you needed bringing back?"

Finally she let him go, mud dragging at her water-logged boots as she took a step back from him. Eyes shining. A little dazed. A little darkly pleased. She gave him a timid smile, but it, too, did not seem to have real roots. "Are...are you still my Catch, then?"


<@Catch> Her Catch. Hers. He is not upset by that designation. It is true, to some extent. She has poured her Love into him, into his Child. Flowers and Song. She let him go. She stepped back. Human lips, human skin. But what she stepped away from was not human. Water lapped at moon-kissed legs, feathers curling like inquisitive tendrils. Misty tendrils drip from a barreled chest, an arching and cervine neck; when they fall from the writhing mass of his lipped muzzle, detaching, they halt in their downward progress and drift gently upward. In the middle of the Beast's brow was ruination - but in the middle of that Ruin was a Bud, a small and malformed hump, a twisted tendril resembling a stag's red horn. Mismatched eyes refuse to leave her face. "Inside my head."

Nothing about him moves to indicate that he has spoken, yet he has, as if he stands before her in man's shape. In the water such a shape lingers, no matter what Fionn's eyes say.


<@Fionnuala> Another step backward, one she did not even realize she was taking until her treacherous bandaged knee suddenly twisted. Her arms flailed for balance, but she crashed anyway, kneeling in weedy, chilly water up to her hips, the long ends of her loose hair dangling in it. Her heart hammered in her chest, double-beats, until her skin beaded with sweat and her brain felt washed away in the hot flood. It was, she thought, with a detached interest, the opposite of fainting.

Her trembling hands knotted together, fingers entwined, squeezing until the knuckles went pale. They rose to grind against her lips, mashing the meat against her teeth. Still she could not pull her eyes away. Silvery feathers, tendrils that writhed and reached, that gouge in his brow that she had always been so afraid to look at and even more afraid of touching--why though? Why had she made such a fuss about it? It was all the same, really. He was just the same, only a little...more so.

Yes. More so.

When her fists slowly eased down below her chin, she was smiling--her old dazzling, impish grin, teeth strong and white. The black ganconner eyes more than sparkled. They burned like two nuggets of coal in a forge.

"Oh, but you are lovely," she said, as if he'd modestly insisted he was not.


<@Catch> The muddied water cleared even as he stepped in it, stirred it, no longer green or rotted but clear and black. The world seemed to groan with each step, as if even one limb removed was a relief; as if his weight was so great that it gouged down to the very mantle. In this very lake had lain a Statue; in that Statue, a Horn. In one movement, both lumbering and graceful, Catch kneels into the water, his withers turned towards Fionn. Wordless. Lovely.

He waits, all-color tendrils dripping into the water, floating upwards, gentle whispers.


<@Fionnuala> And of course there was never a Tuatha born that did not recognize that gesture, nor a Tuatha queen who didn't know exactly the right response for it. She pulled herself, hair dripping, from her crouching spot, and even the drag of water against her legs was not enough to slow her from going to him, one hand planting between the withers as with a quick last-second skip she swung herself onto his back.

In a burst of affection she leaned forward over his neck, just as she sometimes did with Tintreach, and planted a swift kiss behind an ear, then whispered in her own language, "Go, my beauty!"


<@Catch> It will go some way to thanking her. It is a paltry gift, this, but it is something, a beginning. As soon as she is seated he rises, and she cannot be as far from the ground as she seems to be. They are in the Sky; there is nothing around them but the Moon and the Stars, and the World is so very far below. His shoulders, and now hers, seem to stretch the vast track of Black Milk wherein the celestial bodies reside. Yet when he begins to run, he does not run the World entire; one step does not take them to Razasan, the second does not take them to the Sea; four or five does not take them to her own Kingdom. But he will run, for her, in their Forest.
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
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Niabh
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