by Rance » Wed Jun 19, 2013 2:02 pm
Spittle still gleamed on the corner of her lip. Her eyes were dark, unwilling to listen -- Rhaena Olwak was all but ignored in the wake of this introduction. The copy of the the Mathymatics would remain abandoned, alone.
She tried to give a final look toward the Storyteller. A long, clinging stare -- too much to ask, too much to know, too much to speak of that would never be resolved as each one of them turned the tumblers on her opportunities to do as she would, as a Jerno would.
That, Storyteller, was the face of a girl who sought to be better than she was born, with the downturned edges of her lips and the red-rimmed eyes, the gaping hole sucking inside her heart's guts empty for its want of rites and fulfillment -- Why this Dream you have given me, she might have asked. Why this head, my head? What must be done to prevent it, to keep it from manifesting?
But those possibilities, those need-to-knows, were suspended indefinitely.
Elliot Brown and his words were a waterfall, the overturning of a coffer of sand that hissed across the floor and had no true audience. Only when he was done, and the curve of his arm was offered to her, did she move -- she sought out his gauntlet with her gloved hand, to open his fingers if she might. With her bare hand, she wrenched the tiara-and-vine brooch from her collar, tearing tattered wool with it. She would place it like a beggar's coin in his palm.
"You've changed, Elliot Brown. I don't know when, or why, but it is not a better change. You are a lie," she said, her whispers a restraint for the revulsion clicking in her throat. "Sell it, if you want. Discard it. I don't want it. I have learned all I needed to know from you. I certainly hope you learned all -- all you needed to know from me."
Why the masquerade? The armor, the high-spoken words, the change...
Then, with his palm exposed and the brooch in it, she spit again -- not with disdain, or confusion, or disgust, but in the way one child might seal a deal with another, right into his glove. And then she'd take his hand in hers, tighten her elbow, and shake it. The saliva was warm between their palms, slimy, and she felt the molding of the brooch bite like tiny teeth into her skin.
"To the Veldt with you, and -- and with her," a tilt of her chin toward the door where Rhaena Olwak departed.
They could have their shining-steel and fine-gowned barbarism. They could have their Storyteller, their Golben, their false fairness and blood-balanced justice -- and a seamstress, what would she have? Nothing, except being some heel-crushed fool, deceived and betrayed on all sides. She would remain until they were gone, glad to be rid of the pin on her collar. Of Elliot Brown, greedy boy that he was. Of Rhaena Olwak, the governor's lady, mind-prying snake in pretty skirts.
Glad, begrudgingly, to be rid of the Storyteller, if not in the way Jernoah would have desired it.