Swords to Ploughshares

[Rance]

Gloria,

A marked map is included. My suggestion is that you speak to an uninvolved citizen from a farming family before bringing tidings, good or otherwise, to the Brown family.

A night before she had burned her favorite dress. It had gone up like dry brush. Fire was the great purifier, and even as she'd watched the bloodstains turn to black ash, she had not felt any cleaner.

Fire was on her mind as she looked upon a vast and sprawling hamlet of farmland. Grasses and fields stretched for miles, well into the vast horizon and beyond, where cloudless sky came down to meet the distant hills. Crops of far-off farms were patchwork squares against the green earth. The sun bore down upon her shoulders like the stare of a displeased parent.

…they just live on it…and in return get paid in dividends from the harvests.

The girl's legs burned with exertion. They had taken her several miles, almost five since sunwake, into what felt like a wholly new part of the world. The winding, muddy streets and shoulder-to-shoulder cottages of Myrkentown had given way to lush hillocks; here, the air was not heavy with the acrid spoor of human offal, but with the powdery aroma of fertile wheat. She could have ridden Caliir, should have, but the splinter in his hoof would have given him too much pain. With black sweat drenching her collar and a handkerchief mopping her brow, Gloria Wynsee took careful steps down into the valley, skirting the crest of the hill that yawned down into flat farmland.

Back before Calomel's day, we did a lot o' base crops, like wheat and oats and corn.

A farming family. A white-washed house stood between her and the rest of the widespread farmland, where she knew -- according to the governor's carefully-scrawled map -- a cluster of independently-operated farms churned out various crops throughout the year. The two-storied farmhouse had windows like the eyes of a spider. She approached it, drinking a swig from a water-bladder strung over her shoulder, but stopped short to observe the bustle around the manor.

Too many men and women for her to count were a wild storm around the farmhouse, dragging crates through the paths and tossing bags of grain and feed over fenceposts. Rickety carts were lined one-by-one in a straight row, and dirty-faced fellows filled them with careless abandon. This was not daily business; this was an industry, a tense and rushing sea of people lost in the throes of harvest, she imagined. Their heels beat the wet mud out of the ground. She was a red-dressed pockmark amid them. They stank, stank of sunburn and sweat, and for a moment -- a single, fleeting, precious moment -- she thought she was in Jernoah.

She reached for a man, one whose arms were not full, as he swept by her--

A lot of native-born Myrkeners don't like outsiders... but that's just because outsiders tend to cause trouble…

--and tried to snare his wet sleeve in her fingers. The girl shot high her chin, looked past her bonnet with a mixture of wonder and fascination, eyes falling upon his red, red face.

"Ser," she said, trying to stop him before he sought out the steel handles of a plough lodged haphazardly into the grass. "A moment if you will.

"I'm looking for a--" with her gloved hand, she unraveled her parchment map, looking upon the name she had scrawled out of an old census record, "one Feodor Fletcher, landowner. I wondered if he might direct me to the Brown family farm."

[Glenn]

Joviality and trepidation. It was a strange mix and rather a vexing one considering the man before her didn't know either of those words. Maybe Gloria did though, one or the other. Maybe she'd just see it some other way as he smiled a crooked smile at her, a few ill-placed gaps where teeth had once been. This was a different world than Myrkentown, but she had at least arrived during a festive enough day it seemed.

The answer began slow, laconic, but it picked up speed. Everyone kept their secrets close but every man, woman, and cow liked their gossip as much as anything else. "Well, that's a good question, it is, a good question for today, girl, and a good question from a girl whose not from round these parts, yes it is. It makes a man wonder, it does, just why a girl'll come along and ask what she asks." He was chewing on nothing, gums going even when there weren't words coming out of them. That might help to explain what happened to his teeth or it might be an aftereffect of their lost. "But I'll tell you. Ol' Jimmie will tell you, because it's a day for telling, I reckon. it's a day for a lot of things. Fletcher's done gone and moved out, he has. Heading to Heath. Just this morning. Not sure why, but he's packed his things, just some of them, though, and he's moved on. All very sudden and very strange and we don't like strange much here, we don't.

"We talked about it, me and Lloyd and Hagar and we figure it's cause Heath is enough of a dump that either you travel light or someone helps you lose your burden along the way. Why take things if they'll just be taken from you?" The gap-mouthed man guffawed as if he'd said something clever before leering over her paper. "What're you really looking for, stranger? Quick with it. Field won't plow itself if I sit here yakking at you."

[Rance]

He was the bristling image of impatience. For a moment, she thought him an old brother -- she smiled at him with her imperfect grin, the missing-tooth gap, the little brown stones that Jernoah had left in her mouth with its lack of water, jah'zoon urine, the eating of blessed sand.

Fletcher's done gone and moved out, he has. Heading to Heath. Just this morning. Not sure why, but he's packed his things, just some of them, though, and he's moved on.

Her black eyebrows shot up. She turned her head, watched the work with interest. Daft as she occasionally was, she had a feeling that these workers were not the landowner's usual employees -- they were volunteers, in a sense, taking what no longer belonged to anyone now that he was for Heath, for a place where someone helps you lose your burden along the way.

"It is my understanding that Messa Fletcher was once the owner of these cluster farms. This one," before she thrust a hand out to indicate the endless horizon, "and all the others here. Seven, eight of them. Producing wheat, flax, cotton and the sort. And one of those farms is being operated by the family of a very dear friend of mine. Elliot Brown. Do you know him?"

She tried to read the change in his face -- Elliot Brown's name, if known, would not often come with elation, after all. But she quickly interjected the next bit, for while Jernos did not often lie, sometimes a Myrkener must -- and despite her black sweat, she wore every evidence of a Myrken teenager, including the proud tiara-and-vine badge at her collar's edge.

"There has been a -- a bit of bad news I must deliver to them. I would wish it, in the stead of Fletcher's absence, you might lead me to their home."

No, no bad news as of yet, but a promise of it--

--if the Dream were to have its wish.

[Glenn]

She spoke and he stared, one eye seeming to drift now and again, but only slightly. It was just a small drift. Fifteen degrees perhaps. It was very possible that it was trying to escape from having to look at her, but then the eye would have more sense than the rest of him and that seemed somehow unlikely (perhaps just slightly unlikely). "Brown, yeah." More senseless chewing. "That's the thing, innit?" There was no particular attention given to the first name, just the last. "That's why the old grump left. The Brown family came into money suddenly and bought him out." Spoken with a tone of someone, who in his many years plowing a field, had never seen anyone 'come into money,' suddenly or otherwise. "That's their stuff being put into the house. Two families' worth. Conrad, the oldest is moving in with his family too. Manor's big enough, right? It's all confusing," and here the gruffness had left his voice, given way to suspicion. "Probably best to just move on, missy. That's what ol' Jimmie thinks. Head on home. Send a note. Something's gone strange over there."

The bustle might be clearer now. People were taking things in to the house, not out, and in a steady stream from one of the farther, much smaller, houses down the way. The closer one got to the scene, the more happy people seemed about it too. The man with his plow and the teenager with her sweat were at some distance, looking on upon all of it.

[Rance]

The Brown family came into money suddenly and bought him out.

A helping of duck, gamey meat plucked of its pinfeathers and served in little hunks--

A promise of shoes, not ones whose soles hung open like a dog's tongue.

The commission of a blade made for her from a fragile shard of glass that told dark futures and gave one's eyes what they feverishly desired.

Elliot-Goddamn-Brown, she heard the rogue's voice proudly proclaim in the back of her mind.

As Ol' Jimmie's eyes moved, so did hers, and a twist in her stomach caused her to squeeze her grip upon the man's sleeve -- she had never let go, had never torn her fingers from him. So these were the needless belongings of the Fletchers, then, being discarded and replaced with others, as if this deluge of money could bring with it a whole new freshwater sea of prosperity. The materials of a comfortable life.

Head on home. Send a note. Something's gone strange over there.

"You are a friendly man, ser. But I have matters I must speak about in person. There are things a tongue must speak that a letter simply cannot. Bring me inside, or I shall do it myself. Conrad, you say," she repeated, before unhanding his sleeve and smoothing out the front of her skirt, a habit of nervousness, as if organizing herself might organize the whole world around her, submit it to some sense of order belied by this wild upheavel of landowner power.

A day before, in her wild hunger to bring reason to a world still slick with Councilor Treadwell's blood, she had sought out a pamphlet in Darkenhold, The Farmer's Code of Good Conduct. Myrken law. Rationale. One of its edicts read--

A man shall not steal what belongs to his neighbor or any others, nor shall he commit bodily harm or forceful retrieval of the objects in question without the permission of a man of the Law.

But even amid farmers, she imagined the rules could be bent, changed, gnarled at the whim of convincing amounts of money.

"Your concerns are kind," she told Ol' Jimmie and his bad teeth. "But I will speak to them. And I--"

Elliot-Goddamn-Brown...

"--will take my chances."

[Glenn]

"Conrad's a good man, like I said," for he had tried. "A bit flimsy, if you ask, and you didn't, didja" and he had failed and she was moving on. "He stepped in when his Pa died. Came back and helped out Ellie, that's Elaine to you, his mother, and kept his own family afloat too. They've got three young ones, he and his wife. Maybe that's why he ended up so flimsy, spread too thin" The words were a flood. They weren't quick or complicated, but there were a lot of them. He was ready to be rid of her now that she'd decided. "Lizzy was married off three years ago. She's on another farmstead. Toby's been working on whatever the governor's been doing up by Golben. That's supposed to be good work, good pay, but not enough for that, not nearly," a nod to the house and the changes churning within.

He kept on chewing, as if trying to gnaw her away from him through jaw strength alone. Thankfully, he had words to help with that. "Youngest girl is Daphne. She's a bit of a firebrand, that one. Spirited. Going to make someone a horrible bride someday. Don't tell no one I said that though. She'd come right up here and give ol' Jimmie a piece of her mind, she would." He sighed and looked off to the house, having not mentioned a single thing about the boy she'd come there to speak about. "G'wan then. Off with you. There's work to be done and you've got your head set for mischief."

[Rance]

"Your secret's safe with me, Jimmie," she assured him with an uneven smile. "I will say nothing; it is like we have never talked together at all. You see?"

But they had -- they had, the talk of money, the Browns coming into a great helping of it as if falling headfirst into a vault of sharp-edged shillings. There was so much information, too much of it -- Lizzy was married off three years ago, so she mattered little. The girl with black sweat lining her dress-collar had a purpose here, amid even the displacement of one family and the plantation of another. Seeds were being sown; the Browns had stepped onto the next rung, and as the seamstress turned away from Ol' Jimmie and his plough-hands, she wondered what crushed knuckles the Brown family had left underneath them, what skulls they had ground into the mud just to stand taller.

An ornate wardrobe was being brought into the shadow of the porch, and when it passed, she hiked her skirts and clicked bloody-heeled clogs onto the first step, then the second, and finally alighted onto the verdana. It would have been a good day, a fine day, to drink a mint-dram and enjoy the wind, let the sweat blow off--

Between haulers of goods, lifters of boxes, carriers of oaken furniture, she leaned into the doorway and drummed her knuckles against the open door, shouting into the interior of the farmhouse with a voice that was not timid, not in the slightest.

"Ser Conrad, Sera Elaine Brown," the girl called, trying to lean in and trail her gaze up the great staircase inside -- how many times had the Fletchers traveled up and down it, up and down, in the years before their removal to Heath? -- with the want to get a greater glimpse of the husk the Brown family was turning into their very own communal manor.

Her words echoed back at her from the tall ceilings and the old, papered walls. It could have been a castle for all she knew of architecture.

"I come to talk. A -- a few minutes of your time."

A precursor to the second lie of the day, spoken with a churning displeasure cycling, cycling over and over in the pit of her stomach. She spoke with the walls, the rooms, and workers slipped by her with more and more of the Brown family belongings.

"I come with news from town."

[Glenn]

Conrad was uncomfortable. That was obvious from the start. He resembled Elliot in only the vaugest ways, something in the eyes, perhaps, or the lines between them; the chin when looked at from profile but not dead on. He was an adult and perhaps, a relief, he looked little like the Brown from her dream. Flimsy had been a carefully chosen word from Jimmie. "This isn't a very good time." Serious, overly serious, a constant frown upon his face. "We're in the middle of quite a bit as you can see." Still, there was an undertone of compressed joy buried underneath. It was just stifled by all the life going on around him. One might expect repressed guilt in this situation, whatever it was, but it was the opposite for this man.

Elaine's smile was tired but more friendly. She was hard in ways Conrad only tried to be, hard and lean, far too lean, as if age and hardship had whittled her down to sticklike remnants. She was also more put off by Gloria's appearance, by her obvious foreign nature. This was where Elliot had received his biases. This is where he had received his old wives' tales. She was not cruel. Her smile was friendly, for as much as she brought it forth, but she was no more comfortable with Gloria than Conrad was with whatever was going on. "My son..."

That was all she was able to say before a head popped out from around a doorframe to another room. This was Daphne. Her hair was long and braided. She was, perhaps, a year or two younger than Elliot, closer to Gloria's age than anyone in the room and there was energy and eagerness in her eyes. To her, this was a dream come true, and she was the only one of them still capable of dreaming. "Town? News from town? We would like to hear news from town." Perhaps she would remind Gloria of Nela Kaczmarek. She would certainly remind her of Elliot. They shared most of his best physical features and very few of the worst. Unlike either Nela or Elliot, however, there was a rosy glow of attention around her. It did not mean she was pampered. There had been no room for that here. Her hands were those of a worker's like everyone else there, and her skin had seen much sun over the years. It was her demeanor which belied that well-investment of people's time and focus. She was taking to this change like none of the rest. "we've had such news lately, too! But none of it was from town."

This is when something might have become apparent to Gloria. Fletcher had travelled light. He'd travelled without his servants who remained with the house. It was with an excited timidity that Daphne Brown looked to one in passing. "Terry, could you fetch some tea for our guest, please," and she almost seemed displeased with herself as she spoke as one friend to another, as opposed to how a mistress of the house would speak to her servant; she bit at her lip before turning to Gloria. "Come along then. Everything's such a mess, but we have some chairs and a small table. Come and tell your news."

[Rance]

She could see Elliot Brown in all of them -- he was an amalgamation of them, or they of him, as if he'd been pieced together by this frumpy, over-worked farming family. Suddenly, he was a nail inside of her skull, a boy whose outward attitude, his biases, his abrasive personality all made absolute sense. Perhaps he had not thought a living such as the rest of the Brown's family was suitable; perhaps he wanted to climb atop them, reach the hillock at the top of the dark ladder and spread his arms and embrace the whole world as his--

He wanted something better than this.

"I can see," the hefty girl said to Conrad, turning with a swirl of skirts to note the work happening around them. "Yet, the words should not wait. I am here on -- on official business."

There was the fib, the little lie, but it seemed safe to say -- if Elliot Brown was so despised in Myrken Wood proper, then what credence would his family have if they reported to anyone what was said here?

With gloved fingertips teasing up a corner of her skirt, she dipped into courtesy to Elaine Brown, to Conrad as well. Their eyes scrawled the words foreigner, foreigner, foreigner on her, etched them deep like with a glass knife, made her wrist smart where it met with her glove. But the tiara-and-vine brooch shone in the ambient daylight pouring in through the windows as she raised her chin. This was an exercise in rhetoric, one the Proctor did not oversee.

"Tea would be lovely," she said to Daphne, affecting a higher, more confident tone of voice that flattened her lilting accent.

She followed the similar-aged girl to the table and chairs. She would be sure she was the last to sit. Before doing so, she drew off the black glove on her left hand. The impulse to do so was difficult to fight; there was a reason she revealed what was beneath it to them. The hand the little glove covered was as thick and as hefty as its brother, but the skin, instead of burned to Jernoan darkness, was a brilliant and piercing silver, as if etched from molten metal itself. She turned it, pressed the edges of her digits down on the table to sprawl that hand out so that, if they looked closely enough, they might be able to see their reflections distorted across her knuckles and the ridges where fingernails should be.

Under her dress, hidden by the edge of the table, her knees spasmed with a tremor, and though her dull eyes were stern, a few trickles of oily sweat belied her spoken confidence.

With her other hand, she unpinned the brooch from her collar, then gently placed it down on the table.

"I come at the behest of Rhaena Olwak, and on the blessing of Glenn Burnie, as a representative of the Council of Myrken Wood. I would wish that you might forgive my peculiar appearance. I was not born here," she told them, more specifically, told Daphne, "but I have shown my dedication to this town and its prosperity time and time again--"

Treadwell's blood on her palms, smeared into her dress, the trappings of a stupid, afraid girl...

Giuseppe and his blade, leaning in, speaking false prophecies, promises of the surprising and the inevitable...

She lied to herself, as well as to them: she told herself, you have earned this chance to bend the truth like it is greenwood twig.

"What I bring to you is -- is not so much news as it is a matter of potential difficulty. Sometimes we must adhere to means that are otherwise controversial or unconventional for the safety of Myrken Wood." In Helstone's letter, he had mentioned drow, undead, and the traitorous Brotherhood of Janeiro, all tools she utilized as if she could whittle out a more accessible truth for them. The girl spoke, in those few moments, like a well-trained woman. "It -- it is understandable we should do what we can to protect the interests of our people. That is how you protect a vulnerable place from black-skinnned threats, things that live despite their death, and -- and treacherous Brotherhoods. Sometimes you must divine information through alternative means.

"I have seen a future with Elliot Brown that, as his friend, turns my stomach to sickness. I have seen what he may become. And I entreat you, as his family, to help me prevent it."

[Glenn]

Daphne was a little uneasy with Gloria as well. Of course she was. It wasn't often they saw someone so foreign on this farmstead and they rarely got too far away from it. More than that, when they did see someone foreign it was still usually something familiar, something they'd seen or heard of before. Gloria Wynsee, while perhaps not wholly unique in Myrken Wood, was one of very few. Still, her mother and brother were being dreadful as usual and she very much wanted the news. Town had once seemed like a wholly foreign thing in and of itself. Now, though? Now it felt almost within reach.

They would sit and she would sip at the tea. Again, the comparisons to Nela Kaczmarek might be apparent, but there were significant differences. Nela had trained graces. Daphne was fumbling and guessing as if she could get ahead on bluster alone. Perhaps the comparisons were more apt with Elliot. For one thing, they both only heard what they wanted to hear. Gloria led with the shining hand and perhaps that was to grab attention from the beginning, to show she had authority and meant business. What it succeeded in doing was distracting the Brown girl wholeheartedly.

She did make sure to primp slightly, as if subconsciously, upon the mention of Rhaena Olwak though. There may have been an excited little noise. "Miss Olwak sent us a letter a few weeks ago, she did! We had to hold the messenger back to read it for us," a little embarrassment on their illiteracy but only a little. It was, after all, such a fact of life. She barely knew anyone who could read. "and it was the most amazing news! It was the start of all of this." Her teeth were rather uneven, but all intact and when she smiled, Gloria could see the lot of them.

Gloria had such words but they were all wasted on this uneducated girl who was thinking of tea and of shining hands and of town and of the Governor's lady. It wasn't until she got to her point that Daphne's attention fell back upon her again, and then, losing all semblence of ladyhood, she laughed and she laughed. "Oh!" Hands reached for Gloria's flesh and blood hand, as if trying to embrace it like sisters. "You ARE one of Ellie's friends aren't you? You're a traveller from the west. I should have known with that strange hand. You've come to surprise us! You should have told Ma from the beginning. Oh! Will others be coming? Others like you? He didn't mention you, but there was so much to talk about. His horse! Did you see him? All white and beautiful? You must know him if you're his friend, though." She spoke as if she was a child again, all giddy and full of joy. If she had been allowed to take Gloria's hand, she'd squeeze it warmly.

"We were so worried about him. Not at first, not really, not during that bad year, but after that? When he went away beyond, beyond EVERYTHING! We never thought we'd see him again. Then Pa died and Lizzy got married and it all just seemed dark. He'd been gone from Myrken for years. You can't imagine what it was like when we received Lady Olwak's letter! We couldn't believe it, even if she is a right proper lady and would never lie to us. It was just so hard to believe." the smile looked strange on her suddenly, too happy, too giddy, as if it wasn't made for the face upon which it rested. It was so earnest though and her tone tinkling with emotion and excitement. "Our Elliot was coming home."

[Rance]

...it was the most amazing news! It was the start of all of this.

All this. All this, moving from their home to that of the Fletchers, who'd been bought out to Heath. All this, a seamstress playing like she was some kind of dignitary, albeit one with sweat on her chin and stains of dark sweat under her arms. The bubbling Daphne took her hand, and while their visitor wanted to flinch her hand away, tell her do not touch me, she allowed it. She squeezed Daphne's hand in return, smiling, taking no care to hide the brown, flaky blood still staining the edges of her fingernails.

You're a traveler from the west. I should have known with that strange hand...

"I don't imagine any others will be coming. Not yet, not unless--" she showed no surprise at the mention of Rhaena Olwak, though the girl had not expected her lies to combine with an unexpected truth, "--Menna Olwak herself were to come pay you a visit. But mine is mostly of my own accord. I'm concerned for -- for your brother."

Daphne may not have listened, but Gloria Wynsee did. She listened to every word, as if they were a story told in the sandy squares of Jernoan towns. Absorbed them like sand into her skin. Basked in them like a hot and blistering sun. Images of Elliot and his white steed, this thought of the beyond, outside of Myrken, some distant and fantastic place that was not here -- maybe that was what he had written in his letters back home, a chance to angle the pride of his family toward something greater. The truth was that he was a rogue, a thieving boy with a self-image too swollen for his own head, but the story was more beautiful, more legendary.

Some boys made-believe that they were saviors of the world to justify their helplessness. I will be greater.

Some girls made-believe the same. Even ones with silver hands.

"He's coming home?" she inquired, stroking a thumb across Daphne's knuckles. Conrad and Sera Elaine were still there, quiet, perhaps judging, examining her, but Daphne was her only focus. With her silver hand, she took up the tiny mug of tea, sipped it, simultaneously bland and overspiced. She was a regular little Rhaena Olwak, wasn't she -- wasn't she? To them, perhaps. It was a new role she had not expected she might need to fill, she did, as once she had

gripped a schiavona with the Marshall's hand, used Cherny's death and Catch's subjugation to her final aim: to bring a Golden Myrken Wood down upon the head of an assassin named Brown.

Young women, holding each other's hands, smiling across a table.

"Might I see the letter," she said. "The one that Menna Olwak sent you? That pin--" she nodded to the pin of a tiara and a vine, "--is her mark, and she -- she would trust me to read it. You do not, after all, bear a hand like Rhaena Olwak's without being one of her more trusted confidants."

It was a day full of untruth. Elliot Brown's. Gloria Wynsee's.

Talk of a Dream? Such a thing could wait.

[Glenn]

"I worry about that," she whispered, leaning her head in, not wanting everyone to make a big fuss about it. "I was hoping that more people would be coming to Myrken. He's been away for so long. Oh, we DID fight terribly when we were younger," she huffed overdramatically, "but i hadn't thought he'd return like this. How could i know what he'd grow into, and I was so very young when he left home, I was. I worry about him being alone now. He's said that she'll see to that, of course, and that she even has a match lined up for him, that she's beautiful and wonderful and all that, but still. He's come back and been so good to us. I'd like for him to have more friends." She squeezed her hand again, this time meeting her in the eyes. Before it might have been a show, all that sympathetic talk. Now, though it was more earnest. "I just think about them out there, the two of them, in that dreadful wilderness for years. I can't even imagine what it was like. None of us can. Oh! You can, of course. I'm sorry. It's just good to know he'd met others out there and they weren't all those horrible witches. Thank you for being his friend."

Then she asks her question and Daphne can't help to be a little confused. She tilted her head thinking through what she knew and how to make sense of it. Then, once again a smile. "Oh! you must have thought to reach here first. That would have been a strange surprise! No, no, he arrived this morning. Everything's happened so quickly since then. You should have seen him. Little Ellie on that horse, riding up, dressed like he was. Once he got close everyone flocked in to greet him." She seemed a little wistful just at the thought of it.

"The letter? Oh, the messenger took it with him." Here she laughed again, now looking at Gloria as if she was perfectly silly. "Of course we've seen that mark. Of course we have. I told you! He came by before. On his horse. Why I'll never forget it again. It's the first thing we saw this morning, and weren't we surprised too! We knew to expect him from Lady Olwak's letter, but not like that! Not our Ellie. Ma turned perfectly pale, and that was just the start of it!" The end, of course, was them ending up here, in this house, sitting across this little table.

[Rance]

Words, in the Brown family, must have been contagious among the siblings -- Daphne had more than enough for the silence that Conrad and Elaine otherwise brandished. They were steely, stiff, and the seamstress thought she felt her guise slowly slipping with each sip of tea, every flourish of a hand to punctuate her words. But perhaps the siblings were not the only ones subject to that impregnable gift for speech, for Gloria herself had experienced that sickness around Elliot Brown, or after a conversation with him: the illness, a need to say whatever must be said, even if it was wrong, letting one's tongue dance a combustible waltz of words that sometimes meant nothing at all--

Elliot Brown, that dreadful wilderness for years.

Elliot Brown, who met others out there and they weren't all those horrible witches.

Little Ellie on that horse, riding up, dressed like he was.

None of that was right. None of that was--

"He -- he is here?" she asked, her sweaty fingers slithering out of Daphne's, the palm of her hand dragging against the table as if she meant to steady herself. Her fingers scooped up the brooch and blindly, clumsily worked to pin it to her dress-collar. Her silver knuckles almost toppled her mug of farmhouse tea. Elliot himself had spoken about his family as if they were a thing left behind, tossed to the solace of memory and almost forgotten -- and yet, Daphne said he had

been riding that horse (white, in her mind, it was soapstone white; had Daphne said that, had
she said a thing like that)
was dressed so propetly, snooty boy in ruffles and long trousers with
knives
on his hips, and
maybe he, maybe he, maybe he smelled
like fires, burned cairns of corpses.

"I think I have had quite enough tea. Do you believe," she said, smiling, all off-white teeth, "that where I am from, sugar is a delicacy? It is a--"

She was standing. The girl wanted to turn, run, because what would Elliot Brown say if he knew she had sought out his family, to speak of some foolish Dream like she might warn them of what she had seen, eliminate the possibility--

Years of surprises. Years of inevitabilities.

But when she opened her mouth, it was to all of them, even as she somehow managed to drag the deflated fabric of her glove on over her silver hand. It was all confusing, a wall of interconnected insensibility. Why all the money, why the herald of a letter from Rhaena Olwak, why the upheaval of the hamlet's farming-lord to replace them with this, a little family that despised foreigners and had children who never knew when to shut their mouths.

...she even has a match lined up for him, that she's beautiful and wonderful and all that--

the two of them.

"I want to see him," she said, perhaps more girlishly than she wished, no longer on official business, but a desperate, personal kind. "I wish that you would let me see him, lead me to him. It -- it would be a great honor to welcome him back. Yes?"

Because Elliot Brown, for all his eccentricity and arrogance, could make sense of all this.

[Glenn]

It was not the Brown family, but the two youngest Brown children, Elliot and Daphne, both accidents, born around a year apart, that shared such similarities. Their nature was quite similar but how they were raised was not. It was why one ran away at a young age and why the other stayed. She worked the fields here. They all did because they all had to, but she was the little princess of the litter and he had been just the runt. Now though, everything had changed in a heartbeat.

"He's not here anymore," Elaine had to amend, she, herself, both baffled and proud of the son that she never did think much of, not even now. "There was much to do, he said, and he meant it too. He rode in, took care of business," business being setting all of this in motion, apparently, "and said he would be back before long. Way he put it, he would be staying somewhere in town. All of this, this..." Her voice sounded weary but not unhappy as she looked about. "everything will take a few good, long days to sort itself, and then there'll be sorting that'll need sorting. We'll have a big dinner for him after that. If you're a friend of his, you'll be welcome to join us then, though. It could be a week or two off. That sound right, Conrad?"

The eldest son grunted agreement. "Week or two as things go now. Moving'll just be the start of it."

"Moving will just be the start of it," Elaine repeated. "Not so sure how it is that you are going to be welcoming him back when you just got here too."

Daphne shook her head emphatically. "She likely came back first and has been in Myrken a short time. He probably told her about it, Ma," she amended trying to sound ladylike. "mother. You'll have to forgive them," this spoken without any title, despite the airs and authority the seamstress had tried to present, but also without at least some of the distrust of foreigners. "It has been quite the day and we really should get back to it." Daphne flashed another smile at Gloria, one full of finality. "If you do see Ellie before we do, tell him we're thinking about him and we'll see him soon! And please! Give our regards to Lady Olwak, but make it sound good and polite if you do. It was very nice to meet you, Miss..." Daphne was starting towards the door now, to see the visitor out, only to realize they never did get her name. She laughed once more. It had just been that sort of a day!

[Rance]

Their words were a wall. Daphne was not the only one who spoke; together, they layered their responses as if they were a finely-woven basket -- and perhaps she and Elliot Brown were not the only ones who told lies this day, and others.

But when Daphne moved to usher her out, the young seamstress complied. Elaine's eyes were sewing-needles under her skin, and Conrad was an inflexible oak. If she remained too long, they would ask too many questions, and already they had countered her, staggered her, Elliot Brown was here and Elliot Brown is not here. If these moments in time had been a painting hanging from a stolid nail, then while the frame might be right, the whole world around it was off-kilter, slanted, unsure--

At the door, she turned and gave her finest courtesy, this time greater and more flourished, while they conversed, corrected one another, stomped the heels of their sentences against the toes of their periods. This was no place to talk of a Dream; they would be no help, and she realized--

--they would be the yellow-eyed Hungry. They would peer out from the shadows at the golden streets and lick the blood from between the cobbles. Many-Fights and his noble guard would rip through them like scythes in a harvest; they would come to beg for all the skin they could, just a morsel, a piece, and she would jam her knife into their mouths, bust their cracked teeth when she twisted it.

They were all flax and wheat, and as sand, she had no place among them.

"Gloria," she said, clearly enunciating her name. "Gloria Wynsee. And yes, I would be honored to come to your dinner. As an outsider, it -- it is not common that I should be invited to such open-minded tables. Your hospitality would be welcome, and I would be pleased to dine with my friend." A pause, before, "My Ellie.

"Mind you, my presence here would be wholly of a personal matter. No business of the government or council; I sought you out for the sake of Elliot. I might wish we could speak again," she added, tilting her chin in reverence to Conrad, to Elliot Brown's mother, "at a time that is more suitable. Send word, if you will, to the Broken Dagger -- it is my permanent residence for the time. As for Elliot, when you see him, please pass along my regards, and I shall certainly do the same to Menna Olwak.

"Until dinner," the seamstress said, before touching Daphne's hand with hers -- the natural one -- and taking her leave.

She stepped back out into the hot sun, off the porch suited for shaded afternoons and lemon-water, and even as she passed by Ol' Jimmie, she did nothing but incline her head to him and make way for the hillock over which she'd first come.