Iron, Rags and Bones

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Carnath-Emory » Thu Dec 12, 2013 6:17 am

It was never about the clothes she'd chosen to wear. Gahald's distress, the very real concern that he'd demonstrated for her; it was never anything to do with hair that had finally relaxed its curl, with garments well-fitted but drab. She might have imprisoned herself in silk and whalebone and gentle orchids from her lover's greenhouse, she might have painted her lips and brightened her eyes, recited poetry from any one of the strange, thin books which fill her home's library, and still it would have come to this question. Still he'd have known.

You and your burden.
And it had taken her this long to realise it. It simplifies; in the same moment, it complicates. So that a swordswoman sheds the intentions which she'd brought with her, abandons a half-stiff posture in favour of taking a seat for herself here near his side. A boot-heel propped against his bed's edge, a wrist slung across the bent knee; she does not smile, not quite, but her eyes are steady upon him, solemn and not unkind.

"You know something of - weapons, of armour; such things. Have you ever watched a 'smith craft these things?" And there is but a moment spared for his answer; a nod will do, a shake of the head or nothing at all. "Raw metal is worked under a heavy heat, at first with tools as common as those used for - horse-shoes," she quietly grins. " For such ordinary things. But that is only the beginning. When the material has begun to take form - in one way or another; sometimes welding, sometimes folded - the 'smith begins to refine what he has made. Straightening the blade's line, honing its edge; advocating for balance, without which - " A pause, the space between breaths. "Detailing is required: the manner in which the grip is bound, the width of the guard; the angle at which the ricasso might curve," and she does not draw her own weapon, but only shifts this small measure upon her seat, that he might catch a passing glimpse of the gleaming presence at her hip. "A hundred different things, informed by need and purpose and the 'smith's art. It is the work of hours, of days upon days; it is demanding - a moment's carefuless and everything is ruined. And in the end no sword so crafted is quite identical to any other."

A moment for breath, a moment for the narrow body to ease back a little in its seat.

"That is one way. There is also another. In E'strielle, a city-state very far from here, the crown 'smith is sometimes tasked with the crafting of a particular sort of weapon. They name it the gol'kathir, and its price is - unfathomable. He pours molten gold into a mould, you see? and when that gold has cooled to hardness it has the look of a sword from pommel to tip. Very simple. Swifter by far. Very pleasant to the eyes, and that is the purpose of such a weapon: it is worn by the crown guard upon festival days, a demonstration of the monarch's wealth, of the state's command of beauty. It shines like you would not believe," she laughs, "and if you try to wield it as an actual weapon, it will suffer; heavy though it might be in the hand, it will bend and fail. It is an ornament of stunning beauty. But it is not a sword, even though at a glance it might have the look of one."

It was sudden earnestness. It was a risk - too many words. It was everything, all at once, from a creature who knew no other way.

"Elliot." It almost hurts to speak his name. A remembrance, a mourning; a silent fear that she has harboured for weeks. Because there are two young Elliots and only one conclusion towards which that fact can possibly lead. "I was a very lovely ornament." Her smile is small, distant. "The sort of loveliness, perhaps, that inspires - for a time. But I was - without substance. In time, I, too, would have failed, accomplishing nothing and yearning to be more. Do not think I lack for joy, just because it seems now that I do not shine."
User avatar
Carnath-Emory
Member
 
Posts: 2531
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 5:00 am
Location: Under your bed.

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Glenn » Thu Dec 12, 2013 8:08 am

He told a story, not even a story, simply a metaphor, of a road and the water that made it a riverbank. She tells him something else entirely, something far more detailed, something still so abstract. Night and Day. Neither night nor day brings a light of its own though. One has the sun. One has the moon. Cherny is a lantern. He cuts right through the middle to hard and harsh truths. He brings his own light and it is welcome by both Ariane Emory and Elliot Gahald.

The problem is thus: what the light illuminated there was no easy answer to. Cherny is so focused, inwardly, on necessities, on the basic needs of life and why wouldn't he be? This was a boy that had known hunger. Elliot Gahald is focused on everything else, the big issues, how to move hearts and minds and how to provide succor to people's souls. What use was food to be put in your own mouth in the face of that?

Or, as it was, in the face of Ariane Emory.

"You are wrong." Again direct, but she asked for it. It was not why he provided it. It was not something he forgave himself for even though she asked for it. "You could have moved mountains. You can still, I see. I can see that, but you could have before too, and it would have been in a completely different way and I would have wondered at it; we all would have. The whole world, my lady." Knightly and poetic even if not in verse, but he was so sure of it too. It was faith, deep and thorough, not in who she was, but in who she had been. "That sword. It is worth so much but it means something even more. In the right hand it means just as much as yours, and my lady, I value it, a sword of peace, ever so much more than one of war."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Carnath-Emory » Fri Dec 13, 2013 10:04 am

She'd been of a mind, when this began, to send Cherny away. Not because he was ill-fitted to the moment, not because he was somehow short of being essential; not even because discretion required it of her. But - look at him; look at how a boy makes a shadow of himself, a silent presence hovering at the very edge of the world. A sometimes-nod; an occasional deference, quickly lending himself to one small service or another - a visitor announced, a coat swept away. Something other than the clever young creature who'd charmed a difficult portion of her household, something far different from the grinning youth who'd climbed Darkenhold towers with her; who'd hung reckless at the very edge of their tiles.

And no-one is at fault for this - except for her, perhaps, who might have sent him away before now and hadn't. This is nothing but the consequence of a boy's respect - towards a teacher who hadn't much, lately, warranted it - and his very real care for Elliot Gahald, the knight that he's handled so carefully and for so long, and perhaps never more clearly-so than now. She might say the words this very moment, and being what he is, the boy would very likely - and very reluctantly - comply. She might say the words, spare him this and spare herself the risk of those misunderstandings which follow when she's searching her way through the unanticipated; spare herself the necessities which come of being what she is to him -

Might. But he's worth so much more than that.

"Are you so certain?" For Gahald: her eyes, her words. And don't his ring with a certain resonance? Terrible and fine and familiar.

Reflected in your eyes, I like myself more than I have in ages.
The sensation is strange; is nothing like novel, all the same, and she shakes it aside with a tilt of her head, quiets her eyes before they might speak the words she would not have heard by such company as this. "And if we gild all of our swords, then? Consider that: this work of hours, of days and weeks and all the years of a craftsman's skill. Consider it bathed in molten gold until it emerges shining; what have we then? As a weapon, it fails. As art," she slightly smiles, "it is a counterfeit.

"Elliot. I was not always what you have known me to be. What you would have of me - " You inspire me, and she might have echoed that; she might have repeated it all verbatim as if words given to her were words suited to his need as well; might have, and the idea of it is repugnant. "Peace - I value in ways you might not even imagine, but I will come to it in my own ways, and what I was, Elliot, what I was hardly understood what you describe. It wore the gowns that it was given to wear - " More or less; less rather than more. " - and it spoke the words that it was given to speak, and it tried, Elliot. It tried - so very hard - "

The eyes close. The delicate line of her jaw, a subtle clench. And with a smile that is solemn and small, she looks to Cherny.
User avatar
Carnath-Emory
Member
 
Posts: 2531
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 5:00 am
Location: Under your bed.

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Cherny » Sat Dec 14, 2013 1:10 am

The knight and swordswoman debate the relative virtues of gold and steel as a way of talking about something else entirely, trading in symbol and metaphor, and the squire takes the role of silent spectator, dark eyes flicking from one to the other. It's a role familiar to him from long before Rhaena Olwak's red-and-gold summer, from before Catch had mended his tongue and given him a voice of his own. Keep silent, he knows, and it is easy for others to disregard you, to ignore you, to forget you. Which can, at times, be valuable.

The Marshall turns her gaze to the squire, and the boy visibly straightens under that attention, a reflex learned at Rhaena's court lest he be chided for slouching. She looks to him, and after a moment he takes that as a subtle invitation, a request, and he draws cautious breath to speak, daring to meet the knight's eyes for but a brief moment before his gaze fixes on some point low on the wall, and beyond it.

"She w-was broken, ser. When she w-was the L-lady Marshall." Deferential, but emphatic. "She was g-good at, at not sh-showing it, but she was b-being something she wasn't, and, and it didn't f-fit her." An apologetic glance for the swordswoman, talking about her as if she was somewhere else. Someone else. A steadying breath and he forges on with an air of dogged determination, as of a messenger who delivers entirely unwelcome news.

"Th-the Lady made her - m-made her into s-someone else." A particular stress to that word, made not as an act of creation but of coercion. "And, and it w-wasn't her. And it d-didn't work, and she, and it h-hurt."

"You, you're happy b-being who you are, s-ser." It might've been phrased as a question, but there was little need; the squire has spent enough time in Sir Elliot's company to be familiar with his confidence, his self-assurance, the satisfaction he takes in what he does, who he is. Who he has been made into.

"The Lady M-marshall wasn't happy at all."

And in the boy's mind that, more than anything, condemns what Rhaena Olwak had done to the Marshall. To Elliot Brown the Lady had offered a new life, a life he might have hoped for when he was Cherny's age.

To Ariane Emory she had offered only a prison of flowers and silk.
User avatar
Cherny
Founder
 
Posts: 383
Joined: Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:34 am

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Glenn » Mon Dec 16, 2013 7:39 am

Cherny had been so careful with Elliot Gahald, so very careful. Part of that, certainly, was due to the knight's physical condition and, of course, before that because it would have been unpolitical to try to open his eyes too wide. Cherny had tried, successfully, to hide in plain sight with Elliot. There was something else, though. It was far more pleasant to allow for the myth, to allow for something true and brave and kind than to chance that with anything as unnecessary as the whole, unfiltered truth. Half-truths could accomplish just as much and were so very easy to rationalize. That was when the two were alone or canvassed by the fantasy land that Rhaena Olwak created. Now, Ariane was there and Cherny's words were very different indeed.

In some ways, they were a mercy, not necessarily to Elliot but to the pair of Elliot and Ariane. There was much to say in response to the ideals behind a gilded sword, to ambitions of peace and the worth that one can find in another if she but attempts at a grace she does not possess. There were opposing world views with no middle ground and Cherny stepped forth with practical matters and swatted them away; in some ways a mercy, in some ways a shame, for it would have been a pleasantly uncomfortable conversation, which was far better than many that the swordswoman had as of late.

Even so, there was only so much Elliot could understand. "You felt obliged." He offered, tentatively, carefully, even unsure, "but this is not so, for you were so earnest in your behavior, my Lady. I do not think even a great actress could feign that, right? Not without really feeling it on some level. You were happy and you had a peace. I can understand if given what happened, you wish to find a different peace. It's easy, in times like this... No, it's human, ok? It's human in times like this, to doubt one's beliefs, to try to find something closer to the ground to cling on to. Even so, I wonder if your trauma was not more than you are letting on, my Lady."

"Brave Cherny says much for you," this with a nod towards his stalwart young friend, "but I must hear it from you." Then with a smile warm enough to strain his injured side, he looked to Ariane Emory and he asked but one question. "What is it that you want?"
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Carnath-Emory » Mon Dec 16, 2013 10:59 am

This is the moment in which she'd send Cherny away; if not before, then now, in the moment that Elliot Gahald asks a question seldom spoken and never answered. Oh, there'd been - once; once, perhaps. But that was an answer purchased, and all that Elliot has to buy this with is his own, absolute need, and when has need ever counted for anything?

"You say that I felt obliged - "

And yet.

This is the moment in which she'd send Cherny away. Cherny, who has no need for this whatsoever; who does not stand to benefit in any practical sense, whose unexpected relationship with a difficult teacher can only suffer beneath the weight of such conversations as these, but -

"But it was not that at all: I was obliged. I was - written upon, as surely as stories are written onto the pages of a book. I was written with ideas, with a history that was not quite my own; a life that changed every thing that I had been."

A husband. A child. The one of them dead, the other as surely as murdered by her own violent hubris; it hesitates at the edge of her lips.

"I did not even realise this; I was not permitted to know, just as I was not permitted to remember - what had been, what I had been. Pieces of a - life - were given to me, pieces were stolen from me," and it is the closest, the closest that she can get to saying has never been spoken aloud

- although had there not been a filthy street upon which well-clad gentlemen applied unprincipled fists to the faces, the soft
bodies, of the small and desperate?
"- and then she took them away!" she'd roared at the height of it, and that was not nearly
enough, it did not
begin to be enough, but where words had failed steel would supply. It was vengeance and it was so much
more than that - for herself and for them, and for a student and for a boy, a bloody and methodical dismantling -

Grey eyes gently close. Narrow features smooth into an set of quiet ease. She does not begin again until the moment in which she feels certain that a shout does not threaten inside her throat.

"What I want, Elliot - is to be my self, as hard and as absolutely as I can. Everything else in life - " a small wave of her hand. "It's just - things. This roof, these clothes, even this weapon. I've lost more than most, and I've had more than I ever imagined possible, and all the same these are just - things, which come and which go, easily given and easily lost. But what is mine - what is always and absolutely an unavoidably mine - is my self -

"And that is what I want. If it's to be fine silk and, and foolishness tomorrow, let it be for my sort of reasoning - or for no reason at all but whim," she almost laughs, "but let the choice be mine. If it's to be pastries and dreams and flowers for my - my friend's hair, let it be for that I want such things, and not because I am obliged to feel that I ought to. You do not make a sword golden by dipping the steel; you only make a mockery of everything that it might have been. I want to be able to choose, Elliot."

Quietly, then. Quietly, as she watches him, because:

"I want you to be able, as well."
User avatar
Carnath-Emory
Member
 
Posts: 2531
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 5:00 am
Location: Under your bed.

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Cherny » Wed Dec 18, 2013 5:31 am

The squire offers his thoughts, his feelings, his reasonings and explanations, and subsides back into quiet watchfulness, aware that this discussion is for the most part between the two of them - knight and swordswoman, paragon and pragmatist. They share the Lady's touch upon their minds, have both been remade into something else, and yet still struggle to explain their differences to one another. Sir Elliot Gahald, insisting that there yet remains some truth to the Lady Marshall, lingering behind grey clothes and wind-tousled hair; Ariane Emory rejecting that interference, determined to make her own choices, her own mistakes, her own life, of her own will and beholden to no other.

Obedience and independence.

Cherny is silent throughout, no move made to interject, to interrupt. Attentive, drinking in words and meanings and the gaps between, striving to understand what is left unsaid as much as what is spoken.

That last, from the Marshall, though; a span of heartbeats, time enough to hear, to infer, and there is a tense and subtle alertness in his posture, a flicker of alarm in the focus of dark eyes upon the swordswoman's features. Something in her tone, something in her gaze.

Not a wish, but an intent.
User avatar
Cherny
Founder
 
Posts: 383
Joined: Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:34 am

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Glenn » Thu Dec 19, 2013 1:03 am

"How do you know?" Elliot Gahald did not stand; he could not, not for long, not well, not in this sort of dramatic fashion. He was vulnerable. "How do you know what is true and what is not?" Wasn't that the question that plagued Myrken at this very moment? Had your neighbor been compelled or had he acted out of greed and spite and fear? Forget your neighbor. What about you? What about the Governor? The Vice-Governor? Even Olwak herself? What about the madman on the posters? Had they been a ruse like the Civil Constabulary or were they based in truth? What about Burel's intentions? What was the truth?

"I can't, my Lady." And she must have known what would come next. What else could it possibly be. "So I must have faith." He must believe. "At first, I had faith in my memories, in my Lady, in the knight that trained me, in the ideal of deference. Lately, though, I have had much time, right? I've laid here, fevered and not. Just me and loyal Cherny and whoever offers me aid and kindness. I have had much time to think. I've come to realize that I have faith in myself. I believe in myself, my Lady, much as I'm sure you believe in yourself.

"I do not want what you want though. You wish to be your self. I wish to to be good. I do not say that truth is what we make it. I don't say that beauty is in our eye. I don't. However I came to be, I am here. These memories are mine as much as your memories are yours. I have read authors, my Lady. I have discussed with some, though far fewer than I would like, ideals and morals. Ethics," and this was said with such innocence and nobility that he must not have known what went on between his squire and the Marshall, not in any real sense. The boy was loyal and true but he did like his secrets. "All I want is to be good and to do good work and there is so much to be done. After that, maybe there can be such a choice. I would sacrifice myself, but I will not sacrifice the well-being of others for my sake. And I will not let anyone else do it on my behalf."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Carnath-Emory » Fri Dec 27, 2013 2:47 pm

He knows then, this Cherny. For a week and more, well before any of this began, she'd had him escorted upon his journeys between Darkenhold and the mill, there being a question of bandits nested in the intervening forests. Two guards, each and every visit, and by the end of it he'd earned a nickname: Bachgen Craff, a boy of unique perception. Their reasoning shows true in moments like these: he knows - only a part, it's true, but for a boy like Cherny that's tantamount to knowing it all.

Her eyes meet his. She will no more deny him that than shrink from it.
Her eyes meet his, and their gaze is not an apology. Sympathy, though. That, perhaps; oh, a quiet breadth of that.

Elliot, then. Gahald, who describes not the slavish adherence to instructions that she had expected of him - that she's experienced of him, since the months ago that this began - but something like evolution. An evolution of the self - no, an evolution into Self, into a creature that had quietly explored - ethics, wasn't it? his words, not even hers, and it had sparked a fleeting frown that her features could not begin to restrain.

"I felt what I was made to feel," she begins all the same - like that, right into the middle of his words - but this is not entirely true, this is not the whole of her truth, not his and not even hers, and the long gaze of her eyes confesses that much. Wasn't it? She had

laid laughing in the sunlit grass, stealing wishes from dandelions and marveling at a world which teased persistently at the fingertips of her thoughts chased the storm from one balcony to the next, passionate for lightning and the raw chaos of rain and high winds, attendants hasting to keep her from a fall
woven tiny glass beads into Catch's beard and then his hair, a dozen iridescent colours as she sung the old songs that soothed his heart and hers

Grey eyes gently close. Listening, listening and sympathy is a familiar ache at the edges of her thoughts. Listening and persuaded, and: "It's the only thing a long illness is good for," she murmurs at last, with a glance sidelong towards Cherny - they've had this conversation before, she and he. Perhaps he'll even meet her eyes, in this moment. Perhaps, stung by something like sudden betrayal, he will allow no such thing. "It's not - time to think," and 'thinking' is such a poor expression of what they actually describe, these two. "It's time that allows for nothing else. Transformative, mn? You emerge changed, in ways that have so little to do with - with scars and a limp," and she's almost smiling, as she shakes her head; a detour dismissed.

"How does any one of us know what is real and what is not? Perhaps you lay fevered even now, and this - " a broad wave of her hand " - is all some sickbed fancy. Perhaps Myrken is; perhaps Trae Kelsa," a shake of her head, and this is laughter, soft and smiling. "No. I cannot know. You cannot. What I can do is deal with what is before me as if it were as real as it appears," which had been an architect's approach, in the end; visiting upon the Lady Marshall an unwarranted kindness had accomplished more than countering her convictions ever had. "Cherny, here. You yourself. To whom an apology is owed, mn? You're much more than I'd reckoned possible. So much more, and so worthy of - "

Again, the shake of her head; a narrow body unfolding from its bedside seat. Faith, he'd said, and she'd nearly flinched at the sound of it, but what had followed was nothing like what she'd feared; was, in a very particular way, so much worse. Too easy, to imagine - just for a moment - what it would be to speak with this youth, this self-made man, of these discoveries he's made, of the strange and fine directions in which his thoughts have begun to branch. This very new person - which fact is itself of stunning meaning to the creature which she is; too easy to imagine weeks like that, months like that. She is to her feet instead, a hand clasped to his shoulder as she takes the first and necessary step away.
User avatar
Carnath-Emory
Member
 
Posts: 2531
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 5:00 am
Location: Under your bed.

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Cherny » Sat Dec 28, 2013 10:08 am

That sympathy is confirmation enough; with it the Marshall acknowledges the boy's mute accusation, affirms them, and then sets them firmly aside.

She knows something; she has something, some trick, some spell that might undo what was done to Elliot Brown; she means to see him restored.

Back and forth, swordswoman and knight, and Cherny watches, listens, attentive to the smallest gesture, reading what he can in the pauses between words. Sir Elliot has no need for the boy's advocacy, not any more, and as he speaks his squire settles, eases from that moment of sudden fear. The knight argues well, states his position clearly, emphatically; gone are the honeyed platitudes of Lady Rhaena's ornamental knight - I am sorry you suffer; I will save you - and in their place something more substantial, more real than his airy assertions on the Lady's most treasured virtue of Beauty.

A glance, and the boy's gaze upon his knight is filled with a quiet admiration, pride as Sir Elliot states his devotion to doing good, to being good. Another a moment later, and for the Marshall there is something like defiance, like challenge, because she can see for herself - a stretch of long weeks of convalescence, of enforced contemplation, and see what he has become - free of the Lady's smothering influence, allowed to grow into something more than an armour-clad adornment to her court. So much more.

A paragon, by his own choice.

The squire startles as she moves to stand; an unthinking half-step forward as she reaches for him, a motion stalled as she almost as quickly steps back, places some small distance between them; he cannot say what he fears, only that - even for a creature who deliberately scorns the Lady Marshall's concepts of propriety - that touch seems an incongruous familiarity.
User avatar
Cherny
Founder
 
Posts: 383
Joined: Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:34 am

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Glenn » Sat Dec 28, 2013 10:35 am

There was a concept that was plainly apparent. It settled around the room like three day old dust upon a windowsill. There was simply no Elliot that would shout it back to her as she left.

One must explain that:

There was something to be shouted. It was a distinct thought. He had grown. He had taken what was made of him not as an end in and of itself and as a starting point. She could have done the same. She might have become a better person at the end of it. Others, now, may say things about herself that are positive. She might know things about herself that were positive. Of the former, very little she believed. Of the latter, the term 'good person' would not be raised. Someone could shout that some day she would look back and hugely regret the lost opportunity for improvement.

Likewise,there was an Elliot who would shout to her in this very situation. She offered him a kindness, but a very specific sort. It was a sort that an Elliot would have saw through as endlessly flawed, hypocritical in the most human, most harmless ways. He would have never allowed her to get away with it. It wasn't enough that he didn't accept it; he would have to let her know just what she did and why it was unacceptable and remind her, of course, that he would simply take from her something more acceptable, because that was who he was and that was what he did and any justice in this world was what you could take yourself. That Elliot, however, would never say what this one knew, even as this Elliot, would accept her kindness for what it was worth and would never shout back to her those words.

Instead. "If I can help you, Lady Emory, if I or Cherny can, for I know that I am currently limited and he is endlessly resourceful, please just let us know. I speak for both of us that we would not see you have to deal with the darkness in this world alone. Thank you for coming." Earnest and caring. Concerned either. Cherny could be defiant for both of them. Elliot Gahald was simply himself.
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Carnath-Emory » Sun Dec 29, 2013 7:33 am

Imagine a kinder world, a more reasonable woman. Imagine how it could have been: the coat reclaimed like an afterthought as she turned to move from the room; the jarring doorway pause; the dramatic spin with which she would turn upon them, a swordswoman and philosopher whose eyes shone brilliant with sudden realisations -

No. She's around the corner and halfway down that corridor before her stride even begins to slow.

It was so necessary for her to distance herself from the boy - from the weight of his gaze and of Cherny's, as well; so essential to take some measures against the chance of what her eyes might betray. It was so completely inevitable that she would answer all that smothering silence with motion, quick and sure, but there was only the slightest chance that she hadn't known where that motion would take her until she was there. Distance, after all: you don't name the child until it's lived out its first winter, you don't name the animal that's destined for your dinner-plate; you're careful, damned careful, not to look them much in the eye, if you have even a little concern for the limits of what your heart can bear.

It's something, perhaps, a little like running away.
Something else entirely, when her footsteps pause; when she retraces her path in a sudden rush.

"This is stupid." A hand catching her momentum against the doorframe; she'd stormed back into that room, and now she flings at them a word that she seldom uses at all. A border tavern, once; an alehouse counter, concern overcome by sudden outrage. And this time her word's target isn't the boy or even the youth to whom he'd been squired, but her eyes are for each of them in turn all the same, her mouth some dissatisfied line. "Say this could be ended." A glance for Gahald, then. "Everything that you are, everything that you'll become, that you've reached for and earned and won."

Clever Cherny, who'd known almost immediately.

"Say the alternative is to leave you intact as you are, to learn and discover, and what perishes then is only everything that you've been, a whole person - " A hand catches back through the dark of her hair, as sharp a motion as all the angles that she's become. "It's a very Myrken way to think - isn't it? That one thing dies so that another might live, that of two things of worth, one must be buried that the other might thrive. What do we say, Cherny - "

And her eyes fix his quietly, then; there is something, something to the set of her mouth.

" - what do we say of two-way choices, of Live And Die? Do you remember?"
User avatar
Carnath-Emory
Member
 
Posts: 2531
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 5:00 am
Location: Under your bed.

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Cherny » Mon Dec 30, 2013 1:21 am

From his bed the knight offers something akin to a polite dismissal; to his squire's surprise it is heeded, if somewhat abruptly - no time even for him to retrieve the Marshall's coat from the hearthside.

In the silence that follows, once angry boot-heels have receded along the Rememdium's hallways, Cherny hesitates only a moment before turning to the quiet business of the sickroom: smoothing bedclothes where a boot had rested, a swipe of thin fingers at some perceived smudge upon the linen; adjusting the chair's position from where it had been casually dragged; erasing the touches of disorder the swordswoman's visit had introduced, as if to banish the threat of yet greater chaos implicit in her arguments for Self. Small devotions to his knight in the offering of water from the bedside pitcher, in the straightening of blankets and bolsters.

This is the life the boy has made, has chosen. At first purely to survive, to evade Rhaena Olwak's touch upon his mind; but over the red-and-gold summer he has grown into his role, has learned that there can be more than mere survival. Even with the Lady gone, even with Elliot Gahald's status uncertain, this life offers more than a mill-boy might have imagined. A life of service, certainly, but out of choice rather than obligation or coercion. Service not only to Sir Elliot Gahald, but to the ideal he represents.

This is the life a swordswoman would see ended in the name of Self.

The ringing of footsteps in the corridor outside has the boy glancing up uncertainly for a moment, and by the time the Marshall returns he's already halfway to retrieving her coat, presuming this to be the reason for her return. That rebuke has him flinching, eyes downcast until she begins to elaborate, to explain, and when he looks to her his gaze is still wary, mistrustful, but willing to listen.

When she turns her attention to him, though, when she questions him, there is a flash of sudden understanding and - tentative, cautious - of hope.

"W-we refuse them, sera." The diligent student, knowing full well the answer his teacher requests, the answer which is right. "And we m-make our own w-way."
User avatar
Cherny
Founder
 
Posts: 383
Joined: Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:34 am

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Glenn » Mon Dec 30, 2013 1:51 am

Was there disappointment in Ariane Emory leaving as she did? Without a word, with nary a look. If there was, he didn't show it. Likely, given who he was, there was only sympathy, as much as he could muster. He couldn't fully understand but he could make assumptions, guesses. They were, of course, more focused on her than on his own situation. How could he know? In the absent of knowledge and true understanding, all he had to offer was kindness; all he had to offer was his best.

Then, she returned. She spoke her words. Cherny spoke in return. One had to feel a bit like an outsider int he face of that, but it still drew something of a smile. She had returned in defiance of everything brutish and small and weak. She had returned in defiance of simply accepting life for what it is. She had decided her best would be something more than that. To be fair, he still didn't entirely understand the choice that she spoke of and again saw it as something to do more with her than with him, but it was a rousing sight to see.

So here was Elliot Gahald, Sir, on the outside looking in. Here was Elliot Gahald choosing to be oblivious of that fact and including himself with these people he cared about so much as if he was always part of the conversation. "We strive to make a better world instead."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Carnath-Emory » Mon Dec 30, 2013 10:47 am

Elliot Gahald, Sir, slides himself into the conversation as fluidly as if he'd always been there. It'd had all the air of a performance sketched out for a captive audience, just moments ago - but murderous wounds and delirium had not been sufficient to relegate Gahald to the role of passive observer, and neither is the quiet conviction of Cherny's reply. Is it even remotely possible that they'd wanted it otherwise? Perhaps not: for young Cherny there'd come a nod, a moment's quiet, fierce approval - but it was a moment tempered by the curiosity with which she regarded Gahald's reply.

That, though - this sudden focus, when his offer and all its warm concern had received scarcely a glance.
Perhaps it speaks what her silence never could have begun to.

"That's interesting. Isn't it?" And for all her attempts, there's no restraining this sudden grin: the curl of a hand, the head's subtle tilt, and all for naught when her eyes drag right back towards him again. The the narrow body leans this small measure, hands braced against the back of that chair she'd abandoned. "The way that you see this; the way that Cherny does. You look towards the - broad aspect of the thing," and a twitch of the hand's almost dismissing her own trajectory. "Is it always this way for you? The large image? Like - like for - the whole of the map, rather than the tiny pieces set upon it?"

"We find the third way." Cherny now; the small nod of her head leaves grey eyes fixed upon him. "And if I fail to identify one," which she had; oh, she had. "Then the lacking lay not in the circumstances, but in my self," and it is something like an apology; a tilt of her head includes Gahald in its scope. "I wonder, sometimes," she murmurs moments after. "To spend all this time - "

A pause drags out far longer than it ought to.
In its wake her spine slightly straightens.

"So. Two new options, Cherny - both better than what we began with, and all the same I like each of them very little. The problem with the whole map, Gahald, is that a better world would never have allowed for what created you - " A catch in her breath, nothing like laughter. "It might never have birthed what you'd been." Wry, the shape that her mouth's become; wry and not at all without its regrets. "But you've my apology; this is a cold way to speak of you."
User avatar
Carnath-Emory
Member
 
Posts: 2531
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 5:00 am
Location: Under your bed.

PreviousNext

Return to Myrkentown



Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests

cron