Iron, Rags and Bones

Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Glenn » Fri Dec 06, 2013 1:54 am

Cherny was particularly suited to deal with the trial and tribulations of Myrken Wood. He knew pain, but he navigated skillfully around it, far too skillfully for his scant years. Avoidance, deflection, rationalization, whatever it took to survive and stay in one piece, so long as that piece still included his sense of self. He had been terrorized by elves and rogues, afflicted by dreams, maligned by those he cared about due to their unpredictable nature. He had seen bad things and even, perhaps without meaning to, caused others. Cherny knew pain. Cherny knew how to avoid it as best as anyone could in Myrken.

Ariane Emory, no longer a Lady but still very much a Marshall, was pain. She was hurt. She embraced it with iron and blood and a cold, biting, northern wryness, for deception, even self-deception, was not an option for her.

Cherny could hide things from his knight. Ariane could not hide herself. No fever would run so hot to make her seem like that she was not.

"You shoulder a burden," the words were simply put, strained. Each syllable was pronounced carefully, methodologically. "Cherny does too, more than anyone at his age should, maybe more than anyone at any age. You though? It's a river, okay? With Cherny, with you, my friend," he would offer his squire a nod, refusing to speak of him as if he wasn't there. "You can hear this. You live it, lad, you do. You walk," and with his free hand he wiped at his brown, for this was an effort. these words would have been an effort in the best of times. "You walk a dirt road, one that we all need. Everyone needs it to get where they're going. To be okay. It rains, though. The dirt turns to mud and threatens to flood. Every drop of rain brings the road closer to flooding. People you care about walk the road, but you, Cherny, you try to catch the rain as you walk, even though it makes you shiver, even though it might bring you sickness and make you uncomfortable. Because every drop matters. Because every drop matters."

It was the fever driving his words. He pictured it so clearly, that road, the boy with his buckets and cups and whatever he could find, doing whatever he could, hoping it would be enough, hoping that it would matter. Milky eyes turned to the Marshall. "You, though," he stared at her, through her, past her, and then directly into her eyes. "You and your burden. I don't understand, my Lady. I don't know..." His words fade. He could picture brave Cherny's task. He could not form a proper image of what he saw before him now. "I'll help you, my Lady Marshall. You needn't toil through life with so little grace and joy. We both know that it has always been within you. It was a true thing. You were a light that we all needed. I promise you I'll protect that light once more." She had regret for him. He had concern, sadness, determination for her, even through his current state, perhaps even more because of it.
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Cherny » Fri Dec 06, 2013 4:53 am

He steps aside as the Marshall approaches, a gesture towards discretion; a few paces back, but enough that he might pretend not to overhear. Head bowed, eyes downcast, it's only when the knight addresses him directly that he looks up, that he abandons that pretence and listens.

The knight's metaphor is strained, the boy's brow furrowing slightly as he endeavours to follow, to see it, and there's perhaps a brief glance for the Marshall to see if she shows any sign of finding it easier to envisage. The gist of it is conveyed, however, and he offers a small nod to show that he understands, more or less. That the knight needn't struggle to explain further, not when he should be conserving his strength.

When Sir Elliot turns to the Marshall the squire's gaze follows, dark eyes moving from one of them to the other. Both had suffered the Lady's touch, both had been transformed. And yet despite these similarities, there remained a gulf of difference between them - for Elliot Brown it had been a second chance, sloughing away years of the worst Myrken Wood might throw at a boy; for Ariane Carnath-Emory it had been a maiming, a clipping of wings, a pulling of teeth that might otherwise prove dangerous - that and a prison of aversions, of painful memories to constrain and guide her as the Lady saw fit.

The knight searches for the Lady Marshall he knows, grasps for what he expects: a graceful bearing, a dignified poise, an elegance of grooming and garb that strives towards the perfection of the Lady's ideals. Instead there is this figure - weary, disshevelled, eminently practical - and he finds himself adrift, uncertain. There is a certain tension in the squire's features as Sir Elliot speaks, as he offers what he imagines to be comfort and reassurance. A subtle widening of his eyes at that promise that he can only imagine the Marshall hearing as a threat, and he hurriedly clears his throat, glancing to the swordswoman for support.

"Y-you need t-to rest first, s-ser." Insistently repeating what has become a mantra over recent weeks, signifying that their conversation must conclude - too taxing, too exhausting, too distressing for a youth that has had his vitality tested to its limits.
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Carnath-Emory » Fri Dec 06, 2013 10:21 am

The knight had searched for the Lady Marshall he'd known, and for the squire he'd known better, perhaps, than she ever had. Better, in his way. In any way at all. Burdens - oh, burdens hardly mattered in the face of this: too familiar, too old and grey and understood, but - imagine a river-bed. And because your imagination's so poor - neglected muscle, malnourished and not worth much even to begin with - you'll never see it with the clarity that Gahald might, that Cherny might; you'll never feel the soft silt beneath your fingers, you'll never drown in its rich, damp colours. But what you can do is imagine what it was, before the waters came. Ruinous spring floods, tangled roots washed away in all that sudden turbulence. Incessant winter rain, year after year of it eroding at the soil so that a road becomes pitted and uncertain, opens cracks which become fissures, fissures which become a crevice, a yawning mouth just waiting to drink down the next autumn tempest -

Erosion. Given broad enough a span of time, every drop matters.

"A cold cloth for his head, Cherny." She wouldn't have bothered, once. Not for Gahald; not even for Elliot. A thief in her home, he'd been - that, before anything else. Untrustworthy at the least; cunning and proud of it, and absolutely unapologetic. She wouldn't have bothered, back then - to be here, to ask this of the other boy. But 'back then' is a whole other world, separated from the Now by the yawning black chasm of the Lady Marshall and a dozen half-shared dreams. It was not so much a change that Rhaena had wrought, but an opportunity created by the crisis she'd been -

"Do you mean to stay with him? That's what he must have, along with the rest," along with whatever ministrations the Rememdium's quiet staff might provide. "A damp cloth for his brow, to gentle the fever." She does not do this herself; she does not touch him in any respect. But instead allows him her eyes, when he searches for hers, a quiet surrender to the demand which is his gaze. Elliot's eyes, fueled by Gahald's solemn urgency - it's impossible to look at the one of them without glimpsing the other, different boys and the different minds which had known them, and this will dizzy her if she 's not careful with her thoughts.

But he will have this from her, all the same. A closeness which is unwise - she has every reason to keep her distance, and one of them is coldly practical in a way that gnaws at her heart. A hush of quiet words which were as much for his benefit as for Cherny's. And: "You brought me rain, once." Her mouth wears something like a smile, and it is not even for him - but perhaps it's for he and Elliot both. "Do you remember it? A different sort of rain; a storm of it, a desert in autumn. Im - " Searches, swiftly. "Improbable. And beautiful, and I smiled like I'd not smiled in months. Do not fear, Gahald, that I suffer for want of joy."

And for all that her jaw slightly clenched against the sound of it, wasn't even his promise familiar? Like an echo, an afterimage of a thing Elliot had once said, a variant upon the deal they'd once made, and she not even realising his part in it until months later, when he spoke the words -

"But it is time that you rest, now. As young Cherny says, mn? I know very well that you would - protect. I know very well that, were you to deem it necessary, you would be up from your bed in defiance of what it would cost you, that you would judge it a price willingly paid for what it would accomplish - but Gahald, there is no need. Not in this hour. Not in the next. Now ... Now is for resting."

A half-step back. A hand that does not quite touch at all.

"Look to your dreams. But rest, most of all. We would have you whole, mn? Whole and well."

Sick, to speak those words. Sick to even contemplate them, and for the very same reason that his promise did not ring to her as a threat. Cherny, should he think on this hours from now, may well come to realise why.

Unless he had all along.
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Glenn » Fri Dec 06, 2013 12:53 pm

He would laugh. It would be a kind, exasperated thing, a sheepish thing from a young man too earnest to every be that sheepish. He would laugh and it would almost tinkle with a certain knowing innocence. There he was, trying to safeguard those he cared about, trying to live up to his code, his reverent order, to protect Myrken after a trauma and loss he was only beginning to understand; there he was trying to grasp truth and understanding and meaning and use it to shine a light for those before him, to ease their hearts and be a salve to their weighted spirits, and what did they do? They told him to rest. They were kind but ultimately dismissive, not because what he said lacked worth but because he needed the help far more than they did. It was the sort of thing that would make him laugh, a quiet frustration and ultimate acceptance. In the face if this, if they said that, well, then he was in a state.

He couldn't though, for the Lady Marshall used this word, Gahald, and wasn't it his name?

It was, of course. It was a name he held such pride in, a new identity that was the second greatest gift that his mentor gave him, only after everything else, and like everything else, it was worth so very much.

Her saying it as she did brought him a fevered chill. It brought him silence and a temporary reprieve from resolve.

He laid back, arms falling to his side. After a moment, he looked to her once more. "I will rest. I will heal. I will..." the word, the exact word, was hard to find, a challenge. "hasten my recovery. I think, my lady, it is dearly needed." His lips upturned, but only slightly. Despite that, his eyes shown. This was a dogged young man, a driven one, one who normally would not rest until all the wrongs in the world were righted. After a breath, he managed one last sentence. "I will rest, Lady Emory, until your kindness can be repaid in kind. Thank you. And you Cherny, of course."
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Carnath-Emory » Fri Dec 06, 2013 5:18 pm

It grates. It must; she can't conceive of it being otherwise. He is what he is - something like what she'd been made to become; something considerably more, besides. He is what he is, and he does what he does, and were they to show him the need for it, he'd bleed his veins empty this very moment. With a comforting word for each of them. With a martyr's clear, brave smile.

An hour ago she'd stood staring into the furious eyes of Elliot Brown.
Ask her, as she looks down upon this knight's shining gaze, if he is not a defilement of everything that boy had been; if this is not horror fit to rival any she's known.
And somehow it doesn't make easier what's yet to come. Should, and does not, and -

"It is needed," she echoes him, and so quietly now. As are you, a Lady might have whispered, and cradled his hand amongst her own; the swordswoman who was her undoing does not even smile. But the words, such as they were, were gentle as she could make them; it is something other than a hand thrusting him back amongst the bedclothes, something better than the short, hard insistence she'd have spoken were it any knight she'd ever known. If it were Malaroth who lay there, or one of his lot; if it was a constable, if it was one of her own Militia, if it was something other than impossible sweetness forced into a human form.

"We will speak again soon. You've my word on it," and she is turning away then, in the wake of a promise that had chilled her as if it were a threat after all. There are implications to what he'd said, none of them intentional. There are intentions besides, none of them kind. And she is away, pausing just past the doorway to straighten the set of her jacket's edge; to smooth the dark hair back from her brow and straighten her spine. Five hours ago she'd requested sleeping draughts from a man who could hardly believe what she was demanding, and the after-effects of it all still linger - but there are faces she recognises, near the door; there are people that she needs, and she will not approach them looking like anything less than the self she needs to be.

Quiet words, amongst the group that she reaches.
Quiet glances, too, tilted long towards the door from which she'd stepped.
An arrangement, in the end, not entirely unlike what she'd secured for Agnieszka days before.
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Cherny » Sat Dec 07, 2013 5:29 am

Months spent as a squire, and a good part of that had required that he attend upon Sir Elliot while the knight attended the Lady's functions, an ornament for her followers to praise and admire. He knows how to be unobtrusive, to retire quietly from line of sight until he is needed. So while they speak the boy is a watchful shadow among many in the room, until the Marshall's instruction stirs him from where he waits. The healers hear the request and oblige with a basin of cool water and a wad of folded linen; he waits until the knight sinks back into his pillows, soaking and wringing the cloth with movements born of familiar repetition, before spreading it gently on the youth's fevered brow.

"I'll b-be here." That and a nod for the sworsdwoman's question, though spoken just as much for Sir Elliot's reassurance. He'd done his best for the knight for weeks, and would not abandon his post now.

Before long the Marshall is turning to leave, and the squire offers a solemn-faced bow, entirely formal, entirely correct, as if on the behalf of a knight who would gladly clamber ruinously from his sickbed to see such propriety observed.

"Thank you, s-sera." A deeper gratitude in his dark eyes than those words can properly convey; a heavier concern than he'll likely admit.

A look to Sir Elliot to see if there's anything else his knight needs, before he retreats to the edge of the room to allow the healers to return to their work.

---


The knight had spent weeks - a month or more - in the Toll cottage after the Lady's fall. The care he'd received there, well-intentioned and diligent as it might have been, can hardly be considered adequate given the state of his injuries. A wound cleaned, but not closed; food enough to keep body and soul together, but little more than that; medicines that had arrived only after infection and fever had set in.

Even for one as vigorous, as determined, as valiant as Sir Elliot, it exacts a heavy cost. His spirit blazes with resolve, but weeks of fever have been ruinous upon his body.

His long-overdue move to the Rememdium comes not a moment too soon, for under the care of the healers and wellsmiths he can at last begin to recover - slowly, over the days and weeks that follow. His wound is finally stitched, subjected to poultices and ointments almost as vile-smelling as the infection they draw out. The healers bring endless infusions and tinctures, bitter medicines and tonics to cool his blood and strengthen his nerves.

A constant throughout this interminable convalescence is the slight figure of his squire - always close enough to attend to the knight's requests, arriving early in the morning and remaining for as long as the Rememdium staff will tolerate him; in the evenings he leaves only once his knight has slipped into a healing sleep, his presence no longer required.

After a time he brings dog-eared books from his treasured little library, or weightier tomes of the sort Sir Elliot had recommended - matters of heraldry and accounts of military campaigns, tales of characters historical and legendary - to be read silently while the knight sleeps, or aloud, when he wakes and requires distraction from the discomfort of his healing injuries.

Weeks pass.
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Carnath-Emory » Mon Dec 09, 2013 5:50 am

Imagine a river-bed

and bury it in snow. What becomes of Gahald's analogy then? She'd thought on it for a while, on the way here. Being rather buried in snow herself, and being not nearly so cautious with her thoughts as she ought to be; she'd thought on it until those thoughts began to wander towards directions she would not tolerate. Like the way in which a mind seizes upon a weeks-old metaphor - roads and rain and drowning sorrows; like the way in which a mind makes something new of it - something different, something wholly unintended, kindling that quick to burn.

And that was how she came to pause just inside of the Rememdium's door, lips clenched bloodless and hands desperate to be anything but still. A month-old anger ought to be an anger cooled, and at the very least it is not one that she'll harbour on her return to Elliot Gahald; can't, all too aware of how hands would love to be fists in his collar, shaking loose of him the answers which she needs. It's bad enough, isn't it, that what they intend for him will -

Discipline in the steady unwinding of one scarf and then another, knitted wool hanging in sodden loops amongst her hands. Methodical motion, and enough of it that by the time she'd done - by the time the snow's stamped free of her boots and the damp jacket draped across the crook of one arm, she has schooled her features into something like cool ease. This is how she'll enter his sickroom: a creature considerably improved over the half-drugged thing she'd been those weeks ago, scattered and still tired. Straight of collar and quieted of eyes she'll join him there, this boy she can't quite look at without recalling everything that he used to be.
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Glenn » Tue Dec 10, 2013 4:06 am

It's amazing what proper medical care can do to help restore the health and well-being of a damaged young man. It's even more amazing that the care one gets at the Remedium sometimes does one good too. Elliot Gahald's indomitable spirit hurt and helped all at once. He had a tendency to try to get up and save the world long before he should, but also the determination to get better which always did further the healing process.

The counterpoint was the strange visions that overtook him now and again, memories not his own. Careful probing showed that they were not that of his old self either, which, of course, was the first thought of pretty much everyone that encountered him. They involved that old Elliot, the one he still denied as nothing but the aftereffect of an evil spell, but always from the outside looking at him and Niall, or him or others. He was unswayed but highly distracted nonetheless.

It had taken weeks more in this environment, with these hurdles and the weeks of substandard, but well-meant care to his wound, but finally, weeks later, his fever had broken. He was still unable to do much in the way of physical activity, but lucidity was returning. He was starting to ask questions that were more and more unpleasant.

Loyal Cherny would be rewarded in seeing the restoration, in seeing life and light return to him, first gradually, and then, when it seemed to hit a wall for long days, quite suddenly. He had been resting upon Ariane's return, but perhaps it was the weight of her presence or simply a creak in the floor that was no fault of her own that caused his eyes to flutter open. "Cherny?" A constant, or near-constant. It was easier for him to ask for confirmation of the boy's presence than that of the sun or the moon; those he had to find a window to see.
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Cherny » Tue Dec 10, 2013 5:44 am

The squire has his own chair - one that he's as good as claimed, with a view of both the bed and the door, in which he might sit and read when he's not at his knight's bedside. The approach of footsteps in the corridor outside has him glancing up from his book - a densely-lettered volume on the history of a particular chivalric order, its membership stretching back centuries - and by the time the door opens he's rising, book set carefully on the seat behind him. He enacts courtesies as the knight's proxy, a few steps forward and a polite bow as he notes the visitor's identity. Neat and tidy, a surcoat of black wool over his mailshirt, every inch the dutiful page.

"It's th-the Marshall to s-see you, ser." For the youth's benefit, and a quick little smile of greeting for the swordswoman on his own behalf - glad, perhaps, for a break from the day's routine, and in particular an interruption to his studies while the knight was resting - though short-lived as he recognises the deliberate neutrality of her features. A small gesture and flick of dark eyes for the Marshall's coat, in any case, an offer to relieve her of that snow-damp burden.
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Carnath-Emory » Tue Dec 10, 2013 7:01 am

A kindness, perhaps, if she'd fetched out the pretty silk and lace and crinoline's. If she'd coaxed her overlong hair into some precariously floral concoction, affected some colour for her lips, some smokey kohl for the edges of her eyes. A kindness, if she'd slipped into the wounded Knight's room upon the delicate soles of satin slippers, with a garland for his hair and best wishes for his health. Things which his eyes knew, things which his mind would have found comfortingly familiar.

The wreckage which she'd been would at least have brought him crumpets.

"Cherny. My thanks." There'd been uniformed men seated just past the door - that being the sort of kindness which a Marshall can actually provide. She'd dismissed them in passing: an hour's respite, no more than that; time enough for a cup of something warm across the way, time enough for a bowlful of runny stew and some of that crusty bread Dulcie always seems to have ready. Not the chance of trouble in the meantime, thankyouandgoodbye. There'd been that, and now there's her coat folded dark and damp across a chair-back before she's quite realised what Cherny's little glance actually offered; a shake of her head in answer to it, and far too late.

"How is it with you today?" And her eyes are for Gahald, nevermind that she does not speak his name; a sidelong glance includes Cherny in her question all the same. But briefly, only briefly, for soon enough those eyes are lost to their inspection again, to this quick and careful examination of a youth who'd lay still as if dying all those weeks ago. Eyes which want to discover some colour in his cheeks, some focus in his gaze; which want to see far more besides, a hint of flame-quick anger and audacious cunning.

But then, she'd never been in the habit of hoping for what can't be had. Not even this, in the same moment vaporous and just within reach...

"I hope you're of a mind for visitors. Or at least just one."
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Glenn » Tue Dec 10, 2013 7:20 am

There were large things that any mind could handle. A changed society, a changed Myrken. That was something he could wrap his mind around. The rationalization engine that his memories had become was dynamic and powerful enough to process through such a thing, especially with the death of his and everyone's guiding light. What altered memory of years past could encompass what he saw before him now, though. It was small. It was concrete, not abstract. It was immediate. People didn't just change like this. It was impossible no matter the trauma.

"A moment, my lady," He sat up, and was that not impressive? It seemed like he might never again many weeks before. "This will be impolite and beneath both myself and certainly you but, I am at..." Words were hard, still, not due to any sort of blight upon him, but instead, his simple intellectual failings. "a victim of my own... that is, a disadvantage? That's the way to say it, right? I am at a disadvantage."

Then, as rude as he had warned, perhaps more so, he would look to Cherny with clearer eyes than the boy had known for a time. "Is all Myrken so transformed? Is..." Is she under a spell? That was the question. He couldn't voice it. He could not be so rude. He could not be so horrible, not to her or to anyone. Instead, he looked past to Cherny and directly to the Lady Marshall who was far more Marshall than Lady.

Elliot Gahald was young, younger than twenty still, and some of those memories were more of a framework than a complete tapestry. In the face of this, he could show resolve but not understanding. All he could do, the only middle ground between his manners and sense of disorientation, was this:

"Why?"
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Cherny » Tue Dec 10, 2013 8:30 am

The Marshall has little need of the boy's assistance - a small shrug and twitch of a grin as she briskly sidesteps the petty niceties which had marked the Lady's reign and are, in this room at least, to some extent preserved. She turns her attention to the knight, and the coat is insistently transferred from chair back to a peg beside the room's small fireplace, brushed down with a palm so that it might hang well as it dries. A tilt of his head and small moue of his lips at the Marshall's discreet inquiry - nothing especially terrible, nothing particularly delightful.

For the most part he remains quietly aside, at the edge of the room - patient, watchful, until the knight asks him that. It gives him pause, has his gaze flicking from Sir Elliot to the Marshall and back again before he composes his answer.

"It's g-going back to, to h-how it was. Before--" Before you returned from Lothaine. One of the Lady's lies, one of the many falsehoods she'd placed in the rogue's memory, one of the delusions with which he's played along in his role as diligent squire and trusted friend. And yet for all that he's given Sir Elliot every impression of coming to accept this tale, Cherny flinches from repeating it in the Marshall's hearing.

He shifts uneasily, trapped between conflicting loyalties - a squire's vows to his knight, and an odd friendship forged over the course of a storybook summer; a student's duty to his teacher, to take what has been learned in their lessons and apply it.

"B-before the summer."

It is at once a kindness and a betrayal, an admission that Sir Elliot Gahald's remembrances are in some way inadequate, incorrect. The squire's eyes are for the knight and the knight alone, not quite daring to meet the Marshall's gaze.
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Carnath-Emory » Tue Dec 10, 2013 10:03 am

She'd had such a love for stories, the Lady Marshall. Being something of a storybook thing herself, perhaps, a creature snared hopelessly amongst dreams. The lady in the tower, unattainable and remote; yearning, ever yearning - oh, what tales she'd have woven to answer Gahald's sudden plea.

No stories, today. None of the odd little parables that she'd had for Cherny, those months ago when their time together erratic in nature, if not outright strange. None of the more elaborate tales that she'd spun sometimes for an architect, during those intervals in which she found his company tolerable - brief as they were, at first, and so tenuous that the slightest misunderstanding would see the Lady fleeing in sudden terror. But the stories themselves had been fine and good, and some part of her will always wonder if the pleasure with which he'd listened to them had been actually been genuine; the rest of her will wonder if it really matters at all. No stories for Gahald, but only this: narrow and grey, earnest and ordinary and unyieldingly mundane.

"Be certain, Gahald, that I value your earnestness above all the - manners - that you might think to offer." That, which is poor consolation at best, and from a creature which does not sit but finds casual enough a posture hear some short distance from his bedside. As he begins to sit, an effort which has drawn a sudden smile from her mouth's corner; as he hunts and retrieves his word, which only deepens her halfway smile. Does he realise that sometimes the manner slips? She'd wondered at that, too.

... okay?
And only ever noticed it to begin with because that was a word the Lady Marshall would never have spoken; had never spoken, but the same could not be said of Elliot Brown, the boy whose vigorous personality had haunted her dreams for all of a month.

... right?
There's a word for this pattern of speech. She knows that it exists without actually knowing the word itself at all; a thing mentioned to her once, years ago and in passing, mentioned because in her home she speaks a scattering of three different languages and speech itself, for all that she's no talent for it, had inevitably begun to interest her. There's a word for this, the way that statements become questions, the way that sentences grow to end with an upturned sort of tone. Three weeks have passed, but this ... this began all the way back then, and perhaps even earlier yet. It'd had her wondering, since. And wondering in this moment if 'Gahald' isn't a name that she ought dispense with after all.

"It's as Cherny says. More -" a glance for the boy "- or less. I know, very well, how this must seem to your eyes. To your thoughts. I know that it must seem cold. Ruinous. It is as - as a Myrken which wakes from a .. deep and long dream. At first it hardly recognises itself," and this is not quite a smile, this small, taut thing. "But to sleep so long, even when the dream is sweet, sweeter than anything, it is - "

There was a way he'd had of saying it. Not Elliot, of course, but -
And how she hates to repeat his words, to lend him any sort of credibility, any substance at all. But in this moment, here, now, they're true, and damned if she won't use them how she likes.

"It is not sustainable."
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Glenn » Wed Dec 11, 2013 7:20 am

Of the two of them, Cherny is endlessly more helpful. There is almost no chance this would surprise Ariane, though it might just surprise the boy. Elliot Gahald can almost wrap his head around what his squire said. It made sense on some level. Myrken lost its light and that sort of thing has happened before and it never goes well. Regression just made sense sense. He hadn't been there to stand in the breach and the darkness rushed back through. "Then we have work to do." This to Cherny, and it was easy and it made sense, and it would be nice if that was the end of it. A simple, if impossible, mission was just the sort of thing a knight could tilt at forever and ever more.

Ariane spoke again though. She spoke against manners. She spoke against the dream of the last many months. She used a word that he did not even know at the end and an emotion that he knew of, even if he did not know it himself, not anymore.

"No," was his only response, tender and caring, soft and sensitive. His heart went out for her. "Not Myrken, my Lady. You. Why?"
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Re: Iron, Rags and Bones

Postby Cherny » Wed Dec 11, 2013 1:39 pm

We have work to do, and the squire nods in obliging agreement; it's easy and it makes sense, at least until you start asking questions of difficult practicality - What work specifically? How will it be carried out, how will the knight and squire support themselves in the meantime, without their Lady's sponsorship? The squire, at least, has spent the months since Rhaena's end fretting over such problems, considering options and possibilities while Sir Elliot struggled with his sickness.

He remains quiet through their conversation - a nod of acknowledgement here or there as they look his way, but preferring far more to watch, to listen, to let the pair of them concentrate on one another. He watches the knight more as the Marshall speaks, a subtle alignment, ready to lend what support he can to her position, should the youth protest.

That question again, though. It is a transgression for him to speak out of turn, for him to answer on the Marshall's behalf, but the words are on the air before he can think to stop them; a hoarse murmur that finds itself released into the space between a knight's question and a weapon's reply.

"It's h-how she was, b-before." Before Rhaena Olwak attempt to remake her, to work her memories like clay until she was fashioned into something more ladylike, more delicate. Less dangerous.

Before the summer.

A blink as he realises that he's spoken that thought aloud, head bowed again to self-consciously inspect the floorboards with a shrug.

"M-more or less."
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