Ailments

Ailments

Postby Tolleson » Tue Jan 28, 2014 3:56 pm

From an outsider’s perspective, perhaps Glenn had fallen ill to some terrible ailment that had now gripped one of his few remaining Inquisitors. In it’s wake, she was similarly gaunt and weak, propped up by an old, comfortable, second-hand chair set at a spartan but adequate desk. But the similarities were just that, observations made by onlookers. Not that there were many, but perhaps an errand boy gone to her room at the inn several times for books and clothes. Rumors, if anyone cared to carry them, of a young messenger girl with a thin letter for one Glenn Burnie and a thinner one for Gloria.

Glenn,

I hope you’re well and forgive the lack of pleasantries. Let us meet soon. The Marshall has shared disturbing news, or perhaps rumors, with me regarding Miss Wynsee and the events surrounding your speech, including the reasons why I have a terrible lump on my head.

Thank you, by the way. Ariane says you meant to protect us – I don’t recall.

Gods be good,
Genevieve


Miss Gloria,

Ariane explained what has happened. I am sorry, I don’t recall. I do wish to see you to learn more, to help if I can. Though I am not yet well, please come prepared that we may not speak long.

Gods be good,
Genny

Post Script: The messenger will bring you to the apartment, the address is rather useless.


Her otherwise quick, decisive and neat penmanship is strained. Far still from sloppy, the strokes contain the small tremors and the wavering quality of one trying very hard to write.

Missing from the infirmary for several days she hadn’t returned to the Inn, nor had she gone to the Inquisitory, the first as a choice and the latter, simply because she lacked the physical capability. Several weeks it had been, or so she had inevitably discovered; her muscles were relearning, slowly. It was a small apartment, three rooms at most, up a narrow flight of exterior stairs, toasty warm above a bakery and handsomely painted. It housed little more than the desk where she sat. It was a homely, empty place, not dilapidated or putrid as many other dwellings in town. It simply lacked invitation, furniture, possessions.
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Re: Ailments

Postby Rance » Tue Jan 28, 2014 4:44 pm

The messenger caught her on the steep first step of the Inquisitory, and when the thin missive switched from the hands of the heavily-breathing courier to hers -- "It's for you, with urgency, sera," the girl said -- Gloria Wynsee examined the note with dull eyes that seemed to flit back and forth several times over the words before her.

She folded the paper at its pert creases. "A moment, to -- to gather my things," she told the girl who'd come with the delivery, and turned inside, a stiffness plaguing the stalks of her stout legs.

Her sojourn back within the Inquisitory lasted a matter of four minutes. Long enough to leave a note hanging like a pale tongue off the side of her battered desk.

The seamstress' steps at the messenger's guiding heels were heavy, firm, the heels grinding prints into the white powder with every stride.

* * * *

When she was led to the apartment, it was the odor she recognized first. It rose like incense, permeated the air along the street; freshly-leavened rolls cooked by too-great temperatures, browned crusts that she could only imagine as, with a gloved hand trailing along the stairs' rail, she ascended toward the mentioned apartment. She found herself contemplating calculations, values, nebulous hypothetical numbers -- how many pounds of the glean had they preserved, despite the famine; how many loaves and crusts could they produce before the dearth of resource reached this far, into even the baker's stores--

She opened the door without invite, her palm pausing only for a few lingering moments before twisting, turning, entering...

...into a proper and smart little apartment, vibrantly-colored at the walls and incubated by the rising warmth emanating up through the cracks in the floorboards. The place lacked, despite its hues, any significant vestige of comfort or life. It was bereft of amenities and character, a husk that begged to be given personality, decoration. A bureau stood obstinately in the center of the room, a stout soldier of wood that separated the seamstress from the pale, fragile-looking woman seated on the other side.

The door remained opened but a crack, her ink-stained fingertips begging it not to close, that the coolness might crawl its way inside like a furtive interloper.

"I received your letter," said the young woman, her body never turning to fully face Genny. Instead, she quartered, giving the breadth of her shoulder, the vision of a soil-dark cheek. Skirt-hems dragged in a lazy trail behind the heels of her snow-crusted boots. "I came, despite that for a moment, I considered ignoring your -- your letter. Because for all that I have learned to trust my instincts, I have realized just as quickly that my initial urges often spark flames I cannot put out.

"And then I realized, Menna Tolleson, that for once, I have not been the one setting fires."
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Re: Ailments

Postby Tolleson » Tue Jan 28, 2014 5:16 pm

Perhaps Gloria might see the difference between siblings, as the redheaded girl's reactions are far from quick. The sound of the door opening caught her just as she sat, propped up, hunched over and slowly, carefully dripping a cheap stick of melted sealing wax over another thin missive. The eyes that rise to find her company are relieved but dull, a pallid green, like a sickly leaf, not even the sort of color that comes with the natural death trees when winter comes. How Genny had even come up the stairs to be sitting here defied reason. She could have been carried. No, she must have been.

Unlike Burnie with his uncomfortable chair or Giuseppe with one that was overly plush, Genny had forgone a chair for her guests entirely. In truth, she had not expected to entertain, not now, not ever. To this point she seems automatically apologetic, but then again, the apology that follows as she sets down the tools for missives, is all-encompassing.

After all, if what Ariane said was true, then she had a great deal to apologize for.

“I am glad… t-that you came, Miss Gloria. In t-t-truth, I… well I suppose, I would not be upset if you had not. Ariane,” she spoke the Mashall’s name is if she were a dear, old friend and paused to push herself to stand. Both palms flat upon the table she struggled a moment, pushing with her arms, lifting with her legs until she stood of her own volition and bowed her head slightly, as was only polite. Welcoming Gloria to her home.

“Ariane has explained t-to me what happened, she was… she was very concerned about you… as am I,” the last bit was ventured carefully.

“I…” There was a strained breath as her arms shook and she lowered herself back to the hair, a few beads of sweat sprouting on her forehead.

“T-th-th-this is… is, it is why… I needed to see you,” there is a soft smile, merely for the metaphor and far from jovial. Her eyes fled to Gloria’s, gentle and inquiring, where they sat as she implored her.

“First... Miss Gloria, speak your mind. Your anger... or upset with me should not underscore what further I may ask of you. Th-then t-t-tell me, Miss Gloria, t-t-tell me what happened th-that day… th-the day Glenn spoke?”
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Re: Ailments

Postby Rance » Wed Jan 29, 2014 1:22 am

This was no home.

Gloria had little. All she owned, all she called hers, could be stuffed into a satchel or two, strung across her shoulder or worn at her hip. Genny Tolleson, for having planted roots so much longer than the girl across the desk from her, should have had more: books, clutter, errant papers, all evincing life -- but the apartment seemed devoid of anything else, including warmth, soul, the bloodflow of a home that was more than just a place to rest one's head.

Genny stood, a fragile and sickly-looking doll of a woman. Gloria did not move any further forward, but continued to linger near the door. For as convivial and welcoming as Genny had been, her audience was a rigid monument of ice, prepared to flee should the need present itself, coiled to lunge should that minute possibility become essential. Those potential motions, however, were masks. What couldn't be concealed were the spots of damp sweat on her collar, the wideness of her stone-gray eyes, the vicious strangle of hands in cobalt gloves squeezing the life out of her skirts.

"I don't want your concern," she said. "Not now. It doesn't endear me to you anymore or -- or offer me comfort or solace. Your recent complicity with loudly-spoken lies gives me pause to even believe you're being genuine."

Genny crumbled back down to her seat. Behind Gloria, the occasional gust of wind hammered the door against its frame.

"You don't want me to -- to speak my mind; you don't want to offer me that freedom. Appreciate that I am keeping as many steps between you and I as I can, Menna Tolleson." The formalities were barriers, shields poised, wrangling the humanity out of their conversation and replacing it with necessity, with business. "Words would not be the only way I might express myself for -- for what I know you did to me. Perhaps to others.

"As for what happened," the girl stated. "Will speaking of it again invite you to reach into my skull and -- and pluck out the details? Change them, transmute them into something that more eagerly becomes your truth?"

A pause, enough for breath and the willing of patience.

"What did Ariane tell you?"
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Re: Ailments

Postby Tolleson » Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:05 am

This was her new home, a place purchased weeks if not little more than a month ago now, when she had been too busy to give it any attention. And now it was the only safe place to go, knowing little more than Ariane’s brief account. Her room at the inn might reveal a bit more of just how far she’d slipped, the mania evidence of some encroaching delirium or dementia. Pins and string, posters and letters, an unused bed stacked high with open books as a second desk, the floor a third. And all of it insulated by stacks and stacks of books lining the walls, piled so high they seemed to hold up the ceiling and protruding so far on every wall it shrunk the room by a third. A small hole had been left for the window, covered now by heavy curtains, thick with dust. Catch might know, he was allowed there, but no one else, not even the maids.

Weary eyes ignored the incessant door, they watched her, they fell specifically to the strangling gloved, grasp she held on her skirts. Those gloves. Genny’s silent gaze lingered, a moment, a minute, then several. But then there was nothing. It was the fruitless grasping at some half remembered detail, little more than a feeling of deja-vu.

The raggedy seamstress didn’t want concern or comfort and it is just as well. Her sentiment does little to change Genny’s soft, sympathetic but otherwise hollow expression. Everything is just that, the room is empty and nothing lunges out or sought to touch her mind.

Like the seamstress, she is still, though it is exhaustion and not tension, she is unmoving but not rigid and the whole of the room feels it. The space between them, all the air that surrounds them is silent, warm, and utterly still. Only the occasionally clap of the door might break the pause between when Gloria finishes her tirade and when Genny, finally speaks.

“Please, Gloria, do not presume t-t… to know what I want.” Worried but patient words are almost languid in cadence. “I ask you because I t-trust you… because my own account is… half remembered,” and half at best. She remembered nothing of the speech only fragments of moments leading up to it, glimpses of a haggard Glenn, a vase of flowers, the grain of the wood that made the chair she had clung to. Shadows of memories, whispers of ideas, and a low, thick murmur of words so distorted they were barely voices at all. But just as Gloria was cautious, so too was she, perhaps too used to withholding and hiding defensively.

Her hand rose slowly, fingers testing the lump on the back her head, a bruise that still lingered. Wincing slightly, she sucked in a large calming breath.

“Even if I could do such a thing t-to your mind, I haven’t the desire nor would I,” her eyes pulled up from where they had been momentarily lost in the pain that radiated across her skill and contorted her face. A pain-wrinkled brow aside, she is earnest and unwavering.

Gloria gave her patience and that was enough, some small pause to extract truth, or to at lease make sense of what had transpired.

“Ariane,” she started and then seemed to think better than to offer a recount of a story not her own. “Ariane explained t-th-that Glenn spoke t-t-to the t-town, I hit my head and you were t-there, t-th-that I might have hurt you.” There is a deliberate pause then, a stop, imploring Gloria to expound, to contradict, to offer just as Genny had asked – her story. The point wasn’t to give fodder to Gloria, it was to hear her perspective. The story of one was easily swayed by emotions or bias, the story of two was better, the story of three and that story might resemble what had actually happened. And who else was she to ask?
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Re: Ailments

Postby Guppy » Wed Jan 29, 2014 2:51 pm

They had plans to speak on the details of their dead boy with the doe. Plans to meet today. Gloria was suspiciously absent, but there was a note left behind.

The note that bid her to find their mutual friend. It had warned her of approaching danger and a secret meeting with one to whom she did not give her trust. Immediately, the alarmed young woman scrambled to the tavern. The door had clattered against the wall, thrown ajar in her haste to get to the room where Catch lay his head.

Her insistent knocking, sharp staccato, was loud enough to startle the other inhabitants. Egris opened her door just the barest inch to peer out at the frantic girl. She had thought to assist for a moment, but wisely closed it again when the wildling threw her a sour look for her troubles.

"Catch!," she called. "Gloria sent a letter! She is in danger!," she called, pressing her ear to the wooden frame to listen. She hoped to catch the barest sound of movement within.

The note was shoved into his hands, should he open the door. She was not certain that he could read, but he might recognize the writing.

-----

Provided the addled man would give his aid, she would mention Gloria's promise to make heavy steps. She was a tracker by trade and would be able to lead them towards the appropriate place. Catch himself might recognize the building they approached and the danger that Gloria assumed.

Miss Genny.

The door had been left ajar and their voices floated down, down the staircase. Noura's wariness won over and she employed stealth to climb the staircase. Her eyes were narrowed and the runes upon her skin flared once before fading entirely.
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Re: Ailments

Postby Rance » Wed Jan 29, 2014 3:35 pm

"Because you trust me."

This -- this -- is what had come of Genny Tolleson, this convalescent tangle of limbs stuttering itself out of confusion. For a translucent moment, she could only boggle with subdued amazement. This is who the governor chose in his complicity; this, a well-liked paragon of seeming-innocence, as easily shattered as a pane of blown glass. Genny Tolleson dripped clear sweat, succumbed to weakness and damage as easily as any child; she was human, fallible, a visible equator that ran a line of pathos between the brilliance of the governor and the mindless, presuming masses of Myrken Wood.

"It is clever," the girl said, speaking to nothing but the assumptions that cluttered her brain.

Genny touched fingers to a bruise that blackened and yellowed her hairline; Gloria, meanwhile, worked thumb and forefinger at the knot of ribbon that fastened her snow-freckled bonnet to her head. She pulled it free and crushed it between her palms, giving full view of the shortened scatter of black-and-ash hair on her head.

"It's not that you could or couldn't; it's that you did. Ask Mister Catch the right of it, and he will tell you as much: you invaded me, as you had no permission to. And the last woman who -- who meddled in minds? Her head was found somewhere apart from her body, and she paid for the overt misuse of her talents with her life. The difference--"

She licked her lips, and leaving the door ajar, strode forward to poise her knuckles on the opposite side of Genny Tolleson's scarred desk. She withdrew one of her blue gloves, making visible the scabbed tangle of bandages wound around her bare fist.

"You stood on that scaffold in front of Myrken Wood, at Glenn Burnie's side, and -- and whether at his bidding or at your own behest, stitched patterns of lies to people who wanted a truth. Agnieszka was no hero; I was no hero. It's no secret that Agnieszka Kazmerrik -- and she is just a scared little farm-girl, I forgive her, I forgive her -- was loyal to Rhaena Olwak near the end. She and her Civil Constables beat men and women for the slightest infractions, posted bills that forced unreasonable decrees upon townspeople. I was in Golben," she whispered, "with Giuseppe. But when I returned, the town still rattled with the news that Agnieszka had -- had been swained.

"But you still supported Glenn's lies. I spoke my mind, called the lot of you liars, deceivers. Agnieszka--" her lips tightened, seemed to quiver, the lock of muscles trying to will back unavoidable words, "--is just a scared little farm girl, I forgive her, I forgive her, yet she proceeded to try to turn the townspeople against me. To -- to what? Disguise deceit? Cited my color, my blood, everything that makes me different from her, from you, from them."

She eased the weight from her hands, stood to her full height. The girl was large for her age, inches taller than her contemporaries, her dress and cloak a threadbare wrap for the hocks of her thick arms. Then, a slanted mention, an addition to her complaints:

"I tire of Tollesons playing games in my mind."
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Re: Ailments

Postby Tolleson » Wed Jan 29, 2014 5:13 pm

This is what had come of her, passively watching, collecting details as any good Inquisitor would. She stayed her arguments and saved her strength, even when the fleeting memories of Glenn’s conversation glinted from under a fog. His voice a faint and barely recognizable echo, argue. Argue. Of course it was frustrating, she was hardly at peace. Her brow furrowed from pain and her jaw is set, clamped tight to keep so many things inside. It is more than words, but in this she is resilient. Surely not to stumbles, cuts, and bruises, she was a fine mess with death clinging to her shadow and leeching her color.

It is clever she had said. An empty word and harmless dagger, for when had she ever lied to Gloria? What reason did she have now? Even when lies would have been more convenient, even when she didn’t like the girl; she hadn’t lied. It was a true test of Gloria's candidacy, to see if the Inquisitory had done her any good in fighting bias, finding reason, and simply listening. Not that Genny had the mind to judge it, her brows furrowed further, perhaps the pain grew hotter, harsher, or simply deeper at the story.

The tirade continues with nothing short of a threat. Genny knew and by all accounts she seemed to agree, or might have if her eyes did anything but follow the striding woman now before her, thrusting a bandaged fist to her.

There is a slight, delayed recoil as the hand is put before her, as if expecting that Gloria might hit her. She teeters, swaying ever so slightly, off balance a moment before lifting her hand, in part to steady herself and then to take Gloria’s. Despite the warmth of the room her soft, ink-stained fingers are like ice. She is delicate, her long fingers pale, cold, and as light to the touch as snow. There is confusion and a wincing horror, or was it sickness that spread over her face. It was an expression that pleaded for an apology, that shuddered at the sight of the fist, and was also nauseous at the sight of it.

“I’m… sorry, I… I didn’t… I,” she fought against herself for acceptance and apology, obviously assuming she was the cause of the bandages, ready and presented evidence. “I…”

Her hands retract quickly, a sudden movement seizes her, doubling her over as a deluge of foodless vomit is coughed into a bucket behind the desk. It isn’t much, all in all, water and bile. Immediately she wiped her mouth with a handkerchief, her face still downcast her other arm a wooden prop set firmly on the desk. “Glenn says Agnie,” she whispered to herself, her mind already returning to the matter at hand. “It had to be… Agnie or Ariane were the only ones t-there, t-the blood… the evidence… but how, what piece does he have,” the manic rant is so softly spoken to herself that if the room hadn’t been entirely devoid of a sound other than the distant door, she might not have even heard herself.

“I support Myrken,” her voice resolute, her eyes finally shot up from where she had unleashed the sickness of her stomach, the pain from her wound, and the loss of her mind. She sat lower, a veritable cripple compared to the full height of Gloria, standing righteous and justified. “If it is as you say… if Glenn lied, he does it with purpose, he does it t-t-to keep you safe,” she spat a little more bile from her mouth and tried to remove the brace that held her and sit upright. Somewhat successful her head bobbed dizzily. “And? Agnieszka punched me for being from T-t-thessilane!”

Finally she seemed to find balance, regain some composure her eyes blinking and refocusing, still dull and sickly, perhaps even more so. “You t-t-tire of my brother… who will not give you his heart, you t-tire of situations beyond your comprehension… let alone your control, you tire of betrayal, of losing your friends to thoughtless acts.” She stopped and watched Gloria, in these she shared her exhaustion, she was genuine but could not continue. “Perhaps it is best you leave, Miss Gloria… I believe you and… am penitent, tell me how I may atone and I shall.” Sentences. Her stuttering stopped and her hand went to cradle her head.
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Re: Ailments

Postby catch » Thu Jan 30, 2014 5:40 am

Gloria is in danger! Noura cried.She is in danger!

Catch could not equate that, now, in his mind.

It had been easier, before. He had charged from his room, bursting from it like a wounded beast from a cave, his eyes hard rocks of animal rage, the silver a barely-visible billow from his nose, clinging to his lips. The note took some of the rage from him. He could not read, but - in his clumsy way - he didn't want Noura to know, even though the girl, surely, must know. So time was spent with him temporizing over it; time spent, finally, admitting defeat, and explanations.

And then they were here.

_______________________________________

Where Noura held the grace of a forest, Catch did not. He tried, usually, but now now. He was too conflicted. Gloria is in danger! and Genny, Miss Genny, could not be reconciled. He knew what she had done. But never, never, could he hate her, and never could she be a danger.

He forgives much. And he forgives too much.

Noura's Magic was a heat to his skin, and he touched her, once and briefly, rough hands to cup her shoulders before he sought to move past. He blunders into this, this meeting, unaware and unthinking, because that is Miss Genny, there at that desk, and Gloria is the smoke of her fire, the fires of Thessilane, a red-haired girl who stood before him in all his anger, all his glory, and she helped. She helped. Her vomit was a sharp, cider-sting in the air.

"Miss Gloria, are you in danger?" he asks, hesitant, like a child. Danger from Genny. Such a thing was impossible. His mind refused to put itself around the words, cast them out with each attempt. He went, instead, to Genny's side. She was no, small girl, but still, he would kneel next to her, ignoring the acridity of her stench. He would try to gather Genny into his arms, and he would try to give her a kiss, just a small one, on her cheek, a muted defiance to what he had always been told. No touching. No kissing. It wasn't like Ser Stefan.

"C-c-can you Fix Miss Gloria?" he asks of her. Everything else is above, beyond him, save that Glenn is a liar, a terrible, cruel liar. The needs of a country, no matter how Knightly he wishes to be, he cannot comprehend. But he knew Miss Gloria was swained, and he knew that Miss Genny was terribly, terribly ill, and these are things he cared about, things he wanted to be Fixed.
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Re: Ailments

Postby Guppy » Thu Jan 30, 2014 10:55 am

Catch placed firm hands upon her shoulders, gentle and unyielding. They lightly cradled her and the magic raced through them both for a brief moment. She leaned into his touch, eyes slipping closed. Then, he moved past and away and she felt empty. Her eyes followed him up the stairs. Dimly, she realized his intent and scrambled to try to grasp the back of his shirt, but her fingers fell short. Instead, he climbed the steps with all the grace of a bull and shouldered inside to stand at Genny's side.

Noura, eyes narrowed and accusing, took to Gloria's side and stood at her elbow. The pair of them, standing against the seamstress, seemed an uneven fight. She bristled for Gloria's sake, protective. Her hands were clenched at her sides and a sickly red glow shone from under her cloak. One of her hands came to attempt to rest on Gloria's arm, stalwart support for her friend.

"You," she spoke up sharply, "changed her mind. Altered her so that she would forgive that woman who tried to turn an angry crowd against a girl." She spat the words as if they were foul-tasting upon her tongue. "Is it not convenient that you might forget your wickedness now?" Lips thinned, pressed tightly together.

"Now, when any mention of this would anger the people, already hurting from Olwak's reign." Arms came to fold across her chest. If Gloria had been thought obstinate before, well, Noura was making it an art form. It was a threat, even if it were a vague one. A wary eye was kept upon Catch, who did not enjoy his friends' squabbles. Who might take offense to her accusations. He, after all, blamed Glenn alone.

"Do you know that Catch blames Glenn Burnie for what you have done? Do you know that he tried to get me to kill him to spare you?" It was a secret that Catch likely hoped would go untold, but Noura's aggrieved words were like lashes. Defensive from a girl who felt helpless to stop these heinous actions. Her words were unforgiving to any in their path.
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Re: Ailments

Postby Rance » Thu Jan 30, 2014 12:21 pm

Genny Tolleson reached up to grip her hand. The seamstress' knuckles did not move--

--for if Genny wanted to change her, crawl into her mind like a serpent and manufacture new truths, Gloria Wynsee knew it could be done without a touch. What more danger could further contact offer?

It was with a sudden wave of the knowledge that Genny Tolleson was instantly sick, heaving into the receptacle as if to rid herself of the rancid truth. Witnessing it, Gloria's own stomach twisted, violently lurched; the odor of bread and grain below was instantly nauseating. She poured her thoughts into her own words, resisting the urge to let go of that perspiring hand. And while her hand in Genny's was not comforting or soft, it was present; it was one less fist that might ever seek to find her nose.

if Glenn lied, he does it with purpose, he does it t-t-to keep you safe.

"His safeguarding isn't necessary, not if -- if it brings with it greater lies and intentional misinformation. We subsisted in his absence through, survived a threat with which he once shared a bed. His protection is meaningless. His people are not children."

Genny crumbled; Gloria had to work to tighten her face into stone, especially as Genny's last phrases pierced too close to a hidden actualities for the girl to dare recognize. Nothing to refute in that, not about her brother, betrayal, situations beyond the reach of her meager control. No, for once, the seamstress nodded, acquiescence to each one of those facts, and--

Harnessed in a tooth, hidden away like a swollen worm curled in the heart of a geode, the black oil started to pound and thrum at the pace of the seamstress' heartbeat. She turned her head only seconds before Mister Catch, a mountain and a tower all at once, trundled in through the door left intentionally ajar. Behind him, she saw the shine of Noura's eyes in the fading daylight. A smile, grateful and relieved, shot across her Sun-hardened countenance, before:

Miss Gloria, are you in danger?

He moved, as was expected, as was best, to Genny Tolleson's side.

"No, Mister Catch. I am not. Not unless you sense that I am, not -- not unless you see what I cannot. And perhaps you can ensure Menna Tolleson that she'll be in none, either, now that you're here."

An earlier sentence truncated, left to hang, now completed:

"The difference, Genny, is that unlike Rhaena Olwak, I would be loath to see you further hurt. This is more than you; I am greater than fists, fury, or impulse. This--" the situation, the confusion, the misdirection, "--demands tenderness."

But tenderness was not Noura, who came in with sharp precision and hammer-hard fact. With the wildling at her side, the seamstress lunged out a stern arm as a bar, a barrier between her friend and the broken Inquisitor. She gave Noura the freedom of her criticisms and violent matters of fact, but would have restrained her had they turned into greater, more physical expressions. A swath of surprise registered on her visage -- Do you know that he tried to get me to kill him to spare you? -- but she subdued it, blunted it behind her dull features. Fingers scraped at Noura's sleeve, squeezing her wrist, silently expressing both thanks. Trying, as though it were even possible, to emit patience, patience.

She said to Noura, "Menna Tolleson knows. Vaguely. The basics. But if I've not yet bloodied her, we approach this with calm. With -- with her safety intact. That," the seamstress tilted her chin to Catch, "is what he ensures. And if Genny wishes to atone, to remedy, we allow her that."

Here, she squeezed -- Genny's hand, Noura's hand. She held them both.

"For it requires only her signature."
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Re: Ailments

Postby Tolleson » Thu Jan 30, 2014 2:52 pm

There had been words, thoughts that threatened to be spoken. They swelled and argued, their boisterous and billowing voices a crowded pressure against her skull.

Miss Gloria, are you in danger?

A danger. Now she was a danger? Catch and Noura press through the obnoxious door and her attention shifts away from Gloria, even as she speaks on ‘difference’ and holds the abandoned hand. She might have been dismayed to see the pair but her movement is strained and slow, no sooner does she see them and Catch is near, pulling her close with his large, warm hands. She is like porcelain, a thin doll off which ill-fitting clothes hung, her skin cool, her posture rigid, her eyes glazed and her mind fractured.

“Catch,” her voice is raspy and her tone surprised, but it is still a talking voice, weak despite her best attempt.

There are words, so many words. Wickedness, tenderness, killing, the words stick out from the noise and their meaning is an icepick to her mind. Beyond that everything is lost, a clutter of incomprehensible contradictions, cruel accusations, patience, the angry and the calm. If she heard what Gloria said she made no indication, there was just a brief woeful look at the pressure upon her hand as madman pulls her into his arms. Though she might possess the strength to resist, she does not. Her cold thin fingers slip free and her boney arms embrace him as if he is an anchor and she might fall free of the world. And then, to her cheek, there was a kiss.

She had been fine, calm for a while, stern even, but at this, with everything that has happened, her rigid body trembles. And great, globular tears trickle down her cheeks. She had told Gloria once how important Catch was to her, but now the seamstress might see how she loved him, how his friendship pierced her. How it broke her.

Her eyes closed but the tears continued to sneak out and cascade to her chin. If she could, she might stay in this moment forever, warm, safe, and loved.

But it came as the tears had, in a small wave, sudden, hot, and overpowering. Unguarded and safe in his arms she had melted and it poured unwillingly from her like a liquid, viscous and bleeding. But it wasn't blood that seeped from her. It was feeling. Perhaps the crack in her skull leaked heartache, let the overwhelming emotions of anxiety, confusion, and pain trickle free. It wasn’t her mind that reached, or intention that grasped, it wasn’t fingers to meddle or an embodiment of her to dance, it was a warm low tide lapping at ankles. It was how she felt. Lost. It was struggling to remember, it was a muffled voices, ambiguous places and fine detail lost in a sea of disassociated components, grasping at pieces of memories, some which were not even her own. And finally, it was love. It was pure and sweet, it was the bond the left her clinging to the madman as if she was now the child.

It is only the span of a breath, two at most, before the tears stop and she is still. “Ahgggn” it is a high, wavering prick of pain that left her mouth slight agape, where it stayed. Her physical body sat there, eyes clenched and dewy, frozen as if she’d pinched a nerve and couldn’t move. Internally she recoiled at the mistake, grasping frantically as if trying to rake back the ocean and contain it.

"Go," it is barely even a whisper, "p-p..p-please..g-g-go," her voice strained against a frozen body. Perhaps she'd even meant to push Catch away but she didn't, she couldn't, it took everything to focus. To keep from hurting anyone again.
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Re: Ailments

Postby catch » Thu Jan 30, 2014 3:02 pm

"D-d-don't say those things to her," Catch says. And Noura is a friend - Gloria is more than a friend, but a stal'vak - and Miss Genny was, too. He was torn. He stayed next to Genny, his ruined head pressed against her, sullen and uncertain. He is not strong enough to speak against the two angry, young women, who were entirely right, who made so much - too much - sense.

"Miss Genny," he says, and she breaks against him, her tears molten, so hot that they burned his hands. But he would not let go. He would nuzzle her, as if she were one of his precious, porcelain dolls, his own eyes brimming with his own, mingled tears. Even if her mind's tendrils did not reach out, cry out, he would have wept to see her weep.

"D-d-don't you see? Don't you see wh-wh-what he's done?" he whispers to her, wheedling, unknowing that Gloria and Noura sought to convince her of something. He had his own, childish motives, though he cared - cared very much - about the dancing from Miss Genny's skull. "He d-d-did it to, to Rhaena, too, didn't he? He'll p-p-put, put silver bracelets on you, b-b-but I'll - I'll murder him," he says, "Murder him m-m-myself, if he t-t-tries. He's m-m-making you do all th-th-these terrible things."

"Miss Gloria c-c-can help. And - and I w-w-won't have to be a Murderer again."
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Re: Ailments

Postby Guppy » Thu Jan 30, 2014 4:58 pm

There was a stern arm halting her forward momentum. Gloria was a patient force beside her when all the Whelp wished to do was wrap her small hands around the mindwitch's throat and squeeze. Her darkness crowed at her to watch as life ebbed from her tearful eyes. Brave Gloria, scorned Gloria was noble to stand between them when she had every reason to hate the woman who stood wilting before them. Contempt was awash upon her face, naked and angry as she glowered at the High Inquisitor's feeble replacement. Catch chided her for her blistering words and her mouth opened to spat vitriol at him, as well. Angry that he stood against them.

A gentle assurance, a soft pleading circled her wrist and her vision was drawn there, reflexively. Her mouth snapped closed in response. Her gaze was pointedly unapologetic. It was a look that both goaded and revealed her overwhelming frustration. Why should she take care with a woman who acted so foolishly against one who she considered a friend? A woman who had mangled an already raw wound that had been carved into the heart of every Myrkener, adopted or not.

Suddenly, the wildling was startled when the ailing political figure before her crumbled into sobbing vulnerability before their very eyes. Catch's lips gently traced against her skin and it seemed to have broken something in her. Noura watched, feeling almost as if she were intruding on this moment meant to be shared in private. She shifted with discomfort that pulsed and twisted in her gut, shooting Gloria an incredulous look.

She startled again when the painful cry sounded and the runes flared again in defense. They quieted immediately when she noticed that the danger was not forthcoming. Instead, Genny Tolleson pleaded with them to leave, finding her limits reached while Catch whispered.

Noura felt anger slipping through her fingers like wisps of smoke.

"No," she barked and stomped her foot in childish fit. Stubborn. "You do not get to defile one you have called friend and then conveniently forget. You do not get to stand here and feign fragility to earn sympathy." Pearl-colored eyes were narrowed into slits in her face and she had to grit her teeth when she finished. She struggled to clamp down on the surge of magic that sang sweetly at her temples. The feeling of it lurking at her fingertips was almost addictive.

Gloria's pleading for patience had vanished into afterthought.

"Catch, she is just like Olwak! Like Burnie! This is an act! It must be!" It had to be, for her anger to make sense. It had to be so that she could continue to stoke the flames of her fury. She had been suffering this hatred ever since Rhaena Olwak had her dragged into the middle of town. Since she was beaten and bruised. Since she had swallowed so much blood and tears that she felt sick to her stomach. Revenge had been stolen from her. Rhaena had been killed and not by her hand. Genny was an adequate substitute, so long as one ignored her docile temperament.
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Re: Ailments

Postby Rance » Thu Jan 30, 2014 5:30 pm

So many things, simultaneous:

Catch, his shoulder and bent arm a cradle for Genny Tolleson. His whispers, a condemnation for Glenn Burnie. She wondered, in these frail moments, if anyone else in Myrken Wood knew this part of him, this infinitely forgetful, beautifully-gentle child of forgiveness -- one who whispered Murderer from the same tongue that ventured to console and accommodate.

Genny, a wilted flower, knowing nothing and everything all at once, a High Inquisitor who crumbled like a knuckle of moldy bread. Love, she could see; love, innocence, worn like a damaged bit of armor. The fire-haired woman adored the mountainous sentinel at her side, but Gloria tilted her chin and forced herself to look past the smooth simplicity of frailty and tears--

A part of her, the Myrkener, pitied with all the weight of a lump of lead.

A part of her, the Jerno, felt her guts roiling with disgust -- for she'd been summoned here for what, exactly?

To accept amends from a rapist?

(This, she mustn't think; this, she cannot help but think.)

Noura and her marks flared like a vicious candle. The burn of the light and radiance gleamed in the girl's eye-corner. It crackled in the air, dared to muddle the lines that existed between the real and the abstract, the concrete and the intangible; the natural, and now, the gifted. The wildling's skin wore threats carved in archaic runes, and Gloria Wynsee -- for all she rarely understood -- knew the promised lodged by the embers of those scalding marks.

No, Noura said.

You do not get to defile one you have called friend--

"No," Gloria said.

--is just like Olwak! Like Burnie! This is an act! It must be!

Her touch for Genny was no longer. Instead, she turned, angling her chin and baring her cheek to fill the whole of Noura's vision with her damaged face. The hawkish, many-times-broken bridge of her nose. The witless matte of her Sun-burnt eyes. The curl of lips offered only enough to show brackish, brittle teeth the color of tarnished copper.

Both her hands mounted themselves on Noura's shoulders. Warm, but bidding cooless; soft, but asking for strength.

"Leave him to her," she pleaded -- not demanding, but with uncharacteristic patience, begging. "We don't invade. We do not come, at invitation, to -- to terrorize a woman in her home. No matter how right it feels, now matter how deserved we might think it. It's enough that -- that you came for me; it's enough that he came for her. We give her her space. At'chemso, Noura, but--"

I'd wanted this, she didn't say. I know how much he cares for her.

"--we do this smart."

She applied a gentle pressure to her palms upon the whelp's upper arms, then tightened her grip like a vice on her wild friend's elbow, trying to usher Noura toward the door.

"Mister Catch tends to her, and outside," Gloria said, "we talk."
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