by Glenn » Wed Feb 25, 2015 12:48 am
He sat and he listened and, at first, he made no attempt to get anyone a drink. There was no searching for servants or anything like that. While the place was clean, there was little sign of them otherwise, even if it might have been socially expected. As he had said, he was past the point of being social and well within the realm of just playing at it. Ailova didn't say much. Gloria said a good deal more, and then, at the end of her words, he rose, nodding to the highwaywoman as if acknowledging her request of a few minutes before and ignoring her companion altogether.
When he returned from a neighboring room, it was with five objects in hand, three of which were glasses, empty, precariously, but deftly enough, held in one hand, between fingers. Broken glass seemed like a near-certainty or at least a strong eventuality. in the other hand was the bottle of brandy and a small piece of paper. Objects were delivered unto the table (bottle first, then glasses, with too loud a clunk). He slid one glass towards Ailova. The other was carefully passed to Gloria's own hand, the little slip of paper long the side of it. Were she to take it, to look down at it, she would notice it was folded in half and on the outside was written:
Read Me Later
He left the bottle for either of the women to pour and settled back into his chair, his own glass still empty. Whatever he was, currently, a conscientious and polite host did not seem to be on the list.
"Here is what will happen, then," which had all the making of a Glenn Burnie speech forming like a far distant storm. "She'll be who she is, a creature of her nature, and you shall temper it with kindness and acceptance that she had not found before, that she doesn't accept at face value. There will be in-roads, understandings that you, through persistance and grit, push forward. There will be setbacks, both due to ill-timing and misunderstanding, internal setbacks that is, and due to the interference of other, darker, crueler powers, external setbacks. There is only so much you can control," and he knew that more than most, more than most people and more than most of what he said.
Here he shut his eyes. Here he leaned his head back in that chair, arcing his neck against its cushioning. He, lost in momentary thought, licked his lips unconsciously, because they were dry. "She'll come of age, come into power if she has it, and react. You'll have thought you were making progress, an objective sort, defined by what any of us would want for a girl like that," for this wasn't the time for semantics even if the beginning of their discussion today forced him to double back and reinforce the architecture of the concept. "And something horrible will happen, and in that horrible happening, you'll finally reach her, get through to her, and there'll be a real road forward for the first time. Except for, by then, blood will be on everyone's hands, most of all hers and most of all yours."
He stop then, open his eyes, and hopefully somewhere in there, one of them had poured some brandy. Either way, he wouldn't reach for a glass yet. "Girls become women. Children become adults, and adults can understand reason better. When it comes to the process of developing perspective, nothing lubricates the wheel quite like blood. You let things run their course or you try to change them with closed eyes and good intentions, and that is what will happen, for good and for ill."