Let's call the whole thing off

Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Sun Jul 01, 2018 3:53 am

The raven woke her ridiculously early and someone in a uniform spotted her coming down from the roof. Fortunately they seemed only to want to ask her if she wanted to get herself killed. She kept stretching her great dumb brown eyes wider and wider, as if she had never before heard that falling from great heights could be fatal, until at last he let her go with a warning that he'd better not catch her up there again. Since she could not foresee any circumstances in which that would ever happen, she agreed that he would not. There had been a lovely silver chain upon his belt, but she refrained, feeling that to be an appropriate sacrifice for being stupid enough to get caught in the first place.

By the time she paid a second day for her horse's board, it was still early and she was starving. In anticipation of gorging on party food, she had gone without dinner the evening before, and since party food had never actually happened, she ended up dazzled by street vendors offering steamed eggs and mysterious, savory things on skewers and chewy, glutinous buns full of what was promised as beef, though any fool who'd ever eaten horse could have told them straight away that it was horse. The raven preferred his eggs raw, but accepted the shredded horse-beef, twitching and complaining about some people's dawdling all the while. She had a feeling he suspected she really had fucked Glenn Burnie, or killed him, or possibly even eaten him, and was anxious to make sure his friend was still intact this morning. She hastened to snap that if she had eaten Glenn Burnie, she'd be too full to stuff herself now.

Last night was slowly catching up to her. In hindsight she could see a hundred holes, a thousand spots where he could easily jab in a blade if he chose. She wondered what he was waking up to now, how he was feeling, if he'd gotten any rest at all. She should have checked on him anyway. She wondered how much he remembered. If he was going to be angry with her. If he would realize just how badly he had been violated. She tried to anticipate the worst of what questions he could ask.

He said we were friends now, though, she thought plaintively. He said it. He's like as not going to be cross, there's nothing to be done for that, but surely he won't be vindictive. The worst thing he can do will be the questions, and if he asks anything I don't want to answer, I can just lie, and if he won't let me lie, I'll just leave.

Which was cheating and she knew it. But it was a plan. She always felt better with a plan.

By the time she figured where she'd left him, she was hungry again, though the hour was still early and the tavern below practically empty. There were pegs after all. Even the morning maid was called Peg. Peg objected strenuously to allowing pets into her tavern, particularly filthy jackdaws. She gazed with deep suspicion on Fionn's wrinkled green gown as it was both far too fine for a tavern of this quality and far too disheveled for her to have been up to any good in it. Fionn did not feel up to defending her attire, or to explain that it was the only article she currently possessed that would neither show her knees nor melt into nothing if she happened to brush against a nailhead. Nor would it be found favorable to object that the raven was not a pet, or filthy, or a jackdaw. Tultharian did love to scold for no reason.

Reluctantly, but without a word, the raven stationed himself on an awning across the street, the better to peer into windows. Fionn settled herself in a corner table with a commanding view of the entire common and ordered herself the largest second breakfast she could acquire at this hour: black sausage and brown bread and last night's lukewarm vegetable soup. Before she could even dip her bread, some lout with a brow studded with greasy blackheads was blistering the side of her neck with his hot garlic breath and asking for her name.

Slowly her fist tightened around an implement she had recently discovered was called a "fork."
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Sun Jul 01, 2018 6:05 am

He woke with the dawn surprisingly rested. Despite the aftereffects of the glamour and the poignant effects of multiple realizations and yes one long glug of beer, he had never been drunk. The sleep had been driven by exhaustion, dreamless, and he was distinctly not hungover.

In general, Burnie was not one to lord over others. He may have kept to himself more these days than in years past but he was still the sort to eat in a common room, to ask his questions and occasionally tell his stories. There was none of that today. Breakfast was sent for as were other packages. That purse had been particularly full and well she hadn't taken it. Razasan was not Myrkentown. It was much larger and much more developed. They had made it almost to their destination the night before, which meant they were close enough to certain establishments. At the proper price, most things could be obtained. Likely, Peg was none too pleased about any of it, money or no, which could have well shaped her attitude towards the Fairy Queen and her stalwart companion.

One of the first to arrive was the instruments of writing.

Savoy,

Here I am in Razasan. I've been here for years. Where are you? It all seemed so long and momentous those first few months. In many ways, you seemed like my first true friend. Then you fell to madness (were you the first?) and as the years went by, I came to resent you more than remember you. I am well past that. I can sympathize to a degree with


Ariane,

You did not march down to save me this time. Down would be the wrong word. It'd indicate North. I think your heart is always North of us even if the rest of you might be elsewhere. Regardless, I am glad. It's not the situation is not dire. It's actually far more so than I indicated because it is far more so than I knew. It's the sort that invokes lines to be crossed or not to be and ancient peoples on the wane. Someday I'll tell you about it. For now, the lack of your letters are both a mercy and a torture. That they could be such extremes is very likely why you


My Faithful Agony,

It's the child that's the issue. The only thing worse than the idea of me being a father is the idea of you being a mother. And the only idea worse than that would be the two of us raising a child together. Aleksei was a friend but frankly, he was a poor man's Savoy. Must we all be beggars in Myrken? Not with you in it, I suppose. Anyway, I like us more as siblings; it makes the violence more excusable somehow. If only you didn't already have so


There were three or four more such attempts, before he finally managed to complete one letter. By that point, the other package was arriving. Unfortunately, obtaining such things meant some degree of specialization. Courier left, messenger was sent for, and Burnie turned his attention to washing up and preparing for the day.

No more than ten minutes after she arrived, a boy would step inside. After a brief talk with Peg, who wanted nothing to do with any of this, the boy was sent up. It'd be just a minute or two later before he'd arrive back down with Glenn behind him, going over instructions for delivery for what, given the look in the put upon lad's eyes, was likely the third time. ".. find it's way to Myrken."

His clothes were new, obviously purchased since dawn. As such, they were not a perfect fit, but they were close enough, his figure being nothing out of the ordinary. They were nice, not as nice as his coat had been the night before, but nicer that what he usually wore, far nicer than what this establishment normally put up with. The shirt was a light blue, not ostentatious on most people, but certainly somewhat outlandish here and on him. At his collar was a slight bit of silver, a small strand of satin tied to a far more aristocratic style for either Burnie OR the tavern. That alone would have been pricey, even just the small bit of it.

He walked past her without an overt glance, leading the boy towards the door and finding yet another coin for him, before turning about to face her. It'd be a few steps back towards her table before he spoke, not wanting to shout this to the entirety of the room (sparse as it still was): "This had better do something for my eyes, because I barely recognize the rest of me in it." He looked rested, eyes neither bleary nor bloodshot and his face bore the early makings of a smile.
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Sun Jul 01, 2018 7:52 am

Glenn managed to make one of those fortuitously-timed arrivals that interrupt a scene on the threshold of becoming tragedy. Fionn whipped her head toward him, her face a perfect mask of surprise and her fist, gripping a tin fork as if it were a dagger, poised to plunge into the back of the lout’s hand. From intent and wrathful, her features underwent a remarkable transformation: puzzlement first, then, as context dawned, her eyes shone in admiration and delight. A soft smile blossomed. As her head turned to follow him across the room, the fork slowly lowered, both it and her current antagonist forgotten.

The lout, meanwhile, raked contemptuous dark eyes over Glenn, sized him up, and evidentially found nothing to be worried about. “Who’s that,” he scoffed to Fionn, “your pimp?”

Fionn was not a lady who enjoyed her small pleasures interrupted. Particularly by rudeness. The fork rested on the table but she hadn’t let go of it yet. “Yes,” she hissed in the lout’s ear, “so piss off, you poxy git.”

Her face twisted as she viciously jammed the fork's tines deep into the quarter of bread at the same moment that she flung the lout's purloined purse into his lap. It wasn't heavy enough to cause any damage but the sentiment was plain. The scrape of her chair rattled the floorboards as she shoved it back with her hips and rose to full height, just as Glenn approached and spoke.

“Mistress Peg,” she announced in a loud, clear voice, “your patron here has just tried to solicit me. I’m sure that’s not the sort of thing you want in an establishment of this caliber.”

Peg bustled to deal with the lout while the queen of fairy, biting her lip, hurried to circle the table away from trouble and join Glenn. At his side, she all but squashed her face against his arm to stifle a fit of schoolgirl giggling. “Ach, gods,” she murmured. “It’s been a morning.”

By the time the lout was shown the street, her giggling was under control, and she had the dignify to be self-conscious about it. Timidly, she raised her head once more to admire him properly. Her fingers twitched, and quickly she shoved her hand behind her back to curb herself from fingering the bit of shining satin at his throat.

“How did you…” for of course, it didn’t occur to her that ordinary people could just buy clothes. “You shouldn’t have gone to…I mean, I didn’t mean for you to go to any trouble just because I—”

Her head slouched forward in frustration and concession, and she touched a hand to her forehead. There was only one right and proper thing to say and she was nearly too embarrassed to say it. But she raised her gaze as high as his face and managed, quite graciously, to tell him, “Your eyes look very nice. Good neighbor. I…I am a little afraid to say you look well since that is how things started last time and look how that went. But you do.”
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Sun Jul 01, 2018 11:07 am

Many things happened in quick succession. Given the nature of the letter, he'd been quite focused on the boy and his instructions. It meant that while he registered her presence, he hadn't really honed into what was going on until he started towards her. Then she was by his side, Peg-of-the-little-patience was all but dragging someone out by his ear and Burnie was finding himself complimented and warned, all at once.

Still, this was not last night. He was alert and caught on to most of it quickly. "Oh? Oh. I used to be able to do that," he was somewhat apologetic. "That. Playing along. I think I need to be a bit more prepared for now. If we had gone to the ball, we would have done fine." Then, without any prodding at all. "The other time I was cursed, I ended up spending a lot of time with teahouse girls. That was because of Sarayn's ring. I'm not wearing it, so I'm okay there."

With that clumsily admitted, they could turn to the clothes. "Your reaction made the trouble worth it. Let's see, what else?" Because he couldn't just accept the compliment and be done with it. "I feel different after last night. I thought it was worth trying something other than brown. We'll see where the day goes, but, your high praise aside, I'm dubious. Also," she may have withdrew her hands, either hiding them or fussing with them, but she was still quite close to him. Just turning his head to stare her head on meant that he was invading her personal space just a little more. "I thought it important to show you that I was paying attention last night. From beginning, to middle, to end."

That was, in and of itself, many things: a sign of how important he saw their time, a warning that he remembered all of it or at least that she should assume as much, testament that she had not so broken him that he couldn't manage this. He leaned further still, so that he was a bit past her head, and he all but whispered. "I've been thinking; we have important things to speak of, a list even, but this has been on my mind. Even more than the name bit, he'd be offended that you suggested that he couldn't fly at night." Really, it was a bit too close to her ear for him to make the dissonant tsk-ing noise.
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Sun Jul 01, 2018 1:36 pm

“I do wish we had gotten to the ball, then, if only for that. It would have been fun to watch you, and we might have done some good. I felt a bit sorry for those poor people.” Aye, of course she’d feel sympathy for anyone far from home, sick and forced to rely on the mercy of the tultharian.. “I’m sure it isn’t too late. Last night was not the one night in the whole of history when you could keep track of both those fellows at once, was it?”

The question was born of genuine concern, but the implication was much the same as his: she remembered everything too.

A hundred words in and the first gauntlet flung, she thought wearily. We are not doing this.

The revelation about the teahouse girls genuinely shocked her—not so much that it happened, but that he’d admitted it on precious little pretext. She gave a surprised little chirp of laughter, and just as quickly clapped her hands over her licentious grin (she, too, dropped in at the teahouse from time to time). Then the implications, the circumstances, crept in. One could actually see the amusement seeping out of her brown eyes as the balls of her cheeks went a visibly darker shade, like a blaze of suntan developing in a single band above the border of her fingers.

The hand lowered slowly. “Ah.” It didn’t seem the correct moment to either offer apology or press for details.

The trouble was that she was so used to second-guessing him for everything that it was hard to let it go. She was outwardly warm, inwardly wary, with an unsettling internal tickle she recognized as the sense of waiting for the other boot to drop. That tickle could save your life back home, where alliances changed faster than fashion, but…aye, she had been hoping that perhaps things had changed for the better this time. One last game to pay for all. No more going forward. The thought that they might inexorably creep back into their old patterns made her stomach sink in disappointment.

Men didn’t just wear blue for you based on one idle comment if it didn’t mean something.

But the way he leaned toward her ear, as if it were deathly confidential, the way he mentioned the raven first above all else…that made her uneasy. It didn’t help that he was whispering right in her ear, either. The brush of warm breath caused her to shudder all over, silk tightened over a map of gooseflesh. She found herself involuntarily shrinking away from him while resisting an urge to scuff the side of her head like a hound.

“Please don’t do that.” She stepped more deliberately away from him, putting herself securely out of reach, and spoke at her normal volume. Firm but not commanding or hostile. Correcting an honest mistake. “My ears are, er, sensitive. Sensitive in ways I would rather not have happen in public?”

She gave him a pleading look, begging him to accept without her having to explain it.

He couldn’t know. Either he was trying to throw a spook into her or he suspected something and was trying to get her to admit it. She hadn’t bothered warning the raven but she counted on him to figure it out quickly. Even a gossipy raven had wit enough for some discretion when it came to the queen’s business.

Right. Time for some calculated subject-shifting.

“I didn’t say he couldn’t do it. I said he didn’t like it.” That part was true, and she managed to sound both prim and defensive over it. “He’s right across the street; you can ask him. Though I do warn you, he’s taken it into his head that the reason I asked him for privacy is because I planned to have my way with you in the back of a carriage.” And that part was calculated, in hopes that frankness would disincline him from further inquiry.

She chuckled and wrinkled her nose. That part wasn’t calculated; that was solely because she still found the raven’s accusation funny.

More seriously, she looked back him. “Sionnach, please. The name bit was horrid. I shouldn’t have done that, ever. Please don't mention it to him? There’s a chance it will get back to my bard and if it gets back to her, it will get to my father and I won’t hear the end of it for five hundred years. Particularly after last time. Please?”

And the final stage: press him into a promise, seal him into silence. Turn it into a bond between them. It was calculated, but like the best calculations, it was only a slight exaggeration from the truth.

And now she was the one who had begun a new game. Damn it.
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Sun Jul 01, 2018 3:12 pm

He moved differently than just a day before. There was a touch of ease to it, a lightness. Before, there had been a thousand stones tying him down, a thousand memories, maybe a thousand ghosts? Certainly, a thousand cuts. Now, it was neither him wallowing in the mud nor him dropping down next to the stoop, but there was a difference, an obvious one. "I can't follow you back home," his, not hers. "Not yet at least. I've built up capital. I have to spend it first." There had been something of an expectation there, that he was going to follow her back, maybe even go with her. Could that much really have changed in one day?

He took in her amusement. Violation. That's the word that hung in the air. In that case, it'd been the ring's curse. She tried to demur, to move on. He provided even more instead. "It made me inclined to a certain sort of company; it made Rhaena akin to that company." The first cut. "It was purely social. I couldn't get enough of them, but you don't cheat on a mentalist. You don't even want to."

Then came the leaning, the whisper, the contradiction. Still Glenn Burnie. That was never going to change, not the heart of him, unshrouded as it might be now. It wasn't about him changing. It was about them changing. This was a new pattern. She'd see soon enough. For now, he took a half step back and reached out, giving her elbow an apologetic squeeze. "I understand. You can probably hear my whisper from even farther away." He was not past remembrance or melancholy. He was still human and here, he'd shut his eyes for a long moment, would rotate his neck in a stretch. He was elsewhere, in the silence and the dark, surrounded by those who could see better than him, could hear better than him, that didn't have a broken leg.

She spoke of his friend and his eyes opened awash with his thoughtful twinkle, his little brilliance. It had been a fevered thing before, now it was simply a hungry one. "It wasn't privacy; it was pride. He'd understand that even if he wouldn't like it." Invoking the raven was one thing. Her pleading though?

He pulled out a chair for her like a proper gentleman. He'd help her into the seat if she'd allow him. Then he'd walk around the table, sitting down in his own. His left heel arched up and down silently, as if he was releasing that hungry energy into the earth itself. He smiled at her, and it was a soft, fond thing. "You flatter me, Finn. Good neighbor. Your father wouldn't care, because it was me. I'm ok with that. I don't think that your bard would particularly care either, which stings more, as there's one-sided professional courtesy there. Have you ever gotten something in your eye? Dust, a bit of dirt. One blink doesn't do it. Two, three, though? And then a rub. A second rub and another blink." He placed his elbow down upon the table, palm up-stretched. His chin sank down into it and he looked at her, blinking his left eye twice. "Then I'm gone. None of them understand like you do. Why worry if an unctuous tultharian happened to stumble into your name as part of some game or gambit?"

He did not promise. He did not press. Instead, he shot backwards in his chair, shrugging slightly as he did, all one fluid movement. "You asked about the beginning and then you asked about the end. The curse and her death. How I felt in the glamour as well.' That last one had been something of an afterthought. If he had planned for this line of conversation, that bit must have slipped his mind. "You did cover a lot of ground. There's one thing you missed though, that you didn't have time for probably. Do you mind if we talk about how I'm feeling now?"
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Mon Jul 02, 2018 2:18 am

She looked at him and blinked, surprised. “I didn’t expect you to.” She grasped at once that ‘home’ in this case meant Myrken, and that Myrken was not hers but his, but that he had said it—again, under no pretext she could discern—both troubled and pleased her. She knew how she felt about her home; she knew how he felt about Myrken, and the very associations of the word opened her heart a crack. The same feeling that had gone so wrong last night swept over her again, too-hasty optimism and hope at once: maybe this was going to be all right. Or mayhap her earlier feeling had been correct all along, only premature. Maybe it had been waiting until morning.

That she thought such a thing at all made her mistrust it all the more. No one knew better than she that a lie could be all the more convincing when the feelings it evoked were real.

She still did not want to talk about the teahouse business or of violation. Bad enough it was inevitable they would speak of violations she had actually committed; she did not want to hear about ones into which she was now lumped by association. The trouble with violating someone was that one forfeited the right to complain about how one felt about being accused, since ignoring someone else’s feelings was how the trouble began in the first place. The best one could do was listen and take one’s lumps. “That’s…actually quite a clever trick,” she admitted reluctantly. “I’m sorry you were a part of it, but I can’t fault technique.”

It was a relief to move toward the table, a little further from that dangerous subject, even if it only meant moving toward it from a different direction. Fionn relaxed, sinking into the chair he offered without waiting for him to help her into it—less a deliberate snub and more her being oblivious to the lineage of custom and chivalry that birthed such a gesture. “It can be about privacy and pride and about me wanting to give the raven an evening off,” she protested, even as she scooted her chair toward the table’s edge. “Things can be about more than one thing at once.”

Propping her elbows upon the milky varnish of the table, she waited for him to settle in across from her. She didn’t know if the gambit had been wasted or if it had succeeded, but for the moment, it was secure and she could focus on what was in front of her. Him. Even without the black eyes, her attention was uncanny and unwavering—one of very few involuntary attributes from her ganconner line. It tended to make one feel one was the only other person in the room. Only the strength of one’s own ego determined if this made people ill at ease or not.

“Oh-ho, no, you’ve got them backwards. Father would care enough to want you dead. He doesn’t do half-measures. Either something’s dangerous enough to destroy it, or else it does not exist. And if he destroys it, then it no longer exists, so…” She rolled her hand gracefully to the side, dismissing the mad, self-evident logic in that outlook. “The bard, though…she’d care, most certainly, but she’s apt to care more depending on why I’d done it, not that it were done at all. I’ve oft wished you might go and bother her instead of me. I don’t know if you two would rightly like one another, but you’d keep each other engaged long enough for me to slip away and have a few drinks.”

She smiled gently, mostly to herself, at the thought of how funny it would be to watch Ainrid verbally chasing Glenn all over the room, trying to pin him to some obscure, petty point, and how sad it was that it would never happen. However young Glenn thought her, she was still young enough to hold the vast and hopeless belief that if she could but trap all the people she cared for in one place, they would like one another as much as she liked them.

Then she leaned forward and rapped her knuckles on the table to coax him back to the here-and-now with her. “You keep saying things like that, but it isn’t exactly so. We’re not like Him. We live in time, same as your folk. It’s just a bit different for us. It’s more a matter of remembering than understanding. We remember things that happened long ago, things that we didn’t experience. The glam showed you a little of that, I think.”

She looked down at her hands on the table, away from him. Someone had carved a word in the wood. She traced the grooves with her fingernail. T. O. B. Y. Lugh’us Danaan, they even left their names just lying around on tables. She found herself feeling very tenderly toward Toby, wherever he was now. “I’ve wondered betimes if that’s not why it’s so hard to write about some things in the letters. That feeling I’ve told you about before—that whatever I’m writing about is happening all over again.”

When he shifted in his seat, she did the same, leaning forward instead of back, the same intense interest in her face—like a sunbeam focused through a curved glass. “You’re…quieter today.” And then she laughed, realizing she was probably the only person in the world to ever say such a thing to him. “Not quieter. Still a jabberjay. But you seem…easier in your mind, let’s call it.” Hands cupped protectively over the name TOBY, she nodded to Glenn. “Most of the reason I steeled myself to find you was to see how you were. I wasn’t looking forward to answering questions, believe you me, but it felt wrong to leave you on your own last night. I wanted to know you were all right. If you’d speak now, I’d hear you.”
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Mon Jul 02, 2018 5:39 am

"Maybe. She all but forgot about it. Politics back home. The fact that she was an over-glorified sixteen year old." It was fresh on his mind, very fresh, and there was a small glance to the door which told her absolutely nothing about why. He tried to focus on who she was, not what, and part of that was so that she didn't get conflated with the sinners of his past. "She came back and Rhaena was acting just like her and she barely remembered she enacted the trick in the first place. I spent the next year forging myself into something that could kill her."

It was therefore a relief to him as well to move to the table. Perhaps that's partially why he neither pressed nor promised. Instead, his smile would hint at returning when she parried his accusation of pride and privacy. "So often, when it comes to you and the answers I try to give you, they are. Nothing's ever simple, Finn. That said, next time you don't like one of my answers, I'll make sure to invoke that." So no bond or word, but certainly someone to stare at. Burnie's ego was a healthy thing (and it had been even when he was all but torturing himself; even unhealthy then because he could not place the blame anywhere else). He did well in the face of her regard. He flourished.

"Some days I feel like I'm better matched for the bard." He'd admit and it's not as if he didn't have questions for her. "And I don't think I get it all that wrong either. I saw what I saw as you said and we'll get to it later. Frankly, I think it helps my case. You may live in time, but you don't value it the same way." That was getting ahead of things and wasn't about the bard at all. "In truth, I think we could offer you different things, she and I, so that's some days. Right now, though? Right now." He swallowed, fairly constant smile (or at least uptick of the lips) dissolving. "Well, that's the question isn't it."

Now, could he embrace the answer without running? She was keeping his gaze, for the most part. This wasn't a letter. He was face-to-face with her, and they both remembered mostly everything. "First, before I say it, and quickly, and because I know you're not going to say a damn thing about it because if you argue with me, you'll just delay what you'd like to hear all the more," and this was Burnie trapping her in the way he so often did, "the questions I am to ask you are a downright blessing. My curiosity and your interest are sitting in the back of some metaphorical carriage somewhere titillating a hundred ravens' lurid imaginations. All power to you for that in the end." Ok, maybe he was escaping just a little, but that was because he didn't like the answer one whit. Or at least he didn't like the lack of an answer. "Finn, I don't know. Morning's come. I feel rested. I slept well. I failed to write letters and managed to write one. What else do I know? I know my soul's intact. I know I am not some sort of madman monster, perhaps just a sane one. I know I can return home and what harm I do to them will be of a natural sort. I know who killed her and that none of that will ever be right. I know what you did to me and how well it served both of us. I'm not sure what I feel though. Relief, sadness, affection, a bit of anger. Less than you'd think. Some worry. Relief, mostly relief." She had felt his regard back in the glamour. She'd felt it before and now after as well. There was nothing preternatural about his stare but somehow that didn't help matters. His eyes sparkled. Before it had been thunder and lightning. Now it was a glistening starlight. Somehow though, it was no less intense. "There's a part of me, and forgive me for this, that wonders if you didn't outright do something, maybe even without knowing, for it feels as if this morning, this morning that we're going to speak of all of these things, is in fact the first morning after five years of dusk."
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Mon Jul 02, 2018 7:16 am

Gravely she raised one incomplete hand to her collarbone. “I swear upon my torc, which I am not currently wearing, that I did nothing to alter you in any way, and if I did, I did it with neither my knowledge or yours, and if I did it without my knowledge then, I would in this moment undo it.” She set down the hand. The suggestion that she might have laid a glam unconsciously, without realizing it, was a serious charge. “To speak true, Glenn, for my part I did my best to avoid doing anything directly to you. Most of it was only around you. I tweaked a few things, here and there, to make you pay more attention to them, but that was as near as it came.”

Truth wavered on her lips. She ran her tongue across them, but the taste remained. She spoke slowly, not looking directly at him. “I will tell you this: let none of my people ever convince you that they have laid glamourie without knowing it.” In its way, that was an admission equal to though less binding than revealing her name. “That is a thing beyond lunacy, for even a mad person is mistress of her own glam.”

But you didn’t put the stone there.

She swallowed hard, as if that self-same stone stuck in her throat.

“Beyond that, Sionnach?” Looking back up to him, she had to smile. His eyes were very bright—and very conspicuous against their new background, grey beryl set in silver—so that she must wonder what all the fuss was about, if he meant to blame her or praise her or just admit his own confusion. If he felt better, she was content. “I don’t know either. I’d reckon it more your own doing. It was something you were trying to solve for yourself well before I came along and I can take no credit for it.” Save that she did; she always did, but smug triumph could be swept aside for his sake. “Is it…does it trouble you? You don’t feel as if this is something that…I don’t know, that needs to be rectified? Or is it that it feels too easy?”

Too close to seriousness, her smile strengthened, became more teasing. “An my opinion means anything, from this side of the table you look wondrous well.”
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Mon Jul 02, 2018 7:45 am

Even as she unveiled certain secrets of herself and her people, the things that he would devour without end if allowed, she also managed to make this discussion solely about him. That, along with her stare, along with her oaths, appealed. She had her dancing and stories; he, secrets and the lauding of his agency. Color entered into his cheeks that she hadn't seen before. It wasn't a blush but it certainly was something. "Stop it."

With a flash of thought, his teeth ran over his bottom lip. The ideas were coming to him quickly but not necessarily in organized fashion. "It would be a terrible thing if I had gifted you regret by losing it myself. I do not think that is the case, though. I still feel it, all of it. I wonder whether or not I deserve relief? That troubles me. I went and did the hardest thing I could just now. Upstairs. In part to see if I could. I could, I did, and now I am here."

Then, not lewdly, but directly, his eyes traced up her arm to her collarbone. "You should swear oaths on the mole that you rarely let anyone see. Then if you ever break them, you'd lose the mole." He carefully pulled down his own collar, not wanting to muss the silver marker too much. "Too much more of this and you're going to ask Good Mistress Peg to bring your previous playmate back, but this is where my scar was. Then my tattoo. Now my nothing. Feel lucky, dread Niall, for if I still had it, you'd never be able to fool me again."

Without warning, his smile faded once more. The brightness in his eyes gave way to slight disappointment. "It's better to tell you stories in person, I think. Real ones and ones that are only real in spirit. I can't go now though." That was the second time he expressed a desire to return to Myrken. The first time it was about his home. This time, it seemed to be about her. He was lonely, of course, and he wanted to be understood, by her and anyone both, but this was still a strange turn. "More stories, less dancing, I think. I don't just sweep someone off their feet. Let's not be ridiculous here." Then, reaching up to rub something from his eyes, be it sleep or fancy, he scoffed. "Don't think I'm not asking you questions, Finn. They're coming. They'll be lovely."
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Tue Jul 03, 2018 6:29 am

Though the mole was well-concealed, once by glamour and once by the gown, she clutched a hand to her shoulder and pretended to avert her gaze in maidenly modesty as he unfastened his collar. Actually she was only glancing over her shoulder to see if the dreaded Peg lurked behind them ready to avenge impropriety. “Dear me, this is getting cozy,” she murmured, before she leaned near for a better look.

When she saw there was nothing, not even the scar of a scar (if there could be such a thing), she pounded the side of her fist lightly against the table and drew away again, her lips twitching in indecision over whether she should burst out laughing, be cross with him, or be cross with herself for falling for it. “Oh, paugh! Come now, you can’t just hint at a story like that and not tell it. What happened to them? How did you get such a thing in the first place?”

No sooner did she voice the question than a memory stirred: one of his letters from seasons prior. She raised an eyebrow. “The shared dream?”

If his former tactic had been avoidance, this one seemed to involve disconnect—random shifts that seemed heartfelt but with which she knew not if she should inquire or merely offer sympathy. Whatever had shifted within him, he seemed not injured by it, merely conflicted, overwhelmed, and attempting to sort himself out. All the old familiar edges were…not gone, precisely. But receded. A tide gone out, reshaping the shoreline, revealing things once submerged. She was cautious, but her caution tended toward optimism—willing to explore, but with one wary eye on that distant tideline lest it rush back again.

She frowned slightly as his brightness dimmed, a frown only a little tinged with petulance at the loss. Self-absorbed and vain as ever she was, she could still, with a small effort, muster up sympathy when required. “I do like it when you tell me stories. All stories are real, whether they be true or not. Only not now, I think. Now we have business.” She shifted herself around, pulled herself up straight again, hands folded before her but unable to either look away from him or shake off that small frown. “Are you…are you going to be alright for now? Do you need anything?”
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Tue Jul 03, 2018 6:57 am

"All my stories are macabre. Most of them. Most to all of them." He oscillated as he tried to think of stories that were more pleasant fare. The moments he found funny were more dire than anything else. "Better for campfires maybe. That sort of thing." Would she even sit at a campfire? He peered at her curiously as he tried to picture it. He took so many things for granted with her. He had never thought the carriage ride would have been such a disaster for instance. There were things that no one ever wrote in any lore book, practical things.

A half dozen sentences tried to launch their way up his throat all at once, many of them quite sentimental. Instead, he forced them down with a quick laugh. "It's okay for you not to know what to make of things, Finn. I'm not sure I do yet. It was an interesting night and it's a lovely morning." Then, doubling back scattershot. "All stories are not real. Our perception of them is what matters. It's important we keep our power in this. Surrender may well be pleasant but we can hardly afford it given the inequalities." He leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes, though there was such an ease to all of it, a lightness. "I wish we would have had you with us to face the storyteller." One eye opened, his left one, peering at her with that same curiosity, but with just a hint of dubiousness lurking within. "If you'd have helped us and not her. I'm not convinced. You may have delighted in it. You may have shared professional courtesy. Where I am a fool, dearest Finn, is that," there was the second eye opening, for he was making a declaration, "I take for granted," (for here was one), "your sense of justice. It is not mine. No matter, I'll come to understand it in time. I don't quit."

Could he say that and not give her anything? No consolation at all? "In Myrken, lest you fear man's terrifying mastery over fire, we shall make camp one night and I will tell you about the dream, the dreamwaker, my touchpoint, my self-mutilation, and my tattoo. Maybe a bit about Kylerryth, which in some ways felt like the largest thing I ever had to face until you brought up your queen's ambition last night."

Speaking of fire, to touch that subject was like putting his hand in one. He drew back immediately. "I first arrived in Myrken, out of the blue, knowing nothing, shortly after Haberdasher's Row. I missed Ariane on a dragon placing that fop Bromn back as Governor. She'd deny it; the dragon, not the fop. Just a few months before that, our poor and ramshackle houses of government burned down. The Meetinghouse was gone and with it documents. Mudd was useless. No one asked questions. I spent that first year poking in dark places and learning things everyone had agreed not to take note of. There was a first dream before our dream and no one did a damn thing about it." He shook his head, but the wistful tone in his voice was unmistakable. "It was ridiculous but I loved the mystery of it all. I was asleep when you poked me in the eye with the mystery of Victoria. I hope you don't regret that at least."

He exhaled, said eyes shifting to the sky (or the ceiling) even as he plopped his elbow down on the table. "You're right. Stories later. Business now. So, where would you like to begin? Catch, who I don't actually think we should talk about? What I experienced of your people, including some of what I said last night? The bits I couldn't really understand? Whether or not I am cross with my fairy queen?" The last bit was playful, coy. His smile had shifted suddenly into a creature of control, but his eyes twinkled wildly, refusing to heed him.
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Tue Jul 03, 2018 12:20 pm

Clearly, he was not going to be alright for now. Yet Glenn Burnie being all wrong was so much less a headache to deal with that she was nearly willing to go along with him. Nearly. Tultharian oft came out of a glam a bit addled, if not outright altered, but to her mind it had been such a little thing; she hung bigger glams than that on her walls when company came. Mayhap Glenn’s experience made him more susceptible to such things. In which case, she concluded, with a inner sigh of relief, as she’d done nothing to him directly, it might well fade in time and he’d be back to his ordinary, reliably stubborn, insufferable self again.

Example: he was already back to prevaricating. She bore it patiently for now but eventually, something had to give.

Paugh. Brighid gave us fire first. We only let you have it because we felt sorry for you. If we’d known back then all we know now, we would’ve let you freeze to death in the first winter and saved ourselves no end of trouble.”

He was speaking her language now, the language of stories. Her eyes shone as if that future fire was already reflecting in them. Not all of the stories she knew had happened to her, but many of them felt as if they had. “We should do, at that. I’ll tell you about when I was scarcely knee-high and knew no better and smacked the ganconner across the arse with a branch. Or the one about the Sister Queens and how we quit your lands at last. Or how they took me on my very first boar hunt and I ended up claiming the kill by pure accident. Or the time when my grandmother Mabhe and the High Queen were girls together and met their husbands. They were cousins, and friends once, though it seems impossible to think of it now.”

She shrugged, and the fire dimmed a little, as it was wont to do when Herself came into the conversation. He’d mentioned Herself too: double the bad luck. She kissed her thumb to break the unlucky streak. “The one I ought to tell you is what became of the Salmon of Wisdom in the end. I keep meaning to. I forget you don’t know these things.”

Now she was nervous. They were down to brass tacks (as the tultharian put it) and she at the disadvantage. The element of his predictability had been lost. Even his asking her where to begin, surely a reasonable question, felt like a trap. Best start with honesty and go from there.

“I’m not sure where to begin, really. There is much.” She managed to imitate his inflections and expression—as opposed to his actual voice—without a flicker of a grin on her face. “I don’t particularly wish to speak of Catch, either. They’re your questions. Start where you like. You saw the ganconner; that was interesting.” Gods, if she was starting with such a flavorless word as interesting, this was going to get tedious quickly.

Wait a moment.

“Actually, hold a moment, I do have a question.” For once she was so indigent that she could not even rightly said to be angry. “Your fairy queen? Your fairy queen? What in sin is that supposed to be?”
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Tue Jul 03, 2018 2:58 pm

The smiles were so natural and easy. The way that he leaned upon his hand was as if he just happened to owned the place, and it was very likely the place in question just happened to be wherever there were four walls. She could rule over everything else and he'd likely not mind. They could share streets; that was only fair. And yes, the words were so often his own words, just said with a different sort of lightness, like a man humming an out-of-pitch tune as he strolled through a familiar haunt.

Very often Burnie listened to listen, not to speak once more. Sometimes, in the heat of an argument, it was otherwise. Here, though, he seemed all too willing to reply. "Are you sure that humanity didn't steal fire from the gods? That's how I heard it." But then, before she could answer, he stormed right ahead. "I could tell you about the Ashfiend. That would be a good one. There's the Battle of Snowstill, the rescue of the barmaid Teddi, how I leaped out a window my first night in the Dagger, us meeting him in the woods (and how Calomel threw me across the room when he found out). There's Ariane and Cinnabar and the urn, lines that can't be crossed. Vraal. Sin and temptation and corruption all. Or I could tell you of the love between Galcia Tarin and the Baie. Bromn and Renne and Dhrin and Fawn, cults and eyes. Or the Zayken and his perfection and Quincy Randall and her hammer." Once he started, he could go forever. These were the stories of his people, his adopted home. He had spent years living some of them and learning others.

When it came time for questions, however, they never even started. His eyebrows raised at her interjection. "Whether or not I'm cross at you then? Daring." If he did not have access to his full facilities it would be much harder to so thoroughly play dumb. Still, he looked at her seriously enough once his eyebrows found their natural spot once again. "No, Finn, I am not cross with you. It surprises me a bit too. I would like to know your intention. I would like to know why you didn't ask me for permission. Next time, we can just talk about it first? That's all I ask." As sentences go, well, she surely must have bribed the judge.

Except, of course, that given the lack of her actually answering him, he continued on to the next issue at play. "Catch." Steady voice. Sharp gaze. No smile, not anymore. "You won't like this, but I'll be honest with you. Before my fall, I spent time as his friend, trying to help him find himself. After my fall, I spent time trying to contain him and the damage he might do. Never, even at my worst, did I intend to use him. I knew better. Speaking of stories, do you know his?" He had not ordered anything but he had thrown enough money around during various points in the morning that no one was going to throw him out by his ear. "Do you know the cycle of his Glory? Golden cities, greedy humans, revels and dust. It repeats and repeats and repeats. I encountered a legend of him long before I ever met him. Why? Because, thanks to the curse, the first one, I had good reason to study the destruction of great works of humanity."

He'd lean in closer, but not so close that his breath was in her ear. "I saw the glimpse of your ganconner, and I'll consider myself forever lucky both that I saw it and that I saw it from such a distance, but he and it are two different things. The ganconner is. As it was. As it will be. Catch was not always Catch. He will not always be Catch. But he will always be Catch again."
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Wed Jul 04, 2018 5:50 am

“See,” she said, “now we’re back on comfortable ground. You start off asking me questions, then you answer them all yourself. Ask me a few more while I slip out of town. By the time you’re done answering, I’ll be halfway back to Myrken.”

She made no effort to move, though, instead settling in for a long wait. A litany of names he gave her, name and names and names. Silly though it was, she felt sorry for him. Names were heavy. Like iron links. So many could drag you down like chains.

If her ears swiveled forward at the mention of the Baie, the interest was, quite literally, unconscious. She had already forgotten she knew that name.

And though she was not meant to be the one asking questions, one escaped her, very softly. “But what became of them all? Where are they now?”

She shook her head, frowning, suddenly uncomfortably aware that she had been leaning forward in fascination. Probably with her mouth slack, too. A wonder there wasn’t a puddle of drool on the table. “I’m sorry. I’m not meant to be asking questions, I know. But will you tell me? One day?”

His actual question was as frustrating and uncomfortable as she expected. It nearly felt like a return to form. She sighed, with an inner grumble at the disgrace of being required to explain her motives to a mortal. To such indignities one stooped in the name of friendship. “My intentions were…oh, dash it all, Sionnach. This sounds so petty by daylight.” She rubbed at her brow. “I was frustrated with you. I tried to explain why the name was so dangerous and you still thought it was worth it, only to make your grand moral point—hinging names on being able to trust one another. It was just another one of your metaphors. No mere symbol was worth the very real danger of the truth. It was the same with glamourie. I’ve tried with all my will not to use glamourie with you, much less on you. You’ve told me your history, all that’s happened to you, and whenever I used even the least glamourie near you, you objected to it—which seemed to bear out that it was better to avoid it altogether, an it could be managed. But still you didn’t understand what it was, or what it meant. Whenever I tried to explain, you brushed me aside. You were never going to understand. Explaining is no good with you; you have to experience. To know. And now you have.”

In hindsight, it seemed such a small thing, so easily resolved, scarcely worth all the trouble it caused.

“We two have such trouble asking. I forget. I rush ahead. It doesn’t occur to me to ask or explain. I always assume that once the thing’s begun, it will be self-evident. I don’t know why it is with you, though. I’ve offered. I told you that all you ever had to do was ask me, and the worst I will ever do is say you nay. But you must heed me when I say nay. Don’t go on shoving. Don’t keep insisting you must be right.” She sighed again. “Promise me but that, and henceforth I promise that I will ask.”

But after such chastisement, Catch’s name caught her like a branch whipping across her cheek. She flinched. Of course. The one thing she’d rather not speak of, and of course he spoke it. Come on the heels of saying he wasn’t angry, it stung so badly that she near wondered if this was the punishment.

In that spirit, she tried to match his soberness, not smiling, but the longer he went on, the deeper she slouched in her chair—an awkward affectation, since she was already too long for it—ending in an unladylike posture, skirts tented over widespread knees. A child being scolded, insouciant and careless, hateful at being told the truth, and convinced her own will could make the truth otherwise. To have Catch explained to her was like having a scab ripped off. The blood that boiled beneath it was pure, petty jealousy: that anyone could even think to have more claim on Him than she. Moodily her finger traced over and over the O in TOBY.

Finally she looked back to him. The black ganconner gaze returned. An electric charge tightened around their table like a building thunderstorm. Now he was not just the only man in the room; now there was not even a room that could be escaped. “I never knew. We met, and it was already too late to ask.” In her composed and brooding fury, she looked exactly as old as Glenn supposed her to be. “Do you think it matters to me what he is? I love whom I love.”
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