Let's call the whole thing off

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Fri Aug 17, 2018 7:21 am

Glamourie glossed a multitude of tiny cracks. The last two days in the city had been like being lost in a maze where all the hedges concealed iron thorns, until she had unconsciously adopted a stiff-backed, wary walk. The constant noise made it impossible to differentiate one sound from another, which made her nervous; she could tell a near sound from a far-off one, but not with the sort of precision she was used to. Anything could be standing right behind her and she wouldn’t be able to hear it until it was too late. And they were always right behind her: there was nowhere to go without running headlong into people, no peace, no privacy, the filth, the stink. It undermined her in ways she did not fully understand. All she knew was that she wanted to get away from it.

Which was silly. Queen of Cnoch-na-Niall, the woman who had walked on her own power from the High Queen’s court, first queen to cross the sea since the Sisters, didn’t slink away defeated just because things were too noisy or crowded to suit her. If she wanted, she could have this entire city twisted around her finger by sunset, except who would want it? She would not trade a single patch of parkland in Cnoch-na-Niall for the whole rotten stew of Razasan.

Here was better. Alone with one person she knew well, in a quiet, closed room, gave her the luxury of a false second wind. She was confident that she could keep this going forever—or at least longer than he could, which was all that really mattered.

Which was probably why he was able to pull the rug out from under her for the second time in as many minutes.

She blinked, a bit stupidly, in disbelief that he would ever think such a thing—or at least, that he would be such a fool as to tell her he was thinking it. “Why?” No accusation, only confusion. Her voice was plaintive. “Why would you want that? To be proof against glamourie in general, or just to avoid something like this happening again? It won't. There’s no one I’ve found Here yet who knows the true glamourie and it’s not likely you’ll ever happen across any other Tuatha save for me.”

The obvious reason fetched her up hard, drew her short. A sense of dull, worn inescapability, like the toll of an iron bell, fell over her. Hadn’t she thought, during the brief terrifying slip when he’d had her name, that it might come down to this? Like giving a drunkard a bottle. Like feeling on the floor to find the wires behind a trick where there was no trick. It felt like being punched in the throat.

Drawing herself back to full height, she flicked her head to knock a loose curl from between her eyes and stamped a bare foot: more the body language of a small, stubborn pony more than of a queen. “It doesn’t even work like that. You can’t just build a tolerance to glamourie. It isn’t poison. Dash it all, I’m not a…I’m not s-some…some sort of rusting…apothecary.”

The stammering broke her momentum. Underneath the carefully crafted pique, genuine, stark distress strained at the corners of her mouth. Her dark face burned darker and the tips of her ears felt hot as lighted candlewicks. She fumbled to regain enough righteous indignation to restore her poise. It didn’t work. She stared at him with numb, icy hurt.

“Well. Good luck to you, I suppose.” She started across the room, back to the chair, where she scooped up her shoes. “Write me and let me know how it all works out.”
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Fri Aug 17, 2018 8:18 am

She had asked any number of questions. It wasn't a matter of having to answer every little thing she asked. It was more a case that the words came without him realizing he ought to be stopping them. It wasn't until he reached the other side that he was able to look back on it. Obviously this wasn't sustainable, but he hadn't begun to explain that to her. Maybe he couldn't, because this was as much her as it was not him. Hadn't that been the worry? That they were so diametrically opposed that no connection would be able to overcome that? Was this not some sort of physical proof of that?

The defiance in his eyes said it did not matter."She came," he began as she was walking away, his voice strong and booming, those lungs finally being used with the sort of oratorial power that he had utilized to preside over his people, "with the onset of winter. She presented herself as an old lady, immune to questions but ever curious. For all our failings, we respect our elders. We have so few of them after all. When they tell us their tales, we listen. Oh, and did she have tales.

"She held court for curious children with word of a wolf like none had ever seen, not even there. She told sweet, world-weary Dulcie of a woman with a thousand suitors. She nattered pleasantly about a princess gone mad. She warned young and old of a piper who stole a generation. And yes, she told the dying man in black, gutted by no less than a unicorn, a brand new story, dark and twisted, for how he might yet live. The wolf came. The barmaid was inundated. The princess went mad. The piper tried to steal our children. The man lived until he lived no longer, bringing her back new tales of horror crafted by his own hands ever night.

"We caught her. We tried her. She appeared to us as an old woman no longer. Ultimately, she died at the hands of Gloria Wynsee in Golben. The dark man finally died with her. The princess died not long after. The unicorn? He came to me as I sat near death myself and told me to fight her with iron. There are things in this world that we have seen. I know a good few of them personally."

The story was not what he had hoped it to be. That had been six months of their lives, longer, and it had been the tipping point for so very much. Finally, had she not left him entirely, he would pull back some of her words. "It may not work like that, but it doesn't work like this either, Finn!" It was a near shout. Was it the first she'd heard from him? His voice softened again. Even in this state, outbursts were rare and swift. "This isn't normal. You've not seen it before. So since we're in the realm of the abnormal, we're also outside the realm of the known possible. I want you to be able to show me things, to express feelings to me. I want to be able hear your language, to bathe in your truth. I want this without losing myself so thoroughly that you are sharing but with an inebriated husk, a creature of brilliance but no purpose, of delight but no values, a thing instead of a person. I've spent long enough as a thing. I'd gift you something more worthy than that."

"I want you to be able to be you around me, the you that is most natural, that is most true. I understand that there can be a difference between truth and Truth and with you, that it is something to be embraced, to be celebrated, not to be recoil from. Is it so much to ask that I find a way to reach that point without entirely falling to pieces, Finn?"
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Sun Aug 19, 2018 9:08 am

She jerked back to full height, crushing the green satin slippers in her fist. The delicate things had been made for nothing more arduous than a drawing-room carpet and they already looked as if she’d walked all the way from Myrken in them, frayed, snagged, and stained. She stood patting the soles restlessly against her palm, while her bored gaze drifted to any portion of the room that did not contain Glenn Burnie. A crooked lampshade caught her interest and she wandered away, giving him a fine view of her back as she tweaked the shade straight.

Still she was listening. Even with her back turned, the tips of her ears fluttered each time his inflection shifted, and she had to focus intently on the lampshade to keep from being drawn back toward him. When he spoke of being gored by a unicorn’s horn, her hand pressed against her own stomach in sympathy; at the mention of iron, she pulled a sour face, her mouth turned down with the near-comic exaggeration of a jongleur’s painted mask.It was irritating, really, as she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t doing it on purpose—playing with her penchant for stories to keep her there.

Was that why he was telling her a story about stories? Was it even true? All his other stories she had managed to piece together, bit by bit, enough to prove at least the bare bones of them.

His shouting caught her off-guard. Her shoulders twitched as if the words had bounced off her back, but she did not turn immediately. Instead it became a slow, eerie revolution, her entire body creaking toward him in a single unit, as if the floor had rotated rather than she.

Fixing him with a disconcertingly blank, unamused look, she lifted a hand and swatted the lamp from its corner. It rolled to a gentle halt upon the rug, still whole, because of course her dramatic gestures were all going to fall short today.

“Plainly, it is too much to ask,” she replied, “because you didn’t. You never ask. You announce, you presumptuous little shite.”

The words rolled out with great relish. Setting her bare foot deliberately upon the lamp, she started toward him. The glass globe popped under her weight.

“Gods, but you are such a child betimes. Right now you’re a child who won’t let himself be put to bed even when he’s so exhausted he’s made himself ill. You’re cranky and petulant and running around yammering to keep yourself awake because you know the moment you stop moving, you’ll be fast asleep like that.”

She clicked her fingers before his nose.

“You don’t know how it works. I don’t know how it works. I do know that it’s a rare man who does not pass through a glam changed—addled. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Sometimes for always. It hasn’t even been a full day yet.” A small note of pleading broke through her resolve. “For all either of us know, this could all pass away by morning, like a dream. You’ll go back to the way you were before. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the most likely outcome, if only because I know I did nothing to make it otherwise. For the rest…I don’t know. You’ve been through such strangeness, so many enchantments…perhaps this is like bad medicine, a bad mixture. I couldn’t say.”

She huffed out a small breath and shook her head at him. “Here is what I propose. I am going to leave the raven here with you, an he’s agreeable. I think he will be. He’ll keep an eye on you. If anything more happens with you, for good or ill, he can come tell me. If things get worse, I will come back. If you go back to…well, you weren’t exactly normal before, but if you go back to…as you were—” a flicker of emotion on her face, a momentary shading of her eyes. More regret? she still couldn’t tell “—then you can go about settling your affairs here. Or not. You might decide against it once you’ve had the chance to think it through clear-minded.”

Finally she raised her gaze again, calm but stubborn. “And if after that, if you come to Myrken and you still wish to try this plan, I’m agreeable to seeing what may be done. I am not adverse to helping you—if I believe this will truly help. I’m not yet assured on that account. What I see before me is a man half out of his head who may not yet know all that he’s asking for or agreeing to. Until you can assure me of that, I want no part of it.”
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Mon Aug 20, 2018 1:15 am

She was a sight to see. That was always the case, of course, except for when she truly, deeply did not want it to be. Even then, the dissonance, the absence of such a sight, might make it and her stand out all the more. He knew now to look, and increasingly how to look (though knowing and a capacity of doing were two different things).

She had him at a disadvantage, and here she pressed. There were numerous ways she might have, of course, but this was a three-pronged assault. The first was upon the poor lamp, swatted aside with far more presence and purpose than, for instance, a bored cat (not that he had much experience with those), then stomped upon with even less maturity. The second was with insults, whereas he became the lamp.

Those two he could combat, though he did not. Despite her advantage, there was an easy strength to be found in being called childish by someone acting as such. Whatever higher ground was left between the two of them, he hung onto it firmly by maintaining a far more difficult silence. He just soaked it in, simply experienced her. It was more than he could do not to smile, just a little. She could blame his current state. If pressed later, he certainly would.

The third prong, however, was more potent and dangerous by far. She clicked her fingers, huffed her breath, shook her head, and then raised her gaze. Throughout it all, she was as reasonable as he'd ever seen her, save for when she argued for distance and distance alone. He listened. What else could he do?

At the end, he spoke. "I'll note, briefly and as my only complaint," a daring, unbelievable way to begin for someone who could find so much to complain about, "that for someone who well knew that ALL men come through your glam changed and addled, you've shown quite a lack of care for your neighbor. Think that through."

It was a harsh rebuke, but then he wasn't calling her a little shite or worse. He tone had been far more matter-of-fact than incensed. The next part was to be far more difficult, yet entirely inevitable. His eyes fell back to her shoulder and he cursed his current lack of control far more than his lack of assurance about reality itself. Instead of looking back into her eyes, however, he pressed his forehead forward. She had chosen to be close, so very close, and now he'd press yet another advantage, HER height advantage, and lean that forehead so full of wild, rampaging thoughts, into her all-important shoulder. She could draw back and watch him fall upon his face, of course, but there'd been enough of that in a metaphorical sense today already.

"Ok. You win." There was a slight mumbling element to it as he all but spoke into her skin. "He'll see how I am in the morning. I think I know how I'll be and I've acted accordingly, but I don't really know anymore than you do. Regardless of how I am, I will not do anything in this matter without consulting you, not just informing you, but consulting you."

With all that said, he'd try, and fail, to withdraw. Perhaps there would be strength to be found in just a few more words. "Why would I do this? So that in six months' time, you end up with a man not half out of his head every time he sees you." He clenched his eyes shut and maybe she could feel that, indirectly, if she hadn't dropped him altogether. "Remind me to fill in the silence here later with some scathing riposte about queens and princesses and wants and needs. The well of my cleverness. I do think you drank it dry. Swallowed it whole?" The metaphors were starting to prance upon the room intermingling with one another in the most mischievous ways, truly all the sign he needed to find some way to disentangle himself and stumble back towards his bed.
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Mon Aug 20, 2018 2:48 am

His one complaint—and she highly doubted that he had ever had just one complaint about anything—was duly noted. “Not true,” she replied, quite calmly. “If I cared not at all, I might have left you in the street.”

Then he set his head against her shoulder and she startled, then tensed, momentarily uncertain if he really had given in to exhaustion and passed out mid-word. Briefly her hands pressed to either of his shoulders as she panicked about whether she should hold him up or shove him off. Then she froze again he spoke the words she thought he never would. You win.

It was probably to his credit, and a mark of some courtesy to him, that she dismissed the concession out of hand, granting it as much weight to their discourse as a bit of random sleep-talk. He was tired, and he was ill, and he was in the grip of all sorts of emotions he likely wasn’t much used to. Of course it felt like defeat to him. She’d hold it against him more if she was not so keenly aware that she felt it too: this fierce little desire, underneath everything else, to score a victory. To what end? Some addled self-important little mortal man. What could it please or profit her to defeat him—she, who already had so much? It was petty. It was poor form.

But there had been that one whirling, shining moment, when he had been so alive, so present, so potent. She had delighted in him. He deserved to have that, if he wanted it. Under his own terms, not hers.

On the heels of that very thought, contradicting it, overturning it, but making far, far more sense, came another: You could just give it to him, you know. You could. It would be so much easier than this. It would be so easy— before she cut it off short with a brisk mental clap of her hands. That was just the spot behind her eyes whispering again and she had resolved not to heed it.

“Good,” she replied at last, “because I am on your side in this, believe it or not. Betimes it seems we pick the path with the most mires and thorns but we do get there eventually.”

As she had the night before, she cupped a hand at the back of his head, cradling it against her shoulder, and wearily leaned her cheek against his hair, as much for her own comfort as his, and added quietly, “You’re going to be all right. You’re going to be just fine.”

Any tenderness in the gesture quickly passed into awkwardness as now she must figure out where to put him. Over his head, she glanced side to side at the few doors available (partly out of politeness but mostly due to lack of time, she hadn’t bothered to investigate the rest of the house when she had the chance), hunting for a place to deposit him. If he were another letter, she could add him to the bundle and slip him safely in a drawer with the rest. People were much less tidy and tended to be damaged by folding.

Wanting and needing. She gave only a wry smile he would never see. Mayhap she knew a few things about wanting and needing that he did not.

It would be so easy—

Her cheek lifted. She gave his shoulder a gentle shake. “Come now. You can’t sleep on me. Let’s get you walking.” Her face softened, became wistful. “Will you say me farewell this time, Glenn?”
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Mon Aug 20, 2018 4:18 am

It wasn't an embrace. It wasn't even leaning on her, not really. Alright, it was leaning on her, but just his head, and that was more because it would allow him a closer look at her shoulder, which was essential to discerning reality in this quite key moment.

She was at least somewhat reasonable about his concession, which was the entire point why he had conceded in the first place. It wasn't the fatigue; he'd have argued until he collapsed. It was because he couldn't raise a proper argument against her position. Principle without purpose was an empty hill to die upon. He might have argued forever, but his metaphors were getting more and more muddled by the moment.

"I'm on your side as well. The journey makes the destination all the richer in the end." He still had axioms though. Some well-learned men were quick to quote texts and treatises, but not Glenn Burnie. His ego was too large to quote anyone but himself.

She had made things quite awkward for both of them, and there was only one way through that; he granted her a gift, even with his last burst of inspiration. "You're telling yourself that, not me. You need me to be alright or you're lost. I'm the only one that can draw you a map through this quagmire of millennia." His heart wasn't in it, and there was, perhaps, a quick press of his arm into her side, a half embrace, to let her know it was part of a game they'd long-stopped playing.

"Bed, then." He nodded back to one of those closed doors. She'd not made this easy on him. Either he let her take him there and she'd be apt to tuck him in and neither of them could have that or he said farewell now and then if he didn't make it all the way to the door, they'd all look like fools.

He weighed his choices carefully before outright chuckling. "Let me say farewell now and get myself there while you walk out and don't look back? Otherwise, I can throw something at you, you can make yourself look twenty feet tall to me with smoke coming out of your nose in anger, then I'll pass out and you can drag me there? Let's go with farewell and dignity instead?"
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Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Mon Aug 20, 2018 6:03 am

He was wrong, of course, but it was just the sort of thing that led to nagging self-doubt. Was she only telling herself that? To make herself feel better about the state he was in, the part she had played in it? Far more likely he was telling himself that, convinced as ever he was doing her some nebulous favor but too tired to invent one. Anything to make himself feel in command of the situation. She felt an argument uncoil itself on the back of her tongue, stretching toward an open objection…but if he wanted to press the point, he could damn well write her a letter about it.

Later. Let it go for now. The gods knew they’d find something else to disagree on, given time.

In the face of his chuckling, she sighed, exasperated, but bowed her head in formal acquiescence. “Oh, fine. For sake of dignity, I say thee farewell, Glenn Burnie.”

Her hand slipped into his and her thumb ran over the back of his hand, memorizing the shape of his knuckles, before pressing down in a warm, lingering squeeze.

A bit shyly, she glanced over her shoulder at the door, then back to him. “It’s just. I am never all too certain if I’ll see people Here again. I like knowing we got to say farewell. That’s all.”

She took another half-step backwards, letting his hand slide from hers of its own accord, before she turned in a swift, silent half-circle and started away. Her shoes dangled at her side. She did not look back.

A moment's sunlight in the hall as the door opened, and shadow again when it shut.
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