Midnight Calling

Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Glenn » Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:58 am

He listened. Did she understand the weight of that? Oh, Glenn Burnie always listened. That was what he did. That was what set him apart from all the rest. Then, however, he listened on his own terms. From the moment she had entered his house, this conversation had been on her terms. It did not mean that he responded how she liked, no, but he certainly listened that way. He let her move to and fro. He would retreat a step but not bar her path after him. He let her breathe his air. He let her move his skull. Here, now, this once.

It was cold, perhaps, for the truth was often so, but it was willing, far more than the truth usually was.

Eventually, though, he must speak again. Again, it was no word she wished to hear. "Reward is a dangerous way of putting it. You'd play into her hands. Debt is better. Be exacting in your language. Ask for less than you think you deserve but more than she'd want to give. She deals with change and the perception of change. That's what you don't want. Find something tangible. Something indirect. Make sure to get the words exactly right. You'd do well to check with me first, but you won't, I imagine." What had he asked of Finn over the last many months? What boons? Often, he had escaped the lure by showing his own vulnerable underbelly. He was nothing but vulnerability. Wynsee was not much different, in her own way, but she was far less at peace with it. Her war may have been self-deprecating, but it was a loud, clamorous thing, and to make demands based on it would doom her without question. "All those stories of wishes gone wrong? That's history to her. If you want a starting point to converse with her for whatever reason, that would not be a bad one." It was a fine enough one for him, though he hardly thought Gloria wanted to get into a deep discussion about the fallacies inherent in an oral, story-based history then and there. Maybe later. "If you have a legitimate debt, she'll pay it. Just take care." Reiteration, rote repetition, was the way Wynsee had been taught as a child. There was little harm in reemphasizing here. Yes, he listened, always, but there was a cost to the unburdening. The calculation, the formula, in how he would see you always changed with every new piece of information scurried away.

It was only with her final question, as she focused on the fire and the finery, that Burnie allowed himself to smile. As he had noted many times recently, internally and externally, he was, after all, only human. "No one ever asks me that, Gloria. I realize you do it, in part but only in part, out of spite and loss and frustration and fear and as a burr to press into my heel and force me to walk with until you are satisfied that I have shared in your pain, but that makes it no less direct and no less appreciated. It will make my answer no less earnest and only a little more frustrated." He was a known entity. She did not come here for embraces or even apologies, not realistically. Information and ideas? Far more than she wanted of either? Whether that was her intent or not, it was the reality of this moment. The floodgates had been opened thrice: once by events she was only beginning to see the broadest hints of and the most indirect and visceral ways, once by her arrival, and now finally by her question. The water poured forth and what man-made fire could stand to it?

"It comes down to what you want, what you need, and what responsibilities you have that neither you nor the world can possibly bear to shirk. I would have you balance these things, and if necessary, I would invest my own means into this fateful endeavor. First," and here he had to almost physically restrain himself for his index finger very badly wished to rise up to assist in punctuation, "there is the matter of your mission here; is it complete? Second is the matter of your child, which is, of course, tied to the first. You put yourself at the mercy of another, unknown entity with plots and plans and desires of its own for reasons clear and unclear. A child is a burden and an end of freedom, but in this case, where you've left her seems a burdensome constraint as well. Those matters dealt with, we can get to what you want and what you need. You need safety from Meeda's people. You need opportunities to grow, to develop your acumen and skill. You likely need to face some of those things you ran from. You want personal connections, but ones on your terms, perhaps? Better rough than real if real could hurt you? I don't know. What is it you want, Gloria? Knowing full well that to get it, you'll likely end up utilizing my means, as a friend or a supplicant, that being your choice, as opposed to that of Ruann, to whom you have no real choice at all."
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Rance » Wed Oct 24, 2018 2:58 pm

Back in the too-warm, too-green chamber—

That one...stole me, an accusation, a deflection to turn the light of the lanterns elsewhere.

"Debt," Gloria said sucking air in through her yellowed teeth, "is better." And debt would be repaid; the Other Woman had built a chaos on her own terms, had damn near attempted to destroy Gloria in the process.

She knelt before the fire and reeled the dress out of the satchel. It reeked of old blood, of old sickness, and it stuck to itself with crude, half-dried adhesive. The sleeves dangled down and brushed the floor. Regretfully, she looked upon it, and lamented — this was hers, and it had provided for her. It was no patchwork afterthought, no long-worn vestige of poverty, no mud-or-manure-stained emblem of less-than like the ragged girls'-thing she donned now. It was a fine dress, a nice dress, a well-tailored, even-seamed artifact to which she cleaved, its revered dyes and embroideries telling her she could be anything in Razasan, if only she tried to be; could be something, could be anyone, before, before—

Sweeping back to the here and now, she anchored herself on Glenn's words, having missed...Nameless, how many of them? Ten? A hundred? A thousand?

"You make this too hard, Glenn. Too full of — of unnecessary entanglement, and complex only because you believe it must be complex. You may think me obtuse, but what I want, what I need, and what responsibilities I must fulfill? They are one in the same. I am a creature of few vanities—" including the one she was about to discard into the fire, "—so what I want is hardly worth mentioning, and what I need is married to the responsibilities that have either been thrust upon me or that I, by choice or by force, must resolve to shoulder. I..."

And the words, arrested, came to a halt. She fell to silence. The fire crackled. Only the hovering echo of Glenn's long-winded questions, as if they'd been carved into the very wood of the walls, seemed to remain.

Then, unceremoniously, she tossed the blue dress into the flames. The coals hungrily consumed it. The sleeves withered, turned to black snakes, and then to smoke. The fire gleamed hot, bright, casting the darkness of her face into a brazen mask.

"What I want is to cease lying to the world. I am a mother only in the most rudimentary sense. What did I carry for those nine months? A phantom? Some trick of the mind and the ear, ultimately delayed in the — the most horrific sense? She did not come from me, she did not come from me, she did not come from me." A burst of breath interrupted the violent repetition. "I am off like — like a lump of bad fruit. What other mothers see as their unique privilege, I wholly lack; I possess no connection, no special bond, no maternal gift. Gods, if Ruann asked it of me, do — do you know what I would do? I would bare my wrist and drain it with a steel point, if only it meant they would take her fully from me.

"I run from her. I run from her gaze. I run from the notion that only because her heartbeat imitates mine, she might one day glance up at me, look me in the eyes, and call me 'Mother.' And yet, to deny such a thing to her? Monstrous I've been, and wretched I can be. But cruel?"

There. He had it. A deluge. A truth. An inkpot overturned, to stain their happy philosophy with an ugly scatter of emotions.

"I will flee from cruelty as long as I have breath."

She looked back to him, the iron eyes dull, the dark face sunken and sagging, the shadows of exhaustion thumbed like clay into the creases at the corners of her mouth, her eyes, and across her brow.

"What I want is wine. We should have some. To pass the time," she said.
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Glenn » Thu Oct 25, 2018 12:24 am

He listened. At times like this, that was the problem entirely. No, he was not warm. He could be warm. He had the capacity, far more so even than he had weeks before. Even and especially now, years after Rhaena's death, even longer after his soul had been sundered as a twisted consequence of revenge, he had the capacity. No one understood, however: warmth would not have drawn forth this guilty admission from Gloria Wynsee. Warmth did not require substance. Warmth was its own succor. One could gorge herself upon it and never know the need for anything more. Warmth could be small talk, passing comments about the weather, about one's day, one's family.

The absence of it required something more. Honest and earnest interest, lacking warmth, meant that there were only so many pathways to travel before one reached a meaningful truth.

This was not the truth Burnie sought. It was so often the sort that he found. He had tried to discuss philosophy with her, metaphysics, possibilities and probabilities. He had tried to discuss her past and her future.

His questions had been direct,but they had hardly been simple. They were so direct that they were the sort that one never asked and one never pondered. What does one want? What does one need? What must one do? It was everything, the entirety of one's life, in three small sentences, so simple and straightforward that everyone took it for granted.

He had not so she could not. As she could not, they reached this point, a point which could only be reached through the absence of warmth yet so fully required its presence in return.

Burnie had something else entirely. "You tell this to someone who was sold in the womb, Gloria. For perspective's sake," he did not advance, yet there was no rancor in his voice either, just the infernal steadiness that she had come to expect from him. "At least you have stronger feelings about this than she did, apparently. I can respect that, of course. While I do not necessarily think that those who raised me gave me a better life than my mother and father would have, I have met others who might have, if that makes sense. The notion, while unorthodox, is not impossible by any means, maybe not even improbable based on the simple matter of means and capabilities."

Now it was Glenn who hid from a truth in the best way possible, by offering up other equally revealing ones to compete for the oh-so-limited space of the conversation. Still, this truth, and the question that drives it, was inevitable. He did not advance as he asked it. Instead, "you'll have your wine, Gloria, and whatever company I might provide in drinking it. First, though," his voice faded off here, and it would have been a mercy to both of them if he never uttered another syllable. Whatever mercy he might possess, however, it was not that. "Why? Why do you feel no connection? Why do you feel no bond? Is it her? Is it you? Is it your background and rearing? Is it the nature of how it occurred? Is it the fear of getting it wrong and ruining a life? You have a great capacity to care for others, both in a practical and an abstract sense, even strangers. What makes this different? Answer me that and you can drink yourself stupid on this night."
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Rance » Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:48 am

This is not why I am here. This is not why I have come.

Nameless, they were talking about this? Now? He'd threaded a hook into her brain, right underneath her skin, right behind her eye, had drawn from her these caustic admissions. As if to shield herself from cold, she gripped the collar of her dress and dragged it taut across her throat. Better, truly, that such vagrancy remain interred underneath her heart than ever spoken aloud; in the air, given voice, it existed. And for as much as she had grown to trust Glenn Burnie, she did not trust him implicitly. He asked questions. He asked after her, and she could not help but wonder in what coffer she was depositing the coin he'd later spend on favors from others. Information for information. One secret for another. How much of what you given him will he freely distribute to others?

"I did not come to speak of this," she said, her words carried on a peal of frustration. "It is her. It is me. It is everything you've said, and a hundred things more, and yet none of them at all. It cannot be reduced to something more digestible with — with probing questions and inquiries or slated to probabilities and numbers. If Rhaena taught me anything of mathy-matics, it was that they were cold things, wholly disinterested in feelings." Her knee knocked down, down against the floorboards, a thud of displeasure. "To ask a foolish woman to — to explain the dynamics of unnatural motherhood to a man who lacks the capability to understand them, if even she could, is a journey neither of us are prepared to take, Glenn. Demand this later. In writing, if you must, where we can explore it without grinding our teeth to nubs over our mutual need to emerge the conversational victor. Just not here. Not in the presence of all this blood."

You have a great capacity to care for others, both in a practical and an abstract sense, even strangers. What makes this different?

"Everything. Everything," she said.

From the burlap sack, she removed another soiled garment: a bonnet, its wax-dipped strings swinging freely, its hood spattered with something dark.

The fire ate it without prejudice.

Suddenly, she felt very ill. Her stomach contracted. Nausea surged. She had to stand to will it down. Her lone hand leaned against the mantel, and with her wooden fist, she rubbed vigorously at an unseen smudge on the thigh of her patchwork kirtle. "Your friend, Glenn. She — she put falsifications and fabrications in my mind. How I cared for her in that moment," Gloria told him, "was that I did not crush her skull underneath my boot. She defended herself as only she believed she must." It was an allowance; it was a slip, a flaw, an impulse, and if Gloria Wynsee knew anything, it was impulse, the cloying sweetness of it, its necessity and comfort, how it scoured the confusion of the world away.

She could not look at him when she asked her next question, because it would be too direct, too impersonal; he'd that infernal, indomitable steadiness, and she, the stern conviction of any commoner lashing out at a world that offered her no quarter, no relief. Had she looked at him, they would clash forever, like two stones being cracked together in the hands of a child.

"My mother had her love for smokeroot, and Agnieszka, too strong a taste for drink. Subordinates to vices, both of them dependent on outside substances or powers, temporarily comforting, but ultimately damaging. Help me understand," she said, a soft whisper to her voice, a layer of concern, "how this woman, this being, is any different for you, and why I should not be afraid — for you, for me, and for the world — that it is all not about to happen again."
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Glenn » Tue Oct 30, 2018 3:25 am

There had been a limit to what he had offered her about his 'friend.' He had deflected, offered generalities, though always truths and never lies. There was a uniqueness to this situation. He truly felt like the truth would only hinder her cause, not aid it, but then every situation was unique, wasn't it? It was if one could expand the breadth of one's understandings in a comparative manner. Burnie's classifications, despite being ever so exacting, allowed for a very pliable morality. Were he able to explain this to her in a way both of them could understand, there might not be a limit to what they could accomplish or the damage that they could do.

"No one comes to speak of this. Given free rein, one would never speak of this. I did not seek to learn of it. Yet, there it was." These were relatively simple sentences. If he was attempting to beguile her, it was with sympathy. There had been one small touch from him before, an attempt at warmth and compassion, and she had returned it with a heart of stone and a harsh yank of his chin, one he had allowed. There was no second attempt. Instead, there was a simplicity. Could he not beguile with that as well though? "It drives so much of this. How can we understand anything without understanding it? How can we know what path is best without its malignable light to show the way?"

Of course, all of this, no matter how true, no matter how necessary, weakened any potential defense he might have against what was to come.

She could not look at him for she knew the exact physicality of his response. Were this to shake him, it would have to have come as a surprise. It did not. That meant, of course, he had an answer. "First, I can never be blind to my surroundings again. I'm not blind to you. I'm not blind to her. I am not blind to myself. As lovely as acceptance and faith would be again, I am incapable of such release. Evidence drives my decisions. I shall accept your sympathy on that count if you possess any." Ah, there were the fingers, the first one only rising off of his left hand at the very end of its associated statement. The next rose immediately thereafter. "Second, we must disassociate an interest (even to the point of obsession) with a wholly physical dependence. One cannot be physically dependent on mystery and wonder and filling gaps in one's knowledge, no more than you, specifically you, can be physically dependent on grief, shame, and self-recrimination. However, one can be made physically dependent to smokeroot, drink, or I believe, various magics. There was a physical element to my relationship with Rhaena."

At that, however, his hand fell and he all but glared at the back of her head. "Not like that," this, a mere mutter, with a scowl to go along with it. He was clinical about everything, even that, and neither she nor anyone else had heard him speak in even a slightly bawdy manner. He could put on such airs in a tavern setting to get information in a key moment. There was no prudence that prevented such a notion, merely an impatience as such notions tended to crowd their way into a space that should rightfully belong to more pertinent matters. Were she to chuckle then, she might well find a book lobbed at the back of her skull. "To the connection between us. There is also the matter that I was aware, directly and acutely, of her death, which is something I have only come to fully remember in the last few weeks, my mind having blocking it out for its own safety and sanity for a span of years. One should not witness death, Gloria," control, containment, whatever lapse he had just expressed already gone. This though, was a quivering undertone, punctuated by a swallow he could not prevent.

"So, three," No fingers, no hand, far less intent of a stare as he continued on. "I am taking precautions, building a controlled immunity. One can abstain from smokeroot and drink. One cannot abstain from Catch. One cannot abstain from the Baie. One cannot abstain from fairy queens and dreamwitches. I've tried, Gloria. Half of why I locked myself in this room was to do just that." That was an unfair statement, though one she wanted. Best to give her the other half as well. It was a day of unhappy truths after all. "The other half was to abstain the world from the danger of Glenn Burnie. Obviously," finally he would pull his eyes away from her and to the fire, "neither abstention worked and you have my apologies for that. As for the rest, either you trust I am capable of accomplishing this or you do not. Make your decisions based on that trust or lack thereof more than upon my intentions, which are assuredly positive towards you." Left on said was that he would promise good intentions, but not a lack of resentment if she refused to take a greater leap of mathy-matical, measured faith.
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Rance » Tue Oct 30, 2018 6:02 am

One should not witness death, Gloria

"Yet we do. And we must. And its ugliness and violence ought to always hurt us, shake us, terrify us, and scare us, for if it doesn't—"

The problems of the world often shook themselves out like banners for all the world to see.

"If it doesn't, we become immune. That you came to know of it, experience it, or — or feel it, you have my sympathy." But not her empathy; there was, reserved for Glenn Burnie especially, a distance to be kept. She would not waste his time with too much softness, too much of this care of which he'd so recklessly accused her. "But it should hurt, and continue to hurt. Immunity is neither blessing nor advantage, but blindness and numbness. To new forces," Gloria said, "and to old wounds. It will be painful when someone casts aspersions upon Rhaena's name, and that ache — that seeing it over and over, the waking sweat, the secret emotions you hide behind a door so nobody else asks after them — will never vanish. They are all yours, now. And you cannot abstain from them—" She selected words of his own, thumbed them to their other face, returned them, "—nor avoid them, nor submit them to some sense of logic or measurement or rationale.

"You are late to it, this feeling the loss of her. The world — and Myrken Wood — will not give you any more time, nor will they offer you any greater patience. Flexibility is no longer a gift that Myrken Wood can grant you. They'll kill you like a dog," she warned, "if you slip, if you stumble, if the world even catches so much of a vapor of past mistakes, they will shred you to ribbons — and anyone or anything else that reminds them why they hurt.

"I care for you, Glenn Burnie. Trust you — and fully? No," she admitted. "You're comprised of far too many secrets and too little of anything else."

She could feel her ever-swollen feet, their hard bottoms and thick ankles, growing more firm in her scuffed boots. Becoming steadier. Stalks of a tree. Rooted to the earth.

This is where you belong. Let them swim in the clouds. The sand is yours. And the dirt.

"To foster an immunity is — is to recognize the source's inherent dangers: poison, disease, even madness. How will I know, without a doubt, if you have been compromised, Glenn?"
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Glenn » Fri Nov 02, 2018 7:43 am

Humans were mortal. Mortal and fragile. They could break in so many ways. This way was so unique to Glenn Burnie. She spoke of heavy things, and he smiled, smiled first and then outright laughed. It wasn't a long thing. It emerged from his chest, emanated outwards for just a few seconds, was truly more of a chuckle but more earnest than wry. "Are you arguing to me, to me, Gloria, that our strength is in our vulnerability. I've used that line with her, with Kylerryth and the Ashfiend and Galacia. With Cinnabar and Ariane and Cherny." The laughter was done, but a smile, faint as it was, remained. "If I believe in anything, I believe in that, and I believe it much the same way that one might believe in a god or an afterlife. In believing it, I try to will it to be, because the alternative is something I cannot bear. All of the death and all of the pain, Gloria. For it to be palatable, it must mean something. If it means anything, it must mean this. From the finite nature of our lives comes our spark, our creativity, our ability to appreciate and value things as they are before us. For us it is natural. It is who we are. We cannot deny it. You need not know this about her, but she wears it much more brightly than I, and I think that is because she wishes for it. We understand the meaning within a moment in a way she can merely desire. It is a paltry balm as they are repressing and violating us, but it is ours and they cannot take it from us."

His left shoulder rolled into a shrug. "I suppose that is one of my secrets then. For every one you learn, my substance grows all the clearer and more certain? Is that it? Due you trust me more for it?" A shrug and then a near scoff. There was an energy to him now. A breaking point and look at what had come flowing outwards. "It's good we know it, Gloria, good we know death as we can, but what I saw was not a way we should ever want to know it twice. What we want and what we need are different things though. Still, it weighs on me now and it will weigh on me all the more tomorrow. I will try not to let it sink me entirely. You'll help me in that effort I hope, for I will need it."

All of that still left her last question and now he was past the point of scoffing or scowling or shrugging; pacing was a possibility but not one that had yet come to pass. "It'd do no good to give you a codeword. Anything like that could be fabricated. Fine then, when you must know, simply ask me a question to obtain an answer like the one I just gave you, Gloria. Who could possibly fabricate that?"
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Rance » Sun Nov 04, 2018 2:48 pm

...simply ask me a question to obtain an answer like the one I just gave you, Gloria. Who could possibly fabricate that?

"A charming notion, that it could be so simple, and yet wholly unrealistic," she said. "To return yourself to Myrken Wood in the near future not just with some expectation of influence and power, but with — with such...unique associations, you will need to convince the people you are trustworthy and capable. And before all that, you will need to convince me. I have stitched skepticism to my heart; I've made it mine, because survival has demanded it.

"Cleverness only reaches so far. These associations you hold, Glenn, have — have killed a woman, have punched a hole in the fabric of Razasan's underskirts right before my eyes. Will you submit Myrken Wood to the same danger after long? 'She deals with change and the perception of change' — and those are your words. The wounds after Rhaena still bleed in Myrken Wood. I can still smell them from here.

"Is this the only balm you bring them, after searching your soul this long?"

But she knew. Nameless, did Gloria Wynsee know. One did not convince Glenn Burnie; they did not try to argue against him, after along. Instead, they simply nudged him in one direction, only to see him toddle off on his own, stumbling into tables and chairs and liberties and laws and ethics, upsetting them in his own course. It was better to look at the fire than him. He hadn't even brought the wine yet. She continued on with the burning, unraveling a storm of garments — outers and inners, all manner of public and private festoonments covered in blue blood — only to watch them catch, flare, and become ash across the black logs.

"I'll help you, Glenn, when it weighs on you." So quietly, the Jerno's voice lost almost all its trace of an accent, only the rolling edges of her tongue managing to persist. "But you must ask me to, instead of expecting it of me. For Ruann I will play the Servitor, and play it well, but you deserve a greater authenticity, and — and so do I.

"If preserving Myrken Wood means preserving you, then I commit myself to the task. I already have, your permission notwithstanding."

Along her collar, above the breast, a hidden wound that, with phantom fingers, she tried to scratch.

"I have never seen you cry, Glenn Burnie. Rarely heard you laugh. And even more rarely have I had opportunity to see your happiness."

Happiness. They spoke of this as stockings came free of the bag, still sopping dark and wet.
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Glenn » Mon Nov 05, 2018 7:16 am

To his credit, his great credit utterly denied, he was listening to her on this night. He had something to say after her every other word, but he refrained again and again and again more. When had it ever been so between them? He was smiling, even laughing just a little, but not interrupting her. What regard he showed her? Did she know? Did she care? Did he?

He almost always did. Almost.

Finally, though, it was time to speak, and there was a smile once more upon his face. "Oh, Gloria." The tone was more maudlin than patronizing but could a Jerno even tell the difference? It was fond, and wasn't that just baffling even now? "Where do you think I found her?" There was a dangerous corollary there, one that would cause an even further attribution of grief and spite and rancor to grow from an already festering seed, but because he thought rather little of the un-life she had ecked out here in Razasan, he did not fear the notion. Instead, he pressed on. "I do not give you certain details to protect you. Yes, I do not give you certain details to protect her. I do not give you certain details to protect the raven. Most of all, you wouldn't believe some of this. If I'm going back, it's to help Myrken, lest I wouldn't be going back at all. She'd be there either way. This way I might be able to push things in a more positive direction. If you doubt me, question me in the moments to come and have the patience and the courage to try to understand my answers before dismissing them, even if you must ultimately refute them."

Now it was his turn to look towards the fire, a fire he barely wanted in the first place on this evening. "I offer no balm at all, Gloria. I've neither sought out something that simply makes it better nor have I, through all my experience, found anything that makes it hurt less. I've found, very much despite myself, a call to action, and I will answer it. You will not see happiness, but you will see purpose. If we cannot have the former, then at least we shall have the latter and thus know that we still live."
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Rance » Mon Nov 05, 2018 3:58 pm

Oh, Gloria.

She imagined him with a bloody nose. It was a delicious consideration. This was the way it was with Glenn Burnie: in a moment, pity him; in the next, appreciate him; in another, want to pummel him.

"The raven?"

He dropped breadcrumbs, not because he was clumsy, but because he was deliberate. Crumbs that by themselves did not satisfy, but came from a greater and more mysterious whole. Look at the bread in my hand. Look at what I have. She committed the stockings to the fire, and then withdrew the final garment: a stitched sampler, one of her pocket-charms, its childish red practice-seams always hot like Jernoah. Bloody, now, like Razasan. Follox's blood, clotting and brown. The Other Woman's, crude and blue and foreign.

She lay the still-damp rag upon the rug beside her, then with the heel of her palm, pressed it in, in, in. Until the fabric squelched and bolded with wrung fluid. Until the rug took on the dark shades of Follox in dull, shapeless smears.

"Who are you to judge what I am capable of believing," she said, the words never forming as a question. "You are a poor philosopher, Glenn, and even worse a judge of character. These are not matters I question, but — but facts of which I am painfully aware, by sharing letters with you, by observing you for these past six years of my life, by suffering — alongside countless others — the ugly results of your myopia and blindness. Oh, Glenn," she returned, her tone a powerful blossom of intentional condescension. "I know where you found her, you made that much clear. What I fear is that she found you. What I fear for Myrken Wood is that, while she may be a creature of change, you are fully predictable. You always have been.

"The man who stands before me is no different than he was when last I saw him in Myrken Wood: raving, stubborn, desperate to exert his — his will on the world, so afraid to look in a mirror long enough to see himself. Purpose," she said, and spit into the fire. The saliva boiled, sizzled, became steam. "You answer your call to action — because what, Myrken needs you?

"How grand. How stupid. How infantile!" On her feet, now, her lone hand still smeared in refuse, her dark face a burning storm. That hand formed a fist, and instead of swinging for him, it beat against the steely wall of her thigh. She paced, now, because this place stifled; this place crushed down. He suffocated. He knew so many words and always happened to stumble across the wrong ones, always found a way to stab them, like tiny needles, between the seams of the armor she wore.

...push things in a more positive direction.

Lunging for him. Only to come to an abrupt halt, her fist against her rib, her distorted face so close to him that her breath blasted like a hot bull's right against his cheek.

"My child, Glenn Burnie, is a being of Myrken Wood. A citizen of it, rightfully born. Will she be whole and hale in the shadow of your capacity to make decisions for an entire province, or—"

Look at me. Look at me!

A breath. Steadying. The world stopped spinning.

""How do we make it safe," Gloria said, "for her?"
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Glenn » Fri Nov 09, 2018 2:35 am

"I know what you're doing. You made a deal. I want to learn for real."

A fist for his nose. Boots driven into his ribs. Insults and barbs were one thing, but this was a bullying, a repression of an entirely other sort. A bloodied nose. Bruised ribs. A sprained ankle. Discolored skin. Burns. A black eye. All within his first three months in Myrken Wood. Gloria Wynsee's feelings were certainly not new.

He had made a deal. Then, he made another. The price up front? Discretion. The price longterm?


He endured her words. He did not defend himself. He did not argue with her. Just as he had been doing for the entirety of this visit, he let her speak, let her rant, let her unleash her fury and rage and loss. As she came upon him. He did not flinch. If she was to strike him, he would absorb the blow. It would not be the first, it would not be the last. Ten years ago, she would have done so, just as Agnieszka Kaczmarek had. Burnie better understood the price now. He willingly paid it. Words mattered far more than fists. Bruises faded. Wounds healed. One memory of pain blurred into another. Words remained.

They were, perhaps, not the only thing. Gloria was close now and Burnie did look at her, evenly, unphased, though lacking the smile of his madness of years before. Then, he shut his eyes, and if she wished to drive a knife into his guts, this was the moment. As that moment passed, he leaned his head forward, pressing his forehead against hers, a familial animal gesture, to wolves lost in the wilderness, the very last of their pack with a whole world against them.

"I had few answers for tomorrow and even fewer for today. I was looking past that, because today seemed impossible. That's not good enough, Gloria," his voice was quiet. He had refused to engage her, but was instead admitting a mistake, whether she could see it as such or not. "Is it enough to promote safety and lessen pain now, when instead, through sacrifice, that pain could be eliminated entirely in the future? When we could have something better than safety? Growth, meaning, something more than survival? I thought it had to start with sacrifice. Maybe it has to start with safety instead. We've pursued that for centuries though, and we're still right where we are. For your child, though, Gloria, maybe we could pursue it for one generation more. Maybe she and her peers could be the ones to push us to something better, if only we can give her the opportunity instead of trying to seize it for ourselves."
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Rance » Fri Nov 09, 2018 4:05 pm

Maybe she and her peers could be the ones to push us to something better, if only we can give her the opportunity instead of trying to seize it for ourselves.

So close they were to each other, she could have eaten those words, could have chewed them into pieces, swallowed them down—

Just like he, apparently, already had. Glenn Burnie's trouble was that he talked too much. The marker of his grave (he'd talk his way out of being burnt somehow, wouldn't he, the audacious j'uk'ol) might say as much: He talked too much. If he was a sweetmilk, he'd curdle himself before heat and exposure ever had the opportunity. Did he see as it happened — the unraveling? Maybe it was the spreading crack in the jewel of her eyes, or the faint part of her lips, or the way her shoulders dropped, then lifted like scaffolds around the stump of her neck. The carriage of a creature either prepared to flee or thrash at the world.

Her lips had gone gummy. Her tongue too. But the words came, and they were likely everything he expected:

"You are unfit," she said. "You are unfit, Glenn. These grand visions and broken philosophies you try to substantiate may seem viable to you, but from down here in the shadows, they're—" For every word he'd spoken, she lost one, she lost two, lost ten; not even Proctor Duquesne could have lit the wick anew in that moment. "As a little girl, I watched from the pews as men proclaimed their — their good intentions for Jernoah out in voices so loud and grand and sure that I swore the sound alone could shrivel the Sun, and I believed them, and because I'd studied my Odos I did as I was commanded: I trusted them.

"They demanded sacrifices. It frightened me, and I didn't understand, and I was told I knew nothing, that I ought to wait, believe, trust, for it was the cost we paid to prosper. That if — if Jernoah was to do more than survive, we ought to have the courage to perform against the hesitations of our hearts and for the good of future generations, future families, future stahls acts that every stitch of our being might decry.

"Because we were low. Because we did not know better. Because we could not understand on the spectrum of thought they reserved for themselves. And against our judgment, we believed."

The taste for wine abandoned her. Her boot wrinkled the edge of his rug as she stepped back, neither to cede nor disengage, but to survey him with all the strange wonder and fascination one reserved for alchemies, vapors, and tiny insects captured inside blown-glass bottles. She turned up her lone hand to motion, matter-of-factly, toward the wooden chair and the writing desk not far away, where all the accoutrements of his long-distance dealings had spent many hours growing accustomed to the severity, the sweat, and the serenity of his hand.

"In the absence of a Marshall or figure of — of appropriate authority, Glenn Burnie, I ask your cooperation in the interest of Myrken Wood's safety." Her voice became firm, stately, and her spine equally so. "I request a formal missive, to be signed by you and witnessed by me: that on this night, you temporarily divest yourself of any remaining jurisdiction to — to operate as a representative of Myrken Wood until such a time as you submit yourself, upon return, for examination under the authority of the Myrken Wood Inquisitory."
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Glenn » Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:23 am

"I am unfit," what did she think he'd say, standing as he was, staring as he was, as she first spoke, then moved away from him, then spoke once more? He did not follow her. He did not throw a book at her. If he felt the need to grin, he repressed it, quite good at repressing needs in the face of necessity. She made a claim, a harsh claim, a cruel claim, an honest one, and he did not deny it.

He had spent years here because he was unfit. Now, that he was thinking of returning, she dared voice what he had known for quite a while. "Find me someone who is fit. Find me a philosophy that is superior. What you've mentioned isn't. Mine wasn't either, so I've tempered it, even now. I have searched and sought my entire life, and this is what I've come up with. It may not be fit, Gloria, but it is far more so than accepting entropy, then accepting oppression, as generation after generation has done because they could do nothing else."

When his face shifted, it wasn't a grin, not at all, but it was still a smile, exasperated. That's all he was, even under the pounding, deafening thunder of her disappointment and disdain, exasperated. There was nothing she could do that would hurt him more than what was already done. There was no judgment she could render that was worse than the judgment he had placed upon himself, not along these lines at least. He felt, more than he had a few months before and certainly more than he had five years before, but she meant to burn down a forest already razed. There was no tinder left in the heart of Glenn Burnie. Maybe in time, even with her fevered, persistent attempt to stomp out whatever might just now be starting to bud.

"Belief matters. I believe in the holy superiority of no god, Gloria, but I do believe. I believe in us. I believe in those you, or at least your Jernoan fore-bearers, would consider low. I believe in the things they can accomplish by working together, by caring, by trying to learn about the world around them, by being offered the luxuries of security and leisure, by being allowed to concern themselves with something other than immediate warmth and sustenance." For every word she lost, he had two more. She assaulted him and he enjoyed this, just as he enjoyed the letters. This was his idea of fun. She took a gnarled, bitter axe to the skeleton of his convictions and he met her head-on and would later thank her for the company and the challenge. "I believe in a future that we can benefit and one we could make. What I did not believe, years ago, was that we could manage that future in the present. It had nothing to do with lowliness but instead of environment and outside forces that bore down upon us. It is hard to build something of meaning, even base security and sustenance, when there is a monster destroying your entire world every winter or an army tromping through your fields every spring. Obviously, we need some sort of middle path, a maximizing of what is possible currently while not sacrificing the potential for tomorrow. Otherwise, we will have a foundation of naught but misery."

One might think he would have led with her demands first, but instead he had taken her points one at a time. "Gloria, a letter would mean nothing. I appreciate your effort. I cannot become Governor of Myrken Wood. There is no such position anymore. I never wanted the job in the first place. Moreover, for no reason grander or purer than what hangs between my legs, I cannot serve in that primary role that will be necessary in the negotiations to come. Maybe it was the sort of thing Bromn might have managed in one of his Treadwellian misadventures, but I do have my limits, believe it or not." Then and only then, finally, that smile would reach his eyes and he would look to his companion with sudden, acute fondness. "If things grow so dire that they try to dragoon me into being Governor or somesuch, I expect you, as my friend, to save me and them from it. Spirit me to safety so I need not govern. Your good intentions in that will mean far more than my signature or any cell, and it would be met with gratitude and grace."
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Rance » Wed Nov 14, 2018 3:57 pm

She was not interested in smiling. His met no companion, no equal. He spoke with such fluency about nothing, and no matter how many words he threw into the air, they choked like gray smoke; they made no difference, for while he'd found his embers, hers had been entirely smothered — because how, how did he expect her to talk about the future with the stickiness of Follox's blood still on her jittering palm—

"If you are no governor, then you've no right or authority to ally us — all under some misdirection of hope — with a being of such great destructive potential. With or without a title to cushion your name, you brandish a power that is not yours. To carve a path for the future of a whole land without the permission of its people is not charity, Glenn.

"It is dangerous," she said, dashing her hand dry upon her thigh. "It is foolhardy. And it is despotism."

Why. Why should I learn to alter the mistakes of my past if he cannot?

Perhaps they were friends. Perhaps Gloria Wynsee did not know the nature of friendship, or the truest delicacy of it, but the shine of the steel in her eyes gleamed damply against the glare of the fire. Hers was not a friendly stare. She'd seen this all before, she'd argued it all before, and to find any better words for it all required an effort for which she no longer possessed the energy. So her dry tongue darted against the perch of her lips, and her sticky palm slid down to the folds of her skirts, where at her hip, sleepy in its sheath, a dwarf-forged dagger jutted crossways along her thigh.

She gripped the handle. The leather creaked.

"Twice in the past six years, I preserved your life," the Jerno said, chin angled down, her stare barely visible from beneath the rim of her sooty bonnet. "First in the square, when the right words could have turned that crowd to a hurricane greater than it became, and yet I chose not to speak them — because I instead decided to listen. And then again in Golben, when I was barely more than a child, because action was far better than sitting still, waiting, and being afraid."

Her chin jerked toward the bureau.

"Write the fucking letter, Glenn. Hand me the tool to bring Myrken back down on your head when she fails us — and when you fail us. Not because it comforts me or gives me ease, but because I know how much you love to prove the world wrong."
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Re: Midnight Calling

Postby Glenn » Thu Nov 15, 2018 1:27 am

"You didn't answer my questions, Gloria." The smile did not last, could not last, in the face of her stubbornness. She would not meet him halfway. She would not meet him a quarter of the way. She would not meet him anywhere at all. If there was despotism, it was in her unyielding nature. Despite how genial he had been with her, however, the stakes were too high for him, just as they were for her. If she had come upon him two years prior, she would have had all she demanded and more.

Now, however? The opportunity had been lost. "I appreciate what you did in Golben, though you had your own motives. Taking credit is a dangerous thing when it is at all disingenuous. You'll win few arguments and little support that way. As for the riot, it's not my life that was saved but Agnieszka's and many others who would have been hurt by their neighbors for things not at all their fault. You were an instigating force as much as anything else and I'm not going to thank you for simply not going as far as you might have." One could be clinical, be structured and organized, and still hold a raging heat underneath. Before the words had been the whipping of wind, or a smothering blanket. This was something else entirely. "You listened but you did not hear. That you expect gratitude instead of showing remorse does color the differences in our lives here in Razasan."

Did it hearten her that somewhere underneath, he could still be human, or perhaps could be human again? "I've sat here ruminating, writing, meditating, asking questions. You've rolled about in a pit as if pain alone could forgive all of your sins, even as you hedonistically hammered back at the world for all it had done to you. Most of us are not allowed that bankrupt luxury." He did shy from her. This was a path he had traveled a hundred times or more. He did not hide. He did not duck. He did not worry about his own safety in the face of proselytizing his Truth. "So long as I have some trust in my own sanity, I will not stop trying to improve our lot and our future, even against the most dire oppression. I do not blame the people for their cruelty and malaise. I know the roots of it. I would be doing them a disservice worse than despotism to abide it, however."

A letter then. He did enjoy writing letters. Even with her, especially with her, he had enjoyed it. It was a slow, groaning path to growth, one filled with small reforms instead of revolution, a future built upon an architecture of words. He was changed, here at the end of his monastic chrysalis. "Still, we must think of history, of my own previous failings. I will write a letter, Gloria, but you're not the one to carry it. Your intentions are as muddied as your sweat. To hand you such a thing would be inviting chaos in a moment of simple confusion, mayhem in a moment of understandable misunderstanding." Oratory darted out his lips before he could pull things back to grisly reality. "It would end in ill-intended disaster at assuredly the worst possible time. The letter, through a courier I know shall not fail me, shall go to Ariane Emory. While she has certain sympathies, she, as you well know, will brook no hypocrisy and no foolishness. If I fail you, find her and she'll have all the documentation you need."

At that, Burnie moved past her, ready to both write the letter that she requested and write Gloria Wynsee herself out of his abode for at least the remainder of this unpleasant and unwelcome night.
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