Minding Missives and Madness

Re: Minding Missives and Madness

Postby Glenn » Thu May 30, 2019 12:31 am

In that moment, the specter stared, not with eyes, for it had none, not really; it had diamonds and bells and a veil and an awkward, regal, empty beauty, but not eyes. Eyes were the windows to the soul and no matter how much it pulled, it would never have that. It could never understand that, if it could understand anything at all. Not understanding it, it did not desire it. Instead, it desired something else, and as Genny hesitated, it took it from her. Just like that.

Would she ever even know? In this moment, she likely did not.

Instead, she said her words. Instead she expelled him.

It was a sobering experience, quite literally. Though he likened it to a poison or to spirits, it was magic afflicting an imbalance in his own brain. Or at least, that was how he best understood it, no matter how he explained it. A shock to the system like this? Well, there was not telling how it would affect things. Every new stimulus was unpredictable. There were healers and physicians and phrenologists but those operated in controlled environments. This was a mix of a decade of damage, of six different schools of magics so different that the word hardly contained their nature, of a lifetime of real psychological trauma both natural and unnatural. One wrong move could right the whole ship or burn it to embers.

Here, whatever she did seemed to steady him at least, mentally if not physically. He seemed to have no interest in getting up out of the prone position he had somehow ended up in. Still, his voice was steady enough even if it was half spoken to the floor. "Do not apologize. Maybe apologize for coming without warning, for entering without heeding my warning." The words came quickly, not due to inebriation, but instead due to necessity. "Apologize for not recognizing the breadth of failings, current and former." Then, not an apology, something far from it actually, though at least, just barely, an admission. "I've known for just a short time, a time that I have not been fully well. That was not how I intended to tell you," and here, restraint returned, he held off on those few other words: if I was to tell you at all.
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Re: Minding Missives and Madness

Postby Tolleson » Thu May 30, 2019 3:56 pm

Maybe the ship wasn’t righted, how could it be, with all the damage he had weathered. Whether due to luck or skill, at least for the time he didn’t burn or sink. Perhaps there were better, or at least more gentle, ways to break the connection. Whatever slowing spell she had cast was likely to fracture eventually, and mending him now, or even knowing how, was like trying to reach out and catch a waterfall with one, bare hand. Even though the red that had been on her fingers wasn’t the warm, viscous blood of the tangible world, her ice would melt under it. After all, his wounds were no less real.

Had she actually pushed him? The real world had fallen away for the moments or hours they had been in the mental plane. It left her mildly disoriented, waking to the sight of Glenn prone she looked to her hands as if they had betrayed her. One still held letters, though the parchment seemed unimportant now, especially at this sight, and were released. Left to flutter away to the floor.

He had quick words, admonishing and admitting words, words that despite the content brought relief.

Genevieve hurried to his side, her dusty skirt making a riotous noise in a room where the only other sound was a man who spoke to the ground. She knelt beside him, and wrapped her fingers around his shoulders that she might right him. A ship overturned and barely afloat.

And then there were unspoken words. Words that hung silently without need of being said. Words that she already seemed to know, if just because that was the kind of man she knew him to be. Restraint was surely a good sign, more like the Glenn she remembered. But silence was her only reply. There was nothing that seemed worthy enough to say, she had apologized but now she knew. Certainly there were unanswered questions, even more than she had before. But they seemed pale compared to the weight of reality. In trying to lift him from where he had fallen, trying to physically support Glenn, she supported herself. The truth hurt; it revealed a murderer and a man who knew Death.
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Re: Minding Missives and Madness

Postby Glenn » Sun Jun 02, 2019 11:56 pm

Usually it was a slap, not a push.

Oh, she had done that as well.

The realization made him lead with a smile. It was wry, disoriented. His eyes rolled back upwards before shutting altogether. The scoff never quite left his lips. "There's an order to it," he muttered; it was clearer than a mumble, louder than a murmur. "Push, slap, and then you follow it up with the kick. I'm usually ready for that one. If it goes out of order, that's when I have problems."

Human interaction was a clinical thing, and now that he had his restraint once more, he was something of a physician about it, or at least a natural scientist. He classified and cataloged far more than how women of questionable repute, of which she was not one, tended to rain violent wrath upon him. He had broken the silence, had bought himself a few scant seconds more. In a similar situation, recently, one that was easier in so many ways, he had sent Gloria Wynsee away with no succor.

The temptation was here too. He took a quick step towards it. "Tomorrow we start back to Myrken, you and I. We'll meet, figuratively and literally, others on the road, though not for a while yet," but only a step. It was the only step he was taking as he didn't seem overly eager to make it back to his feet. "If I've learned nothing else, Genevieve," this was a leap, a tossing of his entire being over the abyss between them, and then an offer for her to walk right over him as a bridge. It would hurt but he was willing, "it is that intent matters. I think it matters more than results, because we constantly try for the impossible. Against such odds, we are likely to fail, to make small gains and endure large losses. With open eyes," though his were still not, "we learn to value intent above much else. I never question yours. Thank you for trying to help. Thank you for coming. Thank you for returning with me." Though. Though. Though. It was unspoken. Her help could have destroyed them. Her coming had cost them both. Her returning with him? Well, what might happen to them on that journey? As a bridge, he could only stretch so far.

"If you have questions and it is within my power to answer them, I will try to." That was easier than standing. It was even easier than opening his eyes.
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