by catch » Thu Dec 08, 2011 6:51 am
Their assurances, their platitudes, did little to sooth Catch's rising fear. What if the parrot was to die, locked away in the too-pretty cage? And it was human as well. It spoke, both in the strange beast-movement, of head cants and ruffled feathers, twitching toes and fluttering tail, and in a human tongue. Like Miss Drache. Yes, it was lovely, but the situation was taken from his hands, as Lady Rhaena's gentle hands set the cage away from him. Catch almost rose, in protest, his face thunderous, but a little voice braved the lightning-strikes of thoughts in his mind, soothed Wait. Wait and see the show. They would let him go, with cake, and Catch would keep them from locking him away again. It was a good plan, but as Catch sat again, his entire demeanor had gone sullen. He refused to look at Rhaena, at Ser Glenn, and the parrot, as they each readied themselves. He looked to the ceiling of the little hole, eyes flickering over something he could not see, his arms hugging his knapsack to his chest, indifferent, angry, and let them see it.
At least, until the puppet show began. Planned, plotted, and minds far smarter than he, he was too enchanted by the visuals to continue his rightful punishment of Ser Glenn and Lady Rhaena, his silent protest at having his parrot locked away. Too delighted by puppet movements. They were real. To his broken mind, they were living things, and the first gasp of enjoyment never faded from his lips. He did not follow the story as well as they may have hoped, but all the important, the frightening, the happy occasions, these he grasped in his own, childish way.
She did not invade, like Cloud-hair did. She came, gently, to that broken mind, a mind she had glimpsed when Catch had broken down all those walls, and had built her a hand from nothing and metal. It was not a welcoming place, but it did not spasm, did not hurt him. It felt strange, but what was strange compared to the puppet's show? She would see them, story-book characters, the living things that crowded in his head; Rowsdower Cat-tails and his fearsome necklace of tails, the weasel Ser Suede, with sparkling eye and twitching nose, the shadow of Jirai slipping, keeping pace, just under his paws as the tailor-beast fled. And there would be the two she sought.
The Fat Man was hard at work in his factory, a decript butcher's shop, where sunlight streamed dusty down shafts of clotted, angry flies, the brick walls dark and covered in soot and grime. He wielded his chopper, full of blood both fresh and old, and blood that had only grown gummy in the fetid air. Each blow was, eerily, like Catch, working his axe at the wood, and the unseen victims screamed and writhed as each little bit was chopped away. The Fat Man threw the still-howling thing, carelessly, into a writhing, mountainous pile of meat-things, people that Catch had known, knew, from the town, from the Dagger.
And Faeryl? Would it be surprising if Catch feared her, as well? But it was a fear tempered by awe, tempered by a strange, twisted love. He feared drow, already. He found them unbearable. But he could not look away, the same with any, terrible beast he has encountered. He knew them wicked. He knew them terrible. But in the same, twisted thought, he admired them, found them marvelous to see, to watch, and the Matron was, simply, the perfected idea. He would dance with the drow, but at the height of senses, at the final spin, he would kill them all...
Did Rhaena see when the Fat Man turned to her? When a smile came to his gore-spattered lips?
It happened when the Illithid came.
Catch held his knuckles to his lips, his eyes wide and devouring as Treadwell himself, held completely in the thrall of the play. He thought it was awful, the way the Faeryl-thing had tricked the Happy Unicorn, and had taken the little Prince away. He thought it equally awful that Treadwell must find the need to ruin the story, though he was much, much smaller than Catch remembered him being. Faeryl called for her friend, and it was real, there, terrible. It was a squid. The Baie was a squid, too. Catch uttered a scream of pure terror, the gentle, playful puppet lashing with it's tentacles, the cloth slick with blood and slime.
Rage built in his mind, but it was locked away from the fear, a separate consciousness that Catch had always called the Wolf, and was anything but. How dare she? Rhaena, given such a gift, and tampering now with the carefully constructed memories, the things It had made to guide Catch along this path? It could not undo what Rhaena had accomplished. Indeed, she and the play had accomplished much, for Catch could view Faeryl now with horror, his confidence that she would not hurt him shattered to pieces. She was not a loathsome thing, but frightening all the same. And it was Rhaena's doing, Glenn's doing.
Cloud-hair is here Cloud-hair is here, hurting will come come come come
His fright at the Illithid-puppet turned to pain, blinding pain, and Cloud-hair was hurting him! Catch's body became as rigid as a corpse's, his frightened eyes unfocused, limbs spasmed against his knapsack. Inside, the spider wailed but once, before it was crushed between hard, unforgiving books, their pages filled with dry, beautiful flowers. Things moved, just under Catch's skin, wild lights that lashed and writhed, because he could not.
He wished, his last, conscious thought, that he had gotten his axe, like Iron Shoes had told him.
The Light erupted from his ruined head, held tempered only by the basement's ceiling, and could have pierced right through, passing wood and stone to break free, into the moon. They swept out to defend him, the writhing, skin-held tentacles, a multitude lashing out at the terrible Baie-squid puppet, the others striking for Rhaena, the Cloud-hair-like presence that his pain-fogged mind took for the real Zilliah.