Bedside Manner

Bedside Manner

Postby Rance » Sun Nov 02, 2014 5:42 pm

With enough convincing, she'd asked the bartender for a key.

"Wake up," she whispered in the darkness to the young woman asleep, poppy-addled, in her bed.

A bleary candle winked and swayed on the nightstand, its light offering more mystery than revelation. Phantoms clad in orange and black flickered on the walls and ceiling. The intruder's own silhouette was a hunchback sprawled across the molding, along the rafters. Water trickled, a liquid timepiece cluck-clucking in a porcelain vessel.

"The words you choose and how you wield them," said the shadow, her foreign accent bleeding on her tongue, "they sting. They smart. They hurt."

Cool water trickled briefly across Vara Tassnehof's neck. A pair of callused fingers carefully sought to peel moistened bandages off the young noblewoman's skin. In the brief illumination provided by the candle, Gloria Wynsee's fat, unremarkable face was a half-coin hovering above the pillow. Moisture glistened in the crescents beneath her eyes. Lids were as heavy as iron. "Look at me," she requested.

"How much of the infusion did you drink?"
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: Bedside Manner

Postby SuperRy » Sat Nov 08, 2014 6:13 am

"Wake up," she was told. The words, the order, ignored as the girl continued to sleep, to lay perfectly still.

The water, however, was far too cool to be left ignored. An arm waved in some loose attempt to slap away another hand at work on a bandage.

"Nurse," was the first word the Thessil girl would utter. "Leave me be." Spoken to a subordinate, waving her away again.

With more water, which wet sheets beneath and a dressing gown besides, bandages might be pulled away. The wet, the cold, the sensation of peeling, the tugging of flesh caused green eyes to begin to actually flutter, to actually -see-. That was not her age-old Nurse tending to a nursery wound, but Gloria, who spoke of words wielded like weapons to injure.

Who asked questions she didn't care to answer.

"Not enough, apparently--you woke me up." Still slurred, still slow, but sobering.
User avatar
SuperRy
Member
 
Posts: 100
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 5:00 am
Location: The Lone Star State.

Re: Bedside Manner

Postby Rance » Sat Nov 08, 2014 6:58 pm

"Be still," she said, gently subduing the aimless hand with her own. "Rest easy; I just came to see how you fared."

The bed bowed below her weight as she sat on its edge, tending to the moistened bandages. Gloria softly cleaned the sliver of a wound exposed beneath the cloth. Doting knuckles pressed against Vara's brow.

"I sent him away. I told you I wouldn't let him harm you again. Whether or not you feel justified to -- to do so, Vara, I ask that you speak no ill of him in my presence; Ser Catch is my family, however deranged or dangerous he may be. I regret he -- he did this to you; I assure you, it will be the only time. But that I'll speak no foul of your family, you mustn't do so of mine."

...you'll never be safe enough to -- to see this child, she'd told him. It is me, me, all of it. And I promise it will never become you, or be like you.

In the darkness her words had an iron spine, as great as any steel forged by Razmig the dwarf, as hearty as any hammer or blade propped on his walls. But her metal, unlike his, was tempered with emotions, cooled with tears that wet her cheeks even though her voice never wavered or trembled. All that mattered, in this quiet moment, was the task: seeing to the cleanliness of the wounds.

Under thumb and forefinger, a fresh bandages took the place of the old against the Tassnehof's neck.

"I can get you asylum in this place, and with it, safety and protection. To do so isn't treason; to do so is Myrken."

Gloria Wynsee tried to smile at her friend, an expression that transcended the canyon between commoner and noble.

"Ser Catch did you a greater favor than you can even imagine."
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: Bedside Manner

Postby SuperRy » Sun Nov 09, 2014 12:47 pm

The wagging arm grew still that Gloria might continue in her ministrations. Green eyes, though heavy-lidded, watched the seamstress's face while she worked to strip away the bandage and clean the wound. There was no questioning as to how or why the other girl had managed to get a key to her room, simply acceptance that she was there now, sitting sidelong upon the edge of the bed. But playing nurse was not, Vara soon realized, the sole reason for her visit, for Gloria began remonstrating the little Lady of Thessilane a moment later.

Her words had wounded; she'd spoken without thinking about Catch, whom Gloria claimed as family. And though there was a difference, Vara thought it best to hold her tongue. Even if Duke Burel Tassnehof had never gone after her friend personally, her father's hands were no less bloody. And just when she was about to nod to show her understanding, just when she would have uttered a promise, Gloria spoke words that confused: Ser Catch, favors, asylum.

The younger girl's brow furrowed. "I do not understand. How?"
User avatar
SuperRy
Member
 
Posts: 100
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 5:00 am
Location: The Lone Star State.

Re: Bedside Manner

Postby Rance » Sun Nov 09, 2014 1:27 pm

I do not understand. How?

With a sterile bandage applied, Gloria wet her fingers in the basin and scraped them dry on the thigh of her skirts. This close, illuminated by candlelight, her poverty was evident: the seamstress had never worn anything but this dress around the Tassnehof girl, with its patches of various fabrics and colors held firm by masterful stitches. When she bent her arm, her elbow occasionally peeked through a worn hole in her sleeve. Dirt and sweat had left rings at cuffs and collar, and the curls of wiry hair that tumbled from under her wrinkled bonnet shone with oils that might have been soaked away by fastidious washing--

She would never be at court. Court was not a place for a simpleton, for a laborer, for a shit-heeled scrounger who couldn't even practice a trade.

Regardless, her hard-skinned fingertips sought out Vara's brow and brushed aside the other girl's tresses, giving care that would soon be reserved for the child swelling along her waistline.

"I don't know weapons; I don't know many books, nor have I got many smarts," Gloria told her friend, "but I've come to -- to share the company of very powerful associates. And what you see from the mud, looking up from within the shadow of those who -- who bear power, are all the threads that keep them whole: light shines through them, showing what strings to pull, what knots to tighten, and what loose ends could unravel everything they believe.

"The Lady Egris is no fool. Glenn Burnie, for all his madness, is no bloodthirsty murderer. And Ser Catch?"

She locked her eyes with the younger girl's.

"A beast of burden attacked a young woman with noble blood. That," Gloria whispered, "is the fault of Myrken Wood."

Wax bubbled in the candle's narrowing gutters. Gloria, for a moment, was silent. And then:

"Do you trust me, truly?"
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: Bedside Manner

Postby SuperRy » Sun Nov 09, 2014 2:30 pm

Ironic that the girl she'd met upon her arrival in Myrken Wood, Gloria who spoke of sewage and bath water in one breath, whose words had elicited tears from the little noble girl miles from a war-torn home, was now the only person that Vara might lay claim to as something other than a mere acquaintance. The sole recipient of the title “friend” despite a myriad of differences between the aristocrat and the commoner.

Far softer, far smoother fingers caught those that brushed errant curls from her face, twining between them and holding fast before drawing the captured hand closer until it was pressed against her heart.

“I ran. It was my own fault, and he—he is your family.” Beast, or no. It was as much a promise to not speak ill of him again, in not so many words.

Do you trust me, truly?

A frightening question, when posed to she who was little more than a child, sent with promises by a mother who was perhaps too naïve, abandoned despite promises made by a servant woman, unclaimed by another woman who was a stranger to her, no more than a name.

“I know not the others of whom you speak, but I do know that I entrusted you with something sacred weeks ago, and if you meant to profit from such knowledge, you might have already done so.”

Moments passed in silence, sharing stares, heartbeats. A breath; a hard swallow against the rising knot in her throat.

“I trust you, Gloria.”

Vara Tassnehof had no one else in Myrken Wood.
User avatar
SuperRy
Member
 
Posts: 100
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 5:00 am
Location: The Lone Star State.

Re: Bedside Manner

Postby Rance » Sun Nov 09, 2014 3:08 pm

Underneath her fingertips, a heartbeat--

Vara Tassnehof's was the same as anybody else's; it beat no differently for that she was a Thessil or a Myrkener, like a Jerno's adhered to no unique cadence than that of a Granger's of a slave's.

"You ran because you were frightened. He is my family," she admitted, "and I'll bear the responsibility for his lack of control."

But the punishment will be his to suffer.

The words of trust invited her to release a slithering breath.

"I do bad things, Vara Tassnehof, but this is not one of those," admitted one girl to the other in the dim room. "I do bad things when I do not think, when I let impulse command me. But I'm shit; I'm a maggot and a cow--"the epithets rolled out of her without hesitation, phrases learned by rote and experience, embroidered through ignominy upon her conscience, "--and I know where I belong. I'll die with the crust of dirt on my knees. I'd gain nothing by tossing you to wolves."

Her vapid, unassuming eyes fell down to her belly, where the stump of her severed wrist lay against her bulging stomach.

"I hate wolves. But friends," Gloria whispered, "I cherish."

She bent forward and, with trembling lips, kissed Vara's brow.

"Sleep now. Be conservative with the poppy; I don't relish the idea of putting my fingers down your throat to make you bring it up should you take too much."

* * * *

She sat at the girl's bedside until the candle died. And when Vara finally dozed, she withdrew from the satchel at her hip a tiny heirloom: a tarnished little pill of steel and wood hinged with a simple screw at its neck. A carving-knife that could be opened and closed to display its finger-length blade. Blunt. Worn and weathered from carving. Cherny's. In the darkness she sang a lullaby to the baby nestled in her belly--

"A'ardo, a'ardo, al en g'oroluth,
at'chemso dos mel'ardok abluth, abluth!
Con e'el quol dos Sum Soma su'ul elg--
Raddo, raddo! ar en pol'uth ferr'ut.
"

Over and over. For the baby. For a noble's child. A practiced voice; a choir-girl's voice.

Before dawn, she put the hingeknife in the pocket of Vara Tassnehof's frock.
User avatar
Rance
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 2520
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 8:00 am
Location: Maryland

Re: Bedside Manner

Postby SuperRy » Sun Nov 09, 2014 3:36 pm

“As long as you are my friend, you will never die with dirt-crusted knees. If you cannot stand on your own, Gloria Wynsee, I will give you arm. My shoulder. My strength...if ever you are weak.”

Words were quiet, waning as green eyes grew heavier, lulled to a close by the sweetest voice. Head nodded a slow, belated promise to have a care with the poppy's milk, despite the temptation to take enough to sleep it all, all away. The kiss to her brow was relaxing, was familiar and yet not. A pang of remembrance, of family missing, lost beneath the waves of unconsciousness as sleep came to claim her once again.

Fingers held fast to that which made her feel safe in the midst of a topsy-turvy time where she was anything but.
User avatar
SuperRy
Member
 
Posts: 100
Joined: Tue Dec 10, 2002 5:00 am
Location: The Lone Star State.


Return to The Tavern



Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests

cron