The Flesh is Weak

[Glenn]

One eyelid did eventually shoot open, but it was not when she quested in her own particular way and not even when Benedict crept up so precariously towards his nose. It was only after the bird asked his question and only to serve as a direct response. Was he fine? No less than whenever else. A reset? This was somewhat more dramatic than that, wasn't it? The eye scrutinized the interloper on the bed but without something visually distinct like an odd posture or puffed out wings, there simply wasn't much to see, even if the dark figure hadn't been so close up and blurry. To view Meg would have provided more satisfying input but that would involve sitting up and sitting up would have defeated at least three or four salient points.

He didn't need to view her to hear the energy in her voice. He was stubborn, in when he chose to act and also in when he chose not to. In both cases, it often spurred something inside those around him. Maybe his story was over and maybe it was not, but he could serve as a catalyst: a burr upon the lion's paw, a hill worth climbing, an unpleasant experience not to be repeated.

The problem with spurring is that it occasionally stirred as well. He did not know her, not well, not in the indirect bits and pieces from Fionn, not in the short time they had been with one another. Reasonably and rationally, what she was suggesting was preferable. The letter would most certainly reach the Queen; it would not be intercepted by any other interested party. It would be the safest course for all three of them. A clear course. Despite what she and her Sight might have indicated, he did feel at the end of his tale; as such, he had very few priorities.

There was one that almost no one outside this room, whether tuatha or tulthurian, would prioritize over finding the best, clearest path to a friend that was also a queen. "Only if it's alright with Benedict. He deserves better, from them, from her. I would not have his dignity besmirched for the sake of your convenience or mine."

[Niabh]

“It may be well with him or not.” There was a frosty edge to her voice, clanging flat against the walls. “Tha may send thy letter with me or not. Still I will go to camp, and sharp as any raven I will repeat every word I’ve heard from thee to her ears. No fear in that, is there?”

She clapped her hands briskly and rubbed them together, looking expectantly between the pair, one of them flat and one bolt upright, one weary and one wary. Both pairs of eyes near to the very same shade of grey, how odd, as if the one were split between two.

“Could you maybe not tell her every word?” the raven pleaded.

“Every word,” she repeated more firmly, “for I am a simple woman. Might be the word I leave out would be most important. Who am I to say?”

“You ain’t fresh off the herd, either. You got an edge.”

“Twenty years ago I had an edge,” Morgana said gently. “What status I have in Court is small. My true status is what I’ve built for myself. I am not here to herd the Lady, raven. I am here because I am the best healer of the clan, and my reputation is worthy to be part of a Queen’s retinue.” There: summed herself up, as simply and humbly as she knew how. Not for nothing her closeness with the Queen, that would never be nothing, but for a healer? If she had to pick the right one for the task, she’d pick herself too.

But she'd brought status into it, and the raven knew it was all over. “Y’know what? Fuck it.” The raven stormed off, scowling, toward the shadow at the foot of the bed. “I don’t even care anymore. Someone write a goddamn letter. I’d do it, but I still ain’t figgered out how they work.”

“This is the way it will be with my Queen, for whatever she may be to thee, still she is my Queen. I say this not to stir thee but as fact. To approach the Lady at all puts me in Court, where I swim like a stone.” She rolled her eyes and raised her palms briefly toward the ceiling, a bit comically dramatic but indicative of her opinion. “This is not a favor but a debt. One day I’ll come to claim it, at the cost of exactly as much bother as this brings me.”

[Glenn]

It wasn't a bad agreement overall. No one was totally happy with it, but that was how you knew a compromise was True and not just a manipulation. He would write a message. She would deliver a message. This would open the door for the raven's return. Everyone played a part that was fitting for them even if none of it was ideal for any one of them. "Someday, I'll have you dictate a letter and I'll write it for you." Glenn offered, placating his friend; that was something he was happy to offer. Benedict would either love or hate the experience but it would be memorable at least.

He also didn't seem particularly bothered with Meg repeating everything there was to repeat or repeating things selectively. She would have perception of what has occurred and that was the way of these Folk with their glamourie as a means of understanding one another anyway. He'd have his letter and so long as no one mucked with it, his own truth would ring loudly in the marked ink and the spaces in between. Everything was well on its way and he was already thinking through the first words of what he'd write.

But then she had to complicate things out of ego or whimsy or sheer cultural inclination. It interested him for he had tried to tempt her with a game when they 'met' previously and she feigned so thorough a lack of understanding that she almost certainly had to understand completely. He sat up. There was silence, a long stare, and then finally a soft voice. "Benedict has many skills. One of the most remarkable is that he can repeat back anything he has heard with alarming exactitude. That is, a perfect repetition of any sound or any voice. I do not wish to ask more of him right now, so I will do this in his stead and in my voice, a paraphrasing of your words, not a perfect recitation." His stare gave way to lids falling between them. He did not raise his voice. "It's not my job to be messenger but I'll play it once to buy my way out of it for good." Words spoken, he tilted his head in thought and opened his eyes once more. "Yes, I think that was it. It seems to be me that you looked at this neither as an obligation nor a debt, but as a price you'd pay, without being asked, when I had suggested another option, for your own long-term benefit, in that it would remove even the possibility of future grief along these lines. In fact, one might see it as a favor that I'm agreeing and allowing you to take my letter, in which I will weave in the bit about Benedict as you requested." From the lips came the slightest noise then, something of a tsking, something vaguely wet and quick and harsh. "No debt though, perish such thoughts. A favor, out of regard for you and for Her."

[Niabh]

Morgana ignored Glenn, but watched the raven sulk with a thoughtful, amused, but not unkind smile just barely touching her lips. After a moment, she slipped aside and dangled one small brown hand over the end of the bed, just over the raven’s head. He peered up at it like a bleary drunk before taking one of her fingertips between his beak and giving it a tiny nip. Her smile widened, and she extracted the finger and returned the tug with a tap. Most people, no matter how conscientious, couldn’t do that without rattling his head a little, but he supposed that kind of extraordinary gentleness was what you paid for with Meg.

Only then did she deign to regard Glenn, with an extravagant sigh. “My, but thou’rt a humorless thing.” Walking around the bed once more, she stood before him with her hands on her hips, considering, before she gave him a delicate kick in the ankle, in much the same spirit she’d tapped the raven. “Bestir thyself, get dressed and run a comb through thy hair. This day tha’ll take thy dinner sitting at the board like a proper man.”

[Glenn]

"Is that how it's done?" This was his home and there were things to be allowed and things not to be allowed. He allowed her to poke at the raven, to prod at his ankle. He allowed her to suggest he rouse himself, even. But he ignored her for the most part and looked to Benedict instead. "If they win the game, they call in all debts and stakes. If they lose, they laugh it off as a jest and chide me for not seeing it as such? Still, it is good to know that one is about to walk into a nest of poor losers, or at least send a missive into one."

Yet he would do what she asked, would bestir himself, would dress, would find that comb and use it, not because dinner was to be taken in any certain way, but instead because there was a letter to author.