Interlude: An Imposition

Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Niabh » Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:41 am

A steady flow of warm, green-scented air drifted down the corridor from the open door of Glenn’s front room, and a rectangle of butter-yellow sunlight stained the hallway floor, which was not itself unusual, except it was the middle of the night.

Inside the room he had prepared for her, lush velvet moss ran in parallel lines, sealing the gaps between the loose floorboards. Violets and bluets sprang up from the green rug, which was now thicker and shaggier than when he left it. Ivy fingers twisted through new cracks in the plaster, trickling down the walls like water. The ceiling was now irrelevant, though greenish-yellowy light filtered down from an unseen source, intrinsically warm. She had actually bothered to replace the loose-jointed chair with some monstrous, sturdy white toadstool; whether this was done from whimsy, or because she knew it would irk him, or out of a misguided sense of aesthetics, was hard to discern on first glance.

In roughly the place where the windowseat had been was now an arched leafy bower where the young queen lay stretched out on her stomach on a mat of soft rushes, her head nestled in the crook of her arm. Her eyes were closed, and her back rose up and down in an easy, peaceful rhythm. But her ears still pricked up, swiveling toward any slight noise that happened to sound like a footstep.
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Glenn » Thu Feb 17, 2022 6:55 am

He was expecting a letter. Expecting was not exactly the correct word for it. Anticipation. That was more accurate. Often times he expected a letter. This was different. Philosophical thoughts were well and good, bread and butter even. Well baked, well spread, well seasoned, they could almost be a delicacy and not simply sustenance. Intrigues, however, were something else entirely. There was quite a bit of intrigue in his last letter, some of which he hadn't even been able to anticipate. That was the risk of such broad and open letters. One truth so often led to another like an infection, and so far, they were completely unwilling to cut off the arm to prevent the spread.

He was not expecting a visitor, save of course for his feathered co-conspirator who delivered the letters. He and Benedict had a system for sleep, one carefully calibrated, one with a dozen unspoken boundaries and checkpoints. Meanwhile, Glenn and Fionnuala had nothing of the sort. The had never gained enough familiarity with one another in person to develop such things. Given how clumsy these encounters tended to be, there surely was a need, but a need without a means was a problem unsolved. Problems left unsolved had consequences.

The consequence here was that she had to wait longer than she might have intended. He was a light sleeper except for when he was not and he had reason enough not to be as of late. He had reason to quest to the best of his ability, limited as it might be, after the remnant of his past. Dreams were fed by information, by knowledge, by the expanse of one's imagination, and every clue brought him closer to imagining the possibilities needed to at the very least find the maze that Brown traipsed through (for he now at least knew it existed). So he slept and he searched.

And eventually, having found nothing, he woke. He woke only to find something entirely unexpected. Light. Presence. There was no rush to investigation. Morning came early for him and it would wait a few moments later. He dressed, then, how he would be expected to dress (one such surprise to delight her in a lifetime had been more than enough, a superficial gesture, something they were both wholly past and very likely soon to reach once again on an even deeper level.

"Unless I am mistaken," this said from the doorframe, before he took one step in so as to straddle the line, "your time has not yet passed. I'd tell you with more certainty but you seem to have misplaced the moon."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Niabh » Thu Feb 17, 2022 12:54 pm

She truly had been asleep, though probably not by a human’s standard. Catnapping was closer to it: restful but alert, largely conscious but fully relaxed. Somewhere along the line, she noticed that most humans wouldn’t wake for a spring thunderstorm, but assumed that theirs was the aberration and hers the default—something to do with their defective hearing, like as not. She did not stir at his voice. “It’s four days ’til the next moon. I shall try to restrain myself from ravishing you.” This she said in a tone so utterly toneless and seeped in sarcasm that it might level a blow to even Glenn Burnie.

With no gradations between asleep and awake, she opened her eyes, then gracefully unfolded and propped herself upright, cross-legged on the edge of the woodsy couch. However much glamourie she expended upon the room did not extend to herself. Her sleeveless gown displayed her scarred arm from shoulder to fingertips, and one side of her hair was mashed flat from lying on it, giving the impression that he had encroached on her solitude, rather than the other way around. Yet what glamourie there was trembled like a net drawn taut, like a spider’s web—like an unspoken threat.

“You have questions,” she said curtly, then proceeded to tick them off on her fingers. “I know not what Ainrid has done. I didn’t ask, and I didn’t care, so long as she could repair it. But she can’t, so long as she can’t find you. I did not explain it to you because I doubt either one of us could have understood it; it is all bard’s business. I did tell you that I was looking into ways to resolve it, and I did, and I am. You found out about it secondhand because you are a prying little sneak who can’t keep your nose out of anyone’s business, even an it should kill you.”

Her hand fell back into her lap, twisting a handful of purple-red gown between strong, clutching fingers. Invisible dawn-birds twittered in the branches of a forest one could smell but not see. She never took her eyes off him, never even blinked. “You don’t need her anymore. She’s dead.”
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Glenn » Fri Feb 18, 2022 9:40 am

He certainly did not rush to embrace her. He did not shy from her either, or at least, he did not shy from the room itself, and what was the room now save for the place in which she currently resided? She was the center of it, the center of his attention, but then she might well have been glamourie or not, for save for their first year of correspondence, he was always far more interested in the who of her than the what. "I would say that no one could possibly resist my charms for four days," the response came back smoothly, without thought, without effort, "but then we both know I do not have four days worth of charm."

He did not shy from her and his eyes did not shy from her arm. It defied his understanding and it reassured him all at once. What she had done on that night in the woods, whatever that was, had been no small thing. It had a cost. Yet he had not seen a cost that proximity to Catch could not pay. His letter before last had listed dire and fell consequences of trading in such currency, but then she spent her days all but bathing in the coin of Him anyway. One would think such exchanges would be inescapable from their surely-all-too-saccharine nuzzling alone.

"At some point," tongue licked at lips like an quill blotted in ink. He should have had a drink before coming to see her. Water. Something stirring. Either or. "... even you have to admit that the space between your business and my business is murky at best. I have no need of her save for to end her before she can hurt anyone. That is my business. What was done to me was my business, no matter your valiant search to undo it. Bard's work? My business when it is done to myself. Meg's examination? Mine as well for she examined me. And you, there, benefiting from whatever had occurred whether it was at your request or not (which is something you did not answer, just that you did not know the specifics), have already admitted recently that you smile at the idea of me set wild and free upon the world to be everyone's nuisance." She had sought eye contact and had found it, albeit occasionally blinking. "As in most other things, for you are right and I do not need her, I am yours most of all."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Niabh » Mon Feb 21, 2022 12:52 am

Blood rushed to her cheeks, sharp as a slap, so fast it took a moment to sort out if anger, shame, or indignation provoked the flash. Why else had she even shown up unless she expected to be accused to her face? “My request? By the time I knew about the thing, ’twas done. You dare, sir.”

But had she? She hadn’t asked for it, hadn’t exactly cheered on Ainrid when she learned of it, had dutifully set the bard to repairing it, but she had never really cared one way or another that it happened, had she? In the back of her mind she labelled it a stroke of fortune—one step closer to being finally rid of the hand that still clutched Myrken, and which gripped Glenn Burnie tightest of all. Anything that loosened that hold, she reasoned, could not be all bad.

And it left more room for you, didn’t it?


This is what he does, Catch had warned her, and she should be better armored against it by now. It was the chief tool in Father’s arsenal, too: undermining, sowing doubts.


She uncoiled to set one foot on the floor, the other knee drawn to her chest, as if she might launch herself at him. She watched him lick his lips the way a snake watches a bird. “Our business, then. Passing strange how often my business becomes our business but your business remains your own. In any case you are the worst man for this particular bit of business. You’re too near to it. She was killing you, Glenn.” For the first time, her voice quavered.
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Glenn » Wed Feb 23, 2022 11:53 am

He advanced. Why? Because there was simply nothing else to do. He expected reality to warp around him more and more with every step. The best way to avoid that was to avoid reality altogether and focus entirely on her. Benedict would not look him in the eye but she would not shy away. That would be defeat, retreat. Anyway, if he was going to accuse her, he would do it directly. He might talk about her behind her back with the bird, with Meg, with others who had her best interest in their hearts, but that was entirely about concern for her and nothing else. She might still hate it, she might resent it, but there had to be limits to hating and resenting the people that did it.

Resenting him for accusing her, even directly, would be another issue altogether. "A pause then. I know that I am operating on imperfect information. I imagine you are too. Maybe it's best to lay a few more cards out on the table? The difficulty I face, Finn, is that even if you did not contrive certain occurrences, I am not sure where convenience ends and opportunism begins. I meet Meg at a waystation. Brown and the Remnant; no, let us use Revenant instead, preceded me. You've made him your business. I think her mine. Ainrid did more than separate me from the Revenant. She also hindered my ability to move forward. It was no small thing, not a wounding but a binding, or maybe a shielding? You'd know as well as any how those two could potentially be the same thing. Just how much do you benefit from me keeping my dreaming to myself?" He had continued to advance, though more slowly. Now though, he was practically upon her, neck jutted up ever so slightly, for she was her true self and her true self gave one an unfortunate crink. "Do you benefit only by keeping me safe from harm? Did you want me well out of your Brown business, especially if you knew he was dragging her about? Or, Finn, is there something even more? Where is the line? Tell me all of the truth, convince me to my satisfaction and you've seen me satisfied and sated both so do not dare say it impossible, and I will trust you to deal with her so long as you do it safely and swiftly."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Niabh » Fri Feb 25, 2022 4:47 am

And he was correct: as he approached, the sweet green forest-scent clotted to just shy of too heavy; the floorboards softened underfoot until they were as spongy and damp as spring earth. Even the light felt warm and gummy, wrapping around wrists and ankles and throat gossamer fronds that must be snapped with every step. The queen froze in fury. Of all the damned things, the heel of her hand throbbed mercilessly, as though the black speck under her thumb were drilling down to bone.

He came only so close before she held up a palm and gasped, “Stay where you are!” She had not meant to say anything and she cut her eyes hard at him, flustered with herself and furious with him for driving her to it. She swapped to breathing through her mouth; to her sensitive nostrils, he still reeked of sleep-sweat.

At the heart of all this lay a child. Catch’s child. A child that had waited too long for a rescue that might already be too late. It took so long to gather the resources that would have been so near to hand back home. She bit down on a sudden bitter anger at Meg for telling him anything, coupled with the frantic need to know what he knew.

He could have stayed out of it. He could have trusted her and stayed out of it.

But of course, he couldn’t have done. Not and stayed himself.

“And what,” she said slowly, coldly, “do you intend to do about it?”
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Glenn » Fri Feb 25, 2022 5:09 am

When she told him to stop, he stopped.
When he spat out her question, he smiled.
Sleep-sweat was sleep sweat. His hair was mussed, to say the least. His eyes were red. There was certainly stubble. He had dressed, dull and boring as he would always dress, but in other ways, he had not expected company and had not prepared accordingly.
And yet, did he not seem so alive in this moment? Did he not seem vibrant? There was no mania. There were no lapses. There was focus. In all of this world, for him, right now, there was only her. They spoke of Ainrid and Meg and Brown and the ghost of his everything, but right now, all of them only mattered as they related to her. Did she realize?
He still did not advance, but oh, did he smile. Often he looked older than he was for he carried himself older, slower, wearier, slightly bulky clothes that simulated the weight of years and traumas and deep, deep thoughts. Now, though, he looked younger than he was, with a smile that signified the weight of eternity, but here eternity was eternal youth.
"That depends on what "it" is, Finn. My accusation led to questions. You responded with an accusation. Where does that leave us? I've offered to let you deal with Rhaena," her name invoked when it wasn't before, but no flinching, just a statement of fact, "to leave aside Brown. All for nothing but truth already owed to me, truth that might help explain the binding upon me, that might further explain your actions and those things that have befallen myself, my home, my you. Yet, you need more, don't you?" Part of him did advance then, but only his hands, outstretched. His feet stayed planted and his gaze steady. "I thought the broader matter settled from our last discussion, settled in a mutually beneficial way for all parties. If I find out that we do not share that same understanding, I will take what was informal, that danced upon a perilous, but oh so beautiful, bridge of trust, and make it," Rarely did he fall to theatrics but here he did, his face contorting as if he was searching for a word, as if he was hesitant, timid. As if he was having a real interaction with another person, with all of the playfulness that might occur. "ironclad. That's the word."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Niabh » Fri Feb 25, 2022 7:22 am

Her hand began to snake toward his on instinct. She stopped herself when the accusation turned into a threat—a subtle, elegant threat, to be sure, but that didn’t lessen the implications. Ironclad. Even the syllables clanged like chains. “Of course I wanted you out of my rusting business,” she spat. “I’ve said that much to your face. One does not keep Glenn Burnie out of one’s business by telling him all one’s business.”

Fever gripped her face. It settled somewhere between her temples and her eyes and left her mouth parched. That was the heat of the season in her blood; its grip would loosen if she ignored it long enough, though she swallowed to work up some moisture. The heel of her hand throbbed, too, and she squeezed her fist tight around it, like a bird’s heart pulsing in her palm, pumping a spike of poison clear up to the root of her thumbnail. That didn’t go away.

Her black eyes narrowed to slits, catching a faint glitter as they darted left, right, looking for a path around him. Dash it all, this was her space, he’d given it to her, how dare he pin her in a corner. And it didn’t matter, did it, that she had him all but bandaged head to foot in glam? It didn’t matter if he looked at her as though she were the only creature in the world. None of it matter when he could, in some way she could not fathom, make her answer to him. Any scrap of outrage she could muster energized her. “Do you believe,” she said, in the same crawling voice, “that I would hurt you? After that first time you came to Myrken…aye, I’ve played you a prank or two, here and there, but nothing…permanent. I was the one who gave you the dreaming drought; an it were my intention to prevent you dreaming, I’d already undone myself.”

Her face twisted, one hand going up to press against her hot and aching eye, then to rub the side of her face. Her voice dropped to a throaty murmur, more like she was rehearsing what she would say to him rather than saying it in the moment. “I wanted you to forget her. After that last time in Razasan, when you finally remembered…I hated her. There was nothing I could do about that. She was already dead. Except to you. You kept her alive. She was killing you, but you kept her alive.”
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Glenn » Fri Feb 25, 2022 8:16 am

"What I believe," if there had been one rule that he would have made sure to follow, it would have been not to approach her, not to look directly at her. With Benedict, that was to avoid one sort of animal instinct. With her, now, in this very specific moment, it was entirely another. Yet, there had been the advancement, and there was the smile, and there was Glenn Burnie, wholly unable to stop himself, and damn the consequences. He couldn't stop being himself anymore than she could stop being herself, and that was at the root of it, wasn't it? "... is that when someone wants one thing, one precious thing, more than anything else in the world, that when someone is already suffering and vulnerable and alone and looking for a sign, that when someone is consumed by a need and obsessed with an outcome, that it touches everything else that she might possibly do."

He did not take another step. He did not back away. He did not look away. He did not draw his hands back, save a few scant inches for comfort's sake. The point was still being made after all. "Throughout every talk we had, every letter you wrote, every idea that we pushed towards one another, ever hope and dream for ourselves and each other and our people that we dared admit, dared even to hope and dared even to dream, it was there, creeping underneath. Your desire. Your obsession. Your need. It colored absolutely everything and I was entirely unaware of it."

His tone was not hateful. There was no rancor in his voice. His gaze, though focused, was fond. Was it sympathetic? Affectionate? Forgiving? Understanding? How could one tell, even at this proximity whether it contained any of that? But fondness. Oh, it was there. Were he to try to deny it, it would be the most boldfaced lie imaginable. Yet he still spoke on. "Do I think you meant to hurt me? No. Do I think that you might do something against your own interest? Yes, I do, for you are a complex and contradictory person with conflicting interests and wants. And you had one interest and one want above all. I do not think you hurt me, but I quite imagine that did."

And here he did not pause, did not give her even a moment, did not even breathe. Instead he chained one thought to the next, as if it was all one thought. "And if I have hurt you with her, well, know this. You can do something now. I told you, Finn. I turn my head from it. I put my trust in you. Swiftly, safely, but with finality. Deal with her once and for all. Deal with my obsession, the great obsession of my past who had been the great love of my life. End it. But know that we must also face your obsession as well. For it has colored everything that we have ever been, you and I."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Niabh » Sat Feb 26, 2022 7:33 am

She was following him curiously, tracking the course of his conversation with the barest cant of her head, right until the moment she realized what he was driving at, when she flinched. Her entire face snapped closed. One could far too easily imagine her long ears folding over and the shades rolling down before her eyes like a merchant shutting up shop at the end of the day. She struggled for patience. “That was never anything to do with us.

Us was generous. She longed to say you, to hurl it like an accusation: This was nothing to do with you. I tried to keep you out of it. You insisted on involving yourself. You spoiled everything. Even now, it was less charity and more diplomacy that stilled her tongue. Blunt accusations would only cloud the waters, and if such statements sounded so childish in her own head, she could only imagine what he would make of them.

Underneath churned blind panic. Even without fully realizing what he meant, she felt herself skittering backwards away from his implications the way she would have retreated from the edge of a cliff, propelled by the brush of her imperfect Sight.

“You do not give me permission. For all I hate her, she is your own, and if you wish her back, she will be returned. Ainrid acted withoutten my command or your consent. That is reason enough to undo it.” Spoken like a true queen. Yet the line of her lips quavered a bit, and she looked downward in both disapproval and acquiescence, her mouth pursed in a mild moue of disdain. “Yet with all my heart, I would you be rid of her. Keep what sweet memories you have, but this other thing…it is neither memory nor the woman you knew. Glenn, I’ve seen her. She is naught…it is naught but a…a amhailt gorta, a…” She grimaced as she racked her brains for a translation. “A hungry ghost.”

It still wasn’t quite right. Ghosts were things tultharian had, not Tuatha, but if she let herself stumble on the word, she would be lost. She shook her head in furious dismissal, hair rustling. “I don’t know what you mean by obsessed, though. I don’t. You don’t make any sense.” Uneasily her hand crept to cover her stomach, and she looked away from him. “I’m afraid you’re going to tell me and I’m not going to like it.”
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Glenn » Wed Mar 02, 2022 8:30 am

He wanted to sink down, to sit, to rest, to look up at her and force her down through the looking or to stand tall and live with the consequences of that, to be with him or to be over him. It would have been a completely unproductive gesture however. To sink down now would be to lose himself. He felt the tug of it, the unnatural and entirely natural notion that everything beneath his neck, everything beneath his eyes even, were somewhere else. Every time he opened his mouth he breathed it in, but he could speak here or there or anywhere for he was Glenn Burnie and if he could do nothing else, he could do that.

Still, it was exhausting. She was exhausting. This was exhausting. "I've told you it twice, Finn. One more time then, harder and harsher and clearer. No games save for the type our people will play for eternity, but ours comes from a place of love at least." He had to be looking her in the eyes for this anyway. "I thought we had come to an accord last time, the only path forward for us. Obviously, we didn't. The child is part immortal. She, it's a she, right? She will age more slowly than most. Frame, contort, provide context, provide hope, whisper in her ear, give her gifts, meddle. Please, please meddle. Meddle to your heart's content. Meddle to her heart's amazement. Meddle to Gloria's heart's despair. Meddle. Provide her everything I had, the hopes and dreams I had as a child trapped in a life not of my making. Give her all that I had and so much more. Give her a path forward as well. Instead of being a thief in the night, be the guide lighting the way. In a few decades she will still be young and you will still be beautiful, and I'll probably be dead." He snatched for her hands, perfect and imperfect then, picking that exact moment, that exact notion to do so. Before he had gestured or offered but now he snatched as tenderly as one could snatch, as tenderly as she intended to snatch the child. "But you'll have spent those years with me in it and you will have spent those years without alienating Catch or Myrken in any irreconcilable way.

"I know it's not the path you desire most, that you are so deeply obsessed with, but it's a good path, a path that will be all the sweeter for the work you put into it, one where you can have many things instead of just the most precious, but where you can have that as well in time. Just agree to it in a way that truly matters and I will be rid of her. You've already agreed to it, Finn. Just promise it and vow it and make it true." Two times an agreement then, and three times this. His voice caught for a moment, for it had been the best speech he had left and what would follow would be hardly a speech at all. "And in return, I'll not stand in your way of having her, per those terms, and I will not meddle with however you want Elliot Brown, and this hungry ghost? She will be nothing to me. And there would hardly be room for her on my mind and in my thoughts and for me to be concerned with, for there will be you instead and I find you more than hungry enough."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Niabh » Thu Mar 03, 2022 7:43 am

Well. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t told him she wasn’t going to like it. Her eyes shut in exasperation and her fist clenched against her belly. Meg, Meg. She didn’t like being cross with Meg but the cut was keen. Not the raven, who at least could be forgiven as naturally loquacious and bird-brained, but Meg… The difference was that the raven could only reveal so much. Meg could have told him everything. Or nothing.

Opening her eyes, she seemed surprised to find him holding her hands, although of course, there was no way she was not conscious of it, she who had longed for weeks to be touched. The connection flowed from his palms up her arms, up the sides of her neck to the dull throb behind her eyes and the pressure in her eardrums. Swallowing alleviated neither discomfort. The old sluggish black gean-connah blood seeped out of the whorls of her brain. In her anger she could not bring herself either to be horrified of it or to warn him. There was a rare gap in him into which she might insert herself like a key. The gean-connah measured his edges, tracing them like a loathsome black tongue. The best she could to was grip down on his hands hard enough to grind his bones together.

Glenn.” She cut through his words, her voice harsh and strangled. “It’s done, Glenn. It was done ere you even knew of it. The whole thing’s in motion now. I can’t take it back. Now I ask again: what do you intend to do about it?”

Using the leverage of his touch, she slid down from the bench. This time she pulled his hand to her lips and let his forefinger slip into her thirsty mouth.
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Glenn » Thu Mar 03, 2022 8:41 am

No one knew what imminent ruin looked like quite like Glenn Burnie did. He'd known it after stabbing Sarayn and subsequently after leaping off her balcony. He'd known it beneath the Dagger as Catch's tendrils flared. He'd known it in Golben as his companion turned to dust and the wrenching pain of starvation overcame him. He'd known it when the king's man was there before him with terms in hand.

There was ruin here. It was imminent. It was inescapable.

While he had learned much, the core of him had never changed. This was the same Glenn Burnie who had faced the Ashfiend, who had stared down Kylerryth, who had walked through the Chimera.

He led with defiance and irreverence. "For one, I'm not going to let you eat me whole," yet even as he said it, he did not draw his hand away, did not draw away from her at all.

He didn't because he couldn't.

It was inevitable.

One hand was lost to him, but his other (sufficiently crushed) he pulled back. He had taken his time before seeing her, had dressed before seeing her. His clothes were baggy. It was to hide his frame, to make people think less of him and his prowess, because it was damned comfortable. It meant he could keep any number of things on his body at any time, and some things he always kept with him. A small vial containing a tincture, a tincture of her own making was one of those things. "Actually, that's a lie. You may do just that, but I won't be here to experience it. Not when there's work to do. Next time, be a caring, sharing lady and put your finger in my mouth first." With a swordsmans' deftness, one that might have been used in other ways if things were left to play out just a few minutes more, he brought the vial up to his lips.
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Interlude: An Imposition

Postby Niabh » Fri Mar 04, 2022 1:56 am

The gean-connah was the family joke. The Nialls had always cheerfully blamed it for any number of lapses in judgement, poor decisions, and luck fair and foul, but it was never more than an uneasy jest. A living slip of the beannaithe lurked under their skin and could not be discounted—but, as Fionn herself had observed, in the end, it was all just you. It could no more be separate than she could ultimately divorce herself from the color of her eyes. She had lived with it all her life, danced with it, flirted with it, skirted right up to the edge of her control over it and laughed in its face, and had given herself over to it in the way one might fling oneself into a river at flood. But the choice was always hers, and it was no good to pretend otherwise now.

The instant she registered his quick movement, she jerked away. Her eyes widened in fury and horror. “What is that? What are you doing? Give it here!”

In the next instant a waft of the potion’s scent hit her, and she knew what it was. That didn’t stop her from trying to snatch it away. “You ijit, tha’ll knock thyself out for days!”

Chest heaving, hands shaking, she shot a quick trembling glance all around the room—for what, she did not know: a remedy, someone to call on for help. No one, nothing. Only them, and the enchanted glade she had created. A grey tinge crept into the green, the color of rotten mushrooms, with a foul wet smell underpinning the scent of violets.

“I didn’t mean it,” she whispered, even as the gean-connah growled that she had meant it. “I wouldn’t have. Not without you—” Her shoulders slumped. Suddenly she gave him a hard shove with the heel of her hand. “Oh…did tell thee to stand off me, thou omadhaun!”
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Next

Return to Downtown Myrkentown



Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests

cron