Yet Another Morning After

Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Glenn » Tue Oct 25, 2022 12:58 am

The tea he was glad for, entirely apart from notions of taste and sensation. It was purely a practical thing, or one practical thing and a few positive effects tacked on. The throat needed to be better and while it was, to some degree, he was overusing it already; best to mitigate that. It also would show a level of compliance, not necessarily with the terms of his containment, which as he already explained, was a futile measure anyway, but with his medical treatment. That self-same lady sister could find fault with his manner and manners but hardly with the care he'd take into his own recovery. He'd long ago learned that physicians cared far less about your attitude than whether or not you were following their mandates. The person and his body could be two separate entities entirely and so long as instructions were heeded for the latter, little mind was paid to the former. Granted, he was usually uniquely terrible at heeding such instructions anyway. Here'd he'd simply make a greater effort.

"How often do you report to her? Are there ravens involved? Are you to never leave my side?" These were practical questions, following the careful pouring of tea into mug and slightly less careful sipping. Methodological movement was key, then. A slow hand could be a steady one. Hopefully that would improve alongside his voice, a voice still labored enough that he had to speak in more stilted sentences than he'd prefer. "This is not paranoia or arrogance. Instead, for your sake. Ask her how she feels about you teaching me this. Stories are one thing. Archery is another. If I intend to have you trespass for my sake, it will be for something more substantive."
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Niabh » Tue Oct 25, 2022 7:12 am

“Braiding bowstring is not archery.” She plucked the half-finished braid and showed him. Her two thumbs looped over one another and drew apart, and the knot slid neatly downward, making a round braid that seemed to flow directly from between her hands with no intervention, fast enough that its growth could be plainly discerned. “So I will ask her, an you prefer to know the lady’s will, though if t’were at all trespass—” she pronounced it with the Queen’s Northern slur: tresh-pash “—I would not have made the offer. It’s good neighbor you are to be so concerned for my sake.”

The light bend of her drawl made it hard to tell if she was needling him. Her expression was utterly guileless. Nevertheless, from behind her heavily hooded eyes she watched him warily. Though he disavowed any arrogance, the presumption of claiming liability for an offer she herself had made without any cajoling or cozening from him made all her instincts prickle. She felt she was having her loyalty tested. If he intended, indeed.

Still, it made all the sense in the world to feel out the perimeters of one’s cell, when one felt imprisoned. That she could understand. Feeling out the edges of one’s jailor might be part of that, to find out whether she might be expected to be cruel or permissive or sympathetic to his plight. Save that this didn’t feel like that, either. He forced her to feel him out, as much as he did her, except that she would prefer to spare a few steps to the dance and ask.

The sea-stone spun and twinkled at the end of its string as she continued to twirl out overlapping knots that gradually coalesced into a tight spiral, all while never looking at her hands. “The lady did say I was to be your shadow. Should that order change, the lady will know it first, I next, and you third. But,” she concluded more lightly, “a shadow is not always seen, nor is it always behind one. Now that you are afoot, we foresee you will want your privacy—and me mine, to say it true. That can be provided. I can even be silent, an you prefer it so.”

And she was. The white stone danced hypnotically, her fingers moving so fast they were a blur, as her eyes and head alike lowered to attend to her braiding. "For now I report to the lady Meg," she added, as an afterthought. "That may change soon. Now that you grow well."

After a moment, she paused in braiding to dig into a pocket and toss a second irregular white sea-stone into his lap. Its nodes and arches were smooth and organic as the waves that had carved them. "Here. They're good luck."
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Glenn » Sat Nov 05, 2022 1:01 pm

"If you don't know the queen's will when it comes to bowstrings, and I will admit I only know it so far as archery not bowstrings, but..." And here he raised up a finger. Words were to be conserved, a throat to be treated with care. There were arguments worth having and ones not worth having. It was all a bit like chess. He could put someone in check in two dozen moves, but it was far more difficult to do it in five. In this case, the opponent was bridging the gap of understanding. "I know her mind on something adjacent. Your knowledge is farther off. For your sake, it is better we defer to mine and check. That is all."

But it wasn't all, for this matter of bowstrings raised all sorts of other notions. Far more so than shadows and even stones. He caught the stone, and at some point, again, he would have the strength and patience to joust on the idea of gifts freely given and fairy obligations, but it was all so tiring. That's something the stories never mention. You're always navigating when something is a rule and when something is a norm and when something is just good manners. He'd come to realize that all of this protocol was something of a game, a confidence game as much as anything else. How much of glamourie was simply convincing someone to believe something? It went back to his theory that so much of how their society had developed was based on their longevity and avoiding boredom and malaise.

But bowstrings. They were on bowstrings. "How can you know that my good luck would not be your bad, knowing all that you do about this situation?" It would be going too far to ask her if she was just trying to make things more difficult to herself to find some sort of challenge in this.

Bowstrings, focus then, bowstrings. "It takes some real deftness of hand to braid them correctly, no? Does knowing the proper technique, does being able to do it," he ambled forward towards strain, and brevity won out again, "does that understanding help in crafting a glamourie? In avoiding one? Would your bowstring be harder to undo with it than someone else's?"
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Niabh » Mon Nov 07, 2022 3:20 am

Her gaze lifted back to him, indifferent but not unkind, and her brows drew together in confusion. Her focus made no difference to her crafting; her fingers wove in their patterns and the string spooled out of them, the white stone twirling and flashing.

“They are the same, the glamourie and the spinning. They flow out of your head, down your backbone, into your hands, not one part alone but all parts together. Nothing spoils a glam quicker than thinking too hard on’t. You get in the way of yourself, and the flow is lost. New archers do the same. They place their confidence in technique, and count out their steps in their heads: first nock, then lift, then pull, then release. It must come out of yourself, not separate, and all as one. A good archer shoots with her eye.”

As she spoke, a loop caught around her thumb. She laughed, a quick surprised two-note chuckle, rusty from disuse. “There, see? Did make me wonder how ’tis done and I lost my measure. It’s a hex you’ve laid on me.”

After disentangling her thumb, it took a moment’s hesitation before she dove back into her easy weaving. “You are the one who is ill, in misfortune, and out of the Queen’s grace. You could use a little luck, if there be some lying about, which there was.” She chuckled again. “The tultharian once did say, to look through the eye of a sea-stone allowed one to see things as they truly are, without glam or deception.” Though why she would simply hand him such power was its own proof that it was mere superstition. Even the Tuatha had their fairy tales. “Then, too, I have confidence. No luck of yours could better my own. Best luck is luck a makes for thyself, with learning. Rest be up to the gods, who are fickle in how they dole out fortune.”

Her fingers stopped their spinning, and she fixed her green eyes upon him. “Do you truly believe in luck? Or are you seeing if I believe in it?”
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Glenn » Mon Nov 14, 2022 9:23 am

She laughed and he responded in kind. Except for that wasn't true. It wasn't a laugh, more of a scoff, something more of his shoulders and his chest that made it to his face but just barely. Moreover, it happened earlier, how many beats? Three, four? It wasn't the 'hex' then, wasn't the caught loop, wasn't the shared moment of humor. It was her response. A telling response. He was leading one way and she went back the other, and quite far down the road indeed. How little he knew. It was well and good that the timing was not too far off, for it would be a shame if she misconstrued his mocking of himself as finding cruel humor in her words or deeds.

"Were I to have lost my perspective entirely," which was a way to start a sentence, and one certainly not equal to almost any other way; it was the way he chose, "I would have derived a way to see through glamourie on my own, or at least a way to understand where it began and ended. To do so would have meant embracing something instead of denying it, however, and while there's something to be said of doing that in the most dramatic way possible, if you are to do it at all, I am not so it was moot."

Too many words, circular, weaving. They did not get caught upon his thumb, but they did, in the end, get caught in his throat and he allowed, for her sake or his, an expression of frustration at his current physical limitations. He was not trying to scale a mountain or cross a river.

Still, she asked a question, so after a breath, he would fight to answer. "I believe in unnatural luck but not in natural luck." That established, he took a pause before elaborating. "Through various means, yet only driven by real power, it can be endowed, good or ill. Superstition or ritual not reinforced by greater power will only provide the after-the-fact attribution of luck that comes with confidence or doubt."
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Niabh » Tue Nov 22, 2022 6:07 am

In the short span of words that passed between them, she had nearly worked her way down to the nock-tab, which required a different stitch. Instead she wrapped the string back under her sleeve, with the white stone hanging from her wrist like a bauble, and tucked the cuff back over it. “All luck is unnatural, else it is not luck at all. An luck has a nature, it is extraordinary.”

Which was quite a long word for her, lots of exotic syllables, and she paused and nodded to herself, satisfied that she’d said it correctly and that it meant what she’d meant it to mean. It was a fascinating process, now that there was a tultharian in the room to borrow from; before, she’d taken in language as ambient air, in little drips and drabs. Now she could physically feel the words seeping into her mind as water sinking into a porous stone, more than she could absorb at once. A bit eerie but interesting. She almost wanted him to go on talking, so that she could hoard up more words in a reserve to be employed as needed, but she was too wary of the fracture in his voice. Boldly, albeit a bit lackadaisically, she went, took his cup, refilled it, and forced it back toward him.

It may have been a matter of their language barrier, or of open skepticism, but Bo took a good long moment to chew over what he was trying to say. She almost felt that she had missed a step in this conversation—if conversation it truly was, rather than politely filling the silence until Lady Meg returned—or that he had skipped over the most important word in the sentence and left her to guess what it might have been. The notion set her on a path, sniffing around until she thought she narrowed down the omission. “You say something. What thing would that be? What stops you?”
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Glenn » Tue Jan 03, 2023 6:31 am

This would surprise no one who had ever spent more than a few minutes with him, but Glenn Burnie had been in this sort of situation before. That wasn't entirely accurate, as this was multiple situations at once, and he perhaps had not been in all of them at the same time, but even then, some concurrent confluence of two or three of them had occurred. He had a habit of brushing up against things bigger than him, of refusing his own limitations (mental or physical), of then being deservedly struck down. Often times, his inspired insolence was rewarded with a combination of imprisonment and a tending to his wounds.

As his cup had been so kindly (or at least dutifully, even if that duty was not to him) refilled, he drank of it once more, slowly, carefully. It was a necessary prelude to answer the question poised. Equally necessary was dropping the matter of luck. Any answer he had for that would be a more primal one anyway. Almost all magic was at least partially fueled by belief. Gods as well. This trickled all the way down to simple luck, perhaps.

"Something," he inhaled, exhaled again, took a beat, before spiraling off another direction entirely. "When I first encountered your queen, our correspondence was antagonistic." Too much, too soon, too many damned syllables. He'd never make it through at this point. "Once her nature was clear, I sought stories, reports, records. Ways to learn about the world so that I may not move through it blindly. This is how I counterbalance," but to hesitate, to toil for shorter phrases would simply drag this all to a halt, "the power indifference between beings such as her and myself. With knowledge. The stories were not particularly useful but there were commonalities. Repeated themes. I was supposed to get swept up in her and lose a hundred years in her lands. There was no story yet written for the friendship between she and I. It was all tales of regretful rewards and ironically merciful punishments."

And through all this, through sips from his cup, through tales told of tales, they were not particularly closer to the point and, as always, he well knew it. "Observation can only take one so far when it comes to glamourie. Our tools in understanding this world are our senses, what we can perceive, and glamourie, more than any other means of communication or expression, twists the very act of perception itself." Closer yet? Not by much, but he was all but spent and the only thing left to do was to take a leap the rest of the way there. "The only way to fully understand it would have been to fully embrace it. To fully embrace it would be to become the fool in one of those old stories. I refused to do so. It would be a relief for her, but both a disservice and a disappointment. She deserves better and maybe, just maybe, so do I."
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Niabh » Wed Jan 04, 2023 12:45 am

As the bitter liquid from the pitcher began to circulate, pipes that were rusty eased and roughness dwindled until it was nearly invisible. At the same time, a mild, warm languor invaded his limbs, not unlike a glass or two of good wine. Before leaving, Meg nervously asked Bo to “keep an eye on” the effects of the medicine but forgot to tell her what she was meant to keep an eye out for—babbling off his head about stories and glamourie, perhaps? Surely he had not had enough to be completely insensible. He seemed in command of himself, certainly more that she expected of him. Some of it was surely the medication—Lady Meg was capable at what she did; the last few months had borne witness to that—but the rest originated nowhere but with him. Still it was fascinating to watch him rouse from a silent, sleeping figure to one awake and alert, fighting against his limitations with both hands. Didn’t make her life any easier, though.

She frowned slightly, her brow furrowing at this dangerous conversation. The expression made her look older than she had before: not ancient, but surely older than Glenn. To hear tultharian speak so readily of glamourie was like witnessing a hound rise and walk on its back legs like a man. Eerie. Unnatural. An instinctive sense of stubbornness and perversion rose in her, along with a desire to shut him up before he accidentally stumbled over the truth.

“Glamourie has no part of you,” she said, short and curt. “You will never know it.”

Her own glamourie hardened over her like a protective shell, turning her stiff and sharp, all angles, even increasing the slight space she occupied until she was taller, the black of her jacket deep as midnight, and her sword a separate living entity that quivered in silent impatience, as though it could leap out on its own power. As ever with glamourie, it asserted itself between them until the glamourie seemed the truth, and however he perceived her before was only a dim memory of a dream that faded on waking. Where the Queen’s glamourie was a lovely filigree, an enhancement to their interactions, this was a robbery that verged on a rape. It asserted its certainty over him, made him less in its growing, cast a shadow of doubt over his bedclothes. How could he be correct when she was so certain?

But now she knew something he did not: the Queen had been gentle with this man. For what reasons, she could not guess, though she had her suspicions. The tultharian in their singular seeming seemed soft as rabbits. Mayhap the Queen was too gentle herself to overcome that vulnerability.

“An Herself wished to take you, she would have done. The Queen’s grace is not your own power. You…” The right word was lacking. Her frown deepened. “You live in the lee of her regard. Sheltered. Even now. You are your own fool, an you believe otherwise.”

Her ears pricked up. Somewhere near the front of the house, a door had creaked open.
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Glenn » Wed Jan 04, 2023 3:53 am

Even limited, there was a strategy to his rhetoric. Those asides, which seemed to only provide background, that took up valuable strength, that harmed further a throat already damaged, had purpose nonetheless. He had raised the undeniable truth of a power imbalance between the two. Whatever fool he may be, he was not blind to that. Whether he was blind to what he, himself, did, however, was another question. It might have been so internalized after so many years and the weight of trauma and damage and loss might have been so much, that he could well be a creature of instinct, one so wound tight to drag behind him rhetorical detritus, ever lumbering forward leaving deep gouges in hearts and minds wherever he roamed.

And of course, she was no queen and she was no healer. She was a warrior, a bodyguard, a combatant, a fighter. And she had responded as such. He was familiar with such a person though, with the female of such a class (if not a species as well), and while he avoided lazy and base stereotyping at all points as a rule (finding instead some sort of harmonic balance between nurture and nature as his lens for understanding those he encountered), well, self-discipline tended to be valued by such a figure. He had goaded her with daring words just as he might with a quick shot across the cheek. In responding as she did, to one in her care, one who might be a prisoner, one who could do her very little harm, all instead of hearing what he had to say, unpleasant as it might be, was that not a break of discipline?

He no longer became sick in the face of glamourie, but there was a split second of reaction, recognition, before he was swept under completely. His lip twitched, his eye glimmered. This was an expression he'd made many a time in the face of his hierarchical betters: Lords, Mages, Gods. Bullies all. They may have struck them down, but it was he, minuscule as he was, that had moved them to do so, and they lost more than they gained for the effort. There was none of the usual decorative enhancements here, no blood, no spittle, no bruising, no swelling, but the look was there, nonetheless.

And then he sank down, quiet, subdued. Whatever secrets he had been spilling to her a moment before, the flow had now stopped. She might frown at him all she like, but the deed was done.
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Niabh » Thu Jan 05, 2023 3:04 am

The guard subsided to her corner, arms held with deceptive casualness at her sides. Glenn, a swordsman himself, might have spotted the way her posture shifted forward, pressing toward him, as well her careful, studious expression, her eyes only just barely narrowed as she watched him to ascertain the threat in the room had been neutralized before she allowed her guard to relax. She certainly had caught his final change of countenance before he succumbed, a look she could not quite identify. Recognition? Triumph? But why? For recognition, she might almost pity him.

Not enough pity to relent until she assured herself he was silent. Only then did the glam lessen until it was a mere odor in the room, a faint trace of foulness.

Noises from the passageway: the piping, querulous voice of the child Acorn, a murmured reassurance from Morgana, and her slow, gentle shuffle across the floor as the door clapped shut, followed by Acorn’s quick padding feet as she ran tiptoe down the hall. To Bo’s consternation, a third, heavier set of footsteps followed. She could not identify every footstep by its weight, but part of her silently prayed that it was Ruaidhrí come to stand her relief. A relief it would be, from this puzzling tultharian and his presumptuous notions. Even Galanta would do. This stifling tultharian house and its sickroom made her feel sour and unclean. Back at camp, she might be able to take a deep breath.

One thing she knew for certain: he was far too familiar with the Queen.

Morgana’s objection rose just outside the door: “He is my patient, he is not well yet—” before the door clicked, and Bo stood away from it before it could swing inward near her.

A man. By mortal reckoning he might be ten years older than Glenn; by Tuatha accounting it was harder to measure. He was dense, muscular, wide-shouldered, built low to the ground like a crab or a badger, and with hair the shade of the darkest troughs in the Queen’s red hair, skimmed back ruthlessly into a whiplike braid to the middle of his back. From the eyes up, he bore a strong resemblance to the Queen, with the same broad brow and pointed hairline, but this, too, was no real signifier in a creature who could appear however he chose. His movements were heavy and prowling, his eyelids lowered permanently half-mast, the corners of his mouth contorted into an expression that was neither a frown nor quite a smirk, as if he had just noticed something nasty about Glenn—a stain on his mattress—that confirmed all his opinions.

“It’s a terrible day for us both when I’m playing at diplomacy,” he began amiably enough, before he spared a look for Bo. “Get out.

Bo bowed her head in concession of the order but made no move to leave. “The Lady has bid me stay.

He raised his chin, a small imperious gesture that left no doubt exactly where Fionn had learned it from. “I am still Queensman. I speak for the Lady.

That statement stopped being true exactly six days before, but to his fortune Bodairlin had not been in camp when that particular conflict occurred, and Meg was so politically dead and so wrapped up in her work that he took the calculated risk that she hadn’t thought to inform the guard. He must’ve guessed correctly, for Bo shrugged her shoulder, shot the tultharian one final, curious green-eyed glance, and took herself into the hall. He shut the door behind her and leaned his back against it, arms folded across his chest. From his comfortable distance across the room he regarded Glenn doubtfully, with a faint note of disproval.

“You may as well know that the Queen did not send me. She doesn’t know I’m here. She will soon, I’ve no doubt.” He shifted his back to a more comfortable position against the hard panels of the door. “I am here chiefly because I am sick unto death with hearing your name and would like to find an equitable solution to making it stop.”
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Glenn » Thu Jan 05, 2023 1:57 pm

As her personal glamourie receded, he was left feeling off, disoriented. He'd noticed nothing while it was happening, save for in that first moment before a moment, but now, after the fact, there was the aftertaste. His allergy, as he had called it, was no longer a factor (due to proximity, Her actions, or Catch's, very likely the latter, inadvertent, as always with Him), but it did not take any sort of genius to guess why he felt a half step behind. The logical options were few. He had no idea what thought or feeling had not been his own, of course, and he knew slamming against the wall of that notion would only lead to frustration and madness.

Such knowledge would only take him so far given his own proclivities and nature, but the decision was more or less taken out of his hand with the arrival of the newcomer. He watched carefully the exchange between the two, paying attention to how Bo moved and the tone of her voice, to the raising of the man's chin.

He remained silent through the visual inspection and the words that followed, though a slight smile crept onto his face at the cross-armed regard.

"Truly?" He rasped, more so than he had been recently with Bo even. Maybe that was an aftereffect of what had been done to him. Maybe it was something else entirely. "We both know that my name is only on lips because of your collective presence here. I am a symbol. I imagine that you're not sick unto death of me, but sick unto death at the notion that she won't leave. You flatter me." He raised his cup then, threatened to drink but instead peered at the man through it, which was quite the trick considering it was not translucent. "Anyway, given that I was just badly and sadly ill-treated by the guard placed here to look after me, a job that she's failing at woefully at present, by the way, I'm afraid that I'll have to insist upon my solicitor being present if you wish to discuss matters with me." For someone rasping, he was certainly going on. "Local custom, you understand. While I'm sure the Queen simply being somewhere means that the Court is there as well, she is not currently here, and this does remain my home. Local custom," he repeated, and then said, his voice perfectly clear, loud, firm. "Benedict, I presently require representation."
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Niabh » Fri Jan 06, 2023 1:49 am

“You’re a little too concrete to be a symbol.” His eyes raked over the tultharian tucked into his bed like a woman convalescing after labor. His expression was a bland, bored, genial mask. He hadn’t expected much but he’d expected more than a pallid, nondescript tultharian. Without meaning to, the Queen had tarted this one up as an adversary, something to be regarded with caution. He didn’t quite dismiss her estimation, but he did consider the source. In the past, the Queen had proven herself to be a poor judge of character. Witness that whole messy debacle with the hostage-taking; she’d walked into that like a lamb into a wolf’s den.

He smiled. On its surface, it was exactly the same shape and proportion of the Queen’s dazzling grin, down to the elongated dimple in the cheek. While hers radiated delight, this was sharp-edged and glittering. One could cut oneself on its corners. “By all I’ve heard, you’re an interfering, manipulative, self-destructive piece of shit. I invite you to change that assessment.”

Hoisting his back away from the door, he crossed the room and dragged to the foot of the bed the wooden stool Meg had brought in from the kitchen, neatly avoiding the gap in translation for the word ‘solicitor.’ His mind supplied the vague interpretation of ‘mediator,’ which was near enough, he supposed, to grasp the general gist. “I don’t intend on being here long enough for you to summon your solicitor, but if it makes you comfortable, I accede to the local custom.”

Like a curse coming true as soon as it was spoken, there was a sudden black explosion like thunder at the window, swirls of black smoke that solidified into one of the Niall’s messengers. His head jerked swiftly toward it with a look of intense annoyance. He knew it was inevitable that the Queen would find him out, though he had hoped for a bit longer than mere introductions.

“You called for me?” The raven settled on Glenn’s bedclothes and waddled unsteadily over the hillocks and dunes of fabric toward him. The sight of the stranger made him freeze in place as if before a predator. His neck feathers ruffled into concentric ridges. “Ah, shit,” he hissed.
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Glenn » Sun Jan 08, 2023 9:02 am

"Thank you, Benedict." That was not explanation. It was acknowledgement however, which was well and good for he was not to speak with him further. There was little need. This was fairly self-evident. It was even more so given the bird's reaction.

He did not smile. Even in his current state, Burnie could show at least physical restraint when it was necessary. Other sorts were a different matter. "Your intent, then." The words came from his mouth so easily, so naturally, as if the tide was simply rolling in.

"I've spoken with a few bards now, at least one living. We tend not to get along. I imagine they train the Niall along these lines: Does intent matter or is it only action? You can stew for a lifetime on that question alone." There was the smile, finally, a wry thing, finding an irony he'd not known he'd even been looking for. "One of our lifetimes, not yours. There are practical limits to philosophical musings and do know that I respect your very real advantage in being able to reach them while I cannot." Not bow to it. Not give way to it. But respect it. It was still not something said lightly, even as he filled this space casually enough, even as he continued to bring it back to the man before him.

... even as he did so again. "Now, you would not waste even a moment with that distinction, I imagine. When you instruct and advise, the intent doesn't matter, the action doesn't even matter. Only the consequence." And he would stop there, leaving the man to decide for himself if he was just making conversation, whether he was noting some sort of sympathetic annoyance of bards and looking for common ground, or whether he was making an outright threat on what a consequence of rash behavior might be now that his 'solicitor' had arrived. Past that one wry smile when noting the inherent philosophical advantages that his 'guest' possessed, there was no smile or frown or much of anything else save for a steady flow of words and a lack of hesitation, even given the circumstances.
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Niabh » Sun Jan 08, 2023 11:25 am

But now the man’s interest was fixed upon the raven. He looked mildly surprised, a momentary glint of interest. Now that it was speaking, he knew exactly what it was. “You’re the one she turned out.” He glanced to Glenn, then back to the raven. “So you’ve taken up with the tultharian, the both of you in exile from The Presence.” His face turned briefly toward the ceiling in mock reverence.

“Yeah, and I bet she’d be real interested to know you was here,” said the raven. “Maybe someone should tell her.”

“I can’t help notice you’re still here.” He flapped a hand in a shooing gesture toward the same window from which the raven had emerged. “Go on. Go tell her. I promise I won’t do anything irrevocable until you get back.”

The raven hunkered down, low and protective. He’d never heard of a raven attacking for any reason other than to defend its message, or of one giving its loyalty over while still wearing its bands. Or its wings. But it made no move to heed him. He nodded, as if they’d reached an accord, then addressed Glenn.

“Since we are not yet acquainted and since I have intruded upon you most rudely, I will make amends by giving you another chance to explain yourself. If you go off on another of those pompous, sidelong attempts at demoralizing me, I will break your train of thought by breaking your fingers. Your solicitor will sound the alarm, that little bog-lass will break down the door, and I’ll be hauled back to camp to face the Lady, who will scold me most viciously until I reduce her to tears, which is something she does now, which I would also like to ask you about if we can overcome this silly intellectual dick-swinging. At any rate, I’ll walk away from her without a scratch, and you’ll still have broken fingers.” As he spoke, he rolled up the cuff of one red sleeve and luxuriously scratched at a small cut on the top of his wrist, not bothering to glance up to register Glenn’s reaction, if any. “Perhaps your cruel injuries will provoke the Lady to take you back into her sympathy, though I doubt it, or perhaps at the very least she’ll feel responsible enough to offer you a formal apology, and so reintroduce the lines of communication, and you’ll feel the advantage gained was worth being mutilated. But I shall make sure you have very, very broken fingers.”

With a tidy yank, he pulled the cuff down again, then he strolled down to the end of bed, braced both hands on the footboard, and leaned himself against it. “So much for consequences. I’ve already accepted mine and you’ve just been introduced to yours. I am granting you a great deal of power in this situation: the power to prevent all that I have just told you. Now.”

The raven opened his ebony beak in a silent hiss, hunkered low, and shifted combatively from foot to foot. A lot of initiative for a raven; a lot of possessiveness for a bird wearing the Niall bands; a lot of impertinent gall. This country inverted the very natural order. It drove men and beasts off their heads. More reason that he must keep his own.

Undeterred, he awaited Glenn’s reply.
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
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Re: Yet Another Morning After

Postby Glenn » Tue Jan 10, 2023 3:17 am

Even with his limited capabilities and even still recovering from the slight disorientation that came with the guardswoman's departure, he had control enough over his visage, even if nothing else. The smile was slight then. Let the man think of it what he will. "Pointedly then. First, I have but ten fingers. If I truly wished to speak as I did before, it'd take the breaking of forty or fifty. You have not enough raw material to work with; ask the raven. Second, while I can assuredly do you little harm in my current state, none even, I can ensure that you would have to damage me far more than a few fingers in your attempt to harm me. I am under the ministrations of a truly talented healer," he nodded his head to a place past the man, past the door behind him to some vague area outside. "Why not make full use of that? It would, I imagine (as only one who understands tears can), create something of a larger consequence."

He did not let that hang out there for any length of time. There was no use appealing to honor, ego, or vanity here. He had no desire to appeal to much of anything at all. It wouldn't be the first time he suffered a broken bone to make a point. Still, this was early days with the new arrangement and there was something to say for expedience, for both of them. "So far your requests have been flailing, have been base pressure that hopes to squeeze out some useful truth. Do you think that will be worth the trouble? If you have a question, ask it. Just don't breathe through your mouth, flare your nostrils, and utter 'What are you plotting, Tulthurian?" Ask something actually worth answering and I'll do my best to answer it."
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