Waiting Room Whispers

Re: Waiting Room Whispers

Postby Cherny » Sat May 25, 2013 3:06 pm

"Some, some people have to do harms or, or worse things happen. It's not always a, a choice." Not entirely true, but. Sometimes the other option is so terrible, so unconscionable that there might as well not be an option at all.

It's a difficult argument to have, for all that it's conducted in quiet voices, respectful of the Rememdium's other occupants who've no wish nor need to hear it. He leans further into her side, accepting that sisterly hug even as he grins and colours a little at her praise, her faith in him, and her words about his ma.

His question and her explanation bring further tension to their talk, however, and he listens closely, thin fingers seeking her hand to hold in quiet reassurance, solidarity. She understands, he realises, she knows what he means by or worse things happen. Her grip upon his shoulder is fierce, and he winces and shifts under her hand to relieve that pressure, though he stops short of pushing her away. She will realise, she will stop, it will be fine.

A glance for her gloved hand, with its hidden transition from dark skin to gleaming silver. A glance to his own hands, spidery by comparison, bearing different callouses from different work. He still has both of his, for all that he's nearly perpetrated a similarly desperate act. Nearly. Perhaps that's the difference. "You, you had to. If he, if he threatend you he can't have, have been all that holy." No matter what they said. The boy knows the difference between good and bad, and holy is just a special sort of good. A squeeze for her hand - whatever she's done before, it doesn't matter to him.

The change of topic is welcome, however, and he nods readily at her request. "They, the parents - they come down for, for food. The babies'll be, be flying soon, I reckon, too. I, I'm excited for it." Grinning again, weightier matters gladly dropped for now.
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Re: Waiting Room Whispers

Postby Rance » Sat May 25, 2013 4:03 pm

Only when her fingers began to ache and the knuckles smarted from their pressure did she realize how firmly she was holding him. He touched her other hand, squeezed it. What artisan had constructed such an unnatural thing, what work of more than human construct had fabricated it? He never asked; he had never sought to know, perhaps less from his own curiosity and more for her comfort. But he--

branches had scrabbled against the windows and whispered to him while he lay nestled in the throes of a Blackmilk cocoon--

it encouraged him to tell her yes, share the burden, whistling songs of wind, smear the pain like refracted light from a Glass Sun--


--had only ever looked at her hands as things that knew seams. No shame. No difference.

Jernoah was a glass spike in the base of her brain; it teased her with its old ways and dangled the shackles of the Nameless against her wrists. You bear the shame; you share the burden, but to Cherny she was sister and seamstress and nothing more, nothing less. He was a reason to smile.

"I want to watch them fly," she said, though she sometimes thought she felt the blood-slick handle of a phantom trowel weighing against her palm. She flexed the digits, made a fist, unraveled it, and clenched it again. Nothing there. "Maybe you could draw them in your best-yeary. Document their growth from little things to great, proud birds, from tiny worm-hunters to wide-winged--"

Hawks.

The conversation of death had fallen out of reach. It was a shadow on their heels, a disagreement whose complexity was so tangled with made them unalike that it threatened forcing her to wonder if they'd ever thought the same at all. But those were foolish, fleeting thoughts. Doubts roiling below the surface. And in their wake:

"He came to the schoolhouse," she blurted, the admission like a festering polyp on her tongue. "I was having my mathematics with Menna Olwak. He said things. He did. The devil. His knife was close enough that -- that I thought I could--" a flickering few moments of memory paused her, caused her heartbeat to quicken and her eyes to latch onto his, looking for what was rational, true, sure.

"I could hear the air singing against its blade, but his words were more dangerous."

She ground her palm against a trouser-knee and scrubbed flakes of dried blood from beneath her bulbous nose.

"How does he know my name," she asked. "How would he know it, Cherny?"
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Re: Waiting Room Whispers

Postby Cherny » Sun May 26, 2013 1:31 am

"I, I'll do that." Put them in his best-yeary, alongside scrawlings of unicorns and chimerae and stranger things yet. He could draw them, and it'd be easy - charcoal-black feathers, as if scratching their glossy plumage directly onto the page. Other birds, smaller birds are already fledging, sulking wide-mouthed in bushes and shrubs and undergrowth, still shouting their demands to harried parents and resenting the world that exists outside their cosy down-lined nurseries.

His fingertips creep as she opens and closes her hand, a light touch to her palm that withdraws before needle-hardened fingers can tighten upon it, making a game of it. Then the conversation turns back upon itself, twists around to a place they've been before but approached from another direction.

She'd seen the Black Man again, or he'd found her, and the boy's thin shoulders tense at the thought, dark brows lowering in outrage at such an intrusion, such a trespass. The schoolroom was a near-sacred place to him, a room for learning his letters, for filling his head with useful, precious things. He might expect to see the man at the tavern, lodestone as it was for all sorts of strange and awful things, but the school? No. Unconscionable. She looks to him for reassurance and the gaze that meets hers is fierce, indignant that the Black Man might have dared - dared to vex his sister, in his schoolroom.

"He's a, a devil. They know things and, and creep and spy." Watching good-hearted mortals for a flaw, a moment of weakness in which infernal hooks might be latched into an otherwise pure soul. Vigilance was a word he heard often at chapel, vigilance against wicked thoughts and the deceiver's lies.

"What did he, did he say?"
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Re: Waiting Room Whispers

Postby Rance » Sun May 26, 2013 2:05 am

A game. Move quickly and she might be able to grasp his finger -- it was a welcome distraction, but while her motor skills were precise and practiced with needle and thread, and near-brutish when it came to making bruises on cheeks, she was not a quick young woman, or a very coordinated one outside the work of seams. She unfurled her fingers so far that the skin stretched, inviting him to try again.

"He said, years of inevitability, Gloria Wynsee," affecting her trilling accent with a low-register imitation of Giuseppe's voice, as if making humor of it might rid her shoulders of the subtle quiver. "Years of surprises. Ambition and -- and meddling.

"I do not want to be inevitable. I do not want to be surprising. I wish to be nothing at all like what he says." An open palm, teasing. She awaited his finger as if her hand were a carnivorous plant.

"I threw a slate at him. I did not want Menna Olwak to get hurt."

Open. Snap. Trying to catch his finger. She imagined him with his best-yeary, back against a shading tree, the scraping hiss of charcoal marking bird-lines on the page. It was a calming image; she rooted herself in it, occasionally praising him, that is a wonderful bird. And maybe they were older in that imaginary place, and it was not the kind of world that throbbed with whispering shadows or that bred men with knives and prophetic words.

"I do not want to be like milk. I am not going to go sour, am I?"
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Re: Waiting Room Whispers

Postby Cherny » Sun May 26, 2013 1:01 pm

It's an amusing game, one which has an impish smile twitching his mouth even as they speak of baleful things, of the Black Man's predictions. Sometimes he dabs at her palm, feints that draw back well before he might risk having his fingers trapped; Sometimes he approaches slowly, drifting ever nearer to contact, nerves humming with readiness to flinch sharply back; sometimes he teases, touches to her fingertips or wrist or the heel of her hand, anywhere but the palm. But he listens, glancing up to her face when his fingers are safely clear of being grabbed.

After a time he frowns, a look familiar from times when someone has said something he finds plainly nonsensical.

"It, it can't be inevitable and surprising. Inevitable means it, it couldn't be any other way." Not a word he's accustomed to use, the unfamiliar syllables rattling awkwardly off his teeth. Hesitant also in case the contradiction lies in his own misunderstanding of the word. "You, you can't escape it. If you let go of, of something it'll fall. That's inevitable. You can, you can see it coming and say oh yes, obviously." Drawling those words as if almost bored at the predictability of it, as if only a dunce would expect something other than the inevitable.

"Surprises are the, are the opposite of that. They can be anything. You, you can't see them coming and, and they're what you don't expect." A flinch and croak of startled laughter as her fingers come within a hair's breadth of snaring his own, grinning at his own jumpiness and then, a moment later, at how well it illustrates his point. "If you, if you caught me, that'd be a surprise." Because he's too quick, ha; a gloating waggle of fingers still free and unrestrained.

"You should've hit him with a, with a chair. And Sera Olwak's desk after that, it's big and, and solid." A pleasing image, his sister smashing furniture over the Black Man's head to send him reeling, clasping his battered skull amid showers of splintered wood. Better than the wet impact of an axe-blade cleaving flesh, better by far.

"I think he, he tells lies. Frightening lies so you, so you don't know what to do any more." Sowing fear and worry and anguish, predicting awful futures and watching his victims tie themselves in knots to evade them, second-guessing their every action forever after.

"There's a, a boy at the school, pulls legs off things. Spiders and, and stuff. He's an ass, and a bad 'un." A terrible assessment indeed, his tone and scowl make it clear what he thinks of such antics. "There's people who, who just like seeing things hurt." The Black Man, the boy at school, the fire-dream ghost. All of them, prodding and tugging and wounding so they might see their victims squirm.

Sour milk, however is a pothole in the path of his thoughts; he favours the seamstress with a thin-lipped inspection for a time, expression stern and critical as he weighs her up with dark eyes. Eventually with great solemnity he pronounces his verdict:

"You, you might turn into an alright cheese, I suppose."
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Re: Waiting Room Whispers

Postby Rance » Sun May 26, 2013 7:15 pm

A human's nature not be inevitable and surprising -- a point of logic she had not considered. As their hands played a litany of back-and-forth challenges, they skirted talk of fears, concerns for the future, matters of turning out right or going entirely wrong.

"I should not have even thrown the slate," she said. "Where I am from, you -- you have got to do what you must to make sure the important fellows stay alive. If he had chosen to slice me, a slate would have done nothing. I -- I would rather it have been me than Menna Olwak." But to discredit any thoughts of courage or noble intent, she quickly added, "I wanted to run. I -- we tried to run. He blocked the door."

She could have had more emotion. She could have cried to speak it at all, but there was this game for their fingers and hands to console her. She always lost, because she was not going to be surprising. She would not allow herself to be that way. Even when she thought she could snare his finger in her palm, she hesitated, missed on purpose. Just so she would not be what the Black Man had promised.

"I wanted him to die," she admitted, watching his knuckles. "If I had had my trowel, maybe I would have given it to his guts over and over again if I had the chance. So he'd not toss knives to children anymore or taint the schoolhouse with his shadow." Such words from the mouth of a girl whose legs sometimes did not work at the sight of a simple knife.

"Does that make me one of those people," she asked, "who likes to see things hurt?"

By his synthesis, she would be a good cheese, perhaps the kind covered in wax and as round as the wheel of a wagon. Evitable. Unsuprising.

She took in a breath, and only when she thought his guard was down did she make a true, real lunge for his finger. And if she caught it she would hold his hand, squeeze it, refuse to let it be free only for as long as she said: "We are not going to be what that devil says. We are going to help each other. Can you promise me that, Cherny. Can you?"
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Re: Waiting Room Whispers

Postby Cherny » Mon May 27, 2013 11:17 am

"You should've. And any, anything else nearby." Anything that'd drive the man away, put a dent in his gaunt features. "As much as, as you needed to. His fault for, for making it so you couldn't just run." Because when you can't run you're left with no choice, and a fight becomes necessary. Only when all other options are removed does it become inevitable.

His touch grows more daring, resting in her palm for moments at a stretch but flinching back each time he detects some movement from her stouter fingers - or suspects it. He shakes his head at her first question, though, almost dismissive.

"You, you'd not like to do it. You'd not do it for, for fun. Only because it, because someone needed to, to stop him." He's certain on that point, that she'd take no pleasure in the act. Satisfaction, maybe, but only in the result. "You, you're not meant to wish people dead. But if they, if they make it so you have to - to do it, to stop them, that's... that's probably allowed." Probably. He's fumbling in the dark, reaching for something that feels like it makes sense, like it doesn't contradict what he feels to be right.

"If it's to, to save someone else. And you can, you can be glad they're gone, too, I think. Just not, not laughing or dancing? Maybe." That seems fair, that seems reasonable - because who wouldn't be glad that a terrible threat was lifted, that a danger had been ended?

He might have added more, except her hand snaps closed upon his finger, and the suddenness of it has him jumping and yelping loudly in surprise; his free hand presses over his mouth to stifle helpless laughter for fear of disturbing others nearby, and it takes a moment for him to hear her words, to listen properly; when he understands, though, he nods firmly, doing his unsuccessful best to school his features to solemnity as he agrees to her oath.

"I, I promise. We, we'll show him."
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Re: Waiting Room Whispers

Postby Rance » Mon May 27, 2013 3:11 pm

"I would not laugh or dance. If -- if I must do such a thing, I would pray," she reasoned, holding tight to his hand -- the grip was not violent, but it was merciless in its need for the boy, as if the girl had no other reliance safe for his hand. His hand in that moment. His games, his cheer, his logic, his gravity, him.

"I would pray and hope that the choice was right."

He laughed, though, for the fun that they had. She could not help but smile, and while her teeth were like those of a crone's, she was not afraid for him to see them. They would never be pretty things, or white like little polished sea-pearls; they would always be hard, sun-burnt stones.

She unfurled her fingers from his and thrust out the wrist. Run through the underside of her sweater-sleeve were several of the metallic needles that Cherny had given her, and with appropriate care, she withdrew one between the pinch of hard-skinned digits. She held its sharpness up between them, watching him over its tip.

"A devil cannot make us be who we are not. His futures are only as sure as we allow them to be, Cherny."

Then, she uncurled the tip of an index finger, wielded the edge, and with a flick drove the shining point down into her flesh. She never hissed, flinched, or even squirmed. A lone bubble of ruby-colored liquid glimmered from the invisible hole in her skin. The girl held it up so he could see. It never fell, never slid down her finger. It was stationary, awaiting a purpose.

"You," she said, wiping the needle off on her trousers and turning it to him. "It is like a spitting handshake, but it is more special. It means I will always do what is right by you. It means that even though we were born from different parents, we are exactly the same."

In a Dream--

She shed his blood. She drove a needle-fine knife into his throat, right beneath the hinge of his jaw, listened for the crack and waited to watch the light seep out of his glass-covered eyes.

Now, the sliver of near-harmless steel was offered to him. It was no act of the occult, no dark ritual or harmful portent.

It was what siblings should do.
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Re: Waiting Room Whispers

Postby Cherny » Wed May 29, 2013 5:55 am

He reciprocates her grip with his own fingers, a bony tightness that offers an anchor, a hold on which one might rely.

"Devils tell lies. Whatever they, they have to say so people'll do wrong." So he's learned in chapel, from the preacher's frequent warnings to beware temptation, to shun the desire to do harm to others. Best to ignore them entirely.

The seamstress plucks one of the steel needles from the worn fabric of her sweater, and he smiles to see that she still has them, keeps them ready as if she might leap to mend a torn seam or frayed hem at any moment. He can't help but wince on her behalf as she pricks a bead of blood from her fingertip, and there's a clear hesitation as she offers him the needle in turn. Only until she explains the reason, the meaning behind it, at which point he accepts it carefully. Shedding blood is a weighty thing, something not to be done lightly - whether one's own, or someone else's. Using it to seal a promise makes it especially serious, makes it binding.

A glance for her raised fingertip, and he straightens his own to mirror it; she's lectured him on not fearing the needle, on not fearing its bite, and yet there's still a clinging reluctance in his gaze at the prospect of wounding himself - however slightly. So, a deep breath to steady his hand, and a last glance for the seamstress, his sister; trust in his gaze, a desire to make her proud, and a half-smile that acknowledges his own silliness in putting off the moment in which the point will pierce his flesh.

The moment itself is brief - he looks back to his fingertip, and his other hand darts in and away again, quick as that, with only a flinch of the skin beneath his eye to mark its passing. A little crimson bead grows upon the pad of his finger, and there's a touch of relief in his eyes as he looks back to Gloria to see what must be done next.

"I'll, I will always do right by you." The words murmured quietly, solemnly.
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Ironies

Postby Rance » Wed May 29, 2013 7:12 am

The seamstress, afraid of knives, wishing nothing to do with them, yet she had such a confidence and comfort with needles; Cherny, while he'd a boyish fascination with knives, could scarcely find it within himself to pierce his skin with the tip of such a tiny tool.

Here they were, speaking of pain in the sacred names of Right and Wrong, discussing its very nature in ways that only half-adults could. Meanwhile, they used a needle to cause it, if minutely, in themselves.

They did this in the Rememdium, waiting for a busted nose to be set. In a place of healing and convalescence, they wounded one another and strengthened the little scars with promises.

She cradled the back of his offered finger and touched hers to it. Their beads of blood were pressed into red blossoms on the tips of their fingers. There was no magic behind it, no predetermined ritual or dark compact; it was sharing blood, as if this would rewrite the past and make them born of the same womb. They never would be, of course -- but it did not render the pact less important.

"We will stay away from devils," she said, smiling, looking down to the smear of blood staining her fingertip. "And we will always do right by each other." A confirmation.

Some time later, one of the white-gowned wellsmiths called them both back to one of the smaller rooms. The attendant showed them a rather exhaustive series of hand-drawn pictures, studies of the nose and its inner-workings, discussion of how one might press the right form of pressure to it to wrench it back into place. It is not a comfortable procedure, the wellsmith told both of them, but it was not until the task was done that she believed it: the girl had shrieked in testament to the pain of her broken nose being righted, and after the exchange of a few shillings -- the Rememdium was not an establishment that could be funded purely off goodness, for human misfortune was a far more lucrative business -- they were back outside, and she was busy mopping the wetness out of her eyes.

"You did not tell me it -- it would be so painful," she chided with a lopsided smile, and sought to walk him home.
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