Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Rance » Sun Jul 13, 2014 5:01 pm

Y'know there be herbs f'that.

Under the canvas of night, the seamstress and the young rogue sought out the pack-beast huddled in the furthest corner of Darkenhold's stables. This was familiar hay; this was a familiar home. They brought dried apples with them, a treat for the black lips of the blind and battered beast. Once chewed for the toothless creature, the mealy hearts of the apples were stuffed with pinches of herbs.

Soon, Caliir slept. He did not feel the dwarven knife parting the bulging skin of his inner left flank. Fat droplets of blood ran down through his hair and gleamed like rubies against the candlelight.

"Here," Gloria Wynsee told Cat as skirts wiped the glass clean.

* * * *

Under her hand when next she awakened, Noura the wildling would find the smoothly-blown glass of an azure bottle resting just below her fingertips. The mouth was still stoppered. Old blood flecked the edges of the cork. Wrapped around the bottle was a note, written with extreme care from a hand that had relearned each and every letter.

I regret this. But these fealings do not matter. Though I must live without my hand, I ought not forse you to live without a limb you feel you require. I am human and I am imperfect. I am subject to the demons of my poor desisions. I too would like to live my life knowing I am loved. A part of me which pitys herself once believed that for those three times she saved you from death -- from the lake, from the wolf, from your cave -- that she might one day hear a thank you. This is a sentiment I wished for not due to the nature of its gratitude, but that the eyes behind that voice might say to me I love you as well Gloria.

But I realize my mathy-matics are off; I have analyzed this formula through the wrong lens.

In every circumstance, you wished for death. Your resentment for me grows each time I deny you that freedom.

I apologise now as I have apologised a thousand times, for I cannot help but resent a girl who chooses not to live.

So here is your finest friend. She is not human. She will not let you down. She will not function at the whims of an intemperate collection of feelings. She will make you whole again. She will lure you with whatever comforts you desire. But she will not care for you enough to turn herself into a fool.

A child will not bring me new happiness. It will not grant me fresh insight. It will not make me any less stupid. But it will not make me less human. And should I die when this child comes to be born, as many women do, I wish to die human: fallible, frightened, and forgotten.
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Guppy » Fri Jul 25, 2014 3:25 pm

The bottle's contents tasted like acid, sliding down her throat. It tasted sharp, even if there was nothing visible - nothing substantial - held in the amber depths. The cold familiarity of the dragon's soul seeped into her, suffused her being. Her eyes closed in bliss and when they flickered open, they were black. A ghost of a smile darted across sweet features and a hand reached down to rest over the jagged wound torn into her side.

Tongue ran over her teeth and then she smiled to feel the skin healing unnaturally. The dead skin swelled as blood vessels raced to bring it nutrients and the once-flourishing bacteria present simply withered in its wake. It had missed the pulse of a heartbeat in Its ears.

The floor was cold against It's feet as she swung her legs over the bedside. Given the chill emanating from the being, it was unlikely that she noticed at all. Covers were thrown back and she slipped from her sickbed. The creature paced down the hallway with a hand outstretched to run fingertips along the walls. Suddenly, she paused and took a step back to fix her black gaze on the office door that had earned her attention.

Eyes narrowed briefly, before a sly smile darted to her features. Her hand gathered into a fist and two knuckles rapped smartly on the door to the room. A quill scraped over paper softly behind the silent door.

It remembered the scent and it had been far too long since she had toyed with someone.
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Rance » Fri Jul 25, 2014 3:50 pm

This time of night, the Rememdium Edificium was often quiet, but never lonely. Even through the thin walls of his miniature apartment, he could all too often hear moans and complaints of pain, the shuffling of legs thrashing beneath rough coverlets, the demands for herbs, the wet, echoing ratcheting coughs of those who, by virtue of their phlegm and congestion, struggled to find rest.

A knock on the door of an office. His office.

Jule had still not yet grown familiar to his newest station.

Inside, there was a quick shuffle of papers, the creak of a chair chattering against floorboards. "A moment, please," came the young man's voice, bidding patience.

The door creaked open, its edge grinding against a warped floorboard twisted by age. Lofted in his hand was a pewter candle-holder, the sing shard of fire casting deceiving streaks of orange light across his face. His dark hair was a scattered mess, run through far too many times with his fingers, and his cheeks and chin were dirtied with the beginnings of a beard. He looked down at her, lips parted in curiosity as he opened the door all the way to admit her. "Sera Noura," he greeted. Behind him, the cramped walls of his small office were lined with cluttered shelves.

The young man saw the tricks that shadows played in her eyes, but tricks were all he believed them to be. He lifted the candle. Had her doses been wrong? Had she shaken the poppy?

"It's neither wise nor prudent to be out of bed this late," he whispered.
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Guppy » Fri Jul 25, 2014 4:09 pm

The girl upon his doorstep shot him a grateful smile and attempted to slip past him into his office. Once inside, though, the girl was no longer tentative. Instead, she fairly sashayed over towards his seat to drop herself there. Feet were kicked up onto the papers he had been painstakingly going over. The candle fell across her eyes and the shadow gathered there again.

"Yes, well. I've never been one for prudent. Wisdom is another story entirely. How wise was it not to burn her body, do you think?," the creature wearing Noura's skin asked of him. The smile was unmistakeable. Niall had risen wearing that exact smile.

There was a quick flash of teeth and she glanced at the ceiling, considering the slightly-warped area in the corner from the last leak. "You were so helpful last time, I can't imagine that you would mind giving me the news of what has transpired in my absence?," the creature questioned, with a graceful loft a brow. This was not the sweet, solemn girl he had visited to examine. This was the demon that had undoubtedly plagued his nightmares since he had seen a corpse rise.

"The whelp's memories can tell me much, but what of the army at our borders? What do they want?," she asked, her voice stern and all business. "And who do they follow? This Egris woman?" And here her voice went more curious. She thought the Kestrel might be a woman after her own heart. A rival for power, nonetheless.
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Rance » Fri Jul 25, 2014 4:52 pm

She strode in without concern for pain, though he presumed the body must still be feverish, pale, resplendent with the raking, poisonous touch of infection. He turned to press himself against the door and close it behind him. His hand was mounted flat against the frame of the portal as he looked upon her, incredulous and wondering, from behind the leaning candle.

She did not seem like the same girl.

"Whose body?" he asked. "What bodies we're given, we make a point of burning. It is policy, a necessary but unfortunate task that must be performed."

That voice. Jule knew the tones that rolled out of her, the sing-song dance of crests and troughs that sought to turn a girl's words into something sultry and seductive. His lower lip curled up, teeth brushing the bristling cleft of his lip. He knew that voice, but found it impossible to place, to identify...

You were so helpful last time...

Perhaps the hemlock-milk had interacted poorly with her; perhaps the infection was voicing its displeasure at the treatment -- but like this? He glanced at the stacks of parchment and paper balanced on the desk beneath her heels. Beside them, a squat candle floated in a fist-sized globe of glass, its heat rising up to warm a copper cone wherein bubbled a sweet-smelling oil. Smoke curled up in snakes and wisps from the liquid's surface.

"I know but that they are the Crown's men, delivered here at the King's behest. I know little beyond that they wear his colors, and that his niece leads but one of their contingents. You are unwell," Jule said, tilting his chin. "Allow me to escort you back to your bed. You are unwell. This is a conversation better suited for the morning, after the tinctures fade."
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Guppy » Fri Jul 25, 2014 11:08 pm

He pressed the door closed and she smiled. "Alone at last," she purred, brows waggling over eyes flush with shadow. His expression was incredulous as he peered at her and she wriggled a little to get more comfortable in her chosen seat. Her audacity was jarring, especially given that Noura barely spared him a glance as he and the healers worked to save her life. The girl sometimes called for the boy, Son, in her sleep and it was likely with him that her heart resided.

But now, this flirtation that was thrown carelessly at him...

When he told her, dutifully, of the policy in place, a bubble of laughter sounded from the creature that had boldly taken over his chair and his desk. "Except when a seamstress asks otherwise, I suppose?," she needled. Her lips twisted into a pout. "I am a little hurt that you don't recognize me, but I suppose that we did not have much time to talk last time." Her arms lifted, gesturing grandly to herself. "This is the skin I wear most often. The whelp and I have been friends for quite some time."

The chair scrapped as she dropped her feet to the floor and rose. Her hands took hold of the pristine white of the hospital gown's hem and lifted it to reveal a wound that knitted together obediently. The skin, instead of hues of blacks and greens, was pink and viable. The tissue was healthy and that was impossible. Should his gaze return to the creature's, it was amusement that greeted him. "Still, your worries are charming enough."

She strode towards him, almost gliding over the floor as she circled the desk. Should he not back away, her slim frame would seek to come within scant distance. Not quite touching him, though her clothing would brush against him, no doubt. The skirts of her Rememdium-issued gown nudging at his calf. "Why do they linger? Has our poor widowed Governor finally left us in the hands of better men?," she asked, head tilting.
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Rance » Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:16 am

Except when a seamstress asks...

His jaw became stone. His nostrils widened like pits, flared. "Had I known that the girl sought to preserve the hunter's body for a matter of such dark work, I would have refused."

This body is dead. This body must be burned, he'd once told himself.

If breath could run, his was sprinting. His lips parted behind the growing wisps of his beard as she exposed the skin where, underneath, the infection had once mottled the flesh. The sleek curve of her belly-side greeted him with new health, its pink smoothness unnatural. Then, she stood, stalking forward upon him until the hem of her threadbare infirmary-gown tickled across the top of his boots. She was inches away, but it seemed no more than a hair's distance from him, her body bending in ways he'd not imagined the girl would have wanted.

Her collarbone was visible. The curve of her breasts. There was excitement written in the tenuous lines of bones and muscles and the contours of her neck. She was a clean, beautiful, suddenly healthy young woman, with all her shapes and secrets...

He closed his eyes.

"The Governor's state is his own to explain, Sera Noura. Far be it from me to make assumptions regarding his capability. Had I a woman of my own--" You could have a woman of your own; she's whole, she's able, she's here in front of you, separated by but a slip of clothing. "Had I to suffer the mental degradation and subsequent death of a woman I'd come to love, I'd scarcely manage myself with the grace he's exhibited. He is our Governor, a subject of the King and of the Faith as we all are.

"But I parlay with no creatures I cannot deign to trust. Be seated, Sera Noura, and respect my request for distance. I do not take you for a teahouse girl, nor will I use you as one."
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Guppy » Sat Jul 26, 2014 11:26 am

His terse use of her name made her grin, those unnaturally blackened eyes gleaming as they regarded him with amusement. "Sera Noura," she parroted, in exaggerated tone, "is absent I think you'll find. She sleeps, unaware that her body walks without her aid." Her glee was unmistakeable. "My name is unknown, though others have given me names of their own design before. Feel free, if you've mind to. I have a feeling that I will be seeing you again, love," she mused, lifting a hand to tap his nose with her index finger.

The touch, however brief, was meant to alarm him. The pet name was one she'd given him in Niall's body. He was restraining himself, though she had not completely gleaned his motivations. The creature batted him, this way and that, trying to push him. Nudge him into acting on his, she assumed, anger.

Her laugh, as he attempted to insult her, was bright and girlish. A startled noise of joy. It was, after all, Noura's voice that the creature used. The tone was just altered, its mannerisms completely foreign. "Who said anything about using me at all, boy? Careful, now - your inner desires are showing," she sing-songed before attempting to dance away so that she might deposit her backside in his chair again.

"What other news is there, then?," she asked, ignoring his apparent attempts to dissuade her from interacting with him. She wouldn't take no for an answer. "I've not been about since Niall returned with me trapped in some bottle." She sneered at that.
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Rance » Sat Jul 26, 2014 11:52 am

"Beings without names are scarcely beings at all, though you'll not put me in your employ even enough for me to fabricate one."

She tapped his nose and he flinched back as though the point of her finger was too frigid to endure.

...your inner desires are showing.

When she retreated to his seat, the tension visibly uncoiled from his frame. His posture was rigid, practiced, and the sleeves of his pale robes dangled down across his slender hands, hiding the fists that tightened beneath. A flick of his chin threw matted hair away from his eyes. He approached the desk with new resolve and began to carefully order the papers she had been so careless to disorganize with the strike of her heels. One page was placed atop another. An errant sliver of parchment was turned over, examined, and slid amid its brothers and sisters.

"You assume," he said, after taking up a tiny wooden stick to stir at the oil in the copper plate, "that I've some compulsion based solely on your presence to provide you with insights that you could just as easily gather in the streets. Either you had a specific reason to seek me out, or you're concerned about stalking the streets in the guise of a child.

"The Constabulary -- and perhaps some of the Crown's men -- would come with haste at a disturbance in the Rememdium Edificium. I call out a cry for aid, and word carries swiftly. Even if you were not present when they arrived, they'd discover you in due time. Kill me," he alternated, knocking the stirrer against the candle-side, "and they find my body come morning, with surely enough evidence in some manner or another to implicate you, or at the very least, the innocent woman you inhabit."

The logic, in this case, was archetypal: she had a want, and that she'd not yet struck meant she could not, or that some motive harnessed her desire to.

"What could you offer me," Jule Mitchell asked, "that I should answer your inquiries?"
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Guppy » Sat Jul 26, 2014 1:09 pm

"I have a name, you just aren't of enough import to discover it," she corrected, as sharp as the smile she leveled upon him.

The abrupt flinch made that low, sultry chuckle sound again. Still, she obeyed him enough to drop into the seat he had offered.

Her eyes followed him as he paced towards her, to his desk. His hands busied themselves with the papers she had disrupted, but she thought that she might have seen a small tremble.

Her hand stole out to attempt to press against his forearm. She gazed up at him, eyes widened with a mocking rendition of concern. "Oh yes, you are absolutely right. I fear for my very life. The denizens of Myrken are certainly astute enough to pay mind to the girl among them that houses a demon," she rolled her eyes. "My dear, if they have not spared a thought to the girl in the length of time I have lived among them, they will certainly not now," she drawled.

Her eyes danced as she tilted her head back to let him fill the whole of her vision. "Your plan is brave, but foolish. I doubt that you have the allies I've gathered. Besides, there is no need for threats here, boy. I've not come to kill you, how very obvious that would be." Her nose scrunched with distaste. "Besides, it would be a wasted opportunity." Though, she did not bother to give him any details.

Her hand did not bother to stray from his arm, nor the lazy circles she attempted to trace upon the skin there. Should he attempt to pull away, her grasp would tighten until it was painful. "Your threats are misplaced and unwarranted. We are old friends, are we not?," her voice held warning.

His question of a bargain made her laugh aloud. "I want nothing from you, so you'll have nothing in return. You turned so pale when last we met, I merely wanted some entertainment," she explained, before pushing his chair back from his desk and making to rise.

"Don't worry, dear. I'll not forget to check in on you," she assured, winking as she moved towards the door.
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Rance » Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:06 pm

"I make no friendships with demons," he responded, jerking his arm away, a reaction birthed not out of fear, but out of a certain disgust for her nearness. "Bargains, alliances, perhaps even compacts, I would consider, but nothing so convivial as friendship. Regardless of what allies you may believe you have -- with motives surely as fragile as your own -- a Crown battalion camps a half-a-league's distance from here.

"However confident you may be, a single demon in a pilfered body would fall in seconds beneath a thousand swords. Victories in war are only rarely comprised of strategy. They are all too often matters of mathematics: a thousand men can cut down five-hundred; a thousand men can just as easily dispose of one. It takes no brilliant mind to come to this conclusion, just the mind of a curious boy with enough time on his hands to flip through the history books."

I merely wanted some entertainment.

She laughed; she found some kind of humor in his reactions. As she strode to the door, he stood behind her, a ghost in white robes with knees and wrists stained red and brown from the blood of today, from the blood of days past.

"There is a place in this infirmary for Sera Noura," he said, "within reason. But only Noura. And yet I can only too greatly extend my kindness toward an innocent girl whose shadow poses a threat to my healers, my herbalists, and my patients. Divest her of the care her body still requires, and I will ensure that she never finds a bed here again, no matter her need. I would sooner let a single girl perish than expose the ill and wounded to a creature capable of leaping between bodies and corpses.

"I am a man of contracts, not of charity."
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Guppy » Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:35 pm

"Oh, and do you make any friendships at all? This seems far more comfortable than a simple office should be. Burning the wick at both ends, are we?," she remarked, sparing a glance at the room in which they stood together. "You spend each and every night here, do you not? Toiling away in solitude. I wonder how you will manage to capture yourself a woman so that you, too, may suffer mental degradation," she drawled, her stare pointed.

Another frustrated huff as he threatened her with exposure. "You act as if they will believe you. It would be your word against my own, would it not? You, the Rememdium healer who has always been seen as a little bit strange. Me, the wide-eyed, pretty little thing that you trapped inside your office." She blinked and her doe-eyes cleared of black sludge, though her pupils strained and shivered with restraint. They filled with tears and her lower lip trembled. "The girl with the torn hospital gown," she rumbled, like an animal's growl of warning, lifting a hand to tear free the stitches of her sleeve. One creamy shoulder was abruptly exposed.

She winked, the tears shimmering down her cheeks, as the black washed over her orbs again. "I pray that you not attempt to play with fire." She rose and fairly skipped towards the door to his office.

He followed behind her, a ghost on her heels, and she spun to face him. She stood upon her tiptoes in an attempt to brush her lips across the stumble on his chin.

"Oh, you say the most delightful things. Worry not, I have no interest for your patients, nor healers."

Then, the door was jerked ajar and she made to take her leave of his office and the Rememdium entirely.
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Rance » Sat Jul 26, 2014 5:47 pm

Burning the wick at both ends, are we?

The vestiges of fear sparking inside of him were smothered.

I wonder how you will manage to capture yourself a woman...

His spine straightened.

...the Rememdium healer who has always been seen as a little bit strange.

She summoned an actress' tears. He glanced at his papers, at all of his papers. Her talon-like digits curled around her sleeve, dug into the stitches, and wrenched. Each seam snagged, tore, and popped. She left herself looking abused and haggard, the hillock of her shoulder and the crease between upper arm and breast gleaming like polished alabaster in the candle's glow.

Lips brushed against the crest of his beard. This time he did not flinch, did not recede; he stared down at her, his breath stilled, his body an angle of stone.

"Fingers rough enough to tear clothes without consent," he said to the door as she left, "would leave bruises."

* * * *

The next day, a letter found the Meetinghouse for a specific audience, its lips closed by a glob of wax.

Councilor Berdini,

I have left instruction with my fellow practitioners at the Rememdium Edificium to decline the courtesy of future services to one of our regular patients. While the gracious charity of the King and his niece has allowed us both pecuniary and supplemental resources to provide medical care to all citizens of Myrkentown as necessary, it is in the best interests of our attendants, volunteers, and beneficiaries -- loyal subjects of the Crown, all -- that I deny her.

I recognize that this stipulation may not agree with our edicts and beliefs as caregivers in such a challenged location; as such, I hope you will defer to my judgment in the matter given the potential danger this patient poses to those who truly require our aid, as well as to those who give it.

Should this decision ever be challenged by the patient in question, you will understand best why I direct this letter to you.

Yours in health of mind, body, and spirit,

Jule Mitchell
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Re: Foul-Tasting Tinctures

Postby Dulcie » Wed Aug 13, 2014 12:59 pm

A letter was sent in reply shortly by messenger

My Dear Healer,

I have received your letter and find it to be lacking in detail. You assure me that I would know this person that you determine should not receive aide and yet with a single letter I have little idea of whom you speak.

In addition, I believe that I am hardly the final say in such a matter. My authority even over the Arts appears to be called into question. Perhaps you would care to share this information at the next Council meeting?

I do hope we can clarify this matter.

Sincerely,

Stefan Berdini, Councilor of the Arts


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