Sheep, Wolves, and Dogs

Re: Sheep, Wolves, and Dogs

Postby Rance » Sat Oct 18, 2014 3:00 am

She fled.

Under the influence of the sedative, distances stretched into impossible lengths. The proportions and shapes of the corridor twisted and bent unnaturally; colors bled together as one crude, muddy smear; proportion ceased to exist. The brain was as heavy as a sack filled with grain and dirt, amplifying and echoing the heartbeat between the ears. Jule Mitchell rose and watched from behind as Noura's feet dragged across the floorboards. History had been ground by a thousand bootheels into the oak: spatters and stains of blood and fluid had formed a natural tattoo in the woodgrain.

"Impulse," he said, "is reserved for savages and addled men. No, Noura. Consider this the most mature and practiced expression of self-control I can possibly muster."

In the rooms she passed, patients slept, some restless and wheezing, others in repose like children beneath veils of carefully-prepared reductions and mixtures. As the dance of light and shadow in the overlit anteroom came into view, a white-glad figure turned to notice them--

The wildling. And behind her, Jule Mitchell.

He raised his hand to calm the onlooker, as if to say, Stay where you are.

"You could barely trust your feet to take you fifty paces beyond the stoop, Noura. Out there, I cannot guarantee your safety; likewise, I cannot guarantee that should you ever return here, whether by choice or under the influence of your other, I would not apply more dubious methods to ensure the well-being of my patients. But this night, I offer you a bed and the solace of peaceful rest.

"And in the morning, an opportunity for us to confer on ways to grant you dominion over that mistress in your mind."
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Re: Sheep, Wolves, and Dogs

Postby Guppy » Sun Oct 19, 2014 2:33 am

Her eyelids felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds. She struggled to keep them open and every blink was longer, slower. The edges of her eyes pinched as she squinted at the colors smeared across the landscape of the hallway. Finding that unsuccessful, she widened them instead.

His voice had valleys and a change in pitch that she suspected was not there.

The wall seemed a poor supportive structure as she stumbled towards the figure in white. Her only beacon of hope against the mad doctor following her at an unhurried pace.

"Please --," she whimpered, as she reached up to grasp weakly at the robes. "Tell Murrukh." The half-orc was the only law she knew. While he did not thoroughly enjoy her company, she knew his conscience was far more bothersome than he pretended.

She stumbled back, her fingers empty of white cloth, and she swayed on her feet. She would meet the floor if she was not assisted.
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Re: Sheep, Wolves, and Dogs

Postby Rance » Sun Oct 19, 2014 4:53 am

And back she fell, into the receipt of waiting arms. For that was why he'd followed, knowing that balance would, at some point, fail her. Hands effortlessly snared the fragile young woman beneath her shoulders. Over her head, he said to the speechless attendant--

"Get her feet. We'll retain her until dawn."

The white-clad onlooker hesitated.

"Do it," Jule commanded.

As for the mention of Murrukh, the bearded man furrowed his brow and stared down at the girl from above, his face hovering inches above hers. The half-man, then -- the same being that had taken it upon himself to escort Physician Tirel back and forth between the Broken Dagger and the infirmary. At her utterance, he could only presume one reason she might summon the broad-shouldered doorman. Quietly, Jule said, "I have given you my assurance that no harm will befall you here, Noura. Has the beast so befuddled your mind that you cannot differentiate wary kindness from overt threat?

"To the bed. In here," he instructed the attendant assisting him. A heel drove open a door behind him, revealing an unoccupied chamber where a bed -- like all other beds in the Rememdium -- sat beneath a narrow window.

"If it is your desire," Jule whispered in Noura's ear as they deposited her upon the stiff, hay-stuffed bedding, hoping the words would find her before slumber, "we can aid you, but the choice must be yours; Mercy Tirel would demand as much. Otherwise, all you will ever be is a slave, a terror, an object of judgment."
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Re: Sheep, Wolves, and Dogs

Postby Guppy » Sun Oct 19, 2014 5:10 am

Jule's waiting arms caught her beneath her shoulders and she sank into his hold. Blurred, confused eyes stared up at him as he spoke. A thin sheen of fearful tears shone in her vision, brows furrowed over nacreous eyes.

He seemed insulted that she might have thought him dangerous, a threat to her health. "Must have been all that talk of poisoning and defilement," she slurred up at him, in a voice that sounded much louder against her ears than intended. She wriggled in their grasp, though her attempts were meager with the sedative swirling through her bloodstream.

"Why is kindness always tempered with expectations and not acceptance?," she asked, aloud, not expecting an answer from either of them.

The bed was a relief to her wilting frame and she attempted to shrug off the unwanted help that had gotten her to this point. His lips were against her ear, his words attempted soothing. He cautioned her against her demon. He warned her of her fate. Her runes glowed once, weakly, and then sputtered out entirely. She turned her head so that his lips might have brushed against the skin of her cheek. Cold skin against warm.

"Then what will you be?," she asked, before sleep claimed her.
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Re: Sheep, Wolves, and Dogs

Postby Rance » Mon Oct 20, 2014 12:54 am

The touch of his lips against her cheek was not intentional; his eyes never flickered, face never faltered.

"Why," he said, now a blur, now a fading shadow of a face underneath the weight of the sedative raging through her system, "must you expect others to compromise their comfort and security for the sake of accepting you?"

A beam of sharp, autumn moonlight crawled in through that single window. Jule Mitchell reached up as if to pass his fingers through the ghosts of illumination. His hand passed through the white membrane, found the hook-fastened latch of the narrow window, and threw it open wide--

"Come morning, you are an afterthought; come morning, you vanish. Wiser, I pray."

Then what will you be? She asked.

If he ever answered, the darkness swallowed the sounds like everything else.
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