A Matter of Transparency

A Matter of Transparency

Postby Rance » Mon Aug 05, 2019 6:05 am

There was only one alteration Gloria Wynsee made to the work-orders for the renovations of the Myrken Wood Meetinghouse, and she did so in a scrawling hand across the requests delivered by courier to the carpentry guild and the artisan combine:

Willing women shall be alloud to shed as much sweat as men. Hire them, and for no partial wages, but for full ones.


Over two months, the renovations of the Meetinghouse progressed without incident. On the first day after her demand, only one woman attended the task, and the men ferried her about with pointed fingers like some flitting servant. This, Gloria interrupted with a touch to the woman's elbow. "Can you swing a hammer," she asked, and the woman — Kora Emmerich, unmarried, club-footed — drove a nail with one strike into a discarded bit of lumber. Two days later, men held the ladder for Kora, and called her "Yes, Sera Emmerich," and "No, Sera Emmerich."

In the following week, Gloria noted four women in the Bazaar whose skirts hadn't yet been shaken free of their sawdust. And when one of their accompanying fellows tried to pluck a sliver of wood from one woman's brow, she gave his hand an affectionate strike and said, "Leave it," with a surge of pride that fell from her like a ripple.

By the time the renovations were half-completed, as many able-bodied women as men worked the Meetinghouse renovations, and even one who occasionally took leave to feed a yellow-skinned infant that she let lay in the shade beneath a wiry tree. And on some days, Gloria took part, though the labor of moving this object to that location was far more worth her eager sweat than tools or saws. So she hoisted, tied her skirts up, dripped black sweat, and learned names: Gussie Millard, Dalian Hedgefirth, Articula Meers, Olida Farrier-Smith, so on and so on, candlemaker daughters and butcher daughters and fish daughters, all daughters or restless wives or single women who wore their brows like armor.

After a day of grueling work, the women and men mingled with chatter and laughter, sharing wine and whiskey, giving one another soft jabs in the forearms and telling lewd stories.

After sundown, Gloria took her lantern into the unlit skeleton of the half-built Meetinghouse. Her shadow stretched like a black animal across the floorboards, held hostage beneath the heels of her boots. The place reeked of wet wood and rope and perspiration and flax. Footprints of mud and sawdust trailed various patterns across the floor.

She settled her lantern on a sawhorse and a shaved length of wood. It was as good a place as any; it was a quiet place, and a promising place.

She scrawled the words by candlelight.

Written this Firstday of the Second Week of the Last Month of Summer, 219.

A future is not difficult to predict: there shall come a time when my integrity is brought into question, and as such, the following words serve to vouch for the passion of my honesty, even if they perform damage to my name in their commission. Therefore—
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Re: A Matter of Transparency

Postby Rance » Wed Aug 21, 2019 5:37 am

I have comitted a number of offenses which I shall admit to this paper. This may be concidered personal penance, yes, but it also functions to wound me as necessary: to be outed if the accusations I may one day make are challenged and if my opponents seek to weponize my past against me. There is only one reputasion which may result from a shattered one, namely, that when all is destroyed my capacity for truth remains, and to this end I am willing to end my own reputasion in service of this honesty.

THE FIRST — I once conseived a child against the will of the co-conseiver.

There are a great many ugly words for such an act and I fear I cannot bring myself to write them here, but the reader shall know. For this I possess no true excuse, but the complexities I believe are founded in layers upon layers of historie. Catch did not wish for the act; I, truly, did not wish for the act, but am coming to believe this: that between us, we share an artifact of some Importance — a part of him which has, like moss upon a tree, become one with me — that thrives when it is close to him. And because it could not return to him, it drove me insensibly to do a heinous thing, and recreate him in the most natural and biological fashion.

To that end, I employed Forbidden Words to soothe him and complete this act, a natural tendantsy allowed by my Jerno heritige and his terrible obediense.

And dread to this day that I cannot stand myself for what I beleave was done beneath the power of that Passenger. But this is no matter. My body is still and always shall be my body, even under the power of another Force. I can offer no reasonable apology for the horrors it has done, and can only better manage the Natures which led to the circumstance in the first place. I have reduced my interactions with Catch, though I love him as family; I have brought this Passenger as best as I am able beneath my greater control, but far too late for excuse.

As of the writing of this admission the child is safe and nurtured, currently unaware of this knowledge. I beg whatever eyes must read this to let her go ignorant of it until such a time as she must know.

Or I am no longer anything but dust.
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Re: A Matter of Transparency

Postby Rance » Wed Aug 21, 2019 5:57 am

THE SECOND — I have in part been compliset in criminal activity in Razasan.

During a time of residence in Razasan I found myself in the company of less-than-desirious beings whose liveleyhood was composed wholly of acts which would be against any land's reasonable Law and Justice. While I was not present for a great deal of the work of one Lady Aremeda Follox I assisted her with the recovery of debts and unfulfill't payments. In doing so I put to work my fist and bodily threatened and damaged otherwise innocent beings whose only crime was their poverty and inability to return payment.

I took no pride in this act but found myself at great length attempting to discover my use and belonging; Follox did not care that I was a foreign woman with very few skills, but only that I was agreeable to the work she expected of me. In this time I became very aware of the network of Follox's influence and avoided mingleng much with her criminal compatriots except as necessary. Though I took part in no more grievous acts than the battery of others, for this, I possess great shame; a woman who believes she is capable of protecting those she loves ought not be the betrayer of her conviction and damage those she does not know.

But here too is the other matter which I shall put to paper and yet even now hesitate to fully conclude: my time in the company of Lady Follox was short and trunkated unnaturally, not by my own choice, but by the hand of another.

For I was present for (though not instrumental in) the action that resulted in Follox's death.

Murder is a crime most horrendous, but one's defense must be concidered. But I will not implant the name or memory of Follox's killer to this page: partially, I trust she will in time admit the deed on her own if still she lives, and perform equal penance; partially, I do not know her name, but only a face. Enough to say that I saw her run very, very far away; and likely by the time any eyes read this missive, I surmise she, like her identity, shall be lost to time.

Here is a wonder: though I do not blame her for the blood she shed, I blame the blood upon her all the same.
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Re: A Matter of Transparency

Postby Rance » Fri Oct 04, 2019 1:14 am

THE THIRD — In the eyes of all theatres of Belief I am an abominasion

In Jernoah we are beings driven by desire and pleasure. Love is not limited to that which is shared between the man and the woman. You see, there are men who shall — for embrace of their own wants — go abed with other men, and women — who, by nature of their own safety and satisfaction — shall keep the intimate society of other women. Because procreation is a Process oft overseen by governmental creed, a body is not destined to apply itself only to its partner. In the recent past I have found myself greatly enamored of young men whose physiognomy I found quite agreeable and whose minds I found agreeable and distinguished. I have yearned for their Company but all too often found myself less inflamed than perhaps I wanted: it was as if a wall had been constructed between Myself and the agreement with my Desire.

And perhaps because I hesitated to be with them, they grew bored, or they did not find me flattering — for which I do not fault them as I have been graced in creation with a face more suited to its functions than to others' fancies. In these words: I am no object of desire. For men fled from me, or grew drawn to others, and I found myself lonesome.

And wished to be. Until I believe I have come to this realization: I am far more di desirous of the community of other women.

Do not believe I have not craved the attentions of the opposite sex, but do not believe that I have been free of craving the same sex, either. In my youth I discovered a fondness for our Mother Sempstress for which I was greatly derided and given shame; a crueler child named Desra (I too was but a child, forgive my horror of her now even as an adult, for a child's fears do not discern themselves as irrational as age progresses), she would find in my diaries small affections unsent and private and would laugh upon them, and I convinced myself that I was but creating fictions and the Mother Sempstress was a foul and loathsome beast and how ever would she be wanted especially by me!

But a girl will lie in her own defense, and to hide from herself. And she will laugh off the knives of others, even as they cut.

Others of an unkind disposition, in a time of heightened politicking, may seek to reveal this knowledge of my affections to discredit me. So I shall admit them here, perhaps more that I may come to face the frights of my own convictions. I, Glour'eya Wynsee, am possessed of great affection for another woman and believe I shall want more greatly for the company of this woman than I ever shall want for a man; I am simultaneously enthralled by her and fascinated, driven to dream of her frequently and daydream of her commonly. And while I shall not shatter the crystal of her life by condemning her name to the page — angle your spears at me and me alone — I shall not shy away from the power of my heart. Nor does my precious adoration of her make me any less capable than any man. And perhaps they ought to be jealous, that I have been spoken of softly by a woman many of them might seek out fondly!

I am unashamed of this new truth. And know this:

I shall give up any future status, any future stature, any advantage, any position, any grace or blessing, any wealth, to preserve our budding possibilities. For her. This shall not be a hammer to be wielded against me and certainly not against her.

Anything but.
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