Fragile, Bent, and Broken Things

[Tolleson]

He was preserving you.

She didn’t believe it, or rather, she hadn’t and in this moment her mind changed. Behind a pensive breath there was a small shift in her pupils, an ever so subtle twitch in all the small muscles of her face.

This was a revelation that bore mixed feelings, but her emotions were firmly locked after the last slippage so it’s only manifestation would be the thin line of her lips and the slight furrow of her brow.

“M-m-m-m-my wh-wh---wits!” Suddenly her expression exploded, she laughed, again to marvel at the putrid beauty around them. Her eyes to rest on the ivy that covered entire sections, it caught the light, shimmering and dewy, it was gorgeous despite the parasitic nature of the plant.

The Crown’s men have brought us promise and hope.

Her laughter flattened, but a forced smile followed. The Crown. Promise and Hope were not without their price. She might have paused to explain this, but her eyes darted from the ivy and rotting books to the doorway and steps.

Clamoring down the stairs just then was Daryl, with a poor, jostled pitcher of water with droplets clinging and a slash spilling as he came to a surprised stop in the doorway just ahead.

“You woke her up?!” His young voice was hardly small, and genuinely alarmed. But before Gloria might even address the matter, Daryl’s eyes shifted to Genny and expression softened with understanding. Meanwhile, Genny’s hand slipped into the crook of Gloria’s elbow that they might walk side-by-side and help one another balance up the stairs.

Genny would lead on, slowly, a small smile forming as they began their ascent. “C-c-c-cakes… cl-cl-clever.”

[Rance]

They clambered out of the ruined guts of the old library. Gloria carefully helped Genny over fallen rafters and through the scattered remains of crumbled bookshelves. Once outside, where their feet fell upon the scattered gravel, the seamstress turned her attention to the pie-maker and squeezed the crook of the other woman's elbow with her own. A motion of solidarity. She gave up the books she carried.

"Friends," she proclaimed, as if they were sharing some kind of adolescent blood-pact. "Regardless of what challenges we face. Yes? I know, now--"

--what happens in the tangled jungles of your mind, what loyalties you're forced to question, what struggles you're required to endure.

Errant thoughts, forcibly demonstrated, pieced together with each sound and pause in her conscience. Hoping Genevieve Tolleson might hear them, or at the very least, sense them.

"Cakes," Gloria said, in finality, before unwinding her only arm from Genny's. "Daryl's no fool." She shot a half-smile at the boy. "If one wants cakes, there's no one better to seek out than a girl who looks like she's eaten her fair lot of them." And Daryl stood by idly, still clutching the porcelain pitcher of water. She leaned over to him just enough that she could mount her hand upon the edge of her knee. "Daryl, be a fair escort and -- and bring Menna Tolleson to her home. Help her to make her bed, and see to it that she sleeps. I'll be along shortly to be sure you've done so. Alright? With one more cake as payment."

Gloria stood. Her face did not break. The smile she offered was not her finest. It was genuine, but its foundation was a mask, a strength espoused to diminish sight of weakness.

"Focus," she said to Genny, her hand lofted in a still wave.

[Tolleson]

Genny was surprisingly able, she hadn’t been living down in the belly of the ruined structure despite any assumptions. After all, she had still been in the Inquisitory on occasion, and her apartment was less bare, even if in a manner that was not in the least handsome. But then there was always her clumsiness, so helping was fairly accurate.

Once they were back again on the surface her eyes squinted against the consuming brightness of the sunlit afternoon around them. He hair, wild and untamed caught in the gentle, warm breeze.

“f-f-f-fre-friends,” she smiled as the books were handed to her.

Regardless of what challenges we face. Yes.

I know. I understand. She didn’t hear. She couldn’t. After all that had happened she wouldn’t sit in Gloria’s mind to read her thoughts, to hear the words she hadn’t the mental voice to speak. But there was energy to it, in the very least the empathy, the solidarity and the kindness of her actions were understood.

A wry smile grows as Gloria instructs Daryl how to tend to her, a simple and cunning offer of small cakes to send him grinning wide and nodding furiously. In all likelihood she wouldn’t listen. But Gloria must know, they were very alike after all. There were other priorities, still, better to appease her here and let Daryl win his cake.

‘Once I am rested, let us speak again. A meal, dinner, perhaps? There is much I have missed and I will need your help’

[Rance]

I will need your help.

"Dinner," the girl agreed. "Reacquainting. We shall make plans of it."

When Daryl and Genevieve Tolleson left, Gloria did too. She held herself stiffly as she wandered through the dusty streets of Myrkentown, bending her legs to passers-by, agreeable, so very agreeable. When the bustle of the streets started to fade, she turned into the solace of an alley. Offal and mud squelched beneath her boots. Her breathing intensified, little gusts of breath rolling out of her as if the air had turned as thick as mortar. When she knew there was nobody around, she shrunk into the leaning shadows between two thatch-roofed homes.

She leaned against the wooden wall, then slid down to squat, staring at her hand and its four quivering fingers.

Golben.

The Storyteller.

--the way her mouth opened, how she shriveled and deflated, and...

She bit her forearm through the sleeve to stifle the noise of her sobs.

...he knew you could kill her.

Giuseppe.

Some people deserved death. But always by other hands, other blades, not hers, not--

* * * *

Later, much later, Gloria Wynsee was nothing but smiles when she arrived at Genevieve Tolleson's bakery-top loft. She bore a ceramic pitcher of boiled water and a deserved sweetcake for Daryl. She laughed a lot, spoke a lot, made sure necessities were in place for the other woman. She steeped tea at the tiny hearth and left only when she knew the pie-maker's comfort was in order. They decided on a time for dinner, they forgot about mind-meddling and disagreements; they didn't talk of little babies or Rhaena or Golben or Giuseppe--

Because things were fine. Things were just fine.