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A Man Returned and Friendship Found

PostPosted: Mon Nov 11, 2019 6:24 pm
by Tolleson
The ocean whispered in a shallow dream. The bumps from the real road had been waking her up periodically but as the odd party neared Myrken the road became well worn and smoother making short naps far more inviting. And so the sounds grew and grew. On one side of her was a cove, a beach, where a gentle wave washed against the shore. An imagined place where the water was always warm, the sand gentle, and the nearby forest held books in the trunks of the trees with great spiral stairs that lead up to the canopy. On the other was darkness, not a threatening or ominous sort, simply the edge of her.

Genevieve seemed quite comfortable with the surroundings, reading as she sat in an upholstered chair, an almost exact replica of the one in the office of the Inquisitory, it’s legs now buried in sand. The tome was thick and not entirely dissimilar from others she had gathered in the mental library, some from her own observations of people but many left by them, through their eyes. Thoroughly engaged with the text it came as a startling surprise to hear the small sound of clanking chains. Her eyes flicked up and her face turned toward the darkness with furrowed brows.

She closed the book, the smell of Gloria puffing out in the bellow formed by collapsing pages. She rose and set the book in the chair gently, then walked toward the darkness. The sound came again, small and distant, it was almost a strain to hear it. The boundary before her was between the beach scene and darkness, and it was a gradient that went from the the full colored, textured, and rich world erected in Genny’s mind and that of a dark, empty nothing. Knowing this was ample cause for hesitation in her approach, yet as she stood with her feet on the last granules of sand she lifted her hand. Fingers stretched, brushing the darkness as her long arms extended out fully. Reaching.

A bright, hot light flashed, her teeth rattled, and pain lanced into her head, sucking her out of the mental plane and back into the tangible world where her head had slammed into a beam in the cart. They had hit a pothole just before the main gate and Daryl who sat across from her was like a mirror, rubbing his head in the same spot but the opposite side.

The wagon pulled to the back of the Meeting House where it stopped; they had passed the front, bustling with tradesmen at work, the structure already taller and more impressive than when Genny left, and perhaps verging on unrecognizable to Glenn. Daryl jumped down and immediately began to unload, while Genny offered her thanks to the driver and salutations to her companions.

Hospitality was extended to both Egris and Glenn, though she warned them that most of the rooms suitable for quarters were minimally furnished and construction on additional fireplaces was still underway. It simply felt odd to part ways, to say good-bye now. Without request or prompt, Genny hugged Glenn. She might hold him for a long moment if he didn’t pull away. She was tall but not overly strong and she wasn’t trying to restrain him, he could easily break away if he felt there was danger in it. But she would release him, her eyes watching his as if she had some parting words; but there was really nothing more that needed to be said, they had shared so much with one another over the last several months.

When words finally came, they were almost blurted out. “Come to dinner each week,” more of a desperate demand than a request, the invitation was delivered as if asking a brother to join a weekly family meal. After her embrace it may have appeared to have an affectionate intention, but it was a practical and strategic thing. Surely, he could see that there was good reason for them to keep tabs on one another. Setting an appointment to hold one another accountable seemed reasonable, it might assure one didn’t disappear into The Golben, get abducted by a Fae Queen, or slip, without notice, into being whatever Rhaena had become.