From Whence We Came

From Whence We Came

Postby Glenn » Wed May 29, 2019 4:22 am

Two months. Spring. That was another word for it. Spring. The first two weeks had been inaction. At first, he had not thought it to be fear. He was not supposed to feel fear. That did not mean he did not. It simply meant that he could not properly identify it. Eventually, he worked this out. The sheer realization had caused a second wave of fear. What else could he not recognize? What else did he not know? Still, he knew about fear. He knew that being afraid, while hardly admirable, was still acceptable under certain circumstances. True bravery was acting despite that. While he had reason to doubt that true bravery was the ultimate aim in life, cowardice was more distasteful to him than his moderate attempts at introspection could overcome.

So one month in, he acted.

The Priory of Snowstill had never fully been rebuilt, or if it had, it certainly hadn't kept. It had been a sanctuary. It had been a foul lair and a scene of horrors. It had been a place of peace and a place of war. Now it was a shadow of all of those things, much as he was a shadow of whoever he was or even might have been. He had worked fields nearby in those memories that he did think to be accurate. He had watched his mentors and fellows die here. It was here where his false path began. That much he was sure of. It made sense for him to return here.

He was no mason, no builder. He meant to make a shelter. His efforts were futile, ramshackle. Still, if he could do nothing else, he could be stubborn. If he could stand to fear, he could far more easily not surrender.

This was an easier choice, a more straightforward battle for someone that craved such simple purple. Work was purpose unto itself. Therefore, he had little reason to return to Myrkentown, little reason to encounter those who would have answers for him. He returned to buy supplies and each time he did, he asked someone unrelated to the situation a simple question or two. He did not seek out Kals Olwak. He did not look for Glenn Burnie or Genny Tolleson or even Old Treadwell. He did not seek Solena or Ariane Emory. People had lived through this. Even a few years older, even with the patch over his eye, even with him expressing a clumsy care, he would be noticed.

After four weeks of his endeavors, however, as best as he could tell no one much seemed to care.
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Rance » Thu May 30, 2019 2:19 am

It came by way of messenger, who delivered it without word to the gutted Priory. He was an unremarkable boy, the messenger; he had the dirty fingernails of fishmongery and smelled faintly of soured milk. His nose was just a hard line. He rode a small horse whose tail snapped and flicked with impatience. He was gone as soon as he had come, placing the rolled slip tucked beneath the lip of a newly-nailed door.

Gahald,

You, like I, cannot be undiscovered. We are beings of contension: I of Jernoah and you of a foul reign. I find myself in a position to recognize the comengs and goings of various people, and you should know that due to my Past Discomforts, my colleagues have known that you would be a presence of which I would like to know.

In isolasion we are both our best and our worst selfs. The mind becomes an agreer and a liar simultaniously; in Ruann I learnt this, and in Razasan too. And even now distant from someone I have grown to both cherish and crave I find the lonely mind to be a cruel narrarater. Then very fittengly, one of my associates came to me and spoke to me of "The Boy Who Once Was Not" and his singular travels into and out of the town, accompanied by no one, speaking to fewer than that.

This is dangerous to a town which will still does not understand the why and how of you.

This, too, is dangerous to the heart. This I know.

Consider this a formal invitation. And if it cannot be an invitation, then a demand for you to meet me at the Inquisitory in Myrken Town, where I currently reside. We should speak. Even if we do not want to.

Yours,

Gloria Wynsee
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Glenn » Fri May 31, 2019 1:40 am

Politeness and propriety would have required a letter in return. Her letter was not particularly polite or nice. It was honest. Which was more important, truth or manners? What a question that was? How alarming was it that he did not know the answer? That stayed his hand as much as anything else. In the absence of knowing the correct response, he penned no response at all.

That of course, meant that he was obliged to answer her summons. That was facing his fear, was it not? It felt like such. What did he have to fear from her? She was formidable in her own way, but no more so than things he had faced in the West, than things he had faced in memories that were either true or polite, maybe some that were both. Yet not all things could be solved with steel and grit. For him, she was more dangerous with words than a hundred soldiers with blades.

Still, he came. Hard work bred strong arms. It bred bulk on a frame that had ought to be far more lithe. His clothes were simple. He was meant to accentuate bright colors. He was to be their accessory. For the Lady Olwak, he had been a bow or a parasol, something to complete a look but not to be much noticed himself. They had once been white, perhaps, but work and wear had made them something else entirely. That was not to say his grooming was not impeccable. It was. His hair was short. His face was shaved. His eye was glass worn without patch. He was the rare sort of man that could wear a scar like a lady might wear a simple earring. It was neither grotesque nor appealing. It was simply part of him.

He knew where this building was. It was not as if there were a great many government buildings to choose from. To the best of his dubious recollection, he had never been inside. He had known of his Lady's man of darkness, but he, as a young man of light, had little reason to interact with Giuseppe. Perhaps they had been two sides of the same coin, but that was the thing about a coin. No matter how many times one flipped it, the head would never see the tail.

Knowing that he had sent no word ahead, he still announced himself to the first person he found. Shamefully, it was with a hope that Gloria Wynsee had business elsewhere on this morning.
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Rance » Fri May 31, 2019 7:24 am

"He's here," Corm McKinnon said.

And she said nothing.

"Shall I ask him to return?"

Still, nothing.

That was answer enough for Corm McKinnon.

When she emerged from a room which was not rightfully hers and which she did not presume would ever be hers, it was with careful steps that could have lied to themselves and called themselves graceful. Mornings at the Inquisitory were slashed with darkness, the resident scholars often tucked into the thin ribbons of shade, refusing to recognize morning as an entity at all. But Gloria Wynsee, who still hid her hair and had grown both taller and wider, more a boat's broadside than a woman, did not consider herself a scholar; a handler, perhaps, or a hammer, or even a wedge, but certainly no scholar.

She watched him as he stood in the anteroom, and she stood several yards away, filling the frame of the door with her whole body. A smear of ink slanted a wild slash across the bridge of her hawkish nose. A marmalade escapee lay undiscovered on her lapel, barely the size of a thumbnail. When her stance faltered, a cant of her hip sent the drapery of her skirts in a spiral around her ankles.

Forward two steps.

Stop.

Forward another.

Stern as a statue.

So was he.

For a moment's length alone did she examine the wild voyages spoken by his face, but her response to them was wholly Jernoan: a scar did not demand a question, but rather, a commitment, that should the story be told, one would listen. For a scar was a body's enhancement, a proclamation of life, often preserved in such a way that shamed death and announced resilience. And one should wear them. And be proud of them. And even if he was Elliot Gahald, a thief like his namesake, a passenger in stolen skin, an abhuman discrepancy of nature, the wink of glass in his eye earned this: a curt nod, for that missing eye was the truest he had ever been.

Her wrist curled inward. Her elbow jutted toward him. A lady's submission, learned by watching. An invitation.

"Shall we walk?"
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Glenn » Mon Jun 03, 2019 12:44 am

All too often, one saw the idea of Gloria Wynsee instead of the person. It was so easy and yet so consuming to take in the what of her that many never made it to the who. With a glance, a slight linger, a man might learn all he needed to know. Certainly, he would learn enough to fulfill societal obligations, proper or otherwise. Gahald did not glance. He did not linger. Nor did he stare. His working eye was clear and focused. The mind churning behind it was not particularly quick, but it was also in no rush. Whatever he absorbed was limited by geography: it was not head to toe but waist up. It passed certain areas more quickly than others, but with the manner of detached repetition. This was how he met most people, though of course there would be variation, especially when one met one's betters. This was Myrken wood, however, and here, very few could claim to be better than anyone else.

"Miss Wynsee." This was a greeting. Could one drown on politeness? Could it happen in an instant as if all the oxygen was forced out of not your lungs, but your blood itself, by the mere presence of it? If so, he might have managed in two words. She offered an arm and he took it with neither alacrity nor hesitance. There was no need to ponder proper etiquette. Wherever the line was that he gingerly straddled, it was far from that.

Norms could provide protection and succor for those who were not naturally quick or perceptive just as religion provided a balm for those who knew not the true workings of the universe (which, of course, was everyone). Still, she had summoned him, and he would not hesitate to remind her of such. "I do not know why you have asked me here, Miss Wynsee, but I have come this far. It would not be too much a burden to go a bit farther still." He did not say it would be a pleasure, however, not even for the evident sake of politeness.
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Rance » Mon Jun 03, 2019 2:09 am

"I asked you here because I cannot help but collide with people that would rather have nothing to do with me."

She could have turned the knot of their arms into a game of dominance or strength, but not this time. Her thick elbow lay locked in his, and at a glance, theirs might be an awkward betrothal, or an unwitting arrangement, at best: of the two, Elliot Gahald, even with his shimmering eye, was the finer catch. She lingered close enough to him that her skirts rustled and brushed across his knees as they began an aimless stride down the cobbled street.

The morning air, the summer's burden, drew moisture from exposed necks and handkerchiefs from the pockets of passers-by as, sweltering under an unruly Glass Sun, they went about their daily business under the power of hot lethargy. Morning mist burnt off from the steeples and roof-ribs. They wove in and out of stalls where fruits and freshly-caught fish filled the air with sweetness and salt.

At one stall with a ratty awning, she guided them to a stop and gazed over a bounty of yellowed apples gleaming like fool's gold. "I thought it would hurt to see you. Consider it selfish, but I wanted to know. I had to know. And when the Inquisitory's word crawled back to me, I presumed it would be weakness if — if I embraced avoidance." So here, arm still in his, she turned her head so that the skin of her neck stretched like old burlap, and she watched his face almost with the silent demand that he do the same.

"But I feel nothing, Mister Gahald. Nothing at all. Slaying beasts isn't — isn't always about the sword, after all. Hasn't that been your experience?"

Smile. That's how it's done.

"Let me buy you an apple."
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Glenn » Mon Jun 03, 2019 5:47 am

His shoulders, his arms, legs. These were disciplined. For his eyes, even though he only had to worry about one, it was still harder. She was beside him, and ill-placed to witness eye or lips. He was, however, quite used to walking next to a woman and her skirts. Rhaena Olwak had preferred them and had preferred him as her own accessory. Her particular brand of chivalry was prudish only when it would suit her, though it quite often did.

What was he to say about her and her collisions? There was a certain truth but propriety prevented it. Instead, he could turn a question upon her, though he knew the answer as well as she did. "If I said I did not wish to talk." This was not a sentence. He did not seem to be bothered by that fact, if he was even aware of it. "If I said I need more time. Would have you given me that time?" It was not accusatory. It had been quite a while. He thought he knew her well but then he thought he knew many things well. They had different memories of one another, after all. He stumbled forth, suddenly unsatisfied with his question mark as punctuation. "I would have asked for more time if I was to ask for anything at all."

Finally, she turned to look. They had walked for a bit now and if he had managed to avoid being noticed before, it was all the harder with her at his side. There would be a cost to this excursion, and it was not so quickly paid with one yellow apple. What was in his gaze, then? Was it disappointment, frustration, impatience? Someone else might not recognize these things, so disciplined was he, but Gloria Wynsee tended such emotions, nourished them, watered them and watched them grow in so, so many. Were these things and not jealousy considered to be a green-petaled flower, she would win yearly ribbons for her efforts.

There were times he could avoid answering her, avoid comments. A direct question though? There was no choice there. "No apple, no thank you." Whatever debt she was accruing, let her not think it even begun to be paid. "I feel what i often feel. With you, it's just more. You're not slaying anything. You're just poking the beast and angering it all the more. I don't know why you feel you must, but I'd rather you stop. I'd rather that far more than an apple, if you please."
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Rance » Mon Jun 03, 2019 12:22 pm

"I would have given you no time at all. Partially," she said, as she leaned down to examine the apples, her handless stump giving a wave to disturb the flies that congregated there, "because there is nothing time can do to help or heal. Partially because I do not deal in comforts, but in discomforts — and whether or not you may believe it, poking this beast is far better than letting it fester and rot in the minds of Myrkentown, and in his own loneliness. Have an apple—" she told him, through locked teeth, "—and be willing to show the curious gazes around you that you eat, and breathe, and live as a normal soul.

"Otherwise, they see you as an artifact, and one that refuses to relegate itself to their past the way they believe it ought to."

Because that was what Elliot Gahald had come into existence as, wasn't it? The filler for a hollowed-out vessel, stitched together like the tattered dress of the Storyteller from which — if all refuse left a trail — he'd been created. And she made a living of wading through the muck, didn't she; she hiked up her skirts and unabashedly found herself sometimes knee-deep in shit, sometimes knee-deep in dead, ideas and beings alike. It was work she preferred; it was her battlefield, where she waged the wars she chose.

She withdrew her arm from his, offering him his freedom. But she plucked up an apple, its harsh skin like a gold bauble against the backdrop of her brown flesh. Would he break his teeth on it? Or was its golden color just some gift of light and shadow and freshness? A bruise darkened its cheek. "If you didn't desire something familiar, you would have never responded. If you didn't crave someone honest, then you would have never come, Elliot Gahald. Snowstill would have never been your new work; Myrken Wood would have never been your destination.

"So when did it lose its lustre for you," the woman asked over fruit, "this knighthood of yours?"
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Glenn » Tue Jun 04, 2019 12:50 am

"I'm not sure any of that is right." In general, he was made to listen, to ponder perhaps, ant to ask questions. For him to outright question her or anyone was against how he was made. There was to be a dreaminess to his simplicity. Olwak had been very powerful but she was also rather laconic and he was little more than a test case for something far more complex in nature. She had precious little to work with anyway and what remained was, in fact, precious indeed. He continued to frown at the apple, but he accepted it. A gift offered twice was a hard thing to refuse. He took it then, with a quiet thanks, but did not eat it. Eating and talking was not particularly difficult, but it was poor manners indeed and he saw the futility in accepting something with manners in mind only to utilize immediately to the opposite effect. "You are very sure of yourself, Miss Wynsee. It's said that time does help. I could understanding saying that you think that might be wrong. You not only say the opposite but say it as if it's absolutely truth. I just don't know. I really don't. Also, I think they all know I eat. I don't see how they wouldn't." There were logical places that might go next, involving the visibility of other bodily functions, but he would never take this there. At the first inkling of such a thought his mind went elsewhere and he did bite that apple, small shield it may be.

She was moving quickly, and the apple would be mostly bitten down to its core before he had the wherewithal to respond. His jaw was strong and his teeth surprisingly well kept. That had been seen to years before. She had moved well past him by this point. It was all he could do to pull her back. "You did it again. Those two things have nothing to do with one another. I don't think they do at least. Returning here and answering your letter. I did those two things for different reasons. Is this what you do, Miss Wynsee? You say as much as you can, make as many claims, and you hope it all smooths itself out somehow? I don't see how that helps any more than time, really. It would be better if you take it a bit more slowly."

In fast, she had moved swiftly enough that he found himself lost among the details. As such, he never even reached her final question, the one which mattered far more than all the others. She placed a signpost upon the road and he simply never arrived.
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Rance » Tue Jun 04, 2019 1:23 am

She gave to the stall-tender — a short, fat woman with a jagged nose — the requisite coin for the apples, and moved on with him. When she chewed her own apple, it was with tenderness and care. Her teeth, after all, were frail objects, and liable to crumble under undue pressure.

"You think they know you eat? Elliot Gahald, do you remember your creator? Or has that phase of your life simply vanished for you? Myrkeners both cannot be presumed about, and yet they simultaneously presume without — without presuming at all. Your lady—" But she stopped, then, to breathe and pick new language, "—the lady, she damaged our capacity to know and know with confidence. Your presence breeds questions: Is he like us? Is he like her? Does he still do her bidding? That they've not mobbed you yet is a wonder, and a lack of response such as that is, I imagine, rooted entirely in — in fear.

"Those questions came to my mind. Can you imagine how many came to theirs?"

She wiped apple juice from her nose, and then dove into a quickly browning edge of fruit.

"The best kindness I can give you is to be here at your side."

And so they strode on, until the bazaar fell away behind them and the proper markets spanned out before them, a winding cobblestone road where misshapen buildings, crushed together like pages between the covers of a volume, bore windows full of wares. The road smelled faintly of sweat and shit and tar and horse. A fog above them kept it all pressed down, like the cork of a fine wine. She considered his own observation with a tilted head, and walked in silence for several moments before she rounded an aimless corner. "Time is a cruel liar. I abide no slowness. We are born one day and — and may die the next; I claim, and I live, and whether or not I am right or wrong, I am certainly not dead, Elliot B—"

A hard, ceasing breath. Suddenly, she saw a wooden door, and what she wanted more than anything was to hit it.

"Why did you return? And why did you heed my request?"
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Glenn » Wed Jun 05, 2019 12:46 am

"In care too," he interjected. He was not one to interject, especially when a woman spoke, but she inspired it. She was the muse of insolence, the mother of defiance, and the thorny rose of incivility. "I have stayed away. You drew me here, remember?" Underneath all of those manners and forced, all-but-constipated, poise was a throbbing heart of defensiveness, that of one who had lost everything, including his identity twice. She could have tended or nurtured it, but instead, there they were. When he continued, it was with short temper. "They know I eat, Miss Wynsee. This is a..." here a pause to look around, to think, to find a word. Thankfully, there was an apple core in his hand. "well, it is a fruitless path. Tree. A fruitless tree. Let us not climb the fruitless tree. No one's wondering if I eat. Everyone eats." Then, finally catching up to the point of all of this, he muttered further. "Kindness would have been coming to me, if you could not leave me alone. This is procovation."

Still, they walked, and he endured, the road and the smells and the short treatise about time and life and her. Did she ask the right questions? Did she ask those questions at all? No, she just raised them. He had no idea what she asked, what she wanted to know. Whatever question she had asked him before had been lost in the sea of everything else. The fog wafting in the air was woefully thin compared to the mire emanating from her mouth and the mist coalesced in his mind. Perhaps she should have asked about his perceptions instead. What did he see? What did he smell? Was it the same thing as her? Was this simply the only life he knew, Myrken-born as he was? Or was everything filtered to be more pleasant, to be an ideal as his Lady would have wanted? Was it just an irrational discipline? He had let that slip with his shortness however.

Finally, in their stroll, they arrived at another meaningful question. "I answered your request because I had no choice." That answer was easy, but it drew a near smile to his face, the first she had seen. It was a striking thing, a hint at pleasant possibilities, of something well worth engendering. A full smile would be lovely indeed. Unfortunately, this wasn't quite that. "I do suppose that I did return here for the same reason."
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Rance » Wed Jun 05, 2019 7:34 am

One of her eyebrows shot high, like a misguided arrowhead. "Please," she said. "If this is provocation, then I implore you to run from this place, and run quickly—" a motion made toward the horizon with a half-eaten apple, "—else you might perish at the first sign of terror in this town. Make no mistake, Gahald: you always possess choice, as far as I am concerned. I hold no power over you, and intend none. The necessity to obey died several years back. So it is well within your right to — to look me in the eye, politeness be damned, and tell me to fuck right off, or to burn the letters I send.

"You wouldn't be the first to disobey an Inquisitor's request. You certainly won't be the last. Snowstill is far beyond my realm of influence. I was mostly curious to know if you would come at all."

What there was to Gloria Wynsee, as they walked, was as foreign to her as the shortness and sharpness he'd inherited. Even with a dollop of molasses on her collar, the woman swept at his side with a larger and more grand confidence than she'd ever possessed before, as if the world were a wine glass she intended to fill with her whole being. Her shoulders, thick as stones, might have turned themselves against a mountain if they could.

His half-smile was hardly a victory. Above them, the morning grew longer, wiser, newer; it began to burn off the fog, and a wet Sun dripped onto the cobblestone streets. What, truly, was the point of this? To draw him out of hiding? To press the thumb of her righteousness into the weakened temple of his self-identity? What was he, without the lady, but aimless bones and piloted skin? Their boots took them down one street, and then onto the next, where weather had unkindly tilted and broken the street into a thousand tiny islands of stone. With a hooked thumb, she lifted her skirts, and took to each rock as if it were a lilypad.

"What of Myrken offered you no choice? There's a whole world beyond these paths, Elliot Gahald, to which you owe no explanation. Why return here, where all you are is what you were?"
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Glenn » Fri Jun 07, 2019 12:38 am

"Terror is one thing," he said, sounding far more gallant than he meant to. There was something to his voice, to the aim of his chin. It was wholly artificial but not at all in the way of pretending or obfuscating. There were no cracks. It was entirely reflexive. It also wasn't quite as effective as it ought to have been. Some of that might have been the cracks but much of it was the word choice. There was surely a more poetic way to say that. "I would face terror." There. That was better and he almost nodded with a sort of satisfaction before his frown deepened.

Thankfully, Gloria Wynsee ever provided a bridge to the next argument. "First, one ought to be polite when possible," that was reflexive as well but unlike some of Rhaena's stranger edicts, that one seemed reasonable; he was trying to keep the reasonable ones lest he lose everything all at once. "Second, you just said that you were going to not give me any time and if I had refused you or demurred you," that not being the exact word he had been looking for, "you would have simply come anyway."

There was a familiarity to these streets. She led him and he knew where she led him, this way and that. Unless there was some very large disaster like a dragon or a drow army in the midst of the city, Myrkentown did not change much. There was neither the means nor the will. No one liked change. Most there were more comfortable with a dull, steady suffering than even a mild change. While Gahald may not have had good reason to know every street and alley, Brown did, and Olwak had used the other to create the one. In the absence of specifics, she had to rely on generalities. The layout of the city was about as general as things got.

So he did not seem alarmed or lost even as she deftly weaved them this way or that. "In truth," and this, he had at least thought through significantly enough. He had to have made the decision to return after all, "there's just not enough of me to be anywhere else."
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Rance » Sun Jun 09, 2019 3:25 pm

"I would have come," she corrected him, "as an agent of my own choice, for matters personal. As an Inquisitor, my influence extends only so far. For a young man so enamored with knighthood, you know frightening little about — about bureaucracy. Are you still enamored with it?

"Politeness aside, do you still fancy yourself a knight? Or has that too been pulled away from you?"

Time and footsteps found them in a clearing that, at mid-morning, was as lush and as green as any other. Droplets of dew gleamed, crystalline, on the blades beneath them. The Glass Sun was almost oppressive, stifling and still in its summer heat. Their shadows stretched like long, lanky alter-egos across the flat ground. This place was no longer the town as much as it was adjacent to it. The memory of a million bootprints still sullied the ground beneath the swaying grass. Against a gnarled tree slumped a lone figure, impaled there by two moldering arrows. A practice-dummy, painstakingly constructed out of wooden limbs and knots of hemp. Upon it, blank features had been drawn with lines of kohl and ink, and scraped away by weather and blade-point.

Here, the Guard, once gathered and overseen by the Lady Egris, spent hours at their willful practice, clashing swords and polearms. Now, the land was a lifeless spot of moorland, smattered with tangles of brown and dull green, as if Nature had demanded power over it once more.

"There is plenty of you," Gloria said. Softer. As if speaking more to the ground than to him. "At least, more than enough. For if yet you live and breathe, there — there are paths to take and choices to make. Don't misconstrue my ire: Myrken Wood didn't hate you, Elliot Gahald. It had no reason to. It is just afraid.”

She jabbed her toe into the ground, raking a divot into the muddy soil with her boot. A vision danced in her Sun-bleached eyes, something he couldn't see, like a painting she visualized on the canvas stretched across her mind.

"I won't ask you how you lost your eye. But I will ask what you lost it for."
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Re: From Whence We Came

Postby Glenn » Mon Jun 10, 2019 8:11 am

"I was without an order for most of my years of s..." The words had come so quickly. It was because of her, because of her unrelenting presence. She had his arm and he felt a captive. She had his ear and he felt a prisoner. That was poetic flourishing. He knew it, but it was how he felt and despite all of his discipline, he was not nearly as good at controlling his emotions as he ought to be. She had driven him to a quick response and the response was false and they both knew it, even if only one knew that they knew. "That is," he amended, his skin too tan to properly drain of color so she would be denied that effect. "I remember being outside a thing like that for most of my years. So, I am not used to it, and I saw you as a person more than some title, okay? You're a lot to deal with as is. I don't think you hold me with any kind of authority now. We're just talking. If we didn't talk here, we would have talked there."

That was all she was getting both for her first statement, her correction, and for the question that had followed. His answers only went so far, it seemed, and perhaps it would serve her better to lead with them as opposed to giving him more dissonant statements to respond to instead.

"I'm not misconstruing anything." He was difficult, his manners more frayed than she might have expected, but certainly less of an Elliot Brown. There was a level of dignity, of decorum, of yes, discipline, a slight lift to his chin if not his nose. Perhaps some of the same flaws existed but they were colored entirely differently. "Except for maybe where you think you can talk for the entire of Myrken. If it hates me, what does it think about you, Gloria Wynsee? Does it accept you now? You've earned that, I think, more than I have, no matter what I remember?" It was a strange turn of tone. If it had started accusatory, it ended on kind and genuine.

He did not shy from her gaze. No, he met it like one might meat a dragon or an ogre. In this world, in this clearing on this day, she was all he had to face so directly. "I lost it for valor." It was simply said, with no ire or regret or pride or judgment. It was but a simple truth, one of the few he had left to his name.
Glenn
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