The Needle and the Skull

[Rance]

"She should have a skull on her head. Perched," she said, "like a hat."

"And you want me to give her this note," the bartender said, turning the folded slip of parchment over in each of his hands as if he feared it might contain something dangerous -- for what needs did someone have with a girl who wore skulls upon her crown? But he knew the whelp; he knew, if by proximity, this Noura.

"I would like for you to give her the note," the seamstress said, repetitiously. "And be sure she reads it."

"And if she can't read," he said.

"Then read it for her."

The bartender grunted. "And what if I can't read?"

"Then that means I will have to -- to clobber you at a later date. Do this," the girl added, "and I will be very thankful."

And so the note was left, to be delivered to the wildling when she next sought out the bar for refreshment or victuals. The hand was simple, scrawled in charcoal and painstaking in its want for precision.

Noura,

I hope that you are well, I quite enjoyed our talk the other day, please forgive my shortness however, for I am trying to be abrupped and without a want for wasteing time:

I have made a mistake, I shoult wish to have back Cherny's ring that I let you borrow, it was not mine to lend,

I shoult like you to deliver it if you please and maybe we too may have tea, I will be here each afternoon for this week if you wish to seek me out.

sincerely yours,
Gloria Wynsee

[Guppy]

The note was claimed, despite the fact that she had not worn her skull in a few days now. The barkeep no doubt knew her well enough, since she was being housed here. Not to mention that death clung to her form, despite the lack of macabre accoutrements. She could not read properly, but the creature could. She had no doubt that the letter read aloud in her head was not completely accurate to the paper before her.

Gloria told her that they would have tea. She told her when and where to come to return the ring. The wildling had briefly considered leaving the ring with the man and letting him give it back to the seamstress. Though, she wagered that would worry Gloria and do more harm than good.

So, at the assigned time, the whelp would be seated at the counter with two steaming cups of tea. One sat in front of her, the other before the empty stool to her side. She wore none of her skulls, her feathers. Instead, she was clad in Rhaena's colors and waiting with slumped shoulders like a woman before the gallows. The ring that the other requested was held within the warmth of her palm. She clutched it as if afraid it would vanish, staring broodingly into the tea.

[Rance]

She was there the whole time.

Not at the bar; not where men came to drink and tell stories of women they'd never met, or lies about thighs they'd never spread. No, at one of the nearby tables she scrawled lines of words on curling edges of parchment, conservative with her charcoal as if each sentence itself needed to be perfect. Some of them she crossed out with grand, vibrant slashes; others, she blacked out with deliberate, stitch-like strokes. But none of the sentences were good enough, or had the strength she wanted--

"Broth with sugar," she said at the bar when she finally went to it, palms against the rim and stomach pressed between her hands. The bonnet had been tossed back, secured at her chin and neck with a tattered ribbon. The bartender gave her a wide-eyed glare, then pushed the tin mug of frothy stock toward her.

"Are you blind," he said.

"No," came her response.

"Are you sure," he said.

"I can see you perfectly fine."

"Can you, now," he retorted, before jutting his chin longways, as if it were a bearded arrow, toward someone else, someone--

It was the colors that took her eyes first. She thought back to Petronela Kazmerrik, when Catch fell upon her with his hands and furious words, Rhaena-swain, Rhaena-swain spilling from his mouth like salivating disaster. He had torn, ripped, wrenched a brooch in the likeness of a tiara and vine from her breast. Later, when she said, We will bury it, Catch, he gave it to her, to a seamstress who clutched the little pin like a brand on the inside of her sweat-black fist.

The colors were blinding, bright, familiar; she squinted when she looked upon them, as if the Glass Sun might be hidden somewhere amid the folds -- but what she saw was her friend's sullen face, Noura's profile downturned as if she might hide in the mug of tea steeping before her.

And the only words that came out of the seamstress' mouth were simple, short, curious:

"Where -- where is Beatrice?"

[Guppy]

The voice startled her from her reverie and she glanced up towards Gloria. Gloria, who stared at her with horror (imagined or not) dawning upon her features, disbelief etched atop that. Her fingers claimed the ring from her opposite palm and lifted. She gazed at her friend through the circle of metal, with the opposite eye closed. "I brought your ring," she mentioned, which was not altogether necessary. Gloria could obviously see the ring. Likely just to break the ice, to shoulder through the awkwardness that lingered between them.

"Beatrice is upstairs resting. She is far too lovely to match this," she nodded down towards her clothing, the Lady's colors. "To soothe any worries that you might have, yes I remember you. No, she did not change me. Yes, I am very foolish," she assured her friend.

The other woman's color was still somewhat anemic, but much improved. She no longer swayed when she started down the stairs. She no longer craved water as if she were in a drought. There was still a bandage peeking from under her collar and her shoulder was thickened with the cloth wrapped around it to stem the flow of blood. They had much to talk about.

[Rance]

The fear was imagined. It was wholly fabricated, because what was on the stout seamstress' face was nothing, a Jernoan wall etched out of sandstone and slave labor; a barrier, cold, despite its heat and the smudge of charcoal that struck through her cheek just below her left eye.

The ring was up, displayed, and they peered through its very center at one another. All that existed in that moment was one of her eyes -- dull, witless, destined to be struck into silence had the sands drawn her fate -- and one of Noura's, one of the whelp's. It was her gloved hand that moved, the one that always wore black fabric, and it came up with warning before it snapped out to snare that circle of tin from the other girl's fingers.

"I don't understand," Gloria said, though her gaze, once broken free, seemed to never shift away from those shifting, gorgeous colors -- such finery, such pristine beauty in garments, a foreign fabric that her hands had refused, refused to work, and yet--

--yet here sat Noura, bedecked in it, giving explanations, giving excuses, false Razorsand royalty. "Why," was her quiet inquiry, even as she fumbled with graceless hands to do something she wished might not be seen.

The seamstress slipped the ring, Cherny's ring, a thing that meant no minds could pry, onto her bare finger. She did not slide it into her bulging satchel or drop it into the pockets of a Storyteller's skirt; instead, with almost frantic desperation, she stuffed it into her thick digit until the skin and metal squeaked against one another.

"Did -- did you have tea," she asked, though the question was hollow, and she used the back of her knuckles to push away the hot brew that had been waiting for her.

"Did you have tea with them?"

[Guppy]

Gloria stared at her in much the same manner she had expected. Every day of her employ was spent with imagined betrayal churning within her gut. It was only the quiet moments she spent stolen away with Elliot that she did not swear to herself that this was a mistake. That she did not berate herself for stupidity in accepting this fool's errand. The ring was snatched away and a single brow lofted at the furious reclaiming. Her fingers moved to rub lightly against her thigh in imagined injury. It had been so abrupt, it was almost as if she had been stung.

The ring was shoved upon Gloria's finger hurriedly, as if Whelp meant to beguile the young woman. Her lips quirked slightly at what she perceived as absurdity on the other's part. "I had tea with them," she agreed, passively. Her expression was as neutral as she could manage. She knew that this was how the others would feel, but it still hurt to see the accusation in her eyes. "Elliot and It made a bargain. I have to live as her trapper and get pampered as if a favored pet for two months. I use the time to try to remind him of his past. In return, I will get Elliot for two months," explained quietly as she reached for the tea. She needed something to sip, something to do with her hands so that she would not fidget.

What on earth did she want with Elliot for two entire months?

[Rance]

"Do you think it works that way, Noura," the seamstress asked her, her breath a heavy stone in her chest, her focus refusing to shift up, up, toward her friend's face, toward the wrinkles and features that might prove that everything was alright.

I use the time to try to remind him of his past.

Money did not scour brains of their memories, their thoughts, their emotions -- money bought armor, money engraved sigils with hot irons into breastplates, but it did not make one forget. There had been nothing of Elliot Brown in those eyes during the trial. There was a husk of him, some complacent, leashed canine with polished teeth and scholastic words. She considered it possibly a ruse, a means to an end -- by selling himself to Rhaena Olwak, he could provide for his family, shower upon them enough shillings to make their ways, pay their debts, enliven their crops--

...sh-she's probably g-given it t-to, to the m-mind-witch, Cherny had said.

Mind-witch.

"Do you think it works that way," the seamstress asked again, simplicity in her voice. "That -- that you make a bargain, and Rhaena Olwak plays fair games? Did -- did you sign a contract with your blood? Did you mark on the line or consult an advocate?

"Did you, by chance, think that if -- if that oo'olesh invited you into her graces, and you managed by some feat of epiphany to unbreak his mind, that she would just let you turn around and walk away with him?"

[Guppy]

Gloria's gaze was not upon her face. She could not see the quick flash of anger at the implied stupidity. At herself, perhaps, for making the deal in the first place. There was no turning back time, now, though. "I had to do something. Everyone. Everyone says that we can not get Elliot back again. It thinks he is gone. Everyone tells me to give up, to give in. There are moments where, where I see him again. Those moments, they are just enough to keep me on my task." Her words were passionate and frustrated. Every breath she took seemed difficult, sucking in air as if she were drowning. In actuality, she was fighting back tears on conviction. Elliot meant much to her. Perhaps it was unfair to assign him such merit, to lift him on such a pedestal, but there it was. "Elliot stared into the creature's eyes. Looked into the abyss and he told It that he would protect me. How could I give up on him now?," she asked, wringing her hands in her lap for a moment. Clenching her hands into fists and digging her nails into the skin she found there.

"I would gladly consort with all manner of predators to save him. To bring him back. And Rhaena is the tamest of the lot. I have tangled with better monsters than she," she insisted, unyielding principles. She had taken a note from Gloria's own book. How could the girl fault her for that? "If I manage to bring him back again, I do not think she will be left with a choice on the matter. It will come for her with the wrath of the dead. It will take whatever the Lady cherishes most and split it asunder." To hear such trembling fury in the voice of a young woman who commonly showed Gloria another side of herself entirely...

[Rance]

"Elliot Brown," she said -- with a firm and solid voice that was through-and-through a lie etched out of fabricated disgust, "was an arrogant, stone-headed fool. He looked into It not because he cared for you, Noura, but -- but because he would skirt across any sand dune that promised fortune, power, and challenge when he tumbled over the other side."

She hated talking about him. It made her stomach turn; it twisted her guts into a rancid knot, forced bile into her throat and stung her mouth with acid. She remembered, in a flickering thought--

Elliot Brown balancing on a fencepost in a stable-yard. The sky had only just begun to turn the faded blue of tired morning, and their breaths were cloudy ghosts in front of their mouths. He balanced on the rail, and she kicked at it, kicked, and wanted to watch him stumble--

Elliot Brown with two wineglasses, one full, one empty. She challenged him, told him to show her a trick, so he said he would toss the wine from one glass into the air and catch it in the other. And he did. He did, and she realized that while he was just an idiot boy, he was talented, and she never would be--

Elliot Brown, who protected her, and when she was to die -- stupid Jernos always died too early, too young -- he was supposed to...

She went not for broth, but for tea. She clamped her hands around the tin mug and wedged her lips against its edge, drinking despite its scalding burn, its heat; the steam brought tears to her eyes to cover those that already scorched there. Tea trickled down to her skirt-lap, puddling on a patch before rolling away in several miniature beads, one of which splattered against the rounded wood of a clog tip.

"He has -- he has still got the piece of coal I gave him," she said, her proclamation a bursting pustule. "He has got to do what he promised me he would. He has got to."

When the tea was gone, the seamstress' face had settled its skin into something softer, more pliable. Her thick cheeks were swollen masses and her eyes were fidgety, never focusing long. Afraid of truths. Frightened to crack the sun-tanned stone of conviction under her cheekbones, except for the whisper that wheedled out from her lips.

"You -- you do what you can to bring him back to us," she pleaded. "I can be angry. I have that right. I can hate the idea until I am puking; I can despise that there need to be deals and bargains at all. You see? But I--"

So many colors. Rhaena Olwak's chosen hues. Her sigil. Her mark. A bane to the eyes...

It will take whatever the Lady cherishes most and split it asunder.

"I trust you, Noura. With this. With him. With -- with our friend. But permit me to be scared and -- and furious, and irrationally distraught. If your back is strong, then mine will be. It will." The girl's words were a deluge, a cracked ceiling through which sputters of glassy sand came dusting out. Overzealous hands reached out without asking, the fingers touching that smooth Razasan fabric around Noura's bandage-stuffed collar, wanting to peel it back, rip it away, reveal what was beneath.

"Did she hurt you," she whispered. "Did -- did she hurt you?"

[Guppy]

Gloria's insults she leveled towards the young man who had caught Whelp's fancy made the woman narrow her eyes. "How many of us can claim differently? For all his flaws, Elliot was worth knowing. Worth protecting. Worth facing down the snake to recapture," she assured, a little of the boy's new-found earnestness creeping into her voice without meaning to. "He would not have given up on us."

Despite their conversation, she watched as Gloria wrestled with the her guilt, punished herself by gulping at the scalding liquid. Tentatively, her hand stretched out to take hold of the woman's elbow in a show of support. She understood. "The coal? He keeps a trinket from you? From his past?," she questioned, hope dawning anew in her eyes. "I wonder if he keeps the skull." Whelp had given him a gift and he had accepted it - eventually. Her mind filled with plans to raid the boy's room, to find her gift. To tell him the story of the present she had bestowed upon him.

Eventually, eventually the seamstress gave her blessing to the wildling. Her stool trembled at the force with which the woman flung herself at Gloria, her arms seeking the other's neck to cling there tightly in strong embrace. Her heart soared at the acceptance, even if Gloria warned that she would not school her emotions otherwise. "Thank you for understanding. Thank you. I will do what I can," she assured, blinking back the tears of relief at the edges of her eyes. Bashfully, would she part with the other if she'd managed her goal. A smile would steal across her lips, sheepish at the emotional display. "I only ask that you keep an eye out. So that I am not lost, as he is," she requested, the fear of her task suddenly clear. "If I fail, I do not want to lose myself, as well." The bravado was gone and she was allowed every aspect of her feelings on this difficult quest.

Gloria's eyes were on the bandage, anger within her line of questioning. A little chuff of air, of amusement, sounded. "No, not at all. She would not dirty her own hands. Catch and Giuseppe clashed. Cherny tried to attack him and I lunged to keep him from his goal. Something magical occurred and then, we were all flung away like a child's dolls during tantrum," she admitted. "The hook near the fire caught my weight. It says that I lost blood, but It made me sleep so that I would survive," admitted casually. Almost a thin line of wistfulness running through her tones.

[Rance]

He would not have given up on us.

Noura touched her elbow, cradled it, paused her. She shook; the wool of her winter dress hid most of the tremors' visibility (the suffocating fabric reeked of age and sweat, incubated her skin even in the Sun, brought out the tarsweat and promised her some memory of home). Her voice spoke about anger and fury, but her body of a simple child's emotion: fear.

"Not his trinket," she whispered. "Mine. He -- he once told me in his arrogance that he would burn my body when I am dead. That is what they do here in Myrken Wood. They burn the bodies. Perhaps he thought to disturb me, or -- or bother me. But I gave him coal," she said. "Because I will go first. Those are the odds. That is how it will be.

"It will be nice," the seamstress added with an ineffectual smile. "When that day comes, that would be just fine if he could hold his promise."

She wanted to be a greasy flag of black smoke against the Myrken sky. She hoped that even her corpse would reek, that the tarsweat would bubble and pop on her skin and passers-by noticing the pyre would put palms to their noses and look away. It humored her, that thought. Sometimes she drew billowing twists of smoke on her learning-parchment when she thought too much of

a Dream.

Noura lunged forward to embrace her. The autumnal hues of Rhaena's colors were like fire against her skin, but her friend was beneath them, not changed, not meddled-with, just Noura, warm and welcoming and -- for a moment, a split-second breath -- everything seemed normal, time and law unmolested, serene.

I only ask that you keep an eye out, Noura said.

She would not dirty her own hands, Noura said.

She separated slowly, regretfully, from the whelp, as if they were magnetic stones drawn apart by a child's hands. While the other girl spoke, she listened; she did not retort for some time, reveling in silence and considering, considering--

--but only long enough to remove from her satchel a frightful little fang of a blade that shook in the seamstress' quivering palm. Its handle was leather-wrapped, stained in black sweat, and its blade was a jagged shard of muddied mirror-glass, the kind that showed fictions, desires, wants, envies, needs. She placed the fragile knife on the bar beside them, speaking both with heart and honesty. "If -- if you are lost, Noura, and all measures have been exhausted, every avenue of opportunity scoured and ineffective in returning you--"

Her fingertips touched the tin pommel, as if to say, This is what a friend would do--

"Then I will. I will do this, so It may not have you. Do you understand," the girl asked without asking, her eyes frightened but resolute. Because if you cannot be you, she wanted to say. If Rhaena Olwak makes such a thing irreversible...

"Let me see your shoulder," Gloria interjected, an interruption, a rational steadying. "Seams are not always meant for clothes. It is what I can do. For you, for keeping my brother safe from what he ought not do."

[Guppy]

The woman felt the tremor in her friend's frame and her eyes softened as she gazed upon her. Her touch of Gloria's elbow turned more gentle, as if the other were more fragile than expected. Sometimes, it was difficult to notice her vulnerability under all that unyielding principle.

Her mention of the coal made the corners of the wildling's mouth lift in memory of the time Elliot swore the same to her. "He promised me the same," she admitted, with a pang in her chest. "After what he had seen, I imagine he thought it a kindness. I do not think he intended to upset you." The mention of her own death made the whelp both uncomfortable and eager, all at once. Her fascination with death was in all things and she could only make an attempt to hide that from others. Sometimes it was poorly concealed.

The hug was fierce, though brief, and Gloria soon tugged away as if she did not want to. Whelp watched as she dug out the blade and settled it on the counter in front of her. She was quiet as Gloria gave her promise. "It will not be like that. Rhaena means to extract It. She means to insert her own influence. I will have an entirely different breed of creature guiding my hand." Just the same as Elliot. "It is not concerned that is a choice I will make. Nor am I, for the Lady does not seek to prove herself at this time. Should she use Elliot to coax my steps..." A sigh left the woman's lips, knowing full-well of her weakness for the boy. Knight or not. "When the time comes, you may have to save It. Better the familiar demon than an entirely new one, right?," she asked, smiling without humor.

Gloria insisted upon seeing to her wound and the wildling just nodded briefly, accepting the fussing. The tavern wench had done her best, but Gloria would likely be able to assess it further. Correct the work. Gently, she eased down her collar and revealed the bandage. Rhaena would likely consider it somewhat scandalous, since the tender was nearby, but it was unlikely that either Noura or Gloria had an eye for propriety. The bandage was thick with cloth, the wound having left its mark upon the material. It was healing well, but the stitches were clumsy. "It says that one of the tavern girls was fetched to perform the task," she admitted, chin dipped to peer curiously at the wound there. Gloria was free to tend to it.

[Rance]

I do not think he intended to upset you.

"He didn't upset me," she assured. "He promised me, and if he remains as he is now, he will break that promise."

To hold one to their promise despite the scouring and cleansing of their mind was juvenile, unfair, but the seamstress clung to the knowledge as if it were a universal truth, that a promise is binding. Familiar. Comforting. Even through her manufactured hatred.

Should she use Elliot to coax my steps...

"That," the seamstress answered, while her gaze lingered far too long on the glass-edge blade, "is not going to happen. You've your own end of the bargain to uphold; at the hint that Rhaena Olwak may abandon hers, you run. You marshal yourself and -- you turn your back on her. Weak as you may be for Elliot Brown, I hope that you see through your softness for him enough to ensure I do not lose a second friend." Those words were selfish, hindered by an entitlement that came out more strongly due to her trilling accent. But the words favored themselves less prominently than those that followed.

"I will do what I must. Whatever you ask of me," she finally confirmed. "Whatever It asks of me to ensure that I do not lose you the way that we lost him. You tell It that, and -- and you make sure It knows.

"If It has your back--" The repetition of an old promise, a vow between girls, "--then I have Its, however I can."

As Noura shifted to reveal the gash upon her shoulder and the clumping bandage across the flesh, the bartender raised a hand, perhaps to ask them to remove themselves to privacy or to do the skinwork elsewhere. But he did not protest more than that -- the Broken Dagger had seen its share of gore, the evidences of old vendettas and fights still strewn in blood-blackened patterns on the ancient floorboards. She asked the bartender for a "Boiled water, please," and when it was delivered, she leaned forward to examine the wound and its paltry, shoddy stitches.

"Skin is -- is not like fabric," she said, as she withdrew from her satchel a hooked edge of bone. Gloria curved its sharpened lip between suture and skin, the fingers of her gloved hand spreading tight the whelp's battered flesh. With several precise yanks of the tool, old stitches broke, and the wound's wet, gaping mouth was open again to weep.

The smile she gave to Noura was both thankful and encouraging, confident of the task she was trusted to perform.

"At all costs," she said, "avoid Mister Catch. He will see your colors and rip them from you. Perhaps with -- with your flesh. In times like these, my friend makes only one distinction: those he trusts, and those he cannot.

"And he will not trust you."

[Guppy]

Gloria told her that her weakness for Elliot should not break her. That she needed to be strong, lest another friend fall to the mindwitch's tactics. Whelp frowned, wholly uncertain of her strength of character. She had all the faith in the world that It would not allow such an occurrence to blossom, but still it gave her pause. She worried that Elliot could turn her against her friends and the creature she regarded with cautious affection.

It was strange to see Gloria and It could come together over a common enemy. They despised one another so. "It does have my back." At least at this point. "It says that there is an ally in the dark one as well. I am drawn to him, though I suppose that is just the death clinging to him," she admitted, quietly, voice lowered. "Cherny has twice attacked him. You should warn him to be more careful. He might find an enemy in It, as well," solemnly mentioned. "I think It likes him." Meaningful glance.

The bartender's gesture for them to seek privacy was ignored and Gloria requested hot water. The man sighed, but likely did as he was told. Some averted their eyes from such things, but whelp did not. Her eyes feasted on the vision. The hook had pushed in to the meat of her shoulder at her back and threatened to make the joint dysfunctional. Strangely enough, it seemed to be healing nicely, though that would be aided immensely by the seamstress' touch. The bone tool sliced through the previously placed sutures with a little tug on the edges of her skin. There were little grunts of protest from the woman, but she was no less fascinated with the work.

At mention of Catch, though, her attention strayed back to Gloria. Brows knit together as she considered that. "He called me a swine or some nonsense," she mentioned, with pursed lips and a one-shouldered shrug (neglecting to lift the one Gloria was working on for fear of undoing her work). It was as if she did not fear the man. "I think he understands that I am unchanged. Still, you need to tell him not to press his luck. It is already wary and will look for any excuse." Unapologetic about that. Whelp did not understand the addled man and she made no secret of her mistrust.

[Rance]

Rhaena Olwak had taught her matters of simple mathematics, and addition was all she required to come to a simple conclusion:

The dark one. Cherny has twice attacked him.

Giuseppe.

"Be careful over your allegiances. The Black Man has done wrongs to us. He has tried to set children -- children, Noura -- like dogs upon one another. Weeks ago, I put myself between his blade and Rhaena Olwak's body. To protect her. To keep the governor's lady safe." With delicate fingers, she unstrung some of the clumpy stitches done by the barmaid, scraping them free with the edges of her fingernails and tugging them out of bloodied whelp-skin.

"Could I walk back through time, I would invite him to run her through. A great many problems would be solved."

Noura was dabbling in dangerous wine. Rhaena Olwak, Elliot Brown, the Black Man, and It. With needle cleansed in boiling water and a wooly sleeve unafraid of wiping away the coagulated blood, she worked upon the girl's hook-gouged shoulder and occasionally blew upon the gash, trying to lessen the irritation as she wove each suture like a delicate embroidery. Once, twice, she had to turn her cheek, her throat clicking and struggling, a gag suppressed and her meager lunch denied its reappearance.

"I cannot tell Catch what he can and cannot do," she finally responded as the needle slid again. "He -- he fears for the minds of those he loves. He translates and -- and perceives things different than you or I, Noura. And should you wear those colors in the interest of your subtlety, he may hurt you with the belief that he is doing right. Take what risks you will, but Mister Catch can -- can kill you, and if you are dead, Elliot Brown does not have his hope. Do not be counterproductive," she warned, framing a final stitch with pressing fingers. "Avoid Mister Catch for want of your success.

"Do this for me," she said, "and I will talk to Cherny of his boldness. He's every right to despise what Rhaena Olwak is breeding. But I could not bear seeing him hurt for -- for foolish mistakes." A pause. "I could not bear seeing you hurt for the same.

She severed the final stitch with her teeth and drew it into a tight and resilient knot.

"I want Beatrice," Gloria finally said. "I want to keep her safe. So you know always, always, to come back to make her yours again when this -- this madness is done."