Pitch

Re: Pitch

Postby Glenn » Tue Nov 26, 2019 2:38 pm

He had meant no harm.

So rarely does he ever mean harm. This is a problem, however, when one's morality was granted from above, when it has been shown to be facile and incomplete, uncolored and endlessly lacking. It was made even worse when he knew this. He understood color to a good degree, how to match one piece of cloth with another to make a desirable effect. He knew that better than he knew good and evil, and knowing that, he knew something about light and shadow, how shadow accented, how it made the light stand out. He was meant to be the shadow, to accompany, to accent. To try to be more was the height of foolishness. It'd be embarrassing if it wasn't for the fact that he could well do harm.

The entire conversation shifted; it shifted away from women in red and talking birds.

He had not intended that either and he regretted it immediately. At first, it wasn't so bad. Yes, she seemed surprised, taken aback, but she was not well and she had been reacting strangely to everything since he found her in a pit that was barely worth the name. There was even a smile. Then came the washing, and soon after the decay, the death of the smile.

Pain he caused for someone who had suffered enough tonight. As much as she wanted to shield him, he wanted to shield her, but they could not have it both ways. You would create not a phalanx in that scenario but instead an army of the blind. He had but one eye left, but he could still see that. He would be vulnerable so she did not have to. He knew what he wanted and he would give it to her instead. It was, very likely, the hardest thing he had done in years. "I have to tell him. What if he still follows this path? There are things I understand now, Gloria. He must have always known it was a false one, so young as he was. He found some way through. I would drop to a knee and beg for that truth, but how can I ask it of him, without betraying every trust he had in me."
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Re: Pitch

Postby Rance » Wed Nov 27, 2019 1:02 am

"Do you think he was misguided," she asks, "to find structure and reason and belief on that path you shared with him?"

The stone drops back into the basin. Something about her changes. She does not realize it, exactly, but her body does: her spine reduces its slump and her hips and shoulders and knees, they all align like the carved vertices of a statue. Even with the world around her shifting and blurring amid the lingering motes of sandrose, she solidifies herself to find balance. So that she may speak. So that she may reason. "No," she says, finally meeting his eyes again. "No, Elliott. Trust is not an absolute. And like truth, I believe, is not a thing which — which can be begged for.

"Trust exists to be broken." Her gaze softens. This is not one of Gloria Wynsee's hard and hammer-headed philosophies. Rather, it comes from her with a note of apology. Of experience. "It is not porridge with which to fill a bowl, you see? I think of it rather like — like a vase: formed by mud and dirty hands, and hardened by time, and then filled with all sorts of wondrous things like water and flowers and seedlings and then, eventually, the most beautiful blossoms." The metaphor clearly excites her, and she paces, her flat feet slapping audibly at the floor until she stops in her tracks, then shakes her head,
no, no, as if some piece of that analogy had fallen far and away from her grasp...

Elliot did not need comparisons. He did not need daft similarities. Here, as he would with Cherny, he sought truth.

"You have to tell him what, exactly? That you're human, capable of — of new ideas and changing perspectives? A man isn't a house to be built one way and stay that way forever, and I think it does Cherny disservice to presume he would want you only one way. But because that path is false for you doesn't mean it has proved false for him, Elliott. He forged his own belief. You were the vestments, not the scripture."

Trust exists to be broken.
Here, let me show you how.

"You were his means of rebellion. Squireship grew on him, but it was not his original aim. He intended to undermine you, to gain your trust and hers, that he could chisel away at the foundation. So that we could. I — I put him up to it, Elliot. I encouraged it."
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Re: Pitch

Postby Glenn » Mon Dec 02, 2019 1:32 am

"Misguided," Gahald parroted the word. It was one of his many skills, tarnished now by his proclivity to think the sounds through in the repetition. "Guided poorly, if that is what you mean. I'm not sure how anyone could think otherwise." He would know in a few moments more, just where that guidance had come from.

Truth was not a bowl. Or was trust a bowl? Or was it meant to be the porridge. Was truth the bowl and trust the porridge? He strained to work out each word individually, only to find himself falling half a sentence behind. She was excited, and he could listen as well as anyone, most of the time at least, but this was all a bit much. The analogy may have fallen from her grasp but his hand had only begun to unfurl. It was like grasping at smoke. He fell back to a trained (ingrained?) discipline, politely watching her as she paced, assuming, perhaps foolishly, that it would be his turn to speak once again someday.

Eventually, though, it was. Vestments and scripture. He was better off with the porridge and the pot. Therefore, he skipped his turn and let her speak on, finally discovering that the root of that guidance was not the Lady and not even himself, but instead the woman before him. His tone sharpened, tightened, his gaze narrowing in the process. "You put him in the worst sort of danger, Miss Wynsee." When caught off guard, he retreated to a higher ground, one not at all his own making. "He was a boy. Had the Lady taken more of an interest, the proximity would have done him harm and not good," for she would have seen the truth. Had things lasted a few months more, it might have undone them both.

There was not enough substance left to his beliefs to sustain such a storm for long. It blew off to the west, leaving the tamest of squalls in its place. "Maybe that was why it worked for him though. It did not begin from a place of real belief. He was left to question everything from the beginning and accepted only those ideas that stood on their own." It was a needle in a haystack for Gahald, finding glimmers of gold, or at least of steel, in the fluff of fabric and gauze that was the Lady's ideals. "I would ask him what he believed now, if I could." Then, after a pause and with the smallest amount of reactive pettiness, for he had not yet quite forgiven her for her newly revealed transgressions. "What would you ask him, if you could?"
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Re: Pitch

Postby Rance » Mon Dec 02, 2019 2:51 am

"He was a boy seeking to repair a world that had been stolen from him," she says in the face of that seed of displeasure written on his features. "You threaten him a disservice: we ought to be measured more by the danger we are willing to face, and not measured against the dangers present around us. He was a boy," Gloria agrees, "but a Myrken boy, and I would put my coin on — on his resilience, wit, and bravery in the shadow of any normal danger.

"Do not soften hard people by — by diminishing their willingness to fight how they must, and certainly do not discredit his will. Encourage as I did, I didn't force him to undertake that role, Elliot. He was a boy," she repeats, "but he too had lands and friends to protect, and a choice to do so."

Hers is not an offense that she would be blamed for Cherny's decision, but rather, that it would be unnecessarily credited to her. Seamstress she had been, but certainly no clockmaker, no gear-worker with an efficiency to put delicate plans into place, wind them up, and watch them flourish of their own accord. When Gahald deflates, so does she — she coils her energy and intensity back, back, until her shoulders widen and her wild face begins to lighten. "Perhaps—" she reasons, digging her more womanly self from the ashes. "Perhaps you two are more similar than you want to believe. Someone who questioned, and someone who could not. Balance is good. Balance is essential. You needed him. He needed you."

A sleeve dabs meticulously at her nose. Her words had fallen to a whisper. She refuses to look at him. Something springs to life in her: not that previous combativeness, but a morsel of something more vulnerable, more sudden. "If you
could," Gloria repeats, and turns, distracting herself with a sudden and desperate barrage of necessity: to right a stack of fallen-over books. She lifts them, presses them against their brethren, but they fall again, stubbornly. "You'll have that chance. If you ask him what he believes—" she stands the books again, "—I can only imagine—" only for them to flop over, "—that the response—" and again, "—will be beautiful, and perfectly Cherny."

And again. And again. She cannot get the books to stand, spine out, like good soldiers. She damns the lone hand. She damns the stump. She tries to employ it like a clumsy fist, righting the books, but they fall once more. So she hits the desk with that mutilated forearm. The legs and the bureau rattle as one. A quill falls. The books shake and shudder. One of them falls to the floor.

New exasperation wheezes in her voice. A hand covers her eyes, balls into a fist, wipes errantly.

"I'd ask him if he missed me. And if he didn't—"

She swallows.

"I don't know," Gloria Wynsee says. "I don't know."
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Re: Pitch

Postby Glenn » Tue Dec 03, 2019 12:18 pm

These were big ideas, lofty ideas. Put together, they formed a sort of morality, one more adjacent to the tatters of his own than alien to them. His voice was somehow even more unsure than usual and while his body maintained its eternal posture, his gaze had fallen awy from her. "People should not have to live like that. That's what knights should protect them from. Not just monsters and bandits but from that sort of injustice, from decisions that no one should ever have to make. Yes, what he did was noble, but that he was put into a position like that was ignoble. If there had been a hundred of us, a thousand, maybe we could have stood as a wall against such things."

There was only so much to him, and yes, it was deflated now. He could offer her his shoulder, but that did not mean there would be any substance behind it. One might praise a wall for being able to withstand the elements, but no one would go out of her way to ask of it any important pinion. "Balance. I don't know, Gloria," and he didn't, after all. "Balance seems well and good but balance for the sake of balance? Do we really need evil to balance out good?" Finally some motion, a meaty fist slammed hard into an open hand. "I've heard what people say, that we can't understand good or appreciate it if there wasn't evil, but I think I'd be fine with a bit less appreciation and understanding if it meant people suffered less, right?"

The fallen book was a mercy. It gave him something to do, a tangible task, something undeniable. He could bend over (at the waist, not the knees), and pick it up. There wasn't the curiosity to look at the title. What was important was that he compensated for her stumble, that he offered reassurance, a steady hand in the face of trouble he had caused, well-meaning or not. He rose back up and put the book before her, even if it meant placing his arms past her body. "Gloria, I don't know about balance, but I do know that things are easily done together. We'll face brave, young Cherny together. He's a caring lad, not a dragon, and we care for him in return. This, I know, we can do."
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Re: Pitch

Postby Rance » Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:53 pm

No. She doesn't agree. Not about knights. Perhaps the truth of it carves itself onto her face like a knife into wood; perhaps it manages to hide behind that dark skin and fade away. He retrieves the book, replaces it, with such an ease that — had he been anyone else — she would have surely taken it for mockery. "You speak in circles," Gloria tells him, finally catching his gaze with hers, and in this moment, daring not to pull away from that grievous injury of his other eye, as if staring at the puffy slit let her see the inside of him. The beyond. "In one sentence, you damn the path of knighthood, and in the next, you wish it stood as a shield against monstrosities and injustice. And then in the next—" she says, tilting back on her heels, "—you want to diminish suffering, certainly, but polish the luster right away from goodness.

"So knights become what, tired statues with dull swords? You wish to render your calling useless?"

Gahald: either the knight, or the vagabond.

She licks her lips, drying their stony edges before turning and setting her hip against the edge of the bureau. Had she been a woman of remarkability, of beauty, hers might have been an easy and confident posture. Instead, with her shoulders hunched and her lone hand stroking warmth into the roundness of her other shoulder, she exuded tiredness. The bureau held her upright. The room itself supported the tired frame of her bones. "Is he a lad anymore, Elliot? Time has passed. We're changed beings. We've dug in our heels in some hills and lost out foothold on others. He was a boy, but if time will tell its truth, he is no longer. Just like I'm not a girl anymore. Just like you're not hers. He might not be a dragon, but he's certainly not the same soul we last both saw. And I'm afraid—"

She touches her brow. It aches. She closes her eyes against the dull throb, then looks longingly toward the bed. "I'm afraid we'll have all changed so much, there'll be nothing left to salvage, and we wouldn't even know how to find the ruins of it all if we tried."

So much more she wants to say, but knowing it won't find the right words. And he doesn't need to hear it. Be privy to it. Doesn't need to suffer it. Outside, the night still hangs low and heavy with the moisture of autumn and the coming whispers of winter. The chill creeps through the walls, through the cracks in the stones of the fireplace.

"Stay until morning," the Jerno says. "I might not have many more good words, but — but I've no interest in being alone with the ones inside my head."
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Re: Pitch

Postby Glenn » Fri Dec 06, 2019 1:12 am

Another man might express exasperation here. There was no sign that Gahald even felt it. Instead, he was a statue of sorts, a patient one. When they last spoke, things had been rather different. Then, he had shown his frustration. Now, there was more familiarity to sooth that sting. She struggled with his words more than he did. Why? Because of an easy (too easy, cowardly perhaps?) admission. "I don't know, Gloria." His smile was almost a laugh but certainly not one of mirth. "I meant everything that I said but I do not know how to make it all reasonable or true or," that strain as he looked for the correct word as neither of them would do, "consistent? I don't know how to make it all consistent. Can I not want three things and have them all be at war?" Something in his tone indicated that not only was he asking her for permission, but maybe, just maybe she wasn't the person he truly wished to be asking.

On the up side, perhaps that was the other person they spoke of and not someone else. "None of us seem the same, Gloria, but I think we will never know one another unless we try, so let us try. Let us try instead of just guessing that none of it will do." Far more cowardly than not knowing one truth from another was not even attempting something out of fear. As he said, they would do it together.

"In the meantime, rest. I'll send word to your friend, Mister Duquesne and stand vigil until morning."

For despite her words, there was still much use to be found in a tired statue.
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Re: Pitch

Postby Rance » Fri Dec 06, 2019 2:01 am

"When you are invited to remain in someone's home, their responsibility is to be your guardian. To protect you from what harm they are able, and — and to allow you to be at ease."

Rules are rules, whether in places where streets blow with burning sand or in realms where snow drifts like dust across winter-cold cobbles.

"I do not ask you to stand watch, Elliot. Rather, I relish your companionship. I want you to stay," she clarifies, "because I like talking to you. The trek back to Snowstill tonight would be cold, and I'll not have you cold, just as you wouldn't stand it for me amid the mud and the noise of it all. Nor will I have you be lonely, because at the moment, I cannot abide loneliness, whether for myself or for another. You understand?" Elliot Gahald required a world of black ink on white pages. His was an eye that, while it knew a clever scribe's illumination to be beautiful, might neither service it with but a respectful consideration. No, Elliot Gahald was better suited to clear instructions, all the complexities of the world boiled down to simple declarations and defined necessities. One could not speak ten words to him and hope to be heard for a thousand. And this, Gloria Wynsee thought, was not weakness, but power.

Others ought to be so clear. She ought to be so clear.

"Let us try," she repeats. "With Cherny, and — and with knighthood. And with shedding it when the time is right. I don't want a guardian. Instead, I'd like someone to sit beside me who does not see me as an obligation. My home—" (Does she notice it, the slip?) "—is meant to be restful for you, too. Will you let it be that, if just for a little while?"

Her mouth flicked into some awkward shadow of apology, a smile-that-wasn't, as she turned, drifted toward the bed, and sat upon its edge. Finally, with all the slowness and calm one might offer a skittish animal, she turns her hand aside and pats at the rumpled quilt.

"Those parts of you, there's no need to let them be at war. You've fought enough about — about things which matter and also about things that don't. There aren't rules saying you cannot sit with a friend or share the same space with her. Leave those preferences for girls who
want to be treated like baubles and revered as princesses; I just care that you are Elliot, and that in your presence, I can be me. No laws to be broken, or proprieties to be shattered, or glass roses to drop."

But demands, they wouldn't do. She knows this. Choices. It must be about choices.

"Would you feel comfortable sitting next to me?"
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Re: Pitch

Postby Glenn » Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:54 am

"That sounds like fairy talk. Guest right and all that." Somewhere in there, a sense of humor still existed, a folksy Myrken thing that only emerged now and again but was all the more genuine for its rarity. "Anyway, Gloria, don't be foolish. I pulled you out of a hole and I don't know how long you were in there, not really, but I bet it felt like forever." He couldn't hide the look of distaste upon his face though it was his habit to try. The little taste of magic he had swallowed let him imagine just what she had gone through. "Anyway, I'd rather we follow our rules and not theirs. I just can't right decide what ours should be." This honesty, which he leaned in to, was a way to protect her as well. Some sacrifices could be made in times of need.

She set up some rules then, some considerations, and he would abandon his distaste in the face of them. "I can understand not wanting to be alone. I can understand not wanting me to be alone. I can understand not wanting me to be further put out than I already am, not on a cold, dangerous night." These were simple things, the most human and the most Myrken of things. "You want for me what you'd want for yourself and that's a compliment, Gloria." Then, though, came a stomp, perhaps not of his foot, perhaps not of his whole body or any part of it, but of his voice, his tone, his stare (though not his eyes). "You did not put me out though. That was a real meaningful thing. You were in danger. Now you are not. I did something and it mattered and you are here now, warming and resting, and no one, not even she who put you there, could say it was a bad thing that I have done. I'd thank you for it, but you might end up in more holes if I do."

There was a point where decorum snapped in the face of repetition. He could only refuse her request to sit so many times before it became rude, to where the social equation fell to the other side instead of the first. So he fell as well, walking those few steps and dropping down upon the center of the bed. It had taken all of her talking, but she had achieved it. He did not look particularly comfortable (though he did not fidget outwardly, only on the inside). "One does not simply sit upon the bed of a unmarried woman," which was a regret as soon as he said it. "Or a married woman?" For he wasn't sure. "There should be a chaperone involved, certainly, and in the latter case, everyone ought to be sitting in chairs, I think." The words came out as a stammer, for he was already past the point of restraint. Sitting on the bed had been bad enough, and now his center felt somewhere over there out through the nearest window.

"Compromise," he finally cleared his throat, now a hoarse that he wished he was traveling on instead of speaking through, "is that I disagree with you completely but that I am still sitting upon the bed, Gloria. Do you accept it?"
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Re: Pitch

Postby Rance » Tue Dec 10, 2019 1:35 am

"I must, mustn't I?" But she smiles. This is easy acceptance. The bed rustles beneath him, all its hay and down. Compromise, to Gloria Wynsee, is not necessary for tiny matters, matters of beds and propriety — though they are certainly greater matters to him. "But sitting you are, and here you are, and I quite feel like I've sacrificed nothing to cause it. So then was it compromise at all?"

So she just sits. It pleases her. Her hand and her blunted arm, they lay gathered in the lap of her gown like useless heirlooms. Sometimes her finger stretches out and tries to smooth down a wrinkle. She chooses silence. The fire crackles and moans and sometimes wheezes and often pops, fighting against the cool air trying to whisper in through the chimney. Though the smell of rancid mud still rises from her collar, she ignores it.

Then she turns. Her knee cocks upon the bed, angling herself so she could look fully at him. Then he talks about chaperones and marriage and unmarraige and — oh, Nameless, she can't help it, and maybe it's the sandrose, or maybe it's her inhibitions, or maybe the exhaustion, she starts to laugh. Not at him (though does such a distinction, to her, matter to him?), but around him, and with him, and for some reason the laugh goes on and on and on and she clutches at her midsection, clamps at her belly, then flops back until she lays slantwise across the bed and the whole thing shakes with her mirth. There's tears. She wipes them with a thumb. "Chaperone," she bleats, finally, when she finds breath. "
Chap — arr — rone," as if the word itself amuses her to stitches. "Elliot Gahald, I am twenty years of age, and a full woman, and owned by no one. I am complimented by your consideration of my lady-ness—" she says, smiling at him, "—because it means I am no less in your eye for all that I am, or — or that I refuse to be.

"I've not nearly enough chairs here to suit expectations, but have no fear: it's no boy or man I'd want to share a quilt with—"

The words stop. Sometimes she buffets the silence with words, to see how they feel — to understand them. She mounts her elbows beneath her, lifts up, looks at him. Tilts her head.

"Sylvius is — is good at clearing the webs from a mind, Elliot, the ones placed there by code and confusion and — and history. You took care of me tonight." Now was her chance to take care of him. "He'll challenge everything you know, and you might challenge everything he knows."
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Re: Pitch

Postby Glenn » Wed Dec 11, 2019 1:00 am

He doesn't want to battle with her, not with words, not with ideas. Others did. Everyone did? He wasn't sure. Most in Myrken would ignore her if given the choice, but her very presence took the choice away from some and her behavior from others and her proclamations from most of the rest. You could not look past Gloria Wynsee. He couldn't at least, and he'd been trained to look past all manner of people for all the worst reasons. Despite his confusion and sense of loss, he still retained all of these skills, all of these unnatural and inhuman abilities. They were a kit of tools that he could use at a moment's notice, yet each and every one of them was distasteful upon his lips and slime-ridden upon his fingers. He sat upon the bed and pondered this notion: there was an undeniable morality in simplicity. If he pulled aside the lace and frippery and left only the bare bones of chivalry to withstand the pressure and scrutiny, it held up; it did not mean much, but it held up. Now then, if that barest skeleton contradicted all the rest so thoroughly, all that his Lady had stood for, what did that say about her? What did that say about what he had become? No, he did not want to battle Gloria with words so he would instead concede her victory with the merest of nods. Compromise could well be concession depending on one's point of view. Many things could become many other things depending on one's point of view. That was what made life so difficult and everything Rhaena had tried to smooth out, even as Gloria occasionally tried to smooth out her wrinkles now.

Perhaps one could forgive him then, when he took quite a while, the span of many, many seconds, to even begin to grasp what she suggested about the need for a chaperone. Even then, he wasn't sure. It could mean a few things, especially considering what he knew of her past. Best not to dwell. Instead, not unkindly but perhaps a but unhelpably snooty, "I don't think people would care what you'd want. Or at least they wouldn't see it as a defense," Snoot gave way to sympathy," though that's not even a bit fair." That was an easy admission one that shifted his tone from not unkind to kind enough. It would not shift his head though. She may have looked upon him but he looked straight ahead, to yesterday and tomorrow and today all at once.

"Sylvius, then. For you and for me. Cherny, then. For us together." Challenges instead of peace, but at least no battle with her on this night.
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Re: Pitch

Postby Rance » Wed Dec 11, 2019 3:08 am

"Of course it's not fair. But I've lost faith in fairness ages ago, both in receiving it," she says, "and in providing it. Expecting fairness of the world afforded me nothing but scars — a sentiment that I believe your eye has come to understand."

The laughter fades off long before that statement. Here, she shifts as she always shifts, like a plate of earth upon a wild sea: sometimes happy, sometimes dire, and never one or the other for long.

This is an impasse. She knows it. She senses it, like unseen water far below the Glass Sands, waiting to be sucked out by a
jah'zoon's piercing snout. Tonight she seeks to be no hammer, knows she would sooner crumble beneath the blows than his beliefs. A pair of squinted gray eyes watch him intently, with warmth, and yet with distance. For a moment, his skin changes — and he's no longer a young man, but a stocky girl in a dirty dress, stinking of sweat and Sun, desperately trying to dig her heels into the dirt of this new place and understand...

"What matters," Gloria Wynsee whispers, a sober whisper, "is that the future we forge is one in which justice and fairness can live without — without they be used as a bludgeon to batter the masses. I made mistakes; I
make mistakes. In raging against Rhaena, I was unfair to you. And sometimes it makes me sick to think about. I am desperately trying, Elliot, to be fair with them, with her—" as if spoken to some blurry image in her mind, "—but I exhaust of the effort.

"I hate the dreams I have, where — where everything falls apart."

The fire flickers. It's begun to lose its strength. It glows, now, more than it dances. A cast-iron pot of old stew beside the fire has burnt itself to a black mass. How wasteful. She ought to have finished it earlier, before her jaunt...

"If you go, I'd ask you to promise me this: that you aren't committing yourself to loneliness just to adhere to code."
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Re: Pitch

Postby Glenn » Sat Dec 14, 2019 3:20 am

"There was a fairness to my eye," and on the one hand, that statement, said looking off towards the wall and not towards her at all, may have seem overly introspective from the hedge knight, "for without losing it, I am not sure I would have regained my sight at all." On the other, of course, it was the starkest, most straightforward and obvious sort of symbolism imaginable. He lost an eye so that he might see. Gloria may have been a woman of twenty years of age, but she had not long before been a girl of far less, one with just enough education to be dangerous to herself and others, and, as it turned out, to the establishment as a whole (though never, perhaps, as dangerous to the last as she thought or wished). She grew out of such metaphors and he, despite being about the same age, had but grown into them.

If there was something further about it, something about the loss of pleasing aesthetic which in and of itself allowed him to think more freely, well, she was the inquisitor, not he.

She admitted something, quite a bit, about then, about now, and it would be enough to turn his head so that he might look, not at her, but towards her, to be engaged and to show her that he was engaged. It was a kindness, or at least a repudiation of the selfish opposite. He would be in this moment for her. Why else was he here but that. When he spoke, it was only after all of her words, including her last ones. "I will not leave you tonight. I do not understand everything you said, but I would not leave you alone either, not in body nor in spirit. I will be a sentinel and I can be a friend, or I can try to." The former was far easier than the latter.

She had said all those things, however, and while it was better within his competency to focus on those matters directly addressed to him, he could listen; he could always listen. He could listen and he would remember. He was attentive if nothing else. "Her." He said, then, and his lip curled up, just a tiny bit. "If I am to stay, Gloria, and I am to stay so there isn't really an if, is there? But if I am to stay, because I don't know how else to say it and it only works if it's said," which was the sort of sentence she would have heard out of him years before, though then, she could smack him with far less of a social cost, "you'll have to help me understand the things that come... that you say," that last bit was a near miss, for even when she was not a hammer, she was still a chisel and a blunt one at that. "When you said her, there, who did you mean?"
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Re: Pitch

Postby Rance » Sun Dec 15, 2019 9:14 am

"It is good," she says, "that you regained it."

But he hasn't. Not fully. A flutter of wind for the veil, perhaps. All this talk of sentinels, it's just as blind, isn't it?

A tug at the collar of her dressing-gown. Suddenly, she is hot, sweltering, and the black sweat that springs to her skin refuses to abate. The sandrose, in its gradual remittance of her mind, arrests her body in other ways. Flashes of heat. Surges of chill. She thumbs a dollop of perspiration on the side of her nose, wondering —
is it better he's here as a friend? Would it be better for him to be the sentinel alone? Would Genny understand? She wouldn't feel jealousy, would she?

Would you want her to, Glour'eya?

No. Not for her. But if she felt it, even a sliver, then that would mean—

Her. He asks about her. Gloria snaps back from a place a thousand leagues away. For all he's offered her of his attention in that moment, hers wanes. Sleepiness hovers in her eyes, tucked into their black pockets and hanging heavy on her lids. "Her. Her. The fae," she clarifies. "She is embittered by — by her own agendas regarding Gloria Wynsee, and I'll neither attempt to explain them off nor discredit her rage. But I've no patience for a creature who has twice, now, demonstrated an unrepentant willingness to see me die. To extend her any further patience, it would be to my detriment, and I've—" she swallows, "—a great many things to live for. So many, that I would be a fool to smile at a knife held to my throat."

She rocks herself on the bed. Not a frantic pace, but a soft, slow, comforting thing, like a pendulum blown by a draft.

"If she wishes to aggress, then she shall meet aggression. And those who align themselves with her, I'll not omit them, either. She may not choose to wage war on Myrken Wood, but that she chooses to wage it upon me is enough. I'll have my life. I'll have it, if only to spite her."
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Rance
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Re: Pitch

Postby Glenn » Tue Dec 17, 2019 2:56 am

He was attentive. He was attentive through Gloria looking ill and then well and then ill again. He was attentive through embittered. He was attentive through Gloria speaking in the third person (though he did not know the difference between the first and the third). He was attentive through unrepentant and detriment and omit. Being attentive, he couldn't help but notice fatigue catching up with her, finally outpacing the wildness and energy.

The words themselves were harsh, formidable, but the tone behind them could not live up to their furor. His shoulders (which could live up to a great many things, though not for Gloria apparently), heaved up and slowly sank down as he turned his head upwards to stretch, the motion sprinkled with the tiniest bit of sluggish exasperation. "If you wish to wage war in the morning, we can see about that, Gloria. For now, might you," and here a pause out of concern that he might transgress himself, that he may be too familiar, that he may take things too far, "might you wage sleep instead?"

If she should, and they knew she should, then the friend would indeed become a sentinel, not through intent but simply through a lack of conversational company. He had not the words to express that her stubbornness in the one was equal to his in the other, and just as good and bad in both cases. Instead, he emphasized what he could within his meager means. "You need to sleep."
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