Tea in the Woods.

[Cinnabar]

Mid-morning, and a lone figure strays from the road near the Broken Dagger, into woods that are still rousing from winter into spring; it promises to be a pleasant day, though for now it's cool enough that the wanderer keeps his coat buttoned. Head uncovered, silver-white hair catching the spring sunshine that filters between the branches, the young man is neatly-attired in pale shades of grey; boots freshly-polished for all that they'll likely not remain so as he strolls through leafmould and picks his way between stumps and fallen branches. A small wickerwork hamper hangs from a strap over one shoulder, a waterskin sloshing beside it, and he carries a pair of blades at his belt - a matched set of narrow basket-hilted sword and slender dagger. For all that his visit is peaceful in intent, only a fool would venture into Mykren's woodlands unarmed.

There's little haste in his step, time taken to enjoy the walk as he searches for a suitable spot; swathes of celandines and scattered anenomes bringing colour to the forest floor, everywhere he looks there are green shoots and tender young leaves, buds and blossoms and life renewed. The air is thick with it, a rich scent of things growing.

Eventually he finds a likely place, a small clearing around the moss-covered hulk of a mature oak fallen many winters past, where grass and meadow plants have found a foothold before the canopy can close out the sky overhead. He pauses at the edge of the little glade, listening for a moment, before strolling across the sward to set down his burden in the lee of the toppled giant. Swordbelt unbuckled, weapons propped against the trunk; coat unbuttoned to reveal a simple grey doublet, the coat itself hung neatly on a projecting branch-stump. The hamper is unpacked methodically - a blanket first, the square of heavy wool spread out so that he might sit on the ground and make his preparations. Next an earthenware teapot and a pair of cups, plain and simple; no need for delicate porcelain or dainty saucers today. A spirit-burning stove follows, set out carefully and lit with a scratch of a sulphur match. Finally a small copper kettle, filled from the waterskin, is balanced atop the burner to boil.

Preparations made, it remains only to enjoy the tranquil surroundings while he waits. This he does, leaning back against the fallen tree with his hands behind his head; after a time his eyes drift closed, soothed by birdsong and the sigh of new leaves.

[catch]

Send him to the Forest, and he will be Found. That had been Elliot's idea, and yet the observation, the insistence, had been astute, an idea born in the once-squire's maturing mind. He would, indeed, be found, for so bold an adventurer always brought eyes upon them. The stray deer, reveling in its survival from winter's frost, a lumbering squirrel freshly awakened, heralding the soon-to-be Bears who will, similarly, awaken.

Catch found him, taking a little longer than long-legged deer and tree-bound squirrel, because his mind had been on other, growing things, twining with them and feeling the world breathe beneath his bare feet. He came silently with a heavy wind at his back, a presence that both oppressed and reveled in the nature around it. He was hesitant, was Catch, even if Elliot had assured him, and Catch had been so certain before. His mismatched eyes, wide in his degenerating, bestial features, regarded the young-old man for a long moment, where the forest forgot to breathe.

"You b-b-brought tea?" the addled man finally asks, shyly, and he ducks to pick a single flower from the masses, one that sings the most True, absently twining it between his silver-scarred fingers, letting the dapples play across his skin and tattering clothes as he paces across the tranquil clearing.

[Cinnabar]

It's the hesitation which alerts him, rather than the sound of footsteps he'd been expecting; instead, a pause in the forest's subtle sounds, an unnameable shift in something, in the air itself, that marks the arrival of another presence. One grey eye half-opens to lazily survey the clearing, and then he is paying full attention to the approaching figure, though he doesn't start or flinch. Instead there's a pleased grin, as if he'd been anticipating an uneventful day spent sitting alone in a forest glade and is happy to be proved wrong. A short moment to inspect his visitor - or is he the host, Cinnabar a guest in his home? Either way he takes him in with a quiet gaze - those clothes, that scar, the rough-cut hair and mismatched eyes, the air of cautious wildness.

"Good morning. Elliot asked me to, yes." Invoking the youth's name perhaps to reassure the other man, to affirm his credentials. When he lowers his hands from behind his head the movements are unhurried, controlled; first adjusting the spirit-stove to burn hotter, to bring the kettle to a faster boil; then his attention turns to the wicker hamper beside him, picking out a little earthenware jar, tightly-stoppered.

"I didn't set it to brew as I wasn't sure how long I'd be here, and tea's best not left to stew too long." Lean hands go through a little ritual as he speaks, movements with a sense of practise and familiarity to them: teapot placed before him, lid lifted with a soft clink and set aside; the jar opened with care, a measure of its contents shaken into his cupped hand - dried petals, seeds, slivers of fruit peel, root shavings - then neatly dropped into the teapot once he is sure he has enough. The jar is stoppered once more and set down on the blanket, hand unthinkingly moving to his face to breathe in the scent that lingers in his palm. He remembers himself, though, looking back to his guest with a briefly self-conscious smile, gesturing to a spot on the blanket across from him; please, take a seat.

"I'm Cinnabar. What may I call you?"

[catch]

Ser Elliot's was a name that inspires relaxation, if not total surrender. Catch comes to the other side of the cheerful stove, and he lowers himself back onto his haunches, a motion that caused his legs to flicker, a brief tremble, perhaps, of the muscles, yet suggestive of something there, not-there, skin that was not pale and dirt-smudged but a suggestion of all-colors. He watches the movements of Cinnabar, eyes flickering and twitching over fingers and hands. The stove was a curiosity to him, something he was not used to seeing out here in these woods. Both he and Cinnabar had stopped their moving, and Catch did not speak, yet in all that time, the forest was too quiet. It was still in anticipation.


"Catch is as g-g-good as any," the addled man says at length. He did not know enough about tea to comment, and trusted Cinnabar to his explanation. He would have preferred milk. Or rum. But it was the 'tea', in 'teap party', that was the most important. Catch's eyes flickered up to inspect Cinnabar's face; though he was able to observe more, he came away with nothing but the surface. "He said you are k-k-kind. He still wants me to b-b-be human. Am a here f-f-for th-that, Ser Cinnabar?"

[Cinnabar]

The stove is a small thing - a reservoir for fuel with holes through which the vapours can burn, a lid to adjust the blue flames that dance merrily above, and a trio of brass legs balance the stove on the ground and a kettle on the burner. Neat and simple, but cleverly-wrought. A thin trickle of steam from the kettle's spout attests that it's doing its job quite well.

A nod as the man gives his name, that mismatched glance meeting a steady grey gaze - attentive, interested, paying quiet attention to details of gesture and expression. A habit that's served him well in his time as Constable and Governor, no doubt. Catch's surface inspection gives superficial details: lean of build, quick rather than powerful; fine-boned features, perhaps some elven blood a few generations back; pale hair kept short, tousled despite attempts to the contrary; faded scars on his hands, split knuckles and old cuts long healed; palms roughened from gripping some tool or weapon; a white-gold ring gleaming on his left hand, fashioned as a sleek little beast coiled about the third finger.

"I prefer to be kind, yes. There are too many cruel people already." A choice, taken deliberately. Maybe even a natural disposition, though one which can be set aside when needed. "For now, Ser Catch, we're just here to talk and to drink tea." Speaking of which, that trickle of vapour is strengthening to a plume, the kettle shivering as steam rumbles in its belly; a pause to take it off the heat, to pour piping-hot water into the little teapot. A gust of scents are released, layer upon layer; sweet floral tones, rich citrus, something earthier beneath.

"If you'd like to be human, though, I may be able to help." A clink of pottery as the teapot's lid is replaced, the drink left to brew for a time as he turns his attention back to Catch with a grin.

"I'm quite good at it, myself."

[catch]

Catch cants his head, allowing the words to come through him, trickling like soft waterfalls, to spread out as wet loam beyond his toes. Words were strange things, had strange tastes; sometimes, he did not know them all, and familiar groups could turn as alien as the way Andre speaks. This gathering, however, he knew, and Catch's lips are pulling into a shy, responsive smile, and he shifts his bulk to settle back on his heels.

"There's no b-b-being human for me. You'd better ask fish to fly, or tell th-the sheep in the sky to swim," he says, not unkindly. Poor Ser Elliot. Poor Ser Cinnabar, for that matter, because the man had come out all this way for the boy. Ignorant as he was to Ser Glenn's involvement, it was, likely, best that he remained so.

"I c-c-can't tell him, you understand," the addled man continues, wringing his hands together before he settles them, once more, upon his upturned knees, his head thrusting above them, giving him the appearance of some unearthly, elegant gargoyle, his eyes anything but mad, sharp, but absent of the pity that they should be filled with, the pity he managed to put in his voice. "I d-d-don't want him involved. I duh, don't want him t-t-to know what I'm Becoming."

[Cinnabar]

There's a light shrug and an easy grin as Catch describes the impossibility of such a suggestion. "Stranger things have happened. Especially here." In Myrken, where impossible things are commonplace, and jostle one another at the bar of the Broken Dagger. "But if you say it's so then I can't dispute it. Perhaps you might pretend, rather than become?" A suggestion offered for Catch's consideration; an idea, nothing more. If he's concerned then he's adept at hiding it.

"I think I understand." Choosing his words carefully, for clarity's sake. "Ser Elliot thinks that if you were human, people wouldn't be afraid of you any longer; he'd not have to worry about people wishing you harm, and could simply enjoy your friendship. If he knows you're Becoming" That emphasis, noted and echoed "something else, that'll make him worried and upset."

Looking to the larger man for confirmation, wanting to be certain that he has it correct. That talk of Becoming brings a brief flash of that... whatever-it-was that the fae Zilliah had pressed into his mind when questioned on Catch's nature; the twisted horse-shape with a halo of lashing tendrils. No; that image is firmly pressed aside.

"So. What will you Become?" The obvious question. But one perhaps more important comes close on its heels:

"And then what will you do?"

[catch]

He asks many questions. He makes many observations. Ser Cinnabar is more like Glenn Burnie with each passing word, and Catch could not figure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. He had been so curious, so kind, before going down the maggot holes. Before Things had gone missing from him. Catch was not yet certain which Burnie Cinnabar would prove to be. He watches every motion that the other man makes, holding a certain wariness, yet also uncaring. Whatever this man could do to him, the addled creature does not think it is enough. Cinnabar was an unknown, but he was a small unknown, something to be treated with sharp benevolence.

Catch takes a deep breath, and the upturned knobbyness of his knees comes together with a hard, audible click of bones. "Yes. He would worry. He would... help. B-b-but there's no helping. It'll all g-g-go to pieces, even if he and, and you, and everyone g-g-goes to dust."

Catch's voice lowers, from sing-song to the dirge of a trance, and his head weaves side-to-side, lured by Cinnabar's smooth, unobtrusive motions. The next moment, it was over; Catch shakes himself like a giant dog, shedding dust and loam and the stray flower, rising about him in a cloud of sweet nature, and he lifts his head to grin at Cinnabar, though his eyes are clouded and confused. "I c-c-can't properly say, Serjo; not in a way t-t-to be understood. If I am t-t-to b-be feared, th-then it must be so."

[Cinnabar]

Calomel and Burnie are similar in many ways - or have been in the past, certainly; outsiders who've made Myrken Wood their home, possessed of a certain energy, a drive to not simply fend off monsters and madmen, but to make things better. Keenly inquisitive, observant and analytical. And yet at some point their paths had diverged, and the forces shaping them could not have been more different.

Less active, now that the tea is brewing, cross-legged on the blanket, wrists resting lightly on his knees. An occasional flick of fingers to emphasise this word or that, but otherwise still, relaxed. Aside from his eyes, which are alert, lively, taking in nuances of gesture and expression. Features animated when he speaks, quietly attentive when he listens.

"Do you want to be feared, for it all to go to pieces?" Pale brows lift with that query, a grin echoing Catch's own, though he notes that gaze that goes with it. From all he's heard of Catch, for all the chaos and fear that's surrounded him, Calomel finds it hard to believe the man would willingly seek either outcome. He has stared into the eyes of monsters, true monsters, and they were not like those of the creature before him. So, perhaps there is hope.

"Whether or not you think it unavoidable, Catch, is it what you would choose?"

[catch]

"N-n-o-o-o," Catch drawls out at Cinnabar's query, much as a toddler would, if posed a similar question. In true thought, and not in jest or mockery. "Why would I? I like ch-chopping wood," Catch says, and here his wide eyes drop, silver-scarred fingers twisting together over his knees, while overlarge teeth grip his lower lip. "I like st, stew, and m-m-milk, and I like rum and Chocolate even th-though there's n-n-no Chocolate anymore."

The further on he goes, listing the things he likes, the more vehement he gets, the more angry. He wants all of these things, loves these things unreservedly, warm beds and Dreamladies, and even weasel-Suede and beetle's eyes, that when he is done he is almost glaring at Cinnabar, confidence restored, his eyes flashing in a rage that is not at all directed towards the man in front of him.

"Would I starve, or would I go th-th-thirsty? Th-that's my choice, Serjo. I'd rather be mad again. It eats at my mind, tears it to pieces, only this time, it all grows back again!" Catch has become so agitated that he cannot help but launch to his feet, and pace the peaceful clearing that was still so eerily silent, where even his footfalls make no noise and breaks no grass beneath them. "I'm hurting p-p-people, Ser Cinnabar," Catch finally says. He remembers, in the faint fog of his Mad Times, asking Ser Glenn if the man would kill him if the Wolf ever got out, and wondered if that promise had been broken. "I'm n-n-not certain I can stop."

[Cinnabar]

Quiet as the addled man rages, paces the turf with soundless tread. Watchful, but still as the other man is active, calmness to his agitation.

"It's still a choice, and how you make that choice is what's important."

Now reaching back to the hamper to reclaim a smaller cloth-lined basket from within and set it out on the blanket before him; crisp linen unfolded to reveal a heap of small cakes, dark and rich with the spice and sweetness, each topped with a small dab of icing.

"To starve is slower, and some would reckon that a bad thing, as it's longer to suffer; but eventually the body forgets even to hunger." Turning his attention to the teapot, lifting the lid to check the strength of the brew; that looks to be sufficient, so those sturdy cups are set out and filled, a gentle tilt of his hand, a smooth arc of liquid that steams with the scent of roots, seeds and flowers.

"To thirst is quicker, but by no means kind - it brings madness before the end, but at least that is brief." One cup is placed on the mat where Catch had been sitting, the other lifted to Cinnabar's lips for a careful taste. A small demonstration, watching the addled man's movements from over the rim of his cup. It's good tea, though it could have brewed for longer; the next cup will be better.

"There are always other options. In truth, picking between hunger and thirst is no choice at all - they're both just types of surrender. Either way you've given up and lost everything. Surrender to madness or surrender to Becoming something terrible - they're the same thing." A light shrug, and then he lifts his cup.

"This has chamomile flower, valerian root, star anise and orange zest." Things to soothe, chosen very specifically for that reason. He plucks a small cake from the basket; taking a bite, chewing, swallowing, before holding the remaining half-cake up for Catch to see.

"These have ginger and molasses in them, and are very good." He grins, and pops the rest of the morsel into his mouth. It's a moment before he speaks again, preferring not to spray crumbs across the blanket.

"You can choose surrender, or you can choose to keep fighting. That's your choice, Ser Catch. That's everyone's choice." Choose madness, hurt, and breaking apart; or choose rum, stew, and chopping wood. Calomel sips his tea again, enjoying the scent of it, mingling with the lingering taste of spice cake.

"You can stop hurting people. I believe you can, because you have the wits to see that it is a choice. As long as you don't surrender."

[catch]

Catch listens. It is what he is good at, listening; he cants his head as a dog might, the bare peek of his ear, beastly, animal, peering as an elfin-tipped shell from the curls of his hair. He listens, but he does not stop his pacing; he smells things, herbs and spices and sweetening, and he is given names for the things he knew under different names. Ancient names, names long lost to all but He, who must remember them.

It is the honeyed words and the promise of sweets that finally quits Catch's pacing, the addled man drawing close once more, his large hand closing on the teacup, lifting it, bringing the hot water to his cracked lips, to feel the herbs on his tongue. He does not like tea; he would prefer rum. The complexity of the flavoring is lost to him, and yet he drinks it, because it was what is polite. Because, when he had been mad, he had Obedience carved into his psyche with whips and curses.

"What are you?" Catch finally asks, once he has drained half of his cup, his tongue running along burnt lips and burnt mouth-roof, accompanied by a grimace that had more to do with the irritation of pain that distaste. "Could you... run with the D-d-dreamlady?" he asks, and waves his hand absently into the forest. "C-c-could you - I mean, I t-t-tried. I tried very hard."

"Even when I was m-m-mad, I tried, you know. I suppose I d-d-d, duh, don't know any better. Or d-d-didn't. It's n-not just about being. Surrendering. Or. g-g-giving up. Or." Catch was still agitated, only now, he could not explain to Cinnabar just how wrong he was, how things could be no other way. How he couldn't go back to chopping wood and eating stew. The addled man takes a deep breath through his broad nostrils, and he tries to think, to arrange the muddling of thoughts that drifted along atop the mist of the tea.

Absently, he takes a cake. Nibbles it. He decides that he likes it more than the tea.

"Three and three is six. Six and th-three is nine." He could say no more than that; even that quick, decisive muttering brings a shudder to the trees, and the world, for a moment, seems a bit darker. His fingers, engraved first in black, and now in silver, tighten against the cup so that the fired clay that it was groaned in response.

"Let me t-t-tell you about my Mother. She died, you know. A v-v-very long time ago. She would p-p-put blood in my face, and we'd dance under the moon, before it got all th-those scars from being in my head." A madman's rambling, but he believes it; believes it so utterly that he would kill for it, and it is plain to see in the way his eyes glitter, like glass knives. "I b-b-bet, even if she went into taverns and served milk and rum, th-that they would still have crushed her head. When are th-they g-g-going to crush my head? They won't, b-b-because then everything would get out, but if they could. That's n-not my choice. How's it my ch-ch-choice to be whole or not be whole?"

[Cinnabar]

"Careful, it's hot." A quick warning, but a moment too late and thus somewhat redundant; one which he himself ignores, in any case. No scalding, no discomfort. "There's honey for it as well, if you'd like."

Questions in return, and for the first time there is a trace of doubt in the man's features, of hesitation. Things he has chosen not to think upon too hard.

"I'm stronger than most, quicker than most; no fire or heat can touch me, as I've a fiercer flame here." Fingertips rest lightly below his breastbone. "I rage, and the flame burns brighter and I'm told that I become terrible. I dream of a cavern in the mountains, and the creature that sleeps deep inside, and we have spoken on occasion." Secrets here, secrets shared with so very few - for who'd tolerate such a man as Governor, if they knew?

"I'm not sure what I am." Not sure, no; some good idea, some suggestions that are quite likely correct in some or maybe even most of the particulars. But not enough to claim certainty. Looking into his cup, as if to find meaning the swirls of steam.

"Friends - good friends - have presented me with what they think I am, or might be, but I've not paid that much mind. The what matters very little." Uncomfortable to think about these things, even moreso to voice them, and some faint edge of tension is creeping at last into the set of his shoulders. He takes a larger mouthful of tea than is strictly decorous and a deeper, steadying breath before looking back to the addled man.

"I like to run, though I've not done it in a while. Through the woods, just for the swiftness of it." The thought pushes aside less palatable thoughts, and has him smiling slightly at the memory. The Dreamlady, though. Some thought on that name, some piecing together of what he knows and what he supposes. "With her, though? I don't know; I don't know her. What stopped you from running with her?"

And then talk - disjointed, confusing talk, meaning obscured in distorting layers of madness. Cinnabar is still as he listens, as he watches, grey gaze flicking to the trees and the sky as something presses briefly on the place, some terrible weight.

"That's not your choice, no. That's your situation. How you respond is your choice." Another sip of tea, and he finds his cup nearly empty; a moment's work to refill it, to lift and tilt the pot towards Catch's cup while he's at it, if that cup's held still for long enough.

"Why do you think they would crush her head? Or yours, if they could?" A small exploration, a test of sorts. How well does the man understand others, understand people? Cinnabar thinks back to his own past, to a journal in which he'd kept his thoughts, his observations; notes from time spent watching quietly, listening, close attention paid to words and actions that had swirled around him. Striving to understand. At first the arbitrary rules of manners and conversation, the delicate but binding web of rules that kept fists from faces and fingernails from eyes. Then the deeper reasons, the urges and wants and fears that leant meaning to acts that might otherwise seem nonsensical. Why do they behave in this way?

"What else can you tell me of her?"

[catch]

There is more tea, then, held in a hand that managed to keep his trembling slight. There is more cake, because Catch has reached out with a looser, shaking hand to take one.

"P-p-people say that," Catch says, but not without sympathy. He is sympathetic, to a point; it is better to say that he understands, that he can think, that he can - to some extent - project into others. "They always say th-th-they duh, don't know what they are." This calms him, somewhat. Cinnabar's admission fascinates him, tales of fire and creatures. Dragon-like. Is there a dragon, coiling in his belly? Catch hunches back into the ground, and he inspects his cake before he, carefully, licks the frosting off the top. He won't drink his tea, yet. He has learned.

"You wouldn't keep up with the Dreamlady. You c-c-can run like her, maybe, but she has a wolf in her belly, and it runs f-f-faster." Catch grins at Cinnabar, sharing this joke; sharing things that were, perhaps, not his to share, but when has Kacela been reticent about her Wild? "Th-that's what I mean, Serjo. You're no wolf. You c-c-can t-t-try, but she'll leave you to fly with the sheep in the stars."

Catch wants to speak no more about choices, situations; he does the expedient thing and ignores, deflects, looks physically away from Cinnabar until the man asks about something else, that something about his Mother that sets a fresh glimmer in his eye, and causes him to finally sip his tea while regarded Cinnabar carefully. How much? How much is too much, before he Changes, the way Jared and Zilliah had done?

"Th-they loved animals. My Mother and sisters and aunts. They lived Wild when p-p-people shouldn't live Wild. They - We - Become animals, and no one likes that. Only, I'm no animal." An admission of his humanity? Not Catch. He is something more than both, and finishes his cake with another sip of tea, and child-like, reaches for another.

"That is about her and b-b-because of her. Her brains went to the earth long ago. And m-m-mine got to go on for awhile more." The move is aborted, and Catch's hand lifts to touch miserably at the great cleft in his skull.

[Cinnabar]

"I don't know about that. I can run quite fast." A grin in reply, acknowledging that unspoken thing shared; he knows about Kacela, he's been told, and recognises exactly what Catch means.

One line of conversation is turned aside quite clearly, emphatically, and the young man's content enough to leave it for now; the idea has been planted and is now left to grow, or not. Instead he turns his attention to the man's words, his memories, more piecing together of what he knows, what he's been told, and threads of tentative speculation in the gaps between. That careful regard goes both ways, calm but keenly alert, words chosen carefully and actions schooled to stillness wherever possible. Whatever he might be, Cinnabar knows control, perhaps learned it as a matter of survival.

He takes a cake of his own as the addled man speaks, the basket still holding an abundance of them - he'd thought it excessive when Cambree had shown him, but was growing glad for her foresight. Smaller bites for this one, making it last.

"What sort of animals would they Become? Could they return?" Clarification sought; whether this was the sort of change attributed to skin-shifters, temporary and physical, or a more permanent thing - perhaps not even a change of shape but a change of mind, degeneration into something savage and uncontrollable.

Catch's tale is obtuse, in some ways, but Cinnabar does his best to understand; viewing it through what he knows of the man, an imperfect prism that might make the meaning clearer. Images arise and are dismissed as quickly; Catch speaks of his family and at first the thought is of Wild-folk, bare limbs and watchful eyes among the leaves; then pale creatures, fierce as lions, graceful as deer, running through forest glades with cloven hooves and coiling mane; then something other, spindly horse-things with lashing tendrils in place of a head, and that image is pushed aside firmest of all. Of no help and considerable harm. Instead he looks to that scar, ruined flesh and ill-knit bone beneath, and nods.

"Who made that?"