Taking Initiative

[Greets]

After the goings on at the Inn Greets wants to be away from the strangeness. These people were far from normal. Dead Things That Should Not Be, Lost Men, Living Cubs of Things Dead. She slips out of the Inn and looks around. She scents the crisp, cold air looking for one scent in particular. She was no tracker, not like Kacela, but her nose was better than most humans. She slowly and laboriously follows the scent of her target. It takes time, and there are many times where she has to search for the scent again as it is lost, but eventually she finds her way to Catch’s shack. Though she wants to reach forward with her mind to see if he is about, she does not, knowing that it causes him discomfort. Instead she does what normal people do and simply approaches. There ends the normalcy as now she tries the door with the intent to go inside.

[catch]

He had not locked it. He did not have a lock, and such a thing would have been uncomfortable, strange. The time he had locked himself in, at the Jacobs' brothers, had left him with an inarticulate sense of panic, a feel of being trapped, a low, low roof, and walls of hard-packed, lime-coated dirt, terrors and pains that lost all sense and context and threatened to drive him to madness. When he did not wish others to come, the simple and comforting expedience of shoving his carved table against the door did the trick, something he had more control over than an alien, complex lock.

He had done it when Glenn's constable had come, but he had not done it now. The door parted easily at her fingers, and she could enter the dim, small hutch at will. There is little room; the carven, beautiful table and her chairs dominates, and there is a large, long bed against one wall, a tiny, brass stove against the other. The other spaces were, to a point, filled with things, tailor's mannequins contorted in terrible, unnatural shapes so that they would fit, bottles of colored glass, skulls of every shape and description. There is a wooden shield upon the wall, and an accompanying wooden sword, which are normal, if childish things. But on every other space, there are dolls. Tens and tens of dolls, in variations of decay and social strata, no real pattern in their hanging - some by ropes about their necks, some by nails driven into cloth-hands, or into the eyesockets of those whose eyes, one or both, are missing.

Among all this is Catch, shifting in the dim light, sitting upright on the bed, a lurid human-shape. His eyes reflected what light was given from the stove, and so they glittered, like a cat's. He stares at Greets for a long, long moment, and finally he shall slide his legs off the side of his bed, sitting awkwardly on the end like a child.

"Are you, you hurt," he will ask, confusion thick in his throat.

[Greets]

Greets blinks as her eyes adjust to the dim interior. She takes in the clutter in the room, noting the splashes of shiny color from the bottles and the myriad skulls. She ignores the dolls and oddly shaped mannequins. Her attention is on Catch, whom she had spent the effort to hunt. She smiles at him, clearly happy.

She ponders his words, relying only on her growing grasp of the common tongue. After a awhile she offers a tentative “No?” not entirely sure of she deciphered his words correctly. She waits at the door for some sign of welcome, unwilling to enter someone else’s den without permission. “Sha'chem Jh'erno?”

[catch]

He cants his head at her, curious, and his lips pull into a smile of their own, a mindless mimicry of Greets' smile, but not without it's own happiness. He is happy to see Greets; he just would not have thought to smile, perhaps, if he had not seen Greets do it herself. Then she says what she says, Jernoah, and his smile curls it's way down. Not a frown. Not quite. He regards her with no-less curiosity, rubbing his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

"Come in," he will say, in hesitant glass-word Jernoan, thickly flawed, ready to shatter. Someone who has learned by rote, by repetition, and by beatings. Rat'vak words. "I ask if blood-hurt."

Then he smiles, again, cheerfully kicking his legs, a child who has shown himself to be quite clever.

[Greets]

At his invitation she smiles more, padding across the room to settle down. She seems intensely happy at being able to share words that she knows out loud with someone else. “No. Not blood-hurt. Claws not needed.” She reaches out to lightly touch his chest. “You are well?” She studies him carefully. Her eyes too, reflect the light from the stove when she moves just right. “I did not mean to scare. Dead Things That Walk Should Not Be. It is not the way of things.” She bares her teeth for a moment but it is clear it is not aimed at him. “You do not like this tongue?” She sighs and taps his fore head. “This way hurts. These words out loud is all I know how to do. Am learning the Bird Tongue. It is slow.” He hands settle back down in her lap.

[catch]

She touches him, breast and brow, and though it does not hurt, he flinches at the touch upon his mangled, misshapen head. He did not even anticipate hurt, but shame, a shame that the light managed to hide well.

"Miss Gloria put glass-words in. It is safe. It is good." That is all he shall say of the maggot-woman, of bloody mud and awful things. She asks if he does not like, and he shakes his head, and he does his best to smile.

"It is good! Just glass-words. They splinter. My brains splinter. I would rather to tongue-splinter than brain-splinter, yes?" He hesitates. Then he reaches out, seeking that orange hair, his rough, clumsy fingers attempting to stroke it. "Cha'harr is pretty-much. Girls is pretty, too."

[Greets]

“Did I hurt?” She looks at him concerned. Concern melts away to curiosity at the mention of Gloria putting words in. “How? Can she put Bird Tongue?” She taps her own forehead. “Why …” She pauses a moment then lightly taps his forehead again, “hurt?” She allows his touch, seeming curious at his actions. Touch other than to hurt is unfamiliar to her. Such is the Trust she puts into this man she barely knows. “You show Greets Bird tongue?” She tilts her head to one side, half of her face in light, half in shadow and one eye shines bright in the light.