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Post by Lyall British on Dec 26, 2013 20:48:28 GMT -5
(( Rp between Lyall and Cricket)) "I'm looking for Mr. A, the man calls himself a collector. I was supposed to bring this to him." Mark had been employeed by Mr. A only three weeks ago and was standing now, waving a hand-held cloth bag with something heavy in it, obviously what he meant to give his employer. His hair was short and his face with a five o'clock shadow. The items he was to fetch Mr. A wasn't particularly rare or interesting, it had hardly been a daring journey for him to gather and transport it. He had never actually met Mr. A in person, he was hired via a liaison who offered him money if he would track down an item or two and this was the first one on the list. After having so easily capturing his first paying job Mark assumed that it had all been a test of his competency and less about the value of the item.
"He's gone." The butcher said, his face said that what had happened in town was still new. He wiped the blood on his hands off on his apron and began wrapping up the man's meat, "Hate to tell you but there's nothing left."
"Nothing left!?" He adjusted the bag in his hand as he put the item back in it. Mark was young but not a boy. He was still trying to figure out how to make the world give him a quick and easy penny, "What's that supposed to mean?"
The butcher seemed to regard him with a less pleasant tone than before. Not many argued with a man like him working a clever, "Kid, I don't know what to tell you. One night it was just gone. All of it." He used the blocky blade to point towards the road, "If you go that way you will approach his home and you will see there's nothing left. Like there's been a battle but nobody ever heard of saw a thing."
"Thanks," he pulled out money and set it down for the butcher, "I guess..." and lifted up the meat wrapped in white paper and stuck it into his bag that he tossed over his shoulder. The butcher spat on the ground and took his blade to the grinding stone, muttering a conversation to himself. Mark took the path the blade had pointed.
At one time the building had been immaculate. The architecture of it was strange, stark and modern for the time and era which it was built. It had stood like a monument, a terrible, cold monument where witnesses had seen the strange come and go. Bewitched, beautiful, the fortress of which none other had been seen or could be called its equal. It was said that any oddity could be found there, but people who had known of the place and its stories weren't saying that about it anymore.
Some weeds had just grown over the fallen rubble. If the stone walls had even been in pristine condition it was difficult to believe it now. Massive columns had bee ripped into bits and scattered as if by giants. There were indications of hallways and some half formed walls created a poor labyrinth in the ground. Once there had been an enormous room filled with pedestals and on each pedestal was a story, a strange item that had cost wealth or blood to bring it there. One or two pedestals remained, scarred by the incident but still recognizable for what they were. He stopped at the one that was the least damaged, opened his bag and placed the item atop of the pedestal. It was stored in a cloth bag and stood when he set it down.
"Well... I got the job done." His eyebrows lowered and he looked around as if expecting his employer to suddenly appear now that the mission had been completed. At least he had been given half of his payment for the work in advance but he had been expecting the rest of that payment to take care of his other problems.
"What did you even want with it?" It wasn't that special, was it? To hear the people in the town, no, to hear the stories people said about the items that were brought here Mark was led to believe it had been an astonishing collection. There was nothing now, he had never met his employer and all that was left was half a paycheck he'd already eaten through and the one item he'd taken to the ashes of the Collector's home. Mark reached towards the pedestal and opened the beige cloth bag with the hemp string, sliding the blue and green carnival-glass goblet out of the cloth encasement and setting it down on the pedestal. Like a ballerina dancing in ashes. He half smiled, "This place could use a little class." He smiled as his own joke. Absentmindedly he began balling up the cloth bag in his hand when he noticed something written on the foot of the glass.
"What..." He leaned in to examine it closer. Drink of me when I am empty. His eyebrows came together as he read the words and he lifted the glass up to give it a greater inspection. There was no other text... but surely there much have been. His lips were cracked in thought, leaves cracked under the wind and he whispered, "That's weird..." He hadn't seen that there when he first purchase the goblet. ------- Stomping snow from her boots, Cricket looked around the circular stone room, realizing it had been months since she had been here in the tower. Her stomach rolled as it always did when she came here. The first few times, she had puked between her feet, but now it was just a few moments of nausea. Rizza, the girl that had been a part of her household for almost a year now, was not so lucky and retched quietly with her pale hands against the wall. Cricket gave her a few moments to gather herself and then led them out into the maze that was the tower halls. Sometimes it took her an hour or more to find the door. Sometimes it took only a few minutes. Once it had taken her the better part of a day. There seemed no rhyme or reason to these halls. They were always changing, but she found it helped if she visualized the rooms she wanted to find. Today it took only half the hour to find it and the old hinges creaked as she pushed open the door. Rizza took in a soft breath of "oh" when they entered, for it was her first visit here and there was a stark difference between the gray stone of the tower itself and this more livable apartment. Heavy tapestries hung from all the walls, scenes of battle and love stitched in threads of reds and golds. Overstuffed furniture looked comfortable if not dusty, and a large fireplace offered the promise of heat when lit. Curtains hung down over arches that led to other rooms, but those would not be needed. Opposite a single, narrow window with panes of deep green, an arch yawned without drapes to cover it. It was dark within and only the silhouette of a long table could be seen within. "Get a fire started and a pot of tea, Rizza. Let us get the chill out of the place." The girl wrapped her cloak about her and nodded, still looking about her with awe and such a young girl as Rizza was no doubt still contemplating the possibilities of ghosts as she set about her appointed task. Cricket looked about her, and ran a finger through the layer of dust that had coated a cluttered table. It had been months and she did not miss the place a bit. After all, it had been her exile for the better part of a year. She came occasionally, when she needed to travel, but she would never call this place home again. As Rizza got the fire going, Cricket wandered into the larger anteroom that was lit with no light but what came from an eerie moonglow through a row of tall, glazed windows, their panes in a myriad of colors. The hairs on her arms tingled, and she knew the magic was still here. She was taking a huge risk to do this. She was aware of it, but she had decided the gain far outweighed it. So large was the gain in fact, that it would see her through not only this winter, but two or three more. That the opportunity fed her need for adrenaline, she thought about not at all. A few weeks before, she had heard whispers of someone that was paying large for something small. It was only a few days ago, that she had learned whom was paying, and for what they were paying for. A family it was, not a single individual, though she had dealt mainly with the Lady. The family was called by the most horrendous name of "Gryndofolus" and was, according to tales, the oldest family in the Gorgon Hills and surrounding valley, it was said they held their lands for over three thousand years and had the favor of Phyrexia. Cricket did not think this was true, but she did not rule out the possibility. One thing she did know, that if Phyrexia offered its favor to anyone, it was not to be trusted. The Gryndofolus family could have very well been just another of Phyrexia's pawns. The Lady had been expectedly regal, her hair nearly white and had very calmly offered a fortune in return for a single item. The problem was..Cricket was even now, not sure that item even existed or if what she had seen at Mr. A's was the wanted object. The Lady Gryndofolus had given her as much information as she could ask for, speaking in a strong, clear voice and using her bejeweled hands in emphasis. "..for it is written in our books of lore of Ilmarinen "Forge for her the magic Sampo, Forge the lid in many colors" and for this Ilmarinen would be rewarded. He worked to forge the Sampo many days and nights they say, and when it was finished, it is written "on one side the flour is grinding,On another salt is making, On a third is money forging,And the lid is many-colored. Well the Sampo grinds when finished,To and fro the lid in rocking, Grinds one measure at the day-break,Grinds a measure fit for eating, Grinds a second for the market,Grinds a third one for the store-house." We believe what is described in the lore is not the Sampo, but that which contains it. Perhaps it is one piece, we do not know. It is said that a great sorceress stole the Sampo from Ilmarinen, and that when he entered her stronghold to retrieve it, a great battle was fought. Ilmarinen slew the sorceress, but it is said the Sampo was destroyed. We have come to believe that the Sampo still exists and is an object coveted for it's beauty. It is rumored to have fallen into a collection, though we do not know where. We need someone to find it, and bring it here." Cricket listened carefully to everything the Lady had said, mulling the riddle over and over in her mind. A lid of many colors. This was the line her thoughts continually went back to. Boxes with lids of many colors were everywhere. She had one on her own vanity. One could find them at the markets being oo'd and ah'd over by the young ladies and they were sometimes used by jewelers to put their wares in. She had seen one somewhere else though, and that started her thinking. Her thoughts flashed back to Mr. A's home. All those pedestals, upon which sat any number of collectible items. At the time, she had been interested in the golden travelers and their lovely bowl, but she had swept her eyes over everything. Hadn't there been a box with a lid of many colors? Yes..there had been, and she was sure of it..but the details escaped her. She simply could not remember, and had never looked at it closely. Had their been depictions of farming, or milling or coin upon it? She couldn't say. It had just been one of many objects her eyes had swept over and she could only recall the flash of color on its top and four ornate legs upon which it rested. Now she was considering the possibility that it held this thing called a Sampo. Anything was possible. When she had asked the Lady what the Sampo was, she got only a vague answer in return. "It is the columna cerului. The naval of the world." The Lady either could not, or would not, elaborate and offered no clue as to what the object could be used for. What Cricket suspected, was that it was a type of star tracker, and no doubt with some power she could only guess at. Not that it mattered. Cricket found no interest in this. While she collected things herself, she was careful about it. It could be a very dangerous business and she was cautious in what she kept for herself. In this instance, she had a huge incentive not to want the thing. It was called a fortune in gold. She promised the Lady she would be in touch. Now, as she stood in the tower, thinking it all over, she had a moment of doubt. Was it really worth the risk. Was the box Mr. A had, really the Sampo? Really, the box he had could be anything, but she thought this object quite suited Mr. A's taste. That meant there was a chance, small as it may be. Even if it wasn't the Sampo, there were other things, perhaps as valuable, within his collection. It would not all be for naught. She thought about Mr. A, dredging up everything she could remember. She always found herself angry when she did this. That little weasel bird of a man caused a great deal of trouble for a lot of people with that bloody silver oroborous, and to top it off, he had impersonated her. Impersonated HER! That one act alone made her so angry she had to spit. Then there was his pompous personality, and of course she had not forgotten his men in brown. She wondered what had become of Lyall and imagined him still traveling about, writing in that damned book and getting himself into Gods knew what kind of trouble. She wondered if Ekaterina still had possession of the Golden Traveler and necklace, or what she had done with them. That had at least paid well. A brow raised as she recalled Mr A., handing her the necklace and saying he would kill her if she didn't return it. Well...maybe this time, he would get his chance. She was about to come a visiting and see if a certain item was in his collection. She looked around the dark room. She was anxious to go, but it wouldn't work if she did it now. Tell someone not to think of an elephant, sure as hell they were going to. She had to clear her mind before she stepped into the circle. There was a danger, the mage had told her, if you are thinking of something that isn't where you are going. You could very well wind up where that something was, instead of where you wanted to be. She wanted to make sure her mind would not wander before she did this. She turned with a snap of her cloaks hem and returned to what was now a warmer, fire lit room. She would have a cup of tea and warm up a little, clear her mind and give Rizza a little direction in her absence. Then she would call upon Mr. A. She hoped he would be surprised.
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Post by Lyall British on Dec 26, 2013 20:51:09 GMT -5
(( RP between Lyall and Cricket)) "Drink of me... when I am empty?" Mark picked the goblet off of the pedestal and turned it around in his hand. One could obviously not drink something that wasn't there but more importantly, why would anyone pretend to be drinking? People had told him that the things the Collector gathered were strange and could do exceptional things. Was there a exceptional payoff to following those instructions? Mark had never considered that exceptional did not, in fact, imply good.
The description of someone appearing by use of the golden traveler had been documented loosely in various ways. Some will tell you that it sounds like the whispering of indistinguishable words. Once it was said that it was as though a cloud of mosquitoes quickly passed at a distance where their buzz was not so sharp. Supposedly a man said he would not have known it if not for his horse, who he claimed could feel the pressure changes in the air and acted the same way when a storm was coming. There were less remarkable tales of beings simply appearing after a blink as if they had always been there.
Mark was no longer alone and in a way he could not have explained, he realized it first before turning around to see his company. He could not have appreciated or understood the significance of seeing Lyall British standing there, his glasses low on his nose and his face looked fixed with concentration on a golden ball in his hand. The golden object in his hand he looked at as though it was a compass, as if it were telling him something. He called out to Mark, having expected there to be someone upon his arrival.
"Cricket? Hey! You --" but his sentence stopped when he saw that Mark was clearly not Cricket. OR!! Oh, or, this was just a clever disguise. Lyall steppped up quickly to Mark, examining his face, "Is that you Cricket? Am I too late?" He reached over and poked Mark carefully on the cheek. She liked him enough to not beat him with the cane for it. Where was her cane, anyway?
"No..." The closer Lyall got, the more inclined Mark was to back away from him. At this time Lyall's blond hair had gotten lightened up with some grey. Not enough wrinkles on his face for Mark to call him an old man, but he was perhaps a decade from the man that Cricket had met that time ago. Still not particularly organized.
"Oh," he reached into his side satchel and began writing something down, "do you work for her or something? What time is it?"
"Her?" Mark's face suddenly felt hot, "How could you mistake me for a woman? I don't know who you're talking about.... I don't know what time it is."
Lyall didn't seem troubled by the fact that Mark was sour with him. Time had made him a little less sensitive to that reaction... a lot of people seemed to respond to him that way, "Something is about to happen. No, you don't particularly look like a woman but I you know... what just going to ask. Huh? Don't worry... don't worry. Oh! I have it. Come over here, next to me. Don't worry, I don't carry any knives or anything like that. Yes! Right here. Definitely not a woman." Lyall put one of his hands on Mark's shoulder, the other shoved his book back into his leather satchel, "What's that in your hand, anyway?"
"Huh? Mark was surprised he hadn't dropped it. The longer he stared at Lyall the less like a human being he looked. He'd never met someone who could talk so much without giving him any clarity whatsoever. He looked at the green blue carnival glass in his hand and then back to Lyall, "It's something I was paid to bring Mr. A."
"Oh! Ohhhh...." Lyall rolled the golden traveler in his free hand, squeezing Mark's shoulder with the one that was already there, "Maybe you should get rid of it. Yea, I think you ought to. Definitely... shouldn't keep it... " His eyes shot around what had remained of this place. For a brief moment his face held remorse, or nostalgia. It had been something to behold, this building, when it was in his prime. Lyall sometimes thought about that, when he worked in this building and his lift had been decidedly linear. Also, there had been a certain type of pride in working for Mr. A. The man may not have been well liked or received, but he was well known and there was a strange form of prestige in being associated with him. "In fact, I am almost positive. I'll be right back. Get rid of that, okay?" he looked at the ground and rubbed his thumb over the surface of the golden ball as he muttered to himself again, "definitely not Cricket."
"Where are you going?"
"Huh? What? Oh, don't worry." Did Mark blink? Lyall was gone, in a manner so sudden that it made him feel as if he had experienced a hallucination and that the air brief rushed forward and then back like a strange breath in the space Lyall had been. He stared at the empty space, stared at it as though his mind could have brought the man back. There was just emptiness and the glass in his hand was starting to feel heavy. He turned and placed it back in the pedestal with a greater reverence than before. ------- Rizza poured a cup of tea for Cricket, adding a spoon or two from the flask she had been given and handed it carefully over. She was happy in her place here, and had been ever grateful to Wolf and Cricket for taking her in. Not only had they ended the nightmare that had been her father, but they had allowed her to stay. Rizza would have been the last one to admit it, but she swooned nearly every time Wolf was in the same room. He had saved her life, was handsome, smart and capable. What young girl in her same shoes would not have fallen head over heels? She was embarrassed when she thought about it, and could only talk about it with Meg. Usually with flaming cheeks and unable to sit still. Meg would smile indulgently, but would always remind her of "her place". Rizza tried to always remember this and so when Cricket had asked her to come with her to a mage's tower, she tried to swallow her apprehension and go with her. Rizza's father had owned a small farm, and her life had been one of rural poverty. Her mother had died when she was very young and she barely remembered her. It had been all hard work and boxed ears until she had become a teenager, and then the boxed ears became real beatings. When she reached the age of 12, life became a nightmare, when her father would creep in to her bed in the middle of the night. She suffered his abuse again and again. Hating it, she had tried to run away. Not that she rejoiced in her fathers death. He was her father after all, but she didn't mourn him or miss his calloused hands. Perhaps she was glad he was dead, but this too, she would never admit to anyone. She had seen him the last time before Wolf had buried him. He had been pale and with dirt stuck to the side of his face. His mouth had been open and his brown eyes closed, his face covered with the salt and pepper stubble of a weeks growth because she had not been there to shave him. She had been running. She refused to look at the hands that had molested her. She turned away when Wolf removed the crossbow bolt from his chest and sat with her face to the sun while the earth was shoveled over her fathers body. Since that day, even though she remained in servitude, she was treated with respect and kindness, two things she had not had much of in her life. Another thing she had not much experience with was magic, and this was the source of her unease this day. Her father had once said that black magic or white magic, it was all BAD magic and on fair days or at the market, he would never allow her to watch the fortune tellers or visit the magic stalls. To her, it was a thing she had learned to fear, even while it intrigued her. Now, to be asked to visit a mage's tower, it was terribly intimidating, but already, she was finding that it was hard not to be entranced by it. The halls of the tower had been frightening and she kept expecting voices or spirits to haunt their passage, but when they did not, and the rooms were indeed found, she could fully enjoy the wonder of their magic. The fire needed only a stirring before it burst into colorful life, and she stood wide eyed at the hearth watching the play of green and blue in the orange flames. Then it was the small cupboard that Cricket had pointed her to that would mystify her in other ways. She slowly opened its doors and expected to find nothing but dust and mouse turds. What she found made her take in her breath. Loaves of varying types, a plate of yellow cheese, wrapped ham and venison, a frothy pitcher of milk, a bowl of rich butter and another of honey. The scent alone said that it was all fresh, all delicious and a reach forward with tentative fingers proved that the bread was even warm! She would close the doors and open them again at least a half dozen times, just as amazed the last time as the first. She started back to the present when Cricket reentered the room and just a short time later she was handing over the tea, taking a seat on a small stool as she listened to her instructions. "I should not be gone more than a week. If I am, then thee must return to the house and tell Wolf thee do not know where I am. Do not leave these rooms until then, is that clear? Not for a walk along the halls or even if you hear something outside. Stay within. There are books to read, instruments for you to play, and thee will not go hungry as thee have seen." She looked at Rizza sternly to make sure she understood, and after having her repeat back to her, she nodded, adding only "and do not play about in yonder room from where I will leave. Tis dangerous." Rizza nodded adamantly and looked at her wide eyed, wondering with not a little fear, what she would possibly hear in the halls outside. She shivered and hoped her Mistress would not be gone as long as a week. "Do thee remember how to get out?" and when Rizza nodded again, Cricket had her repeat that too. Cricket listened and then waved her away. When she was gone, Cricket drew in a deep breath, finished her tea and then closed her eyes. It was always a risk to travel this way, albeit was it the quickest, most efficient means, it brought with it a risk. Didn't such means of travel always bring a risk? She had only suffered one mistake thus far, when she had tried to get to the Roost the first time. She had made the mistake of thinking of Indigo while she was going, and had wound up half in and half out of Indigo's grave. That had been back when the mage had still been here and he had told her to take that as a lesson. She had. She was always extremely careful to focus her thoughts solely on the place she wanted to go. It had been tempting to try the portal to find people in the past, but if you did not know where they were, it was not wise to appear there. No, the mage had told her always, always, imagine only where you wanted to go and pinpoint it down to a single cobblestone if you could. She had taken his advice to heart and while she would forever be tempted to use the portal for other things, she never would. She wasn't willing to take the risk. She had suffered before at the hands of magic, and it was always wise to keep those risks to a minimum. She would spend the next hour there in that comfortable chair, emptying her mind and trying to recall every detail of Mr. A's house that she could. She traced the architecture in her minds eye, recalled the ornate and manicured gardens, and when she had done all she could, when she had focused her thoughts in recalling that path to his door, she pushed all other thoughts from her head. It wouldn't do to think of Mr. A or Lyall or the men in brown. She stood up and Rizza watched as Cricket left the room, her cane in hand and a small velvet bag in the other. She stepped into the stone turret room that held only a stone table. Rizza was torn between wanting to see it happen and not wanting to see anything at all, but her ears strained to hear any sound. Cricket moved to the far side of the room, and pulled down a brass lever fixed into the stones. She felt it stiffly thump into place. The stone table in the center of the room turned and in its place were faint etchings upon the stone floor. Nine stones shifted, the etchings upon them shifting with them, from triangle to pentagram and finally into a perfect circle. It rose slightly above the rest. Cricket stepped onto it, planting her cane between her feet and closing her eyes. In the darkness she brought up the image of Mr. A's home, and every detail she could remember.
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Post by Lyall British on Dec 26, 2013 20:52:32 GMT -5
(( Rp between Lyall and Cricket)) It was the mouth to the home of Mr. A, even if what her mind drew it to be was no longer the reality. It appeared to her as it had in the past but the image quickly degraded, quickly slumped down into the rubble that it was now. There were indications of fire, some of the metal hinges that had held it together were malformed by the heat. A few were still attached to rock, others were on the ground like scavengers had thought they were too much trouble to peddle for money. There were gouges in some of the rock like an enormous rake had been swept across it-- sweeping up the home of Mr. A to some other place.
That was the other bit about it. There was so much of the home missing, so much damaged that simply wasn't present there at all, anymore. The fingers of dandelions crawled up the feet of the debris. There were indications that though the damage wasn't new, not a significant amount of time had passed. The growth of the world had not yet obscured the footprint of his home, only dusted it with vegetation and at times, quiet puddles of water that reflected the sky like a murky mirror.
Had she expected the Bird-man, Mr. A, to be standing there expectingly? It was his style, no doubt, to appear annoyed with always waiting on people, even those that didn't ask him to or were uninvited. The poison in his eyes was readily identifiable-- he was consumed with himself. There was hardly room for anyone else in his mind. There was no door to his home guarded with men in brown, no well clipped and pointless lawn to greet her. A gaping mouth of destruction yawned into asky with a sun that started to hang lower and lower. The excitemnet had passed and all that was left were the puzzle pieces of rock from the walls scattered along the ground. There was someone though, standing in what would have been the threshold, holding a green and blue carnival goblet.
Mark... saw her and didn't know whether or not to speak to her. The moment she appeared felt to him suspended, more unexpected than when Lyall had appeared. He had convinced himself that Lyall had arrived and he had simply not heard, or overlooked his coming. And his departure. For this instance, though, he could not argue with his own mind. He had seen her constructed from nothing. Was this what the people spoke of when they spoke of the wonders of Mr. A's collection? Could reality put to shame the exaggeraions the people in town had spoke of? His free hand rubbed his eyes and he looked at the goblet, then to her.
"I suppose..." A man whose name he didn't know had told him to destroy it. He looked down at the item in his hand and then looked back to her, "... you're going to tell me to destroy this... right?"
The bottom of the carnival green blue glass said Now is the Time to Drink. His eyebrows lowered when he read it, rolling it in his hand. Why did the world look different? ------- She had steeled herself for the inevitable nausea that came with this mode of travel, for it always felt to her as if she were being flipped into and out of herself and this time was no different in that respect. Usually it happened very quickly and there was some silent, internal shift as she became solid in her new surroundings. This time it was a little different and she had time to register that something was not right. There was something off kilter about this shift that unbalanced her and she felt that internal movement more in her head than in her body. Something was definitely WRONG. That sense of unbalance was strong and as the image of what she expected melted into what was reality, she staggered a step back, setting her cane firmly down into the dirt. For a moment she was sure her stomach would rebel and then it settled and she took in the scene before her. "what....?" she murmured this to herself, even as she took in the stranger holding a cup a few feet away. He spoke and she blinked, trying to reconcile what was in front of her with what she had expected. She did not respond to the question posed, was still in the process of interpreting what it related to and what had possibly gone wrong..and oh..something was definitely wrong here. It was obvious, fairly quickly, that the home had been destroyed a short time past. The weeds had begun to grow but not take over and her eyes took in the gouged rock, the singed stone and melted hinges even while they didn't quite comprehend it. There was even a moment when she wondered if this man before her with the odd cup in his hand had done it before she realized that was unlikely. There would be no opportunity to ponder over it further. Her cane remained in her left, gloved hand and she planted it firmly beside her left boot. The velvet bag she had held in her right hand, was gone. This gave her a brief, cold chill. She shook herself, took a more rightful stance and focused upon the man that had spoken, her head canting to one side. He looked almost as dazed as she felt. The sun was dropping low in the sky, casting a strange light and giving the goblet in his hand a bloody glow. From her lips purred her smooth, quiet voice with its odd, rich accents that did not hint at her unsettled mind. "...I would first ask what has destroyed.." her empty hand lifted and gestured around her. "...all of this." Only the first of what was a hundred questions, marching through her head.
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Post by Lyall British on Dec 26, 2013 20:57:33 GMT -5
(( Rp between Lyall and Cricket)) Mark didn't know what to tell her. Perhaps the man from before would have been able to give her answers, he had not appeared surprised when he saw the place. He could not have clearly said what the man expressed behind his glasses when he looked over the crumbled rock, but it was neither shock nor anger. No one was volunteering or able to explain the damage. Not even another person, appearing at the place from no one where like the other man and looking at the structure as if it were familiar. This person was obviously not Mr. A, the collector. She was someone else, perhaps someone like him, returning from a trip with wares for the boss that was no longer home.
"I don't know." It sounded hollow to say it. Also, like he should have known. He blinked at her and then turned around to look behind him and then twisted to look back at her. Mark was a young man, not terribly attractive but he probably did somewhat well with the ladies. His complexion was average, he looked clean enough. The eyes, though, were a flat brown and somewhat round like a fish. It didn't suit him to have his mouth agape and staring like a catch the fishermen brought to shore.
"Mr. A hired me to bring this to him. Are you also bringing in something?" His eyebrows arched up but he didn't notice anything on her immediately that looked like a package. His eyebrows lowered a bit, "I guess you're out some money, like me, if you thought he was gonna pay you the other half when you brought him what he wanted."
"You missed him," Lyall had never said his name, but Mark assumed from his familarity with everything about him, the way he had looked at a doorway Mark had only suspected to have been there, that he was an employee of Mr. A like him. He would not have thought Lyall to be an ex-employee. Mark jerked a thumb over his should to where Lyall had been standing, "Someone else was here, a guy with a hat and some glasses." That wasn't particularly descriptive, but Mark was never that great with words, "Said I ought to destroy this...weird thing."
When did the writing change on it? Mark neither felt a vibration or shift in his hand, only noticed that the words were different when he looked down at them. Did the glass have a mind of its own? Was it an optical illusion that the glass possessed? When he ran his thumb over the letters at the base of the glass they were raised up, as if real and having always been there.
"Now is the time to drink..." he read what he had remembered it said before but the words were different now. His eyebrows lowered as he read it. "They are always waiting." The carnival glass goblet had images on it he had not noticed before-- they were difficult to see because they were not deep, nor did they have separate coloring to distinguish themselves from the reflective green and blue item. Instead of grapes or other images one might imagine, there were laughing skeletons. One had swallowed a key and another was handing a stack of papers to someone who looked alive and annoyed. The longer he stared at it, the more details of the scene he thought he could see. Was this the value in the cup that he had not noticed the whole time while hauling it to this place? It had to be an optical illusion, but the manner in which the glass was insisting to be drank from unnerved Mark. One truth he had learned early on about life is that no one ever wanted to just give him anything. The cup gave directions but no promise of a pay off. It didn't tell him to drink and he'd gain a fortune. So what was the incentive, anyway?
What he did know was that the glass had some kinda value, even if it was macabre, which mean he could regain some of his losses by selling it. When he looked at Cricket it was clear his disposition on destroying the item had changed. Mark's grasp on the cup became more firm. ------- The man before her was a plain looking sort with fair looks and build, there was nothing that would immediately stand out about him in a crowd. He was also, and obviously, not going to be any help in answering her thousand questions or so. Something still felt wrong here, something she couldn't put her finger on. It wasn't just that the place was in rubble, it wasn't just that the sun was going down. It was just..wrong somehow and there seemed nowhere to go for answers. She didn't answer the mans question, nor did she hint at why she was here. As she looked over what was left of the house and grounds, she felt that for all intents and purposes, her coming here was for naught. Surely there was something left of his collection under all the rubble, but the wrongness of it all had her less than willing to go digging around in it and she was rather sure she wasn't going to find what she had come for. Her eyes had drifted from him, scanning slowly over all that was left, but when he mentioned someone else, her black eyes instantly snapped back to his face and narrowed. A hat? glasses? Had it been Lyall? She felt sure it had been, if only because that boy seemed tied to trouble in a way she could not explain and glasses were not a commonly worn item. As this man before her recited what had been said, her attention centered on the goblet he held more closely. The sound of grit and stone under her boots was loud as she took a few steps nearer, eyeing the object in his hands. Her interest was not in whether it should be destroyed or not, but rather, it was something that Mr. A had wanted. She could not read the words written upon it, and to her eyes it never changed, but she was sure that as she stepped forward, the man who held it drew it closer to himself in that possessive, do not touch it, reaction. She stopped. "Anything that belongs to the Collector, one would be wise to treat with caution." and that was the truth, to be sure..but to destroy it? Perhaps Lyall knew what it was and what it was for, but she did not. At the moment, she was much more interested in if Lyall would show back up and what answers he may have. "What else did the man with glasses say?" She inquired this in a soft, crooning voice while internally she was taking stock of what was wrong. The pouch she carried was gone. Why? Her cloak felt lighter than it should. Why? Had it been this late when she had left the tower? What had happened to this place? Wrong..it was all wrong and inside she felt something completely unsettling. She was scared.
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Post by Lyall British on Jul 5, 2014 15:08:20 GMT -5
"He said I wasn't a woman." Mark was still, perhaps, a bit sensitive to what felt like a slight against his masculinity. Then the other details that Lyall had rambled were starting to come back to mind. Mark's mouth opened as he thought about it which made him appear more fish like because of his round eyes, "He didn't make much sense. He was talking about crickets."
Lyall had been odd to him before, but when the woman wanted details about their interaction Mark was finding it even more strange, "He asked if I worked for someone, a woman. He said that it was almost time." That was it. Marks' face lit up as if he had finally made a realization, "He said that it was almost time for something to happen."
The goblet that he had brought closer to his chest begun to feel heavy. When he looked at his hand he realized that the glass was full now, of some fluid that looked dark and heavy. It was at this point that Mark decided that he no longer wanted to have anything to do with the goblet. Perhaps Lyall's advise whispered in the background of his mind... ought to get rid of it. Perhaps it was because the goblet itself behaved so strangely, and the meaning behind its behavior meant nothing to him. He was about to set the goblet on the ground when another visitor appeared to them.
"I would drink that if I were you." The company joined the scene like Cricket and Lyall had. He looked lanky, older than Mark and nonchalant. His voice was a deep warning, but a practiced one.
"What?" Mark looked down at the goblet and then back to the fellow.
There was a smell to him, like burnt incense and fire. His cheekbones were pronounced. It was questionable if he would have appeared younger if he wasn't skinny like a stray cat. His light brown hair was thin with a deep with a clean part on the side. He signaled again to the goblet in Mark's hand, "Or she can drink it." His eyes were sunken in, which made the light blue of his irises look like stones glinting in the bottom of a cave. He was smoking a hand rolled cigarette that smelled like cloves and other herbs. There was not much volume to his lips, it was hard to believe that they could hold up the cigarette, but they were large so that when he smiled it was broad, transformed his face, almost sarcastic because of its size. He was dressed in a black tunic that had an embroidered light grey design and no belt, his pants went down to his ankles, overlapping his bare feet.
"I..." The glass had been urging him so long to drink when it was empty. Mark looked down at it and saw that there was another message, a different image from the one he remembered. The design in the carnival glass had changed, too. There was a doorway... men in tunics like the one with them stood on either side, bowing. The foot of the glass said Go Home.
Mark drank it, before anyone else could argue with him otherwise. When he opened his eyes he was on the ground. His cheek was cold from the stone. He could feel the goblet in his hand and when he sat up he saw that the man in the tunic was gone and that the woman he was with was on the ground next to him. He reached over to her, touched her and then quickly pulled his hand back when he felt how cold she was. Colder than even a dead person ever was. Yet as he studied her face, her lips, he saw that she was still breathing. His hand clasped her shoulder and he shook her.
"Hello? Are you all right?" Another shake, but there was no response. Mark put the goblet on the ground and hugged his knees to his chest. He'd never killed anyone before. Never caused this much trouble before. What was he supposed to do about her? If he just left her wouldn't she die? "I'll find help for you, I promise. I'm sorry."
The man put his cigarette out on the ground after Mark disappeared and looked at Cricket expectingly. It was clear he thought she was here for a purpose that he understood. The remains of Mr. A's home were no longer so-- the building was now as she had remembered it, with pristine walls and a carefully manicured lawn. Signs of damage, whatever they had been, were gone.
He looked down at the empty goblet on the ground and picked it up, examining it with a fleeting interest, "That was going to have to happen sooner or later, I find it better to just go ahead and get it out of the way. Come, there is work for you to do." The bony hand waved for her to follow him as he walked, the empty glass swinging back and forth in his hand as he walked.
.... "He said I wasn't a woman." Mark was still, perhaps, a bit sensitive to what felt like a slight against his masculinity. Then the other details that Lyall had rambled were starting to come back to mind. Mark's mouth opened as he thought about it which made him appear more fish like because of his round eyes, "He didn't make much sense. He was talking about crickets." A single brow arched high at the mans first response, as it might have with anyone listening in, but any humor she saw in it, was quickly dashed by what else he had to say. So it was Lyall, or at least it made sense to her that it could have been. She continued to do no more than listen as he went on, but now her eyes were narrowing in thought. Almost time? Almost time for what? She was now doubting her choice in coming here was in any way a wise one. Everything still felt WRONG. Her eyes went to the goblet as the man began to set it down on the ground and even she sensed there was something that had changed about it. She wasn't given long to contemplate this, as a strange voice snapped her attention to the left and arrested every other sense she had. She stood straight as a rod, her posture unmoving as her eyes locked on this demonic looking man that had now arrived. Perhaps her interest in the goblet should have been stronger, but at the moment, she felt it was nothing she wanted to be involved with, that there were more important things at hand. Little did she know that in only a few moments, she was going to feel much differently. She listened silently to the exchange between the two, her line of sight directly upon the man urging the other to drink. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the latter suddenly raising that goblet and draining it. She dragged her eyes briefly to him, just in time to see him wink out of existence and the goblet tumble to the ground. Her dark eyes snapped back to the other, danger raising the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. It took all of a second for this exchange of looks by her, and in that short amount of time, she would be further taken aback by the restoration of Mr. A's home. It was as if she could not trust anything she saw. Still, during it all, she said not a word, moved not a muscle and her eyes shifted only between the newly restored residence and this strange being who was now speaking. She comprehended him, but she made no move to follow. Her mind was too busy trying to put together the pieces of what had swiftly become a broken reality. What the hell was going on? Had she herself changed? She took a quick stock of herself..her feet still remained on the ground, her cloak still hung about her, her cane was still in her hand, her knuckles now as white as death as she gripped it hard. The man was walking away after picking up the fallen goblet, and her eyes locked upon it being held loosely in his hand. Suddenly she felt the need to have that goblet, though she could not have definitively said why. It just seemed..important..and if she did not act quickly..out of her reach. With a speed that some would have found surprising, she targeted the goblet, her cane rising to knock it from the loose fingers of its possessor as she came quick as a dart behind him.
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Post by Lyall British on Jul 5, 2014 15:12:23 GMT -5
"Huh?" It felt like a solid rock connecting to the side of his hand, the effect was instantaneous. The goblet dropped, it rolled and sounded with a hollow ring for help. The man, whoever he was, twisted to look at her but did not scramble for the glass. It was clear he didn't understand her as he thought he had a moment ago. The situation had changed. His eyebrows lowered and the way he looked at her was shrewd, the whites of his eyes under the shadow of his brow shined.
"Oh..." He paused and wet his lips as he looked at her, shrinking back from her suspiciously, "You're not supposed to be here, then? Wasn't this as you had arranged it?" In whatever way he had faltered he regained himself now, not moving to snatch the goblet which she had taken from him. Was she too busy eyeing her company to look at the glass? Had Mark been there, he could have explained to her how it was changing, communicating, and though he had bee too dull to know that it was an item with intention, Cricket was seasoned at this game. With all that she had seen, she had known to pick up on the subtle cues and know them to be more than a trick of the eye.
Most items with strange or intense powers weren't garish or obvious to find. Too often they were passed over by others as being an ordinary trinket.
The Door is Closed. The foot of the goblet had those words on it. The image on it was of a shut door and two men, like the one that was in her company now, who held their staffs and looked unwelcoming. One of them had his hand on the door as though discouraging anyone from coming (or was it going?). If Cricket had paused long enough to read into all of that, it was the scene she would have understood. It was difficult, at times, to read through the shine of the aquamarine carnival glass goblet.
"It won't do you any good," the man rolled his sunken eyes and his hand swept ahead of the path he had intended that they go, "you're already dead and he already took the way back home. The goblet was only meant for one." He emphasized the word one like it was acid, as if she had known that but had been silly or foolish. Or simply played dumb. Whatever he said to her was a new speech, not as practiced and nonchalant as all he said before. "You will have to wait your turn to go back. In the mean time... please, there is work for you to do." He was beginning to gather that she was uneducated in what had happened but remained impatient and preoccupied with the task at hand.
His eyes shifted away from her, past her shoulder. The face of Mr. A's home had started to crumble. A rock fell forward and when it hit the ground it did not give off a loud sound. The man's eyebrows came together as if he were concerned. When he spoke, it was more to himself than her, "This place is becoming unstable. Come, there is work to do." He was concerned enough to begin moving away from her even without waiting for her to be agreeable to what he said or even indicate that she would follow. She could stay if she wanted but the perception of this building was changing.
... Her intention was to retrieve the goblet and it was well he let it fall and did not jump after it, for her return swing on the cane would have been on him. As it was, she walked calmly enough to where the goblet had rolled and hooked its bell upon the silver tip of her cane, lifting it from the ground. She had not been close enough to read what had been written on it, or see the changing figures, nor had she been that interested in it, but now she could clearly see what was depicted. She had sensed that it had some hold over the man earlier, she had seen his possessive nature with it and the odd way it glowed and how it had filled with liquid. But did she understand? Hardly. It didn't matter. She wanted it, she had it, and even if she couldn't use it now, she could possibly use it later. It went a very small way in easing her feeling that something was so very wrong. The luxury of the time needed to read anything into it was not to be hers however, for as the man began to speak, her attention was again taken from the goblet. Her mind was stubbornly refusing to make sense of what she was hearing and seeing. Arranged it? Not supposed to be here? Where exactly, was here? That this object balanced on the tip of her cane was full of intention was obvious, but she had not taken it seriously for it had not been the object she had come for, nor had it been in her hands. It had been, in essence, someone else's problem. It had been pure instinct to retrieve it now. Her gaze again lowered from this strange man back to the goblet, and she clearly read. The Door is Closed. Black ice seemed to close a fist just beneath her heart as the man spoke yet again and now with a condescension that dripped from every other word. Impossible. What he was saying could not be true. She wasn't dead..it was impossible. Her method of travel was dangerous..but deadly? She was standing here for pities sake..she wasn't dead. This was all some kind of illusion. A trick of Mr. A's or some web of magic that she had fallen into. She forced herself to absorb what was being said, even though it made no sense at all. Wait her turn? and what work was this he had for her to do? There were just too many questions. She brought the balanced goblet closer to her, but not to study. She wrapped it in her cloak instead, ignoring the advice that it would do her no good. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. With a deep frown that creased her brow, those black, gypsy eyes shot a look around. Her cane was planted firmly again upon the ground and she saw, but did not hear, a rock tumble from the walls at the same time this "usher" warned of instability. Gods, she felt as though she had been smoking from Khaless' pipe. Everything felt surreal. Her stubborn nature would have her stand here an eternity, rather than follow this person to the unknown, but staying felt as though it would be dangerous. In what way, she couldn't have said. It was just an internal warning. She couldn't stay here. She couldn't go back...or could she? She reached inside her cloak, meaning to find the small mirror that always took her back to the tower. She would close her hand about it, murmur the words and she would be gone. Her fingers found it, began to close around it..and as she began to withdraw it into the open, it was gone like smoke. She fished again..found it again..and again it would vanish before she could bring it out. She blocked the rise of panic. So..she could not go back after all, She spoke, her voice rising enough to clearly be heard. "I am NOT dead." She said this with conviction and without taking another step forward. Perhaps she couldn't stay here and would eventually have to follow this person to wherever he was going, but she was convinced she was not dead. She had been dead, had seen the River Styx and nearly crossed it. She had seen the faces of the dead and come back with the memory of their haunted eyes. This was nothing like it and she refused to believe it. Much more likely this was a trick of some kind and that was the straw she grasped. Not dead. Not possible.
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Post by Lyall British on Jul 5, 2014 15:14:20 GMT -5
"Technically, I suppose you are not." He turned and blinked at her, looking uneasily at the area that they were standing in. A large corner of the home slipped and hit the ground, turning into sand. He scratched the hollow of his cheek and then shrugged, "You were supposed to just be a visitor, the goblet is meant to bring only one here."
That goblet, again. Had it reached a stasis? It was not changing from the time she glanced at it before. He took another backward step, "You still have your strings so... you are correct, you aren't dead. But I doubt your body will survive long without you. If you die here your body will cease functioning as well. Eventually you'll become a resident like everybody else."
She needed details. She was stubborn but also, hopefully, a steward for others here. He had serious doubts that she would fulfill that role now, being both unaware and unhappy about the goblet and that it had brought her here. He cleared his throat, "Wait... it's getting stable." He watched it as if he were listening to an eulogy. Walls shifted into sand, then into nothing. The hedges became unclipped, some had perished and were no longer in the ornamental arrangements that had introduced visitors to the structure. The building was now much like how it had been when she came upon it first in its state of disarray and damage. Then the grumbling, the shifting and altering of it appeared to stop.
"This must be what all of the living see, now." The guide looked and her and shrugged, "There must not be anyone left...or maybe there are just so few people... who can remember it being otherwise. It's all based on the memories of the living." He tilted his head to the side, seeing her grab at items that turned to smoke and he shook his head, "I am sorry." it was the first time he'd shown any sort of empathy towards her. He had been dead some time, the shock of it was gone and most of the time he was nonchalant to the alarm that new residents showed. At times, he could even be irritated by it. "But you're here now and it's a low probability that you will be able to go back. The goblet works every five years... your body will surely perish by then." Being sympathetic made him uncomfortable. He finger combed to the side his thin hair and looked over his shoulder to the path he was going to take, "I have work to do... "
....
As the man blinked at her, she blinked back. Indeed, she was blinking more than once at the things that issued from his lips. Supposed to be a visitor? Who's idea was that? The goblet seemed to hold more weight than it had before. Meant to bring only one? What the hell was going on? Her strings? A resident? She felt herself blink at each question as it came to her. She seemed, for perhaps one of the few times in her life, speechless. Her head turned slowly and she could hear the tendons in her neck creak as she did, the uncertain stability of this place slowly settling. Even slower, would her head turn again until her eyes settled once more on him as he professed some semblance of sympathy for her situation. What was much clearer was the irritation that seemed to crawl out from underneath it. Was she delaying him? or simply being a pain in the ass? She didn't really care. She stopped trying to grab a hold of the smoke in her pocket and straightened herself, eyeing him as if he were some new sort of species. Perhaps he was. Again the goblet. Every five years? Had someone been planning this for that long? She wasn't sure whether to believe him or not, in truth cared a rats ass for the goblet. But she still intended to keep it. As for probabilities...well..the odds were often against her. Her own irritation would be clear after he voiced his eagerness to be gone. "It will wait. I have questions." She came closer to him by a few steps, still watching him with sharp black eyes. "Why this homestead? Who intended me to be only a visitor and why? Who are you and what exactly IS this place I have now come to?" It would serve her no good to ask all the other hundred questions she had. Perhaps she would ask them later, but for now, she waited for answers to these few. She wasn't sure what was going on, but she knew she had to get back. Not from what he said, but from her own maternal instinct. She would not be kept from her children for long.
... "I only know the answers from my side of the looking glass," his irritation welled back up at her. Was he human? Human was a strange species to think about. There were so many races, so many sentient beings with souls. Had he ever been alive like she had been alive? Yes, but that was something he had almost forgotten about himself. His story was a deviation from that of other people. He'd been here three hundred years and had met many different couriers in that time, but never one so unprepared as she. There was still a slim chance that she might fulfill the role designed for her position so he was not yet prepared to abandon her as a pointless waste of his time. Maybe her body wouldn't perish and she would actually go back. As far as he was concerned her understanding and discovery of what had happened to her would be like anyone else-- through experience and on her own terms. Her arrival had been too disjointed.
"You intended you to only be a visitor." Without the world falling apart so much he was less edgy but still appeared uncomfortable. He was not intending on dying today, especially not in such an embarrassing way. "The living established this connection to us, do not look at me with such injustice in your eyes. People wanted to connect to the dead, with their loved ones. That is the gift of the goblet, " he pointed it out to her again, "It works every five years. It takes someone to the land of the dead without you actually dying. So you are...in this place..." he looked around the area as if to demonstrate what the words meant, "that is where you have fallen. This is a bit like a dream, your body is still, unable to move but your mind and spirit are here. I assume this is where you were last and your mind just projected it." He took a few steps as if to inspect the area. It wasn't entirely unfamiliar to him but he was surprised at her association with it. "The goblet fills and when your job is complete your drink from the goblet and return to the land of the living. That is why that guy is gone and you remain. That is also why it is intended for one."
"The goblet is meant for someone from the living to visit the dead and then take messages back to the living. They can clarify their inheritance, tell you where something is or, what tends to be the case, express something to someone that they thought they would have time to tell them later. Usually it's love or apologies. So you--" he pointed at her as though she had made the goblet, "your people, made this. I am one of the Heralds. We're meant to greet you, the Couriers from the other side, and give you the messages we have determined should be taken to the other side. As you can imagine there would otherwise be thousands of messages for you to sort and you can only be here so long. Your body is still aging, it is still hungry and needs to be cared for. We sort through the messages and when you get here we present you with what we think should be taken to the other side. You spend some time memorizing it, you drink from the goblet and then you go deliver. Then we meet again in five years to do it all over again."
He scratched the side of his jaw and made a small shrug, "I am a Herald, so you can call me Herald. I've met four others like myself... It will be five years until that goblet fills up again and until then, there is nothing for you to drink to return you to the living. You can call me Herald Five I suppose. You're new, you still have your strings attached to the living but your body..."
Herald Five shrugged his shoulders. The sympathy returned, it was easy for him to sympathize with her because she was so unusual. He had not dealt with any other like her, "Your body will die and you will be like all others who are recently deceased. On the slim to no-chance that your body does not decay before you can return to it, would you like to review some messages with me then? Am I allowed now to do what I am supposed to?" ... If the look on her face could have been sold for money, then surely a dozen or more would have paid for it, because she had never looked quite as dumbfounded as she did now. The black eyes that were most often filled with crafty light were now staring at the Herald with something akin to shock. With every word he spoke, those eyes would blink and blink again, and it was obvious her mind was having a difficult time processing what it was hearing. For one thing, she didn't comprehend what the goblet had to do with HER being here. She hadn't drunk from the Gods damned thing. For another thing, the implications (if what he said was to be believed) were staggering. She didn't want to connect to the dead, she didn't want messages and she didn't want to be used like some ethereal carrier pigeon. For a brief proverbial moment, her life flashed before her eyes and she had never felt so scared in all her days. All the people in her life, those who she knew had died, those she had guessed had died, those she had mourned, those she had celebrated, those she had searched for and missed. Oh Gods. Mantis, her long time teacher and friend, was he dead? was he here? Ari, Ciro, Lanthe, Sho, Khaless, Roan, Majidah, the "girls", Burgoo, Keene, Folshen, Cat, Garrett, Mik, Ian, Creighton, Tarek, Rafe..so many more. She didn't know if any of them were dead or alive. Here or not. She didn't want to know. These faces all flickered through her mind in the space of a second. What lingered was a sickening dread that she may indeed find them here, people like Luke, her husband, or Trevor her son. She didn't know their fate, and she feared she would learn it now. How much grief could one take all at once? Then there was the fleeting question of those she knew were dead. Would they still be here? Most had died so long ago, like Shinjo, Willow and Indigo. ..and what of those she had killed? Those people whose lives she had ended. Some she did not know their names. Some had deserved their fate. Some had not. She did not wish to see their faces, hear their voices or feel their wrath. The infant that had died in Roans arms. The girls that had suffered because of her insanity so long ago. They had not deserved their deaths. There were those that had deserved to die, or those that had attacked her and had died as she defended herself. The last men she had killed had been Rizza's father and his entourage. A man that abused his own daughter deserved to die, and at least that face, if she saw it, she would not shirk from it. She was glad to spill his blood and would do so again if she got the chance. Then there were questions..so many questions. She had died before, walked in the crowd of dead to the River Styx and nearly gotten in the boat to cross. It had been nothing like this. So why was this death so different? Because she was really still alive? For five years? Who would care for her body for that long? She didn't want to know the answer to that. All this went through her mind in such a short moment, but its affect was staggering. She loathed this situation and inside she was stamping a foot and screaming that she had not drunk from the goblet, dammit. She shouldn't be here! None of this left her lips and flashed only briefly in her gaze that was still locked on the Herald. When it melted away, what was left was a deep and dragging sadness. She was not going to see her children again. She dragged in a slow and deep breath and just as slowly released it. She seemed to look past the Herald and her voice sounded as empty as she felt. He may have held out hope that she could return to her body, but she did not. "Do what thee will, Herald. I will follow"
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Post by Lyall British on Jul 5, 2014 15:15:22 GMT -5
Herald Five was used to many reactions, most of her's were ones that he caught on her face. She wasn't terribly dramatic, this one, so it was with the slight furrowing, perhaps the shadow of a frown, that he could see she was dismayed. Her eyes moved as if she saw people and faces which he could not. His gaze moved away from her to the path that they were walking. Finally. She was resigned to him. That would make all of this all the easier, wouldn't it?
It was largely due to the strange nature about Rhydin, and places of its like, that they were stable. So many people had been there, or knew that it had existed. Not all places followed the rules of time, either. The Widow's Spoon was another such place because it was a traveler's port. Ports were always great places to be in terms of stability because of how much exposure they had to people over time. As they walked the ground became more real, somehow. More solid, more like the world that she had left behind her, briefly. He would have told her that it hadn't mattered that she drank from the glass or not. It was all about timing, about positioning. It didn't matter, in these cases, if you were just close enough for there to be confusion. Many of these things were not exact sciences, which didn't bother Herald Five very much. He would often shrug at the details, he found that they changed too much and required too much study to truly understand. She might have liked the Herald before him. He was infuriatingly detail oriented and enjoyed, too often, the feeling of correcting other people. Herald Five had rolled his eyes at him countless times.
His fingertips combed the top of his head as they walked. When they saw the port town on their way there were people in it. The dead, of course. Some had been farmers, but mostly they were the fisherman or others that were familiar with the place. They did not look particularly dead, nor did they especially look identical to the way they had in life. When some woke up in this place they were children, or younger versions of themselves. Sometimes they were exactly as they had died-- Herald Five found that those who experienced no changes coped with their death the hardest. There was too little of an indication to them that they were no longer what they had been. Just whatever identity they really relied on was what happened here.
"It's like another life, being here," Herald Five spoke absentmindedly, glancing over his shoulder to see her take it all in, "You'll find that you recognize people. You may also find that you can't really look at some people. It's difficult, sometimes, to clearly see someone that you never met. Your mind has no memory of them and so here... it's like everything else. When you're here, so much of what you see and experience is based off of what you had in your last life. I hope you were a traveler or this world may just be a blurry walk for you. It's about understanding what you were, what you had been, before you move on. A little scary, huh?"
They were walking down the street now where the small, one story establishments on either side of them were. She had been here before, but it was not a remarkable experience. It was on one of those wandering campaigns with Lyall. Some of the people were sort of blurs, or, it just seemed that the memory of looking at them would not stay in her mind. Until one woman walked by her. Her face was hollow in the eyes and she looked like she was trying to find something on the ground. Brown hair and a servant's clothes. Did Cricket recognize her? Did she recognize Cricket? They had looked at each other at one point, a very long time ago, before she died. It had been her soul that started the whole Ouroboros nonsense. Their connection had been brief, hardly more than what someone would have had if they had sold her cloth in a store. Still, it was enough that she could see her.
"The walk is not that far." But Herald Five had see the mess of tension on her face and felt the need to press, "Are you looking for someone." ...
Perhaps her face did show her dismay, for indeed she suffered from it, but she was not resigned to any fate. She followed his lead, walking slowly at his side and an old lesson from her teacher whispered in the back of her mind. Mantis, one of those she wondered if he was here, bloomed in her memory. His golden eyes reflecting the light of the fire as he leaned in close to her, his gravelly voice harsh. She had been his student for less than a year and her bruises were still numerous and fresh then. "Pay attention, girl. To what is around you, above you, below you and IN you." This lesson had been delivered along with a hard, backhand slap that she never saw coming. With her head still ringing, she had pushed herself up from the floor. She had lost count of how many times that had happened to her before she learned to anticipate it and duck in time. She hadn't understood it then, but she had come to know that while his methods had been harsh, the lessons had saved her ass numerous times. She wondered again if he were here and decided that he was not. He was too mean to die. She was paying attention now and knew instinctively that she was going to need every lesson she had ever learned. The ground did seem to gain more substance, though it was just not what was under her feet but the world around her too. At the same time that it felt more real, it became harder to believe. She absorbed what she was seeing and hearing like a dry sponge dipped in water, but it was held to process, not swallowed quickly down. Just as the knowledge that her hair had turned white as it had once been, she could see the ends swinging at her lower edge of vision but it was only a nugget of knowledge absorbed with all the others. Like the fact that she recognized this place..or at least some of it. Some of it was more dreamlike, some of it out of focus, all of it surreal. "It's like another life, being here," Herald Five spoke absentmindedly, glancing over his shoulder to see her take it all in, "You'll find that you recognize people. You may also find that you can't really look at some people. It's difficult, sometimes, to clearly see someone that you never met. Your mind has no memory of them and so here... it's like everything else. When you're here, so much of what you see and experience is based off of what you had in your last life. I hope you were a traveler or this world may just be a blurry walk for you. It's about understanding what you were, what you had been, before you move on. A little scary, huh?" She had been looking about her as he spoke, experiencing those things he spoke of and finding her feet so to speak. At his question, her sharp black eyes found his face and a single brow arched high. She saw no reason to respond to it, only showing her mild surprise at this supposition that she didn't know these things already. She looked away again, recognizing this place, and again, some of the people she saw were blurs, or rather, her eye could not stay on them long enough to focus, as if they repelled her gaze somehow. The woman though, she recognized immediately. Maggie, whose last words as she knelt over two children, had been that she had had three of her own. Cricket wondered if she had been reunited with them here. She was still looking at the woman, her head turning to keep her in sight as they passed and pondering the similarities in their situation when The Herald spoke again. She finally unlocked her eyes from Maggie and turned a grim look to him. So many. Too many. Some she hoped were not here, some she hoped were and some she might try to kill a second time. She wondered if THat was possible. Something else nagged at her about Maggie..about the familiar streets..about where she was when she wound up here..where her mortal body might still lay..and about who it was that connected all of them. She responded with a short few words to his query on her looking for someone.
"Oh yes. I am."
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Post by Lyall British on Feb 26, 2015 12:15:29 GMT -5
((rp between Lyall and Cricket))
Herald found her response to be curious. He arched an eyebrow at her that was so thin that it looked like it was the bone of his face moving and not the hair or muscle.
When Maggie passed her by she looked at Cricket, seemed surprised and then gave her a small smile and a wave. It was unclear if she didn't say anything to her because she hadn't anything to say or if it was Herald Five that warded her off.
It was about the time that the streets felt solid, like a type of unyielding and unfriendly concrete that they reached a building she could not possibly have remembered. Herald Five's smile was more of a tight frown as he opened the door, offering Cricket the opportunity to go inside before him. "This is where I work. It's headquarters for the collection."
How long had they been wandering by the time they had reached there? Some of it felt rather like a dream. If she were lazy or easily mislead she might have thought that she blinked and that they arrived there, suddenly. As real or odd as it might have been, though, her feet could still recall the wear from the walk as a reminder that they had not been dreaming. Herald Five either stepped in before her if she didn't budge or was close inside the building after she had entered.
Knowing what the building was, one might have expected more decoration or flourish to it. The room they first stepped in was round, empty, and somewhat poorly lit. There were five doorways and Herald went to the one that was on the left. He muttered with irritation when his key had a little trouble with the lock but when it finally opened he stepped in, calling to her over his shoulder, "I hope you have a fantastic memory. Or a discerning eye. These are the messages we sorted that could go back with you, assuming you're not already dead." He leaned in as if examining her a bit more closely and then confirmed, "You're not."
Inside the room was a long counter with ten different piles of papers, stacked about five inches high, wight various things weighing down the stacks so the papers didn't fly off. It was approximately five hundred sheets of paper, which even Herald Five recognized as being an unrealistic quantity for anyone to try to memorize. The only thing left for her to do was select the ones that needed to go back to the land of the living with her.
And if one of the messages was for her?
... Cricket was glad to see that look on the Heralds face if for no other reason than satisfaction at giving him reason to question something. She didn't think that happened to him all that often. She continued to follow him, feeling like a cloud on a windy day. She was here, then she was there, and everything seemed real while at the same time nothing did. There was no passage of time for her, it could have been minutes or days since she had first arrived. For a moment after they had passed Maggie, she felt as though there was nothing substantial about herself, that she was just wandering spirit, and it unnerved her so that she focused upon the steps her feet took. She didn't know if it was this, or something about the place around her, but it seemed that the street became more solid and she felt a little less like that untethered cloud in the sky. As he stopped, she did too, her cane making a click on the pavement with a sound that seemed to her muffled. She still had her cane, of course she did. It was a familiar part of her. She gripped the silver head a little tighter as she looked up at the foreboding building they had come to, and she felt herself start as he proclaimed it headquarters for "the collection". That seemed to make perfect sense. She muttered something under her breath that sounded like "serpent", set her jaw and followed him inside. She stood inside the round room, and as she had no preconceived notion of what it would look like, she was neither surprised or disappointed. She was curious. Five doors. She looked steadily at each one before she turned her head to watch the Herald finally establish a key in the lock of the door to their left. She made sure to mark where he returned that key to. If ever she had had a good reason to use her pick-pocketing skills, it was now. Just where did those other five doors lead to? She followed him again, into this newly opened room, stopping abruptly as he leaned in close to her. A single brow arched slightly, but instead of drawing back, she leaned in a little closer, nearly close enough to kiss. As he proclaimed her living body still alive, she had to wonder how he knew that, or if this whole thing was just some elaborate joke. Black eyes stared at him with curiosity as he drew back, and she was given access to the long counter with its many 'messages'. She approached them at one end of the counter, and without touching them, peered down at the messages that were on top, weighted down by whatever object had been chosen. Slowly she walked the length of the counter, reading what was to be read. If one of the messages were for her, it would surprise her, but of course, it would matter who the message was from, wouldn't it? Up to now, she had followed and listened but as she perused these messages that were apparently for her to bring back to the living, she began to ask questions of the Herald. He did not seem all that happy about answering her questions, but he did so and perhaps he was obliged. "Thee said this was the headquarters for the collection. What collection is that?...whose collection is that? and where do the other doors lead?" She continued to peruse the many sheets of paper and no doubt they would pose their own questions for her to ask.
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Post by Lyall British on Feb 26, 2015 12:16:32 GMT -5
(( Rp between Lyall and Cricket))
"Your collection." When she asked him the collection he jerked his head back as if offended by her. Then, his eyebrows lowered and he clarified, "Well, I mean yourin the sense of you, the living, established this." He was so taken aback by the first two questions that he didn't answer the others.
Herald walked around to the other side of the counter so that it was between them. His cheekbones were ridged. Had he looked that skeletal when he had been alive? After so many years where they were, doing what he did, his life before had almost entirely been forgotten. It wasn't that he didn't care or that it was unimportant, it was just that the mind could only hold onto so many bits and pieces and in the place, as even Cricket was beginning to discover, there was an overwhelming feeling of being displaced. Herald lifted up a bronze triangle that could fit into his palm and started leafing through the stack of notes, "Did a certain individual own this? It was established... I don't know." His eyebrows, nearly hairless, lowered and he looked at her, "Sometimes it's hard to say, because everything here isn't quite linear. You have the past, present and some of the future overlapping into each other because of perception and death and memory."
His eyes went to the ceiling and then he smiled when the memory returned to him, "Ah, yes. It was the living that crossed the divide first. Then the living and dead had to figure out what to do with each other, what the purpose of it all was." Herald watched her as her eyes pursued the stacks that he had organized for her, "The dead can't do much to serve the living, most of the time if you do deliver a message directly it isn't received well. People believe you are a liar, a con artist or an oracle. None of those are particularly desirable outcomes." Then he stared at the counter as if in deep meditation. She could have waved her hand in front of his face and he wouldn't have blinked. When his attention returned to the present he looked at her, "That brings up a point that is quite curious."
Herald held the bronze triangle between both of his hands and examined her with curiosity again, "The dead can only offer specific things. But you didn't want any of it, or to even be here. Yet you are. The one that was with you has gone and left you. So neither of you meant to be here, which is unusual. People have always sent a designee, someone prepared for this," his hand waved at the papers and he cleared his throat, "What is your real intention here?" Herald was starting to get wary of her. Had her and Mark not been near the goblet at the right time, no one would have come. Yet both had somehow been arranged to be here and it wasn't for the messages.
And if it wasn't her intention, what was she accomplishing by being the one that was here instead of real designee? Or, for that matter, any other person?
...
For some reason, none of the messages that she read really surprised her. They were typical messages one might expect from the dead to the living. "Tell Mary I love her" or "Have Lord Tesson look in the attic for what he needs" or other, more bizarre messages like "The coral is pink. I am sorry" and "When cats howl like wolves the house will burn". There were apologies, words of love and others more involved and detailed, listing who's and where's and what's, many that made no sense to her at all, but none of them meant anything to her and she had no intentions of becoming a messenger for the dead even if they did. She saw none that jumped out as being specifically for her or about her and she realized that she had hoped there was. Anything to clarify what was going on. Of course it was possible that in all these stacks there was one or more, more specific to her, but somehow she didn't think so and as her mind went back over her past and all those who had died, she decided there was nothing that the dead could say that she wanted to hear or would believe. She glanced up at the Herald and his apparent defensive reaction to her questions, and it seemed to her he had to work to recall the answers. She listened, quite intently as he dredged up the response, her eyes returning to the stacks upon the counter. She had nearly reached the end, and then began a reverse track. That feeling of being displaced was strong, as was the detachment and she wondered again how her mortal body was fairing, if indeed she was separated from it and just how much time had passed. Five years. The Herald had said the goblet only worked once every five years. Yet when she put this together with what he was telling her now, it didn't fit. All of this felt false. She lifted her eyes to his skeletal features, dropped them to the triangle in his hands as he was now looking at her with his own curiosity. She stared at the object for some time, considering the question and then a slow smile curled the corners of her mouth. It did not touch her eyes at all when they lifted to his face again. "I believe someone is playing games with me, Herald. ..dangerous games. Perhaps with both of us." She sensed his growing wariness and though it was satisfying it was troublesome too. She didn't think he knew what was going on any more than she did and if he chose to abandon her here, she would have no guide at all. But did she need one? Something made her feel as if the Herald were only an illusion or distraction, two things she was well adept at. It was as if this were keeping her ..busy. Something did not ring true in this. Something did not ring true in ANY of this and it was not as simple as saying the Herald was lying. She didn't believe he was but there was the smell of illusion all over him. These intuitions were like smoke here. The more one tried to grasp them, the harder they were to hold. She leaned forward over the counter, her voice was a dark whisper, her eyes intent. "What manner of death brought thee here, hmm?" The question hung in the air like a dark pall for a second or two, an then as if she didn't expect an answer, or didn't care what it was, she straightened and turned on her heel. "I wish to know where the other doors lead." Her interest in the messages was over, and she headed for the door as if she meant to find out on her own.
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Post by Lyall British on Feb 26, 2015 12:17:37 GMT -5
(( RP between Lyall and Cricket))
"People don't play games with the dead..." His eyebrows lowered when he said it as if the very suggestion was repulsive. With such a tenuous connection, he couldn't imagine that the mortals who had strove so much to make it would allow it to be manipulated this way. He wrinkled his nose and placed the triangular paperweight back on top of one of the stacks. The paper made a scratching sound as the weight rested on top of them.
She had skimmed the messages and that was disconcerting. Never had he dealt with someone who nearly rolled their eyes at them. As she began to have a diminished sense of their importance, so did Herald. He looked away from her at the door they had come in as if contemplating departure. When she spoke again it captured his intention.
"My death..." He had told people before about how he had died and come here, but so much time had passed since then. He could have believed that this was his first time being alive because his original memories were that deteriorated. Most people didn't linger in this sort of land of the dead as long as he did. Some spent, at most, a whole lifetime there. Herald Five had spent a great deal longer than that. If she had wanted to make him uneasy, she was successful. He shifted under the weight of her query and dismissed it quickly with, "I'm Herald Five."
Her follow up question was a welcome relief to him because it distracted him from the discomfort she set him in. He tilted his head to the side as if to consider her request. There wasn't much time for him to respond, she was already moving to it. Quickly he went by her side, the frown evident on his face, "You have to be careful when you go through buildings like this!" He was nearly hissing at her, "Most of this world is made up from the thoughts and memories of the living, but not this building. This is original, it is a construct of this place... and there aren't many things like that around here. I don't know how it's going to interact with you. I know the second door takes me to the messenger, when they arrive. The outline of it lights up and I walk through it and bam... I'm there, right where you are, waiting for you or the person like you to show up." Herald was trying to instill more caution in her than she had. He kept thinking of her as being someone who was safe an stepping into danger instead of someone who was in danger and stepping onto any ledge she could find.
--- Oh but people did play games with the dead just as they did the living, but she saw no reason to try and convince Herald Five. When he caught up to her, nearly hissing in either frustration or irritation, she looked at him curiously. What he said interested her greatly and she did not interrupt him as he spoke. What she did do, was cock her head and look at the door he spoke of. She spoke quietly, almost to herself "...is that so...."
She seemed to study it for a few moments, contemplating its construct or its origin, or perhaps just considering its use. In a distracted way, and without looking back at him, she asked another question. "..and the other doors..where do they lead?" She would slowly turn, taking steps that would lead her to consider each door in turn, giving each the study she had the last. She was aware of the passage of time, but how much or how little she could not say. She still felt that surreal detachment, but she felt more grounded when she heard the tick of her cane on the floor, or the scratch of paper, or even her own voice. Oh yes, people did play games with the dead.
She turned a glance at him, flashing him her patented, disarming grin.
"What are thee afraid of, Herald? ...Death?" and then she laughed at the irony with a surprisingly rich sound that echoed in the empty room around them.
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Post by Lyall British on Feb 26, 2015 12:18:41 GMT -5
"Yes, as far as I know it." His hands were on his hips, the web of skin between his index and thumb pressed to the sides of him. Her curiosity for the doors had been far greater than his was. Herald generally didn't sit an contemplate why there were certain doors or what they might mean. He had a job to do, right?
A job without a paycheck. Or boss. Just some strange, lingering sort of obligation that tied him to the building. When She asked about the other doors there was a shrug of his shoulders, "They're locked, been locked for as long as I can remember." His eyes looked as if they were deeply set in hollow eye sockets of his skull. His head tilted to the side as he observed the doors and then looked back to her, "But maybe those aren't doors for people like me, but people like you." Living people, he meant.
With the comment about dying a dour expression took him, where he grumbled, "I'd rather not lose my existence, whatever is left of it. Go on, try one of the other doors. I'm telling you, they're all locked." ---- She studied the Herald for a moment, then turned her attention back to the doors. This reminded her of something..something a long, long time ago. Her teacher had been instructing her on the con game and explaining the odds. It had been a choice of three doors. A wisp of a smile touched the corner of her mouth at the memory. One out of three, two out of three....but here she was faced with four. No matter, the lesson still applied. It would seem that her choice lay in four locked doors, but it was more broad than that. The doors were just one of the choices. She gave him that studious, head cocked look again, weighing not only the odds, but every word he said. "Have thee ever tried them? ..how do you know if they are locked or not? How did thee learn that that one was the one to use? Were you told by someone? Did a Herald come to fetch thee, and teach all that you know now? You see, Herald..I have many, Many questions. Perhaps that is a condition of the Living and not the Dead, but it feels to me as if thee have also asked these questions once upon a time...so long ago that perhaps thee have forgotten. If thee are existing, in any form, then thee are not suffering a death, only a different sort of life and that very existence can be in peril. Who is to say that Herald One, Two, Three, Four and you as Five are not in the same predicament as I am. Fooled into believing thee are dead, and that this is all there is." Her hand gestured airily and then fell to her side. "I would have believed it more had thee said that each Herald had their own door, but that is not the case. If I believe your words, then I must assume that there is but one door for all the Heralds and four doors for the living. This makes little sense, eh? Why do thee even need the use of this door to bring you to but one place and then force thee to walk back through the streets of dreams? Why, if this is the place of the dead, are there doors for the living at all?" Her questions were fired at him, one after the other. She bombarded him with so many that there was no time for his answers. She took a step toward him, eyes riveted on his skull like face. " Can thee call the other Heralds? What will they say? Who instructed them? The Gods? Which Gods? Are there more than five? Certainly the work load of the dead should number the Heralds in the millions, lest they be unable to keep up. Who was the first? Who greeted them? Why have thee not asked these questions for yourself? Were thee content to just be dead and exist here, like this? To use existence and death in the same reference seems ridiculous." With every question she took a step closer to him, until she was near enough to kiss and her voice lowered to a whisper. "Do thee bleed, Herald? ...Do thee feel pain?....Can your existence be ended? ..Should I find out? ..There are so many choices."
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Post by Lyall British on Feb 26, 2015 12:22:14 GMT -5
"Of course, I tried them," he said with a blink at the question, looking at the other doors. But his reaction to them was an uneasy one. If he was supposed to be the creature with higher authority than others, what did it mean that something defied him? Even if it was a rather benign looked door. "They're locked, they're always locked. For me, anyway." He knew that the world could contradict itself and change so he wasn't about to be presumptuous enough to assume that the doors would never open or that he had failed to find the right conditions. Just they were locked. Always locked, right?
The thought of the other Heralds made his eyes seem to momentarily disappear in their sockets. Did the thought of his predecessors bother him, or was she simply overwhelming him with thoughts? Herald Five had been wandering, performing simple functions without so much considering the big picture. "I suppose...It's not impossible," at the thought that he was still alive. Then his nearly hairless eyebrows lowered and came together, "But I have met couriers like you before, on many occasions. My body could not have survived that long without assistance. If I am alive and I have a body that is suffering, I do not know that I am in pain now. I suppose you do not feel you are in pain?" It would have had to been the sort of suffering that happened behind the scenes, like an infection whose symptoms presented when it was too late to do anything about it.
"I do not know what the other four are," he admitted, looking at the other doors and then to her, "but they do not open and there would have to be more than five doors. There would have to be a Herald that comes after me and when that happens where would their door go?" She was making him think about things which he had not considered before. The existence of what was around him was simply something that he readily accepted. To question the mechanics of it had never occurred to him. Perhaps it was one of the traits that was sought for in Heralds. Having an affinity for following instruction without question, like a soldier. She came in and did what all philosophers do-- she made what had been a simple arrangement for him incredibly complicated by asking questions.
"The other Heralds? I only knew Herald Four." Except, that isn't what he had gone by, was it? Herald Five corrected himself, "His name was Bowen, he knew his name or had given himself that. He did not talk of the Herald before him except to say what lessons had been taught." It had all had a finality to it that she was starting to strip away. The more she did it, the more he didn't like it. What had been a simple and somewhat strange simplicity was beginning to get distorted and odd under her scrutiny. Herald Five was coming to the conclusion, more and more, that he didn't like that. "I do not know of any God or Gods, but as far as the messages go? You're assuming that everyone has one. Most people accept that they have died and moved on and what was is behind them. The messages are not as numerous as you might think." But he privately felt that there must have been something greater than himself. Whether or not it was all-knowing and benevolent being, according to all he had seen, was questionable.
Her closeness. How unnatural it was that a soft whisper from a woman so near could have lethal implications instead of intimate ones. He shrank back from her and whispered, "I do feel pain and I do know I exist." It was that internal, tearing feeling he got whenever he thought something monumental was going to happen. The threat, the little stream of it, was one he examined carefully before responding, "Is there no one you would seek out while you are here? Is there no one that would find you?"
---
This won a smile from her. A genuine smile. It crinkled the corner of her eyes and sat easily on her closed lips. She turned, looking again at the doors as if they interested her greatly and giving him back his personal space. She seemed to consider his question for a brief moment, before she asked him yet another question. "Have thee ever studied the theory of knowledge, Herald? How we come to believe certain things, how we acquire knowledge..in fact, what knowledge is. Is belief, knowledge? How one defines these things makes us who we are, I think. ..Myself, I am a skeptic. I question every belief, I question what knowledge I have and I question what knowledge others have."
She turned again to face him, a sigh as if the entire thing had her feeling weary.
"To answer your questions. No. I have no desire to speak to the dead and I have no way of knowing what those who have died think, or would care for in their after lives. I cannot say if there are those that would wish to speak to me, how could I? If they are here, I suppose they will find me if they want me, nau?" Her mouth drew down at one corner in a small smirk.
" This said..do not mistake it for my belief that all of ..this.." she gestured to the view around them. "is what thee say it is. I do not believe what thee have to say, for I do not believe thee know what is going on here any more than I do. You see? Tis a belief you have, but you have no real knowledge." She gave a sympathetic shrug.
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Post by Lyall British on Mar 21, 2015 10:41:21 GMT -5
A sincere smile on her could be quite the frightening thing. Only because, mostly, he did not think that it was for him. When she spoke about knowledge he frowned. The talk of questioning things made his nose wrinkle, "Knowledge isn't useful, it it makes one miserable." Herald Five would have preferred not to ask about where the family dog went if the answer would be anything other than 'to that farm in Wisconsin.' Sometimes, he avoided asking when he had the solid belief that the question may give him a disappointing answer.
"So if you are the skeptic and you find the answers that way, how much further have you gotten for all your queries?" No one liked to feel like they were unaware or a sympathetic figure, but he could not argue that she was incorrect, which made what she said a bit more frustrating. "I tell you only what I know, not that it is truth." The herald before him was like that. He was staring at the doors now and grunted, moving to sit on the floor because their debate in that room had gone on for what he perceived to be a very long time. That was the difficulty with being dead, it was all rather relative. Though she had frustrated him, she had also sparked something. Curiosity. The doors had been ignored by him for a long time but he was now more willing to make study of them and ponder their meaning.
"I suppose a door has to open, sometime."
Not that he had ever seen it happen. His eyes weren't like the hollow holes of a skull, but they looked it at times. From his low angle the light hit his eyes beneath the brow, making them appear more fleshed out than vacant. "So, philosopher, where is it that you would want to go now?" He did not pretend that if she left that she would take him. Herald Five had completely abandoned any pretense that she would be a courier for the dead. At this point, she was a strange guest who would likely become a resident.
She just stared at him as he defended his knowledge, as if she knew better than to get into that philosophical debate. When he pointed out that she had gotten no further for all her questions, she had to give him that one. He was right. She had gotten no further in understanding what was going on. She recalled once being locked up in jail for theft. She had gotten out, obviously, but those first few days were ones of utter hopelessness. She felt like that now. She followed his look at the doors and stared at them as he sat down. Sometime. She sighed and looked back at him, thinking he looked more human in his considerations now than at any other time. It somehow took all the air from her sails. She slowly eased herself down to sit a few feet away from him, her knees drawn up and her arms folding atop them. She rested her chin there and just stared at the doors. A long moment of silence after his last question, and then she corrected him. "Skeptic." Long fingers drummed idly on her knee and her lips pursed in thought, considering the rest of his question. Where did she want to go. After what seemed an even longer time, her fingers stilled. "I began my day with a purpose, Herald, and that is finding a certain person. My purpose is not changed with this elaborate distraction. If I am dead, then I bloody well doubt there is anything I can do about it...but if I am not, then I promise...someone else is going to be."
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Post by Lyall British on Mar 28, 2015 14:17:40 GMT -5
"This elaborate distraction is my life," he countered, looking at her curiously and then back to the doors, "Many people come here in search of someone in particular. Who would you possibly want to seek?"
The woman seemed to him incredibly stubborn and persistent, he did not imagine that there were many that evaded her once she had set her mind to them. His eyes followed the lines of her face. There wasn't a hint of despair there, which was no surprise to him. She hadn't been there long enough to accept what was happening to her as being anything other than a delayed search for something else. It was the sound of the door that made his eyes tick upward. That third door, the one that never opened, was opening now.
Herald Five's first inclination was to withdraw, somehow deepen into himself, for fear of what might have been there. Unlike his experience with the door, which was illuminated at the seams as if a light shone behind it brightly, this one just opened. The grind of it metal sounded like an oiled lock. Fingers curled around the outer edge of the wood to push it back. She might have known the long fingers, but it was the beak like nose and sharp cheekbones that were his recognizing trait.
Mr. A stood in the doorway, looking down at Herald Five and Cricket as if they were unexpected but not at all surprising. His other hand was wrapped around a lantern, his lips pursed in a line of thought before he spoke, "I see you made it after all."
As the Herald spoke, she glanced at him, finding what he said somewhat curious. Of course there was little about this that was not. She was about to open her mouth to debate this with him, when one of the doors began to open. She was not at all surprised to see it was Mr. A. A sneer was barely contained as she pushed herself to her feet, and standing at her full height, she stared at the Collector for a long moment before her eyes swung to the Herald to judge his reaction at this reveal. Whatever it was, it did not hold her attention for long, and that deadly dark stare was turned back to Mr. A, who did not look any more surprised than she did. He might have been waiting for a response from her, but she gave none. She didn't say a word. She simply took steps forward to shorten the distance between them, each one taken slowly and surely like a hunting cat.
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