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 Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 8:26 pm
After meeting Glaucon - properly, anyway - and once left to herself, Alice had gradually realized that she'd been, well, kind of an a**. Not that it hadn't been entirely unwarranted, but she didn't usually react that strongly just because someone was a little arrogant. And yet, it wasn't completely out of the blue. She'd been that way once, a long time ago, and that person had slipped through a few times before, but not in years. Not since she'd left the Castle, and no longer encountered the triggers that seemed to facilitate such...lapses into the past. So why had she so suddenly reacted so strongly to someone she wasn't connected to?
Except through Kyrjadis. After that thought had clicked into place, she'd asked the goddess point-blank if she'd had something to do with it. Her answer had been a disquieting Maybe, that maybe the two of them were beginning to overlap. That, to put it bluntly, was ******** creepy, and Alice didn't like it one bit.
Brooding over it and unable to sleep that night, she'd gone for a walk through the markets in the hours between holy s**t it is late and why am I up so ******** early, when the only stalls with anyone home were those of the bakers, getting ready for the morning. Well, later in the morning, anyway. It was a popular time for the area's stray and feral dogs to be out scavenging, and she'd sat for a time and watched them. Some time into this, she'd noticed a scraggly little puppy limping along after the older ones, and an hour and some food later, had managed to scoop it up. Just so she could, you know, make sure it was okay. Certainly not so she could keep it.
It was midmorning when she walked up the stairs and down the hall towards her room with the pup tucked safely in her arms. Passing by a particular door, she hesitated. Glaucon's door. She sighed.
"Ah, hell. What d'you think, biscuit?" The filthy puppy wriggled and licked her face, which was the limit of its input. "That's what I thought." Alice shrugged and knocked.
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Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 8:34 pm
Before it was opened, there was some barely-audible muttering and shuffling behind the door -- someone was in the act of getting to it, which at least meant that someone was home.
After a moment, the door was brought ajar, and a small, somewhat ghostlike figure slipped out of it. Silvery-bronze in color, with neatly cropped hair of bright gold, the small Shadow Sprite held a miniature pair of scales in one hand and offered a polite bow with the other.
"Hello!" she greeted, with a voice markedly more sprightly than the one of the god she served. "May I ask what you need with Lord Judgment today?"
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Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 8:40 pm
Oh, right. A ghost. Of course he had a ghost. Who better to answer the door? Alice stared for a moment, drawing a blank. She didn't really need anything with 'Lord Judgement,' and in fact, hadn't exactly thought this whole thing through. She had had better ideas, for sure. "I'm Alice. I, uh, have his sister?"
By which she did not mean the dog, but that probably went without saying.
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Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 9:03 pm
"Oh! You bear Lady Justice? I see!" The sprite's bright eyes grew wide with obvious excitement, but there was also a hint of... concern, as they also stole a quick glance back into the room. "Give me just a few moments, please!"
With that, she whisked back inside, leaving the door a crack open. It wasn't quite enough to make out what was inside, just the tiny sprite bobbling back in and hovering towards a few other forms inside. Voices fluttered through the air, her own squeaky chime among them, along with the recognizable low, deliberate mutter of Glaucon. Eventually the sprite reappeared to open the door all the way.
"Um, it looks like you can come in. So welcome, and make yourself at home!"
The god of Judgment's chambers were hardly what one would call grandiose. Rather, it bore an incredible resemblance to a suburban apartment, high-quality but very spartan. There was a large couch and a coffee table in one corner, a simple kitchen, a bath visible behind a nearby doorway. A few small stacks of books could be seen on the coffee table, and a there were a few more on a table near the bed, which was separated from the couch by a wall.
Much of the rest of the empty space was taken up by the sort of raised table that might be used by a medical practitioner, or a massage therapist. The god himself was currently lying down on his stomach on said table, poring over a copy of Plato's Symposium while a minty green demoness servant of his fussed over him with a handful of acupuncture needles. He looked up momentarily to regard his visitor, then returned his gaze to the book.
"Well... this is unexpected," he said, by means of greeting. "What brings you here, Alice?"
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Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 9:15 pm
"Thanks." She inclined her head to the door-answering ghost and followed...and then stopped at the sight before her.
Like coming to talk to Glaucon wouldn't have been awkward enough already, she had the amazing luck of happening to stop by while a demoness was doing acupuncture on him. No, that wasn't awkward at all. Could she please just scrap the last few minutes of her life and not have knocked on the door?
Uh. Great. Now what? Her blindfold was a small blessing, as it hid most of her deer-in-headlights expression. She hugged the dirtball of a puppy a little closer, and it made a small sound of protest and tried to wriggle out of her arms. Maybe she should have gone back to her rooms first, gotten some sleep, and revived an actual functioning thought process. And not brought the puppy.
"Uh." Alice cleared her throat. "I just thought...maybe we got off on the wrong foot."
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Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 9:23 pm
Truth be told, Glaucon wasn't thrilled about the fact that he was receiving such a treatment in the first place, and was eagerly awaiting the day that he was fit enough that Eudocia would feel secure in not needing to offer up a new sort of pain remedy every other week. At least this one in particular seemed to be helping him somewhat. He was feeling relaxed enough that it meted out some of the nervousness he might otherwise have experienced in the presence of this particular visitor.
Not that he was completely free of anxiety, however. Hence his fixed gaze on the text in front of him.
It took him a little bit to reply to Alice's statement. But when he did, it was simple and sincere, "I agree."
Eudocia kept looking nervously at the puppy. She figured her master knew it was there, but at the same time really didn't want it to dirty up the carpet. Or disrupt her in her task.
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Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 9:32 pm
Fortunately for Eudocia, Alice didn't intend to set the dog down and let it run amok, despite the fact that it looked like that was very much what it wanted to do. She was a little less sure about what to do with herself, so she continued to stand, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
"So, uh. Sorry, I guess. I was a little out of line." Why was apologizing so inherently awkward? "I'm not usually that..."
Bitchy? Eh, she'd let him fill that in for himself. "Anyway. Yeah."
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Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 9:45 pm
Huh. An apology? From the host of Kyrjadis? That was every bit as unexpected as the girl willfully visiting her. But -- no, he already knew he was going about that whole thing in a very poor way, and had from the start.
"And when I said I agreed with you, I was not agreeing that you should be the one taking all the blame."
A host was never a mouthpiece minion for the divine burden they carried. Alice was capable of thinking for her own self.
"I think you reacted reasonably to someone so determined to overlook you. Recklessly, but reasonably."
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Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 10:03 pm
Huh. Okay, she had not been expecting an apology from him, either, even if it was a slightly roundabout one. It was at least considerably less awkward than hers. He demonstrated that he understood her reasons, and hopefully that meant there wouldn't be a repeat occurrence.
"Alright, so we were both kind of asses," she allowed. Glancing around, she finally decided to sit, but made sure to hold the puppy firmly in her lap so that it didn't trample all over the couch. "How about we just try to avoid that in the future?"
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 5:40 pm
"An accurate assessment," agreed the Judge. His tone at the acknowledgement was the teeniest, tiniest smidgen lighter than is was usually. The hint of a smirk on the corner of his mouth was expertly concealed by a hand turning over a page. "Oh, Libra..."
The tiny shadow sprite reappeared without delay. "Yes, sir?"
"A towel, for our other guest. Would you be able to carry one over?"
Libra gave a nod, and zipped on over to the bath. She returned a moment later with a clean towel, that looked enormous draped over her tiny arms.
"So, Alice. I know nothing about you save for your name, your admirable willpower, and... your fondness for dogs," he continued. Eudocia was just about finished removing all of those needles, and he was getting impatient to be able to sit up and address the girl properly. "Though I imagine you've had to share your story plenty of times, now. We have quite a collection of worlds represented at the Pantheon."
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 5:54 pm
"Oh, thanks." Alice accepted the towel with gratitude and wrapped it around the pup, which immediately proceeded to gnaw on the edge of it.
"Not that often, really." She'd shared bit and pieces with a few people, but the only she'd given anything akin to an full backstory to was Shyamaath. No one had really asked. "What did you want to know?"
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 6:03 pm
"Where you came from, and how you got here, would work for a start," mused Glaucon. "That is, if you wish to tell. I admit I'm curious. Your appearance, the image it reminds me of, it's..."
From the start of this conversation, both participants had made a silent, but still clear, agreement to not bring Kyrjadis into it. Even as his latest contribution began to reach a close, he could already hear the panicked mantra picking up in the back of his head: do not mention your sister. Do not mention your sister. Do not--
"...familiar."
Dammit.
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 6:15 pm
"That's not exactly a coincidence," she admitted, inclining her head slightly. "I guess the simplest way to explain it is like past life regression, just a lot more...literal." This was never not going to sound crazy, but considering she was talking to a reborn god getting acupuncture, it didn't seem quite as bad.
"You familiar with Tarot?"
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 6:20 pm
"Tarot," he repeated the word, slowly dragging it through his thoughts. He could hardly say he was familiar with it, besides a mention. But, anything to keep this conversation from steering into unpleasant territory. "You mean those cards?"
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 6:36 pm
"Yeah, those. I found one, about eight years ago now, and got pulled into a kind of pocket dimension. I wasn't the only one - there were a couple dozen of us, plus some others. Servants, who were just...there. The Court, though, we'd all been there before, and we'd all died. When we got pulled back, we all changed, physically at least, back to who we'd been." While she spoke, Alice unwrapped the towel from the puppy, then wrapped it again.
"I was Justice, hence the..." She trailed off and made a vague gesture to indicate her blindfold. "We weren't stuck there, though. We could go back and forth. But the last time I tried, something went wrong, and I ended up on this world instead."
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