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 Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 2:56 pm
Bright ribbons and jangling bells have always marked Warwick from a distance, a vibrant note against the country landscape as he comes trundling up over the hill. There are so many colors to his caravan [and himself with it] that sometimes it seems he's immune to the dust of the road, that he shakes it off in favor of good cheer. In the wintertime, however, this comes to be less true. Now, with wet snow melting into the dust, his mule is splattered with mud from the belly down, those bright colors dimmed by speckles of brown and grey. The roof seems a bit sunken and low. The man himself looks a bit tired and chilly, bundled up in raggedy, pieced-together furs.
That vibrancy that always sells his act, even from a distance, has been somewhat destroyed by the winter. All the same, as he crests the hill near Oldcastle, a half-day's treck down the road, there will still likely be enough to draw in wide-eyes and donations.
Wren, after all, seems less touched by the mud. No one need know that this is because, under her careful guidance, Warwick has taken the time to swipe her down as often as he can, to leave the pale colors of her pelt unsullied. The bell around her neck seems louder and clearer than anyone of the others, chiming gently instead of harshly, her eyes sharp and green and curious as she looks ahead.
He is still somewhat dazed by her, and it shows on his face, by the way he sneaks glances across the mule's back to where she leads the way, the tuft of her tail swaying gently in her wake.
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Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 3:05 pm
At the bottom of the hill, going the opposite way, there is a bright spot in the mud and filth: a milk-white hind, a creature of legend. Unblemished with any marking, she nonetheless has mud to her knees, which serves only to offset the startlingly phantomlike silhouette of her new body, the serenity and grace of her movements. Her breath curls in white clouds from her pale nose.
She comes to an abrupt halt, and her rider--until now a pair of stocking-clad legs, shoeless, and the rest of her hidden in the depths of a rough wool cloak--pushes back her hood.
Petra recognizes the caravan. A gust of winter wind yanks her grime-heavy hair away from her chapped face, and her expression can be made out even from here: set and hard, older than her years. She is skinnier than she was, but seems somehow stronger, too: a feral beast that is all claws and ribcage. The juxtaposition of the snarl of her scarred lip with Spokelse's ghostly features is abrupt, and even, somehow, pleasant. If Spokelse is now a creature from story, so Petra as well: raised by wild dogs. In fact, her ugly freckled hound even now lopes past the pair, skinny and alert.
Perhaps he will not recognize her, at the distance; perhaps he will, despite Spokelse's transformation, so like Wren's. But Petra lifts her voice to him regardless.
"Warwick!" it tries to sound cheery, and it's half-swallowed in the feeble wail of another ephemeral breeze.
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Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 3:50 pm
Only a hint of it will carry to Warwick's ears, enough to make his brow furrow in confusion -- but Wren's ears are sharper, perk forward and she tips her head to squint down the long path toward the waving figure in the distance. And if her Chosen doesn't recognize them, she will, bright eyes curious before she shifts to say something in a voice that is barely more than a breath, soft, to her Chosen.
And now he sees her, raises his eyebrows and stands up on his seat at the front of the caravan to wave both hands and shout back, unintelligible, the mule's ears flicking in annoyance at the noise and the fuss. All the more so when he coaxes her to move more quickly, trotting along to meet up with her.
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Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 3:55 pm
Spokelse's progress is more sedate, and when they meet on the road her attentions go directly to Wren, with that same expression of faint familiarity as when they'd first met--stronger now, with a more complex brain behind it.
"Warwick," Petra repeats. She forces an awkward grin, distorted by the scar slicing across her lip. "I never thought I'd see you again but I heard stories you was performing close, so I went to see. I guess I got lucky." She looks at Wren, and then her dark eyes go back to his face, searching, worried. "You too?"
When she says it her hand is on Spokelse's neck, possessively--even more protectively than before.
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Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 7:48 pm
"Me too..." Me too what, is the question he doesn't quite ask? For, up until this very moment, Warwick has been operating under the assumption that every Guardian had woken up on the same day changed, able to speak to their Chosen. His thought was that the need was there, so the need was met with increased intelligence, with softly murmured words probing him to action.
He still doesn't know that other people can hear the Guardians speak, and thinks it is a private thing. Wren has never spoken around the supplicants and wide-eyed children who cluster round.
"...haven't they all?" Now, though, he is thinking about it, confused. Uncertain.
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Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2013 7:54 pm
She pauses for a long time, and she almost has to look down at the cart seat from her lofty perch on Spokelse's back. The Guardian is too big, now, to sleep in Petra's bedroom curled beside the bed like an enormous dog. Perhaps this is why Petra has the chilled look of someone who has been sleeping outdoors.
"I thought so too," she confesses. "But we--we saw a buck, in the city. I think... I think it's just some of us."
And there is a hungry pang of jealousy in her eyes. Petra'd thought so too, but first she'd thought she was special; thought, as she always did, that her longstanding bond with Spokelse--her bond as one of the first Chosen in this new era, and one of the youngest humans to be called forth; her bond as one that had grown alongside Spokelse for years, through the most tumultuous of a person's life, through awakening feelings and learned responsibility and growing pains both literal and metaphorical--she had thought it was different. She'd thought she'd earned it.
She looks at Wren again, then back to Warwick, but she's stifled it now. There's nothing in her eyes but a sort of haunted stillness. She looks through things, past them, rather than at them.
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Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 9:23 pm
Deep thoughts in her eyes, and more than anything else, they make Warwick uneasy. He has never been a deep thinker, is more a man of instinct and action than of consideration, of trying to achieve understanding. Petra has obviously floundered with what her Guardian's Awakening means. He has taken it more in stride, thought about it very little except for when Wren leans in against him and offers quiet words of consideration --
And this memory, all on its own, makes him reach out, arm extended, Wren leaning in at the same moment to set her head beneath it. The bell jangles around her neck, fancier now than when Petra first gave it to them, bright and wild to match her Chosen's clothing.
"Where ye headin'?" He looks up at Petra with his hand still on Wren, that usual smile on his face. He is grounded in this world, and perhaps he can project some of that along. Help bring her back into focus. "We heard 'bout a lady in Palisade...and ent been there in a while, so..."
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Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2013 12:56 pm
Her eyes drift back up to him, and when they do focus it's with her usual banked-coal intensity. Now more than ever Petra is a pike beneath the ice, and when the thaw comes she will be teeth and measured anger. "Maeve," she says, with a sort of awed contempt. Clearly she has no idea how to feel about her.
"She runs a brothel, you know? And trains up Chosen in the back lot how to use a sword or a knife, or at least makes the staff do it." And her cheeks run red as she remembers Ayle showing her how to wield the big knife, teaching her to toss it, and her own fumbling attempts and the blonde's lazy grin. Maybe Warwick will interpret it as more anger. "Everyone thinks she's crazy, too, and she thinks it's all fun, and she's got a damn big statue of a Guardian stomping on a wolf on her desk, and all this between running girls to--"
"Petra." It's the first time Spokelse's spoken, and it's one word and it's soft and faintly parental. Petra's face goes red again and she glowers at the sludgy snow on the side of the road.
"She's got a big book she's keeping all our names in, like a census. Says we're important."
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Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2013 8:46 pm
The voice catches Wren's attention: makes her step in against Warwick's side, eyes locked widely on Spokelse. It is the first time she has heard another Guardian speak, and it fills her with -- something. That familiarity. Loneliness, perhaps. Some echo of the other side coming through. It leaves Warwick struggling to catch his breath, for a second, and reaching out to settle fingertips against her neck.
"...Is my name in there?" He is, perhaps, misinterpreting this as fear, some discomfort. With good reason. The idea of some stranger with his name jotted down in a book he's never seen. "Does she know about me?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2013 12:31 am
"Not unless you put it in there. I didn't tell her about you, but if you've met any other Chosen they may have gossiped. Or if one of them met you at a show. Or if one of her girls did. Or basically anything. She probably," she amends, with a defeated voice, "knows about you. But it ain't in her book."
Spokelse meets Wren's eyes and she seems abruptly startled. Something about her eyes--green as a leaf, and offset with that strange marking across her forehead--couples up with the faint sense of familiarity she'd felt at her first meeting and jogs a memory that slips from her grasp as quickly as it arrived, leaving that infuriating sensation of having a word at the tip of one's tongue. She remembers the smell of snow and the taste of sugar, dim animal memories, simpler than the ones she's had since Awakening.
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Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2013 11:56 am
The faintest of sounds escapes between barely-parted lips while Warwick considers that. His hand sinks slowly into the fur at the back of Wren's neck, buried up to the knuckles, and she is reassuringly warm. It will work on both of them, calm ruffled nerves, even if Wren's eyes remain steadily locked on Spokelse, with her head tipped to the side.
"Did ye put yer name in there, then? Or did she do it?" He shifts, and he is reconsidering the wisdom of heading to Palisade, now. More reasons to avoid the noise and madness of the city. "...an' is it worth while?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2013 12:39 pm
"I did," she says, after a beat's pause. She hadn't--Maeve had, Petra can't write--but close enough. "And it's... I think it is. To know where we are."
She hesitates, before admitting, bluntly: "I'm scared."
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Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2013 4:30 pm
"Ah, bit, ye haint got cause to be scared." His expression softens, slowly, with the words -- something genuine and hopefully reassuring creeping into it. Wren's head butts into his knee, sharing the emotion, and she puffs out a breath like she's considering saying something. But no. She'll leave it to him.
"Ye got that pretty lady at yer side, and more'n yer share of guts."
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