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The afternoon light laid lazily across the freshly-penned words and turned the rough paper golden, making it seem a poor mockery of the illuminated manuscripts holy men love so much. The letters were small. Cramped but controlled, they lined up like well-behaved schoolchildren, using each inch of blank space. The room was the same, no space was used wastefully, and while it was cluttered, it was almost preternaturally tidy and somehow organized. Behind the heavy desk in the center of the room, Dr. Jannisari pinched the bridge of her nose. 

The putesco had thus far resisted any attempt to collect samples of the black taint that crawled across its surface. Scraping, smudging, discreet applications of acidic solutions... throughout everything, the golden laurels had seemed to stare  at Jannisari, mocking her. She laid down her pen and fingered a delicately wrought leaf. Gaudy thing, she thought in vague disgust. But, oh, when it transformed... she smiled, excitement curving her thin lips mischievously. Finally, the ability to study a Plague in person from the beginning. Well, near beginning, she amended.

Gathering her bottles: oak gall, iron, powdered eggshell for quicker drying, she walked over to her supply cabinet, a heavy affair of dark wood and many shelves. The Trisica robes she wore dragged along the stone floor. Her long fingers had reached out and barely grasped the latch when a small squeaking voice piped through the silent room. One of the stoppered vials dropped out of her startled arms and rolled languidly underneath the cabinet.

"What?" She hated how her voice rose in pitch sharply when startled. Lips pinching into a frown, Jannisari quickly shoved the other inking supplies into their drawers. On ocassion, invariably when she had been awake several days, audible hallucinations reared their noisy heads. But they were never this coherent and her bed could attest to her slumbering presence last night. Dark blue eyes narrowed. Under the cabinet? "Who's there?"

There were really only one or two possibilities, Dr. Jannisari mused. Unless, of course, somehow some image had gifted the Trisica mice with speech. She did like to keep an open mind. Much more plausibly, some cheeky stunted had decided to roost underneath the heavy cabinet. The dramatic voice was high and queer and did not remind Jannisari of any Plagues she had encountered before. Although, she admitted grudgingly, she often failed to remember such things. Tapping on finger along her cheek, she stared at the shadow underneath the cabinet, excitement tingling across her skin. One of the slim volumes on the desk had the measurements of any plague she could get her hands on. If this was a new specimen...

Her bottle rolled out and tapped one foot gently. Suddenly, she crouched and tucked it into one voluminous sleeve. "I am Dr. Jannisari, human." Ticking along furiously, her brain catalogued and discarded: grabbing for the intruder, threatening, asking, humoring; which was best? Humoring the little disease might get it to show itself, she decided. "The plague in here is not nearly as interesting as you, little mouse. But I can show you if you'd like to see." She trailed off delicately. Perhaps she could enact a payment of sorts: measurements for viewing.

An uneasy shiver prickled along Jannisari's spine as glowing eyes emerged from the shadows. Plagues were useful creatures for her research, but they were embodiments of disease], and that had always unsettled, even disgusted her. But, she was willing to do nearly anything in the pursuit of knowledge. Jannisari remained crouched, studying Clause intently. His rhyming comment was filed, stored away for later, but not responded to. What type of item had inspired a jester's raiment? The cream cloth seemed an oddly fanciful contrast to Claude's inky self. Bells trimmed the points here and there, clearly the source of that strange tinkling. Dr. Jannisari wasn't quite sure how cloth and the original item were blended, but she was certain they were related. Arching one brow at the plague, she stood and rolled her shoulders.

"You are correct. I hope to stay with it throughout, from beginning to end. However, I do find you quite interesting. After all, an item can hardly talk." This brilliant opportunity: a plague to study from inception (well, near inception, she amended) onward, it was heady and caused her pale lips to curve in a rare smile. She snapped her robes briskly and strode to the desk, snatching up a piece of charcoal and a scrap to write on. "Come along, Claune, if you wish to see." Jannisari motioned to the plague with one hand, scribbling on the page with the other. She had deliberately not carried Claune from the cabinet to the desk. The more observation of it in action, the better. "However, there's a small fee, nothing you cannot afford of course."  She picked up a measuring length of fine rope and wound it round her fingers. "I simply wish to know you."

"An exchange of secrets..." Dr. Jannisari mused aloud, her thin lips pinching further. Bargaining with a plague did not sit well with her, but oh, the lure of new material. Such creatures, she supposed, were similar in mercurial temperament to wild animals: wary until the right treat was offered. This one fed on secrets apparently, on the dark things that scurried in the corners of a mind.

tap tap tap Her long fingers moved along the edge of the paper, just so, tapping unhurriedly. And the seconds flew by, moved on; the silence hammered down until her curiosity over the metallic tang of distaste. She was unworried, for Dr. Jannisari held no true secrets and a professional never let her distaste affect her work.

Still, her sigh pierced the golden blanket of still afternoon. "Then, little plague, you have a bargain. Although, I believe you will find my answers quite uninteresting." tap tap tap She smoothed the edges of the paper, thin rope still caught 'round one hand like a silkworm's web. The scrawled words a jumble of unfinished sentences describing the excito: jester, guarded. Her now charcoal-smudged finger beckoned once more to the short jester and she crouched low, hand extended, for there was no other way to the top of her desk without a boost. "An eye for an eye, then. Shall we begin?"

Dr. Jannisari narrowed her eyes as Claune's slight weight tickled her palm. An orange? Perhaps more similar to a filled bottle of ink. It was entirely more fitting, she mused, to compare it to a murky swirl of half-dried ink. The Plague's dark skin, the rot of disease, seemed to suck in the pale fingers of the afternoon sun. Dust, suspended lazily, pierced by that same light, hung between them and dripped off of her thin fingers. Glowing blue eyes distracted her and an overwhelming sense of wrongness, unnaturalness, rushed across her muscles.

A jingle and a bump broke the spell as the Plagueling nearly toppled over. This specimen had tuning knobs, she noticed. Interesting. She shifted the slight body onto her desk, shuffling aside a few papers. Snatching up her charcoal, Dr. Jannisari scribbled furiously. "Will you indulge me anyway? A scientist should only implicitly trust information gathered by himself. Also, I am curious. What item spawned you?" Her words rushed and tumbled out, and she forced back the million questions bubbling in her throat. Quirking one brow, she held the thin rope, the knotted length swinging, each nub an indication of length.

"Is it not your turn to question? Or shall we go in blocks of knowledge? Unless you wish to view my putesco first." To her right, the laurels gleamed, their golden sheen marred by plague. Incongruous in such a plain and organized room, they were gaudy and grand. Reflected in the levels were the eyes of kings, emperors, the prideful and the greedy.

Dr. Jannisari raised one brow at Claune's use of the word 'beautiful', as if it were a valid quantifier for a plague. And if it had been beautiful as a violin, that pleasing asthetic of carved wood and melodious function was echoed only vaguely in its clothing and form. A disease was not, could not, be beautiful. It was fascination, disgusting, powerful, a galaxy of things other than beautiful. The concept of beauty was a human construct and she marked the plague's words down in her notes with an interested 'hmmm'. Perhaps it was a learned behavior from his Grimm, or a residual of having been a violin, which was, generally speaking, something regarded as lovely.

Looking up, she stretched the knotted string taut, holding it precisely. Jannisari did not touch the plagueling. While her fingers were now used to the delicate shuddering she felt while touching the laurel wreath, she still preferred to limit any physical contact between her and these odd pestilences. In fact, with the laurels it went above mere tolerance, and a shiver passed over her in remembrance. There had been far too many times where she had caught her own fingers idly toying with the leaves and had snatched them back as if burned. Suddenly, Dr. Jannisari dropped the string, content to put it away later. Quickly, and with an almost preternatural neatness, she scratched Claune's height next to its weight, alignment, and odd penchant for the dramatic. Eyes intent upon her parchment, she did not raise them until after Claune had asked the next question. Even then, her gaze did not rest on the questioner, but rather her blackened laurels.

"What do I think...?" Pausing for a few seconds, the fingers of one thin hand reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose. Why did such a question even matter? Already she regretted their bargain, but for now, she would play along. Jannisari slowly folded her fingers on her desk, studiously avoiding her notes. Charcoal was an imprecise method of writing, although quick, it smudged with too much ease. Later, she would record them permanently in ink. Finally, she pursed her thin lips then opened her mouth.

"I think that this laurel wreath is useful. As long as it remains useful, I will not abandon it or this pursuit. As a scientist, I cannot help but be devoted to the erradication of this disease through any means. And this," She tapped one leaf, causing the laurels to wink and flash in the afternoon light. "will aid me in my goal." Only now did she look at Claune, and her tight smile was a little strange. "I trust that was a satisfactory answer. And now, I think, a question for you - what kind of man is your Grimm, that lets you wander about impersonating mice?"

With a few quick scratches, Jannisari marked down what little the Plague had said that was of interest. Perhaps she could contact its Grimm as well. Possessing such a... spirited excito must be tiring. Though, in all likelihood, the excito had to have learned such behavior somewhere. Perhaps this Nicholas was much the same. She paused a moment before answering, her finger tapping out a staccato beat on her desk. Jannisari eyed the Plague's hovering hand. "In this matter, as in the question you posed before, there is no difference between thought and emotion. They lie in sync within me and will not falter. The unequivocal answer is this: I would destroy any Plague without a second of remorse if it would mean this disease be gone. The pestilence has ravaged our cities, desolated small villagers, killing indiscriminately. To cast aside hundreds of lives for one Plague is ludicrous." As she spoke, she reached out to finger one golden leaf. Realizing where her hand had wandered, she snatched it back as if burned and cleared her throat.

"And even so, the love a Plague might feel is typically a reflection of their owner and their emotions." It seemed to Dr. Jannisari that the emotions of plagues were like that of some sort of bonded animal, like a domesticated cat or dog given speech. Of course, she would be unable to study this further in depth until her own Plague matured. She made a note to speak to Kempe about it as well. It was always interesting to ponder if excitos' emotions stem from true, human-like intelligence or were merely aped from their masters. And even if it were not learned from their Grimms, the affection could be like that of the aforementioned dog or cat, mostly mindless and blind, driven by odd instinct and the amenities their masters gave them. Her piercing eyes met the glowing splotches that served as Claune's own eyes.

"For you, I have a simple question - Do you remember the before of what you are now? Do you remember being a violin?"