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 Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2013 6:14 pm
The Bottle in the Coal Bin
{January 7th} Eglantine sighed as she finished writing and immediately shivered. It was cold in her bedroom, colder than it should be and making her turn in her seat to glance at the fireplace. Coals in the pit were burning with a weak red glow in the center, but the majority that lay around those few were cold and long since gone to ash. Frowning, the woman then turned her eyes to the clock that hung above the fireplace and was taken aback that the hands were set at 1:15am.
So late already? The report she had been reading from the company's main warehouse had been sizable but had it really taken her three hours to read through all of it and write a reply? Time did fly, but it was supposed to be when one was having fun! Another sigh left her lips and the willowy woman rose from her seat and padded across the hardwood flooring of her bedroom to get a shawl from the bureau. Slipping it on, she then went to the fireplace and jabbed at the still living coals with the wrought iron poker, but was only able to get the feeblest reaction from them before they fizzled back to that dying light once more. The poker was returned to its stand and Eglantine reached for the bucket that stood just out of the way near the fireplace. The battered metal container was empty of coal, but a thin layer of coal dust lingered on in haphazard smudges. Seeing that made the woman frown again, but she did not pause to wipe the filth away.
The moment she exited her bedroom door, the sound of Jean's snoring from down the hall filled her ears. Eglantine chuckled under her breath and turned down the hall, meaning to close the door to the room the handyman lived in. Before she did, she peered in at his fire and saw it was burning bright and warm. She envied him a little, but she had denied him when he had asked if she wanted him to fetch her more coal earlier that evening. Eglantine then closed the ajar door and swept down the hall and main staircase with only a whisper of her nightgown over the flooring. The entrance hall was cool as well and the older woman pulled her shawl closer with her free hand as she moved from the landing to the darkened hallway through the door to her left.
When through, she groped for the switch on the wall. Upon finding it, a light overhead flickered on with a thin electric hum and illuminated the way forward. Eglantine needn't go very far as the kitchens were in the first door she came to on her left, and again she found the light switch and rid the room she entered of blackness and shadows.
"Now where did I leave those..." She crossed the white-walled kitchen to the counters near the ice chest and opened a drawer. Not finding what she sought, she opened the one beneath that, and then the third. "Ah ha." Eglantine procured a candle and a match and lit the former with practiced grace. The smell of sulfur reached her nose for a brief instant and was then gone as the match was snuffed out and disposed of properly. With candle now lit and in hand, Eglantine was ready to make the march into the black abyss of the basement.
Although her home was wired for electricity, the basement had been neglected on the idea that it - like the attic - wasn't used for much other than storage and would thus be a waste to have set up for proper lighting. Eglantine almost regretted that decision in this moment but did not focus much on the feeling as she descended her second flight of stairs this night. After all, it wasn't like she would have to go from one end of the basement to the other to find what she sought. The coal she needed was practically at the foot of the stairs; an idea that had been wholly Jean's and one she loved him for the moment she reached the last step. Like the rooms she had entered in before they had been lit, the basement was a mass of blackness and shadowy shapes of the things down there; all back-lit by what feeble moonlight filtered in through the windows and the candle that burned steadily in her hand. Had she been made to walk through the basement proper, it was likely she would have tripped or at the very least walked into many a thing stashed away down here. But luckily enough, Jean had done what he had and what she sought lay a few feet before her, propped against the wall.
The lumpy black cache had been delivered just this morning, so the large wooden bin was full to bursting. Eglantine gingerly set the candle aside on a low shelf and picked up the hand shovel hanging from a peg near the bin. Although the flickering light was brought down to help, its flame seemed as feeble as the embers in her fireplace upstairs when compared to the blackness it was placed in. Eglantine could barely see the nose in front of her face and was scooping and depositing the coal blindly. The first two scoops hit the bucket with a resounding clanging of rock hitting metal, but the sound of rock falling hitting glass made the woman immediately stop and fetch the light from its place to the side.
"What is this?" she murmured as she moved a few large lumps out of the way and brought the glass object into view. "A bottle?"
Inside the bucket was a glass bottle no wider than a peach at its base. A yellow stopper glowed in the light among the coal surrounding it but the majority of the bottle was an ombre of grey - light at the top near that yellow orb to dark at its base. Eglantine reached in and plucked the bottle out, noticing the swirls of black twisting around the bottle's surface as well as the large lump of coal that sat inside it now that she had it close to her glasses-less eyes. She was understandably puzzled by the notion of this small glass object being inside the pile and by the mystery that was the lump of coal being inside a bottle that it had no way of getting into. She opened her mouth as though to say something but closed it almost immediately, shook her head, and deposited the bottle into the pocket on the front of her nightgown. It was late, she was cold, and a dark basement was no place to speak riddles and guesses to an inanimate object that was a puzzlement in and of itself, especially when she didn't have an awake witness to nod and confirm that what she now had on her person was indeed something real.
Come the morrow - or at the very least, the moment after she got her fire stoked and blazing again - she would twist and turn the little surprise and speak aloud the questions she denied to here. But for now it would have to wait. She could feel the cold seeping through her slippers, and a shawl and candle could only do so much in a basement with neither heat nor passable light. She would have the bucket filled in a few more scoops as well - barring any more unexpected presents - so Eglantine Renly got back to doing what she set out to do; completely unaware that her newly discovered "present" was something that was going to change her life now and forevermore.
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Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2013 6:47 pm
The Change It had been exactly a week since she had discovered the bottle in the coal bin. Jean had agreed that the coal-filled glass container was a queer thing but he had also agreed it was very much real upon hearing Eglantine's tale of what had occurred that night. So, with the man's word that her eyesight wasn't yet completely failing her, Eglantine had set about to examining her strange little trinket.
The stopper, she found immediately, did not come free no matter how hard she pulled or twisted it. It was almost as if the yellow glass bauble atop the bottle was in fact a solid part of the bottle, which made the fact there was a large nugget of coal inside it all the more baffling. In addition to pulling on the stopper, Eglantine had rotated the bottle between her long fingered hands time and again over these last few days, both to examine the grey ombre glass and also admire it. In the right lighting she could almost swear she caught a glimmer of runes of some sort within the walls of the vial, but even with her glasses on they were hard to detect. All the same, whoever created the bottle had fantastic craftsmanship, especially where the colors were concerned. An ombre of grey - light to dark - with a ribbon of black swirling throughout from neck to base. It was that and the puzzlement of its contents that so endeared her to the thing, and thus she had kept it atop the writing desk in her room; in a particularly sunny spot so that she might admire it every time she cast her eye in that direction.
And so it had been that way for the past few days, with an added brush here and there of a feather duster, so that the pretty glass would not get even the faintest of coverings of dust. Eglantine had given the bottle one such dusting this morning, so she was understandably surprised by what she saw when she returned to her chambers that evening before dinner after a trip out to the Renly Rails office to see to business as usual.
The bottle was coated with dust, but not in the way one would usually find a dusty knickknack. Eglantine's newest treasure was covered in black dust and, most peculiarly, the grains swirled around the bottle as though the thing had its own gravity. The once-actress hastily pulled her glasses from her face upon seeing it, wiped them briskly on her breast, and slid them back on again. When the picture remained the same to her eyes, she turned on her heel and went to the door.
"Jean? Jean! Come up here please! I do believe my eyesight's going for certain this time!"
Jean LeMonte was sixty-something years in age and built like a beer keg. Short of leg and stout of body he had a large and yet jolly sort of belly, a bald head he hid beneath a newsboy cap, muddy brown eyes, and the bushiest walrus mustache anyone ever did see. The urgency in Eglantine's voice had sent him running, and by the time he reached her the run from the kitchens to her second story bedroom left him puffing and wheezing. Eglantine's live-in odd jobs man had to lean against the hallway wall for a moment to catch his breath, but waved off his employer's expressed concern while he did so. When he regained most of his composure Eglantine pointed into her room at the desk that stood on the far left side.
"This is the second time in the past few days where I've asked you this but...Do you see what I see?"
The CEO of Renly Rails moved out of her friend's way as he lifted himself from the wall and moved into her bedroom. His eyes followed her finger and immediately found the bottle. Like Eglantine just moments before, Jean did a double take.
"If you're seeing that bottle o' yours with a bunch o' black stuff around it, miss, then I think I am."
Eglantine moved from her doorway to stand next to her companion. Both stared at the cloud of dust in silence, watching as it moved almost lazily around the bottle. The setting sunlight caught it in such a way that it appeared to be very fine indeed and even glittered to their naked eyes.
"What...ah...What d'you reckon it is, miss?" Jean shifted on his small feet and as he spoke his massive mustache blew out with every word. Eglantine did not immediately reply but instead crossed the room and stood by the table that was presently the glass' home. Although the majority of the dust was spinning around its apparent source, there was a thin layer atop the mahogany desk. Eglantine slipped off a white traveling glove and raked the tip of her index finger through what had collected on the desk. She inspected her finger, than rubbed it and her thumb together. The grains were fine, certainly, but they still had a texture Eglantine was well acquainted with.
"Coal," she said more to herself than the man in the room with her.
"Ma'am?"
"It's coal, Jean. Here, look." She beckoned him and when he made the passage from the threshold, she turned her right hand out to him. Where she had rubbed was black as pitch and the dust had brought out the prints on her fingertips. The older man gently took her hand and wiped some of the black matter away to feel for himself.
"Aye. Makes sense, when you figure that bottle had that lump in it," he nodded as he spoke, but the action was short lived. "But bottles don't usually make a habit o'...o' doin' whatever it is this one is."
They both turned back to the bottle, falling mute as they watched that swirling cloud. Even though there was that fine layer on the desktop, the bottle seemed to have the majority of its grey-black particles contained. At least, to Eglantine's eyes, it seemed that none were getting into the air past the bottle's rim. She was quiet for a few minutes more before speaking.
"I find this bottle in the coal basin, find no way to open it and no way to explain how it got in there without having shattered into a million little bits, and when I decide that its secrets are part of its charm and let it be, it does this!" She threw up her hands, but there was a smile on her face all the same. A chuckle left her thin lips and she, like her companion, too shook her head. "Just how am I to write off this phenomenon?" She swept her right hand toward the bottle, then thought one better, and gently cupped it between both hands to lift it off the desk. To both their eyes, the bottle appeared to react to the dusty haired woman's touch; the cloud of finely ground coal picked up a little speed and quite soon both her palms and all her fingers were black.
"...Magic?" Jean shrugged his broad shoulders as the word left his mustache. Eglantine couldn't stifle an airy laugh and not only because of the state of her hands.
"Aevah be good! Though I suppose that is the only logical explanation."
She looked down at the bottle in her now coal-covered hands and smiled anew at it. The longer she looked, the more her mind filled with questions and queries about what it was, where it had come from, and - of course - why it was doing what it was doing. But of course for all the questions she had, for the time being there was only one answer: she had absolutely no idea.
"What should we do with it, miss?"
"I suppose we should keep it, don't you agree Jean?" She turned to look at him, laughing again at the dubious look he gave her from beneath his cap and untameable, bushy eyebrows. "Well why not? There's no harm in it from what I see and a little bit of coal dust can easily be cleaned. Besides, I'm quite privy to see just what it will do next!"
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Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2013 9:01 pm
Absence of Warmth.
(Dust Spin --> Child Quest*) Eglantine's home is massive, and that's probably why it's a little odd when she comes to find that it's almost as cold inside as it is outside in the depths of Winter. Frost is lining most of the surfaces and in some places, icicles dangle; fires that are lit are snuffed out almost instantaneously, and even the lights give off little to no heat. It isn't until Eglantine approaches the bottle's location that the warmth can be found. In fact, it's outright hot around the bottle itself, and it's no wonder: within the bulbous cage, the dark coal is now alight with vibrant red and orange, aglow with the threat of being burned out completely -- potentially taking the room with it. If that wasn't bad enough, the air is thick with the flecks of coal, enough to cause serious health issues if she doesn't address it, and fast! How does Eglantine approach the hot bottle? Can she appease its flammable nature so this doesn't happen again? Will she forgive it for being...well...coal? *Please note, there's a minimum word requirement of 500 words for this quest.
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Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 3:45 pm
Absence of Warmth
{Growth Quest Response} It had snowed overnight. A thick coat of the white stuff had landed from Aimes to the Deith Forest, and Eglantine's home and acres had not been spared from the passing storm. Knee deep drifts crossed her yard, broken up by walkways that had been just recently cleared by shovel and spade. Other than those ruts in the snow the manse Eglantine called home looked picturesque and lovely, with frost on all the windows and icicles hanging from the eaves. What wasn't lovely however was the bitter chill and gusty winds that hung in the air even though the storm had long since moved out to sea. Put together, the pretty scene of a large house in the middle of a wood-lined clearing was ruined by a cold that was blown through all layers of clothes right down to one's very bones. It put a shiver into the very heart of anyone caught outside and made sure that Eglantine's fingers and toes had gone numb by the time she had finished her share of shoveling duty.
"I think we did well," she said as she handed Jean her shovel. "No need to worry about making it perfect anyway, so let's go inside and warm up shall we?"
They flexed their fingers and tapped their feet all the way up to the house. The snow on top of the drifts was powdery and light, so every time the wind blew through the trees, the top layer was lifted off the ground and blown straight into their eyes. Eglantine's glasses were useless in helping her as the wind blew sideways, so by the time she reached the front door, her eyes were stinging and she was almost blinded by the tears that had built up at the pain. She groped for the handle with her left hand while wiping her eyes with her right and let herself inside her home after a few moments of fumbling.
Instead of a gust of welcome heat greeting her, there was nothing but a wall of coldness as she stepped over the threshold and into the entrance hall. Eglantine stopped at the doorway, peering through her fingers at the room that lay before her; a gasp catching in her throat. The entrance hall was dimly lit, as though the lights in the chandelier that hung overhead were struggling to stay on. The fire that had been blazing in the hearth across the room had gone out and not a wisp of smoke remained. The room was bitterly cold - rivaling the chill outside but blessedly lacking the wind - and Eglantine had to do a double take when she looked to the windows as though they could somehow have been opened wide to let in the cold. Icicles hung inside her lovely home; hanging off the curtain rods and the sills, the chandelier, the tops of the doorways, even on the underside of the main staircase's bannister. They glittered with a light blue color in that dim lighting, which also helped to reveal the frost that stretched and covered so much of the room Eglantine now stood in. The furniture, the floor, the walls, even the paintings in their frames on the walls...blue-white frost clung to it and only seemed to add to the bitter chill that hung heavy in the air.
Eglantine felt her teeth chattering as she finally moved from the spot she had been temporarily frozen to and crossed the room to the cold hearth. She grasped the end of the fire poker and had to wrench it in attempt to free it from the ice that had enveloped the sharper ends of it and its companions. She stumbled back a few steps when she finally did, the sharp crack of ice breaking echoing off the winter still walls and into silence.
"What in the world happened here?" Jean stepped into the entrance hall and stared about the room with equal disbelief. One round hand had gone to his throat to free the buttons of his coat from their eyeholes, but now that he too had been hit by the wall of coldness, the handyman was deftly buttoning himself back up. Eglantine could only shake her head.
"I haven't the foggiest, Jean." She turned from the man to poke at the ashes in the fireplace with the iron rod. A snap from behind her made her turn, but it was only her companion snapping a rather sharp looking icicle off the bottom of the nearest windowsill. She went back to her task, frowning as she broke apart ash and overturned half-burned lumps of coal. "How long were we outside?"
The handyman was turning the icicle in his hand in disbelief, but snapped to attention when the question graced his cold and throbbing ears. "Three hours, I think..." He nodded his head as he counted back, using his fingers to help. "Yeah...Three hours, miss."
"Come look at this."
Eglantine moved to the side as Jean approached, then poked again at the ashes when he was near enough to see.
"You had this fire blazing when we went outside, but look...It's like we haven't had a fire in this fireplace for years!" Her tone was more puzzled than alarmed and a frown had made its way onto her thin lips. Jean nodded to the first part of her statement, remembering the bellows he had used to breathe some life into the first sparks of flame, but didn't say anything in regards to it. Instead, he handed his employer the icicle and could only shrug.
"I don't have any explanation for this ma'am. There's no way..." He watched Eglantine turn the icy spear over in her gloved hand. She tossed it into the back of the fireplace after a moment, then deftly grabbed the coal bucket and dumped the remaining contents onto the ash and previous lumps in the hearth. "Ma'am?"
"The way I see it," Eglantine rose again, dusting her knees as though the frost on the floor had somehow clung to her like dust. "Is that we can worry about the how after we've got a fire burning again. At the very least, it will help with some of this frost. Better we take a moment to warm up and collect our wits than stand here freezing to death, right?"
"That is true."
"I'll go get the coal then; you tend to that."
"Miss Renly, I can get the coal for you..."
"Jean, I think I can handle a pail of coal. Besides, we can get this done in half the time if we both take a task rather than have me standing around waiting for you to do both."
"Yes ma'am."
"Good." She gave him a smile, handed him the poker, and with a whirl of skirts made her way to the door that lead to the kitchen. She didn't turn around even as another crack came that signaled Jean had freed another fireplace tool from its frozen rack, her mind set on her task. What she had said was true - it would do them better to have a fire going before they started asking questions and puzzling over what had occurred in three hours time. At least it would help them shake the chill of outside and the room, at most it might even melt the icicles that clung to the windows and everything else with a little height to give. Still, all the same, as she walked Eglantine couldn't help but wonder.
The morning had been normal. Breakfast at eight a.m. after awaking at seven. She and Jean had chatted at the dining room table about the storm, with Eglantine commenting that she loved how the house looked after a healthy covering. After breakfast had been eaten, the table cleared, and the dishes put to soak, both had gotten dressed to proceed with shoveling. Jean had tried to protest her going out with him, but Eglantine had shot him down quickly enough and that had been that. From then until now they had been shoveling and doing their best to keep warm while doing so. There had been no sounds, no sights, no nothing that what had occurred had done so while they were yards away from the abode. What had occurred - whatever it was - had done so without any sign or telling. That was what puzzled and intrigued Eglantine most of all, especially as she reached the kitchen.
The hallway she had come through was much the same as the entrance hall. Frost everywhere and crunching underfoot, icicles hanging from high places like sharp sentinels. The hallways in her home were always a little chilly in winter but of course they were now freezing cold. The kitchen was equally cold, but the frost and icicles coated the room more than they had in the entrance hall. The wash basin where the dishes had been soaking was a frozen block of ice now, with a few plates poking out and glazed in frost. The floors were slick and the woman gave a strangled cry as she slipped on a patch of black ice and nearly took a spill. She managed to catch the island counter in time, but the bucket flew from her hand and went clattering to the floor a few feet away. Elbow aching where she hit it against the counter top, Eglantine straightened herself and went to retrieve it; a new flurry of questions popping up for later as the bucket had started to stick to the floor where it rested in that brief moment. It pulled away with an icy ripping sound and now had a covering of frost on one side that matched the rest of the kitchen. This only gave the woman who held it a new resolve to get down to the source of it. With her pail now recollected, she carefully walked to the basement door and gave the knob a tug.
It didn't move.
She tried again to the same result. Looping the bucket's handle over her forearm, Eglantine used both hands to jerk and shake the door in its frame, but to no avail. The ice had frozen it in place. Sighing - and watching her breath plume out before her in white clouds - Eglantine turned and went back the way she came. When she returned to the entrance hall she found Jean crouching before the fireplace with the bellows in hand, muttering thinly audible curses into the hearth. When her footsteps echoed into the room once more the curses stopped, but Jean did not make to rise.
"It keeps going out, ma'am."
"What do you mean?"
"Every time I get a spark, it goes right out." He turned his head to look at her and Eglantine saw his cheeks had turned a darker red from his exertion. It seemed he had tried blowing on his sparks himself. "I've tried four times and nothing happens. It just doesn't want to start."
"Perhaps it needs more coal," Eglantine mused, "but the basement door is iced right over. The kitchens are worse than here, if you can believe it. The dishes are trapped in a block of ice."
The pair looked at each other, expressions not betraying either of their thoughts or their concerns for what had happened and was likely still happening. Jean's brow had furrowed from his futile efforts and Eglantine's face had tightened on her walk from the kitchen, but other than that the two remained impassive in the face of each other. After a moment, Jean spoke.
"What about upstairs? I'm sure I've got some leftover coal in the pail in my bedroom."
"Heat does rise." It was, at least hopefully, more than likely not iced over as the basement door had been. One could argue that the reason the door had frozen was because of the added cold draft from the basement itself. The bedrooms would lack that, and thinking on it, Eglantine was sure her own bedroom pail had lumps to spare. "You keep on trying, I'll see what I can't dig up."
She didn't wait for a reply - positive or negative toward her idea - and made her way up the grand staircase. If she had been careful walking after her near spill in the kitchen, Eglantine was triply so going up the flights of stairs, and she kept one hand on the frosty bannister at all times. When she reached the top and removed her hand, her glove had become frosted over just like her bucket. She wiped it against the front of her coat as she turned and walked toward Jean's room, noting the warmth she felt against her face before writing it off as a product of her exertion just now.
Unlike the basement door, Jean's door did open, but not without a bit of shaking to break the thin coat of ice between the door and its jam. The handyman's room was akin to the entrance hall, but with more frost than icicles in his otherwise neatly kept quarters. She found his coal pail near his fireplace, which was also cold and full of grey ash. There was some coal left in the pail, but she also crouched down before the fireplace to pick some pieces of coal out and add them with the rest. Once she had gotten all the suitable ones, she was up and moving again. With the coal from Jean's pail and his fireplace, she had a quarter of a bucket full of hard black lumps. As she walked through the hall and past the staircase landing, Eglantine was trying hard to remember how much coal she should have left in her own bucket, but was finding it hard to recollect a usually unconcerning detail. As she struggled to recall and grew nearer to her destination, the hall took a different turn.
The ice and frost that now reigned throughout the house lessened and vanished the closer she got to her room. Warmth hung in the air now, and with each step the temperature rose. Eglantine was quickly loosening her scarf and unbuttoning her coat, and - now fully aware the heat was not her body's doing - her steps quickened and her eyes were trained on the door that kept her bedroom safe from prying eyes. The thought to call Jean did not cross her mind just then, and before she knew it she was at her door and reaching out to grasp the knob.
"Ow!" She pulled her hand away immediately as she grabbed it, shaking her fingers before curling them against her chest in shock. The knob was hot, and combined with the frozen numbness of her fingers, it made for a sharp burning sensation in her hand that crawled lazily up her arm. She waited for the feeling to fade before reaching out again, flexing her fingers just before taking the doorknob in hand. It didn't burn as the first contact did, but it was still hot enough that she didn't linger to enjoy the warmth before turning it and pushing the door inward. Immediately she was hit with a cloud of blackness and heat that made Eglantine reel backwards to avoid the blast. Her room felt like an inferno, but it did not look like one.
Everything from floor to ceiling was black, to the point where the air was filled with it. It floated from the room now that the door was opened and landed on everything it could touch - the floor, the door frame, the walls, and even Eglantine herself. Stripping her hands of her gloves, the woman reached up and wiped a large fleck of blackness from her coat. She rubbed the dust between her fingers, finding it to be fine but grainy.
"Coal..." The moment the word passed her lips, Eglantine's hand ripped the scarf from her neck and pressed it over her mouth and nose. Her eyes bulged a little then as she looked past what came out to see what lay within. The thin layer that had encircled her bottle these past few days was now spread far and thick. It coated everything and coupled with the heat, made Eglantine blink and rub her eyes more than once as she looked in from her spot away from the door. She moved from one side to the other, looking at other angles of her room from her spot. When she moved to the right side in order to look at the left side of her room, her eyes fell upon her bottle.
"Tina, did you know an empty coal silo is more dangerous than a full one?"
"No. Why, daddy?"
"That's because coal dust has far more surface area than lumps of coal do. When there's a lot of surface area covered and no proper ventilation, it can cause the coal dust to spontaneously combust."
"What's spon-tay-ne-us-ly com-bust mean?"
"'Explode', Tina. It means 'explode'."
The bottle was in the spot Eglantine had left it day in and day out since she had taken it for her own. Now, instead of the bottle being placidly sitting in a sunbeam with its little coal dust cloud spinning around it, the bottle was glowing red hot and throwing up coal dust as though the bottle itself were an active volcano. Papers on Eglantine's desk were smoking and curling up from the corners away from the source of the heat, while the desk the bottle sat on smoked and gave off an awful odor of burning wood stain. Seeing the smoke and papers sent Eglantine into erratic action. She threw her loosened coat off in the hall, threw the pail aside, and gripped her scarf all the tighter to her face. She ran into the room, not bothering to brace herself or even count to three.
The heat was like being slapped in the face outside the room, but inside it was a force to be reckoned with. Immediately Eglantine felt herself sweating beneath the layers she still had on and was blinded as coal dust landed on her glasses and smeared there when she tried to wipe it off. Her goal was the window to her right of the bed. With much stumbling and one soon to be bruised knee thanks to her bureau stool being suddenly underfoot she did reach it, but struggled with it even when she remembered to free the lock. Where the cold air had frozen the basement door in place, the heat had started to melt the paint on the window, and turned it into the consistency of glue. With that working against her, Eglantine was only able to get the window open four inches from its sill. It made a world of difference though as the cold air that had frozen her bones a short while ago now soothed her head and sucked out some coal dust that covered and floated close to the panes.
"Two more." One slightly open window wouldn't be enough to count as 'proper ventilation' in Eglantine's book. She had three windows in her room - two flanking the bed and one behind the desk. She went around her bed to the second bedside window and like before struggled to open it. It did, but less so than its brother as its closer proximity to the bottle meant the heat got to it all the more. It was then she turned to the desk, and she had to shield her eyes from the hot red-orange glow that came from her bottle. Eglantine could just make out the shape of that large lump of coal inside her once grey ombre glass but didn't linger on it long as she started to cough. She turned from the bottle and ran from the room, sputtering and choking on a mix of coal dust and hot air.
"J-Jean!" She gasped for cool air and moved down the hall, but the heat spilled from the open door and made any respite well down past the staircase. "Jean!"
She didn't wait to see if the man heard her and instead ran to the staircase, feeling as if her feet never once touched the carpeted floor.
"Jean you have to get water!" The alarm in her voice made it raise three octaves and crack, and Eglantine stared down over the bannister at the man who was still trying to get a light going in the fireplace. Jean looked up and goggled at his employer; who had left in pristine condition but now returned sweaty, lacking a coat and scarf, and wild eyed.
"Miss Renly?"
"Don't 'Miss Renly' me! I need water Jean, do you hear me? Water! As much as you can carry!"
"What for?" The mustached man struggled to his little feet and had to steady himself on the mantlepiece when he almost slipped.
"Because if you don't, the house will go up in flames!"
Jean's mustache moved in a way that said he was trying to find the words but couldn't. Time seemed to slow, but when the words sunk in, he was off and so was Eglantine. While he ran for the kitchen, she turned around on the stair and ran back up, forgoing her earlier precaution about ice now that most of it had melted away into puddles and vapor. As she neared her bedroom she lifted the scarf back up and haphazardly tied it around her face. She stripped her gloves and a button-down sweater off, tossing them aside like she had her coat and braced herself this time as she went into the room. Her goal was the window behind the desk, but as she neared the latter object, the heat sent her running out again.
"Miss Renly! The pipes are frozen solid!" Jean was at the top of the stair, huffing and puffing again. It took Eglantine a moment to realize he was there, but when she did, she went to looking about her surroundings.
"We NEED water! Jean the desk is going to combust!"
"But there's no water!"
Her eyes landed on the bucket and for the first time in her life, she threw something at her handyman. Jean recoiled from the bucket as it sailed for his head and it hit the corner of the staircase, bounced off, and rattled down the stairs.
"Get snow! It's hot enough over here to melt it. Fill the bucket completely! I'm going back in there."
"What?! No! You can't!"
"If I don't get that window open, the house will explode! Go get the snow Jean! NOW!" She didn't wait and dove back into her bedroom. By that time the desk had caught fire; a red, orange, and yellow tongue that was angling for the curling parchment that sat near the middle. Eglantine's heart flew into her throat at the sight of it and she spun around for something, anything, to stop it. The fireplace tools were in their place and she ran for them, almost turning and fleeing when she thought she saw some of the coal dust flakes turning from black to orange-red. It was merely a trick of the light however and she reached out to grasp the tongs, but screamed in pain and recoiled when the iron tools proved to be too hot to handle. Behind her, the papers went up with a whoosh.
"Miss Renly!" Jean was at the door, his lower face covered by his coat collar and a bucket of quickly melting snow in hand. Eglantine ran to him and without ceremony ripped the bucket from him and threw the contents at the desk. The snow and water mix hit the papers, putting some of them out with a hiss and deterring some encroaching flames from spreading. Eglantine pushed the bucket at her employee and with all the force she could muster, pushed him out the door.
"More! Get more!"
This time Jean did not backtalk. He took off as fast as he legs could carry him, with Eglantine right behind. She overtook him on the stairs, but at the landing ran for the still cold hearth and the rack of tools that stood beside it. The loud crack that she had left the entrance hall on had been from Jean removing the fireplace tongs in an attempt to get at another piece of equipment. The long handled fireplace tongs lay abandoned to the side, the pincers used to grip burning logs and lumps of coal wrapped in a fist of ice. She grabbed them and was on the stairs just as Jean came back with the second bucket.
She could feel the words 'COME ON' in her throat, but her voice was not working now. Eglantine thought she could hear the sound of more papers catching fire and bypassed her forgotten gloves as she ran right back into the room. It wasn't papers that had caught fire - it was the curtains of the window behind the desk thanks to a few filtering embers from the papers. The burning filled her eyes and made her glasses glow in the light. Behind her Jean held the bucket out, expecting her to take it again as she had before. When she saw, she shook her head and pointed mutely, at the desk, which was giving off that pungent odor in waves as its top burned. The bottle remained as it was - burning inside, throwing up coal dust outside.
I have to get the bottle out of here. That's the only way to stop it. But how?
It was a funny notion truth be told, but she didn't question her mind at that moment. It was the best idea - get the source out and the rest could be handled. The ice on the tongs had melted in the heat and now the wrought iron tool was starting to heat up itself. Eglantine gripped the hand holds tightly in her stinging right hand then subconsciously swung the tool before her so her left could grasp one of the two hand holds. Jean crossed into her field of vision; the portly man trying hard to get close enough to throw the snow-melt but stay far enough away that he wouldn't get burned. He was coughing too, his coat collar had slipped and now his mouth and nose were filling with coal dust, heat, and ash.
The thought hit her like a ton of bricks.
"Get back!" She pushed past Jean, who recoiled at her touch. She raised her tongs high, opening them as wide as she could, then slammed them on the desk before her. Eglantine could feel the heat on her face and it felt as though her very skin was burning, but she knew she only had one shot at this. She closed the tongs over the bottle's bulbous base and lifted it off the desk. It came without any resistance nor change in its behavior...until she turned around and thrust it into the pail.
A gout of steam came up along with a squeal that quickly became an exhausted hiss. There was one last puff of coal dust from within the bucket that didn't make it far from the rim and then there was silence from within. Eglantine stared openly but then panted, coughed, and sputtered once more. She pulled the tongs and the thing caught between its iron jaws out and dodged to the left so Jean could throw the warm, blackened water on the drapes. The flames went out with an angry hiss and those that didn't were beaten into submission by the portly balding man with his coat. Once they were gone, Jean used all the strength he had and ripped the window open as wide as it would go.
Soon, the room was cold, grey, and quiet. Both man and woman stood by the window, coughing, panting, and - on Jean's part - pushing coal dust out the opening to the white-covered ground below. The two didn't look at each other for a short time, but were forced too when the seemingly dealt with bottle gave a gurgled sounding belch and started spewing dust and heat once more.
"No more water." Jean's eyes were wide and fearful, darting between the bottle Eglantine held out to her side in the tongs and Eglantine herself.
"Downstairs. Now."
They both flew in that time; Jean to the door with the bucket, Eglantine to the cold fireplace in the entrance hall. She wanted to throw the bottle into the snow outside, but the bottle - spurned once and seemingly angry with being doused - was heating the iron and the threat of another burn was too great for the woman to risk it. She threw the bottle into the hearth and the iron tongs upon the floor. The bottle landed in the coal and remnants of the fires Jean had been trying to start. Eglantine immediately turned to see if Jean was on his way back, but the window-shaking sound of an explosion sent her screeching to the floor.
Nothing hit her. No debris, no flames, nothing. She lay on the floor with her hands over her now-tangled up hair, not daring to breathe let alone move. After several long-feeling heartbeats she did, turning her head slowly so her watering eyes could see what horror lay behind her.
It was her fireplace, and it was aglow with a merrily crackling fire - the bottle sitting placidly once more in its center.
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