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 Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2013 1:07 pm
Claune took a step back from Dr. Jannisari with a twitch and a tiny chime of bells—the sound did not cease completely but rather continued on in the form of a faint silvery ringing, quieter than before but unremitting. The Plague was trembling. He stared up at her, his mouth pursed into a single blue diamond that looked as if it were trying for tart displeasure, but the pretense slipped now and again to reveal something else beneath. The expression was vulnerable but unidentifiable in specific terms; fear, perhaps, or anxiety, or guilt. He tugged down the tattered edge of his left sleeve, under which there were several long, dark human hairs tied around his wrist like a bracelet.
"Ah, but that is not true," he said in his high, droll voice, which betrayed him by breaking on the last word. "If I cannot convince you, your own Plague will soon enough; or perhaps you cannot be convinced, and your Plague will say to someone else one day: my Grimm has a little black fig for a heart, a raisin, nothing. Nothing, it may say straight away—for even figs and raisins have seeds which may yet come to life."
Her next question made him take another step back. A genuine flash of terror appeared in his eyes this time, quickly stifled. Why had he asked her to play this game? How was she beating him? He thought himself clever, sharp-tongued, but Jannisari had been whet on better stones, and he was a fool not to have recognized it. Her questions pared him down to nothing.
"I remember," he whispered. It was a faint, brittle sound, like the tearing of paper or the splintering of fragile wood. He had no choice but to answer. "I remember I was thrown away, into the ocean—I have dreams." He would not tell her about the dreams; she had not asked. He remembered the way she had pulled her fingers back from the laurels. There must be a c***k in her armor, he thought desperately, and he would find it.
"What is it you regret most," he asked, "in all your life?" He had backed up against a stack of papers and now crouched there at the bottom, with his arms wrapped around his legs like a child.
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Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2013 5:04 pm
"Do you find error with my answer?" She gestured expansively as she talked, noting that he had said nothing to refute the first part of her answer. "If this view makes me in your view have no more heart than a fig, why should it matter overall? You, Plague, are inhuman. I do not expect you to understand." Jannisari cut herself off then. How strange, becoming impassioned over a Plague's words. Perhaps the laurels were slowly seeping into her mind. Would she too become tainted?
Although her thoughts were full of noise, she missed no word Claune spoke, noting his nervous gesticulations and the odd bracelet he wore. When he spoke of dreams, a soft hmm sounded past her lips. But when his harsh whisper broke the silence, it shattered through the room, breaking loose dust motes and bad dreams to drift in the light. A corner of her lips quirked and she made a note on her paper. For now, though he was expecting an answer. He had been truthful with her; she would be truthful with him. Her hands were uncharacteristically still as she spoke, her voice thin and reedy. But for her, these transgressions were scars, not scabs, and would not be picked open again.
"I... should have left my home sooner. I was not a full woman, am not a full woman. I was deficient in their eyes, someone to be ignored since I was never good for weaving and of no use in marriage. I should have left." But the reality of it was that she had had no where top go in any event. Jannisari had left when he opportunity to come to Trisicsa had presented itself. Sometimes, she wondered how her life might have turned out differently if she had not been ill as a child. But such fancy did not matter now. Jannisari was a woman mostly pleased with her lot in life. Rolling her shoulders back, she stared down at the huddled Plague, so like a miniature child, so not like.
"But that is that. You cannot change your lot in life. Tell me about the bracelet you wear. It is strange and does not fit the rest of your attire."
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Posted: Sun Dec 08, 2013 10:39 am
Claune moved to protest, but paused. What if Jannisari was right? You, Plague, are inhuman. It was a thought he had turned over in his mind before, slowly and carefully, like a jeweler examining a diamond—a cold thought, sharp-edged and glittering. He had no way of knowing how it felt to be human; it was not outside the realm of possibility that his own consciousness was but a cheap imitation, his thoughts and emotions like shadows thrown against a wall. His despair at the idea was stark and frightening, but even those were qualities a shadow might share. And so he said nothing.
He watched her resentfully for any sign of distress, weakness, hesitation as she answered. The topic seemed perhaps to trouble her, but it was not, he sensed, a fresh wound. Claune was running out of options.
"Ah, this ornament I wear," he replied, shuddering, "is made from human hair; its owner, neither dark nor fair; no longer here, no longer there; one half of what was once a pair; a girl the plague chose not to spare." They had not excluded riddles as answers, after all—he couldn't bear speaking of Isobel openly, not now, and not to someone like Dr. Jannisari.
He seized upon the one detail that had struck him about her answer. If he could not rub salt in a fresh wound, perhaps an old one might suffice. "Do you mean you cannot have children, and your family scorned you for it?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 08, 2013 6:05 pm
Her keen eyes watched Claune. She saw his shudder and shake and wondered at his reticence. Dismissing his words as insubstantial was easy. Instead, she focused on his body language and tone, trying to subtly tear away the obvious and see the hints that rose to the surface. She would say she was looking for the essence of his soul, but Plagues had none. They were filth: a form born of one disease's need to imitate the humans it plagued upon. This Plague was full of lies and deceits hidden behind his face, and she wondered if the plague had learned this from Nicholas. She desperately wanted to break that, despite her typical aversion to their kind. "Your answer is all riddles and rhyme, Plague. Hardly satisfactory." She made no note of his cryptic answer; it was unlikely to pertain to her studies, although this conversation had already moved past the realm of diseases.
Tilting her head slightly at Claune's question, she ran one finger across thin lips before placing her hands flat. In her mind she remembered the myriad of doctors who knew nothing, who tried curatives and silly superstitions that all failed. Her eventual surgery had been followed by pain-hazed days as her body struggled to heal around the emptiness in her abdomen. It had been little differences that first had opened her eyes: her father stopped bandying about the what-ifs of suitors, her mother no longer mentioned weaving a bridal trousseau. These were the differences of her new status. The corners of her mouth tightened slightly. It was not all because of her illness. "I mean that and also in other ways, I was not a credit to my family's guild. There was no real scorn in their gazes, simply an understanding that I was unlike my sister and they did not know what to make of me. It was much like suddenly being in a house where everyone is known to you, but they treat you as a stranger."
She fell silent, her answer spoken, and debated her next question carefully. Moving through a list like an organized machine, her mind latched on the most important of the things she had jotted down to ask later: Claune's dreams. Could a Plague possibly dream? Of what? The human mind could wind fantasy into events of reality to fabricate an amazing array of dreams and false memories. Jannisari highly doubted Plagues were capable of the complex thought to produce vivid, fantastical dreams. However, she would concede that they might 'dream' of their own memories. Though what kind of memories would spark such a tumultuous reaction in this Plague... Now, that was the question.
"Now," she said. Steepling her fingers, her piercing eyes looked down at Claune, the sad painted violin. "Tell me, and answer plain, without rhyme and sideways language, when you dream... what do you dream of?"
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Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2013 9:35 am
"On the contrary, I find riddles and rhymes very satisfying indeed," the Plague said, his droll tenor at complete odds with his posture—his subdued, defensive crouch against the stack of papers. "What's the worth of knowledge without work? One must worry out the truth like the meat within a walnut, and the mind stays sharp and lean. Of course, that's supposing my puzzles are more than pointless prattle; I wouldn't put it past them."
The blue pits of his eyes shifted slightly, the only indication that he was watching Dr. Jannisari's movements: the hand she raised to her lips, the tightening of her mouth. Claune had no prior experience with her body language and therefore no way of knowing whether these were normal gestures or subtle signs of emotional distress. It was much like suddenly being in a house where everyone is known to you, but they treat you as a stranger. This was perhaps the most revealing thing she had said about herself so far—but to what use? He frowned. If his mind was a walnut, Jannisari's was a steel trap.
"Oh," he said, and waved one slender hand, "at least they did not treat you as if you were strangest; it is far better to be the stranger one, or merely strange."
At her question his hand froze in midair. It slowly descended to curl against his breast. He stared. "I dream of—" His voice was high and thin. He started to stand up, subsided weakly back against the papers, and stood up again. He inched away toward the nearest leg of the desk, around the shining leaves of the laurels. "I dream of the ocean," he said, invisibly now, for he had begun to climb down. "And the things that live inside it." His voice grew smaller as he backed away. "Things with eyes the size of platters; things no larger than the tip of my smallest finger; and all they do is eat one another, over and over again."
He had reached his mouse-hole beneath the cabinet. "Alas, I have run out of questions," he said, "and I have no more questions to answer. Goodbye—farewell—" And he fled.
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