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 Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2025 10:33 pm
It would not have been generous to voice what she was thinking, which was: ah, yeah, not so much in a hurry to lead the way when it's creepy s**t, are we?
So she did not voice it, managing to instead give him a look of vague approval for getting the door open in the first place. She gathered her skirts again into her hand, moving past him quite fearlessly across the threshold.
She was unaware of what she was walking into. Perhaps, if she had known, she might have been amused at the picture she was painting: all confident and competent self-possession, with a sort of contented majesty about her, only somewhat marred by her having to turn from the dust and sneeze.
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Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2025 11:02 pm
"Dia linn," a feminine voice said, and standing before them, transparent in the glow of the flashlight, was, in fact, a ghost. A ghost who had, reflexively it seemed, said 'bless you' in Gaelic (not that the current Blarney could tell Gaelic from Klingon with a gun to his head, but he recognized the tone). A ghost who, at that exact moment, looked as surprised as either of the mortals that had finally joined her. " ...You are not my kin," the ghost snarled, narrowing her golden eyes at the blonde woman who stood, offensively, in her doorway. The ghost did not have any magic at her disposal, not anymore, but she didn't need magic for the fury on her face to be made extremely clear. However, before she could actually put any of her rage to use, Blarney - the current Blarney - jolted out of his stunned stupor, scooted around Joy, and held up his hands in the universal 'please stop!!' gesture. "She's not but I am! Leave her alone!" Blarney said, far more alarmed that something might happen to Joy than something might happen to him. He had no idea if he was actually - right about that, that he was this ghost's kin, but if Joy wasn't, and it was his ring that bore the symbol on the earring box and, somehow, engraved in the tiniest fashion inside the little hole in which his signet ring had fit, like the two had to lock together to open the door, then it stood to reason that he was the one the ghost was looking for. "She's Joyeuse Garde Knight of Earth and I'm Blarney Page of Earth and she's been helping me figure out this place because I don't know what I'm doing please don't hurt her or us or haunt us or possess us or whatever else," Blarney said, all of the words coming out rapid-fire, no punctuation. He had no idea what this ghost could do, but better to be safe than sorry, right? Right about then, his brain caught up with the rest of him. He had no idea what the ghost could do??? "Holy snap, you're a ghost," Blarney said belatedly, dropping his hands back to his sides as he stared her. The rage on her face had faded somewhat, and now she was caught somewhere between annoyance and bemusement as her eyes flicked from Blarney to Joy and back again. " I am the former Blarney, Knight of Earth," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. " And I was beginning to think you might never hear me." The former Blarney paused, bemusement beginning to win out over annoyance as she gave Joy a longer, more thorough up-and-down examination. " But then, I also did not think you would bring...company. But...if the current Blarney welcomes you as a guest, Knight Joyeuse Garde, then I do so as well." She bowed her head slightly to the woman. " Welcome to what remains of Blarney Castle."
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Posted: Wed Sep 03, 2025 1:36 pm
Joy, for a moment, struggled with two conflicting allegiances. The first was to anything more female than male and also to anything in the shape of a ghost. The second was to any beleaguered and mistreated underdog, as in this case Blarney seemed to be. The lack of any sort of gratitude in her demeanor was somehow offensive. Even Gouvernail, what seemed like a decade ago, had had a sort of desperate thankfulness in him, until she'd driven it off with her own contempt.
“Your protege,” she said, adhering to a tone of prim reserve until she knew which way to fully land, “seems to have liberated you in some way. He's been doing the best he can under the circumstances. If my presence in some way contributed, then I'm thankful for it,” she added, with the sudden thought that maybe she too ought to be getting some gratitude here. Maybe they were starting to sense that she was, as it were, broadly on their side, and was manifesting some power to call them forth. Ghost whisperer.
This was a pleasant thought, and she basked in it for a second. Maybe she'd get a tattoo of a little planchette or something.
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Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2025 10:00 pm
He's been doing the best he can under the circumstances. Blarney beamed with pride in spite of himself. Was it sort of damning with faint praise? Maybe. But faint praise was still praise, and that meant it was a win in Blarney's book. "Yes," Blarney said quickly, nodding. "I'm sure I never would have found you if not for Miss Joy's gracious assistance. Thank you," he said, turning to look at Joy with a genuinely grateful smile on his face. He looked back at the ghost - the ghost!!! - and tried to arrange his face in a way that didn't make him look like an absolute goober in front of his very own ghost. "So, uh, former Blarney, um...were you like, stuck in here?" Blarney paused, taking in her transparent appearance. "'Cause, like, you'd think that as a ghost, you could haunt whatever you wanted, right?" "You would think that, wouldn't you," the former Blarney responded dryly, her attention now more fully on her successor. "Come. Now that the door has been opened, let us talk. How long has it been since Blarney had her knight?" Blarney looked at Joy as the former Blarney began to float out of the room, with the very same dismissive/authoritarian air that he recognized from Joy herself - the inherent assumption that everyone else would follow in kind. "Uh," he said, shrugging helplessly at Joy. "I--I guess I don't...really know. A long time, I think?" Blarney winced at how stupid it sounded; he could almost feel the former Blarney rolling her big golden eyes at him. "I assumed that much, young one," she said dryly as she made her way down the hallway from whence they had come, paying no mind whatsoever to the ruined remains around her. "What is the state of the world? Out there?"For this, Blarney looked back to Joy - she was a full Knight. She had fought the sky-serpent. She would be able to give a much more thorough status report than he would about the world overall than he would, given that he'd only joined the magical world a few short months ago.
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Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2025 10:10 pm
Perhaps surprisingly, Joy did not evince any kind of rivalry with the ghost. Whether it was deference for the dead, an attempt to make things easier for Blarney himself, or simply a polite acquiescence to a host while she was a guest, she fell into step readily.
She did, however, go in front of Blarney, with that same air of expectation to be followed.
She listened with a kind of smug pleasure to the questions, and only after a moment caught his expression. She did, of course, know plenty. She was in an ideal position and at an ideal time to make herself useful.
Unfortunately there was only one real answer she felt willing to give to the question of how the world was turning, a thousand years after this woman had last walked on it.
"Oh," she said. "It ******** sucks."
It was not a propitious beginning, but at least it was honest. It would be easier - better - to talk up above somewhere, in fresh air and freedom., and so she turned herself towards it in the ghost's wake, leaving Blarney to follow as he would.
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