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 Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 5:25 pm
who| Wickwright Finch, and his excito Hopkin, and Dragomir Meschke
where| outside a pub in northern Imisus
when| midday.
He tried to stand up when Wickwright left and nearly fell onto his face completely, only barely keeping his balance and mostly doing so after a notable stumble. Somehow, even Dragomir wasn't sure how, he made it to the door, pulled it open, and stumbled out. However, in his state, only slightly sober while mostly drunk, Dragomir fell to his face with a loud, surprised cry, followed by a pained moan.
Today, it appeared, was just not Dragomir's day. He looked up at Wickwright's back before trying to get up, struggling, but he got nowhere; he seemed to stay only on hands and knees no matter how hard he struggled against gravity.
"Help..." he cried for no one in particular; possibly Obscuvos, because he was just that drunk and tired at this point.
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 5:52 pm
Wickwright was moving quickly once he was out of the pub. He wanted to get clear of this town as soon as he could, because though it had given him a problem to solve that wasn't his own, which he had needed, he had burned some bridges in the process. The townspeople might be looking for him, and the sooner he was on the road, the more at ease he'd feel. There was a time when he might have stayed around longer than he should, but in his old age, he tended to play things safe. Finch sons had a knack for getting into trouble, he already had enough on his plate with Hopkin to actively seek more.
But, true to his Finch fate, more trouble was staggering out of the pub after him anyway. Hopkin heard the 'help' first, possibly because Wickwright didn't want to.
"Okay."
Wickwright sighed and turned around. "Come on," he muttered, attempting to get Dragomir's arm around his shoulder. "I have a wagon nearby." Wickwright's wagon was his personal space. However, the wanted to get moving, and wasting time trying to find Meschke his own way out of time wasn't something that Wickwright wanted to chance. "Just don't touch anything or I'll leave you on the roadside, you drunken fool."
Wickwright was going to help him. This didn't mean Wickwright was going to mollycoddle him.
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 6:28 pm
Dragomir was more than a little surprised when he was being tugged around Wickwright's shoulder; as soon as his confused mind wrapped around what Wickwright was trying to do, he obediently folded his arm around the back of the other man's neck and looked up at him, dark eyes blinking sheepishly up at him.
"Wagon?" Clearly someone was a little slow on the uptake but eventually he nodded, closing his eyes slowly; he was still tired, though he was sober enough to remember the last time he'd put his head on anyone's chest (approximately 3 minutes ago) and what had happened, even if Wickwright was entirely sober he wasn't sure either of them were in any mood to test each other. "... 'Kay."
He nodded with childish enthusiasm, smiling slightly, "Won't touch anything, got it."
He nodded again, "Thanks.."
Almost no one helped him - because of his personality, which irritated some but allowed no one to get close - so it was sort of a novel thing to him to ask for help and get it; usually, after all, he pushed people away, not allowed them to support him. He used Wickwright to help get himself to his feet, still drunk enough to be pleasant (and smell obnoxiously like it, as well as Dorian).
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 7:37 pm
"Wagon, yes, very good," Wickwright muttered, heaving Meschke past the outskirts of town and into the woods near the road where his home was waiting for him. Patting the old ox hitched up to it and grazing idly, he pulled Meschke around to the back and put him inside unceremoniously. Closing the door, he got ready to leave.
"Wickwright?" said a voice from his hood.
"Yes Hopkin," he answered without looking up from his work.
"May I come out yet?"
He paused, biting his lip. Meschke was drunk and technically they outnnumbered him now if he made a scene at the sight of Hopkin. But an old man and a tiny plague wouldn't be much use against a panicked youth, even if he was tried, drunk, and depending on them. "Not yet," he decided. His hood rustled somewhat discontently as he finished up and went back into the wagon.
"When will Dragomir Meschke be leaving?" asked Hopkin.
"Well, we just don't know yet."
He waited for a reply, but was met with silence and thus he entered the wagon. The ox began to move and the wagon lurched along with it. Wickwright adjusted anything that had shifted during the start, then turned to look at Dragomir. "Your... friend seems to have been fairly cavalier about leaving you," he noted matter-of-factly. "Will you be meeting up with him again somewhere?" What they did was none of Wickwright's business, but if it was close by he might not have to resort to just dropping Meschke off at the first town they came across. Hopkin couldn't hide forever, and Wickwright was anxious to get back to work. Though the task wasn't pleasant, Hopkin had to be educated, and the delay was making him restless.
Hopkin had stopped moving and lay in Wickwright's hood, playing with his delicate bronze fingers. He wanted to get back to learning too. The hood was stuffy, and he resented Meschke for making him wait, but leaned over to glance at the stupefied man on the floor anyway. Meschke acted strange, but he was still beautiful, and seeing him in their wagon was nice. Hopkin found that he couldn't fully be upset at Meschke because he was pleasant to look at, but he couldn't help but glance longingly at the desk where he had been learning during the week. His lessons had been stressful, urgent, but necessary. He wanted to please Wickwright, he felt it was important, and he couldn't please Wickwright from inside a hood. He was frustrated that he didn't know when Meschke would leave or why he acted so strangely, or when he could study again, so he glanced at the blonde man one more time before disconsolately flopping back into the hood to wait. It was all he could do until Wickwright told him otherwise.
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:16 pm
Dragomir allowed Wickwright to support some of his weight but carried most of it himself, trudging along past the ox - he had never seen a real one before, and he almost reached out to touch it before remembering the warning - he did not want to be thrown out on the roadside just yet, so he would do his best to refrain from patting the o-
He gave a sharp, soft, startled cry at being practically thrown in the back of the wagon and hugged his knees and waited - it seemed as though it was an eternity of sitting there, hugging his knees, before the wagon lurched into motion (at which Dragomir rocked over onto his side and had to exert some serious effort to get himself back into anthing resembling an upright position), and Wickwright reappeared.
'His ... friend'? Dragomir blinked a few times in a row, trying to think about what Wickwright was trying to say; meet up with whom? It took a while, in which Dragomir continued to blink like and entirely lack-witted fool, before it clicked that he must have meant Dorian. "Dorian..?" He questioned just to make sure he was speaking about the same person. "He's not my friend."
There was a pause, in which Dragomir considered how much to say. "I'd never actually met him before. I have no idea why he did..." He paused, hesitating, a bit awkward in his half sober state, "that."
He paused, then looked around the wagon curiously, careful not to look too long lest Wickwright qualify that as "touching with his eyes".
"This is a ... pretty nice wagon?" What the hell would he know; he'd never seen one. "Thanks again.."
He looked around, awkward.
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:38 pm
Wickwright looked surprised for a moment, and mentally cursed. He had made an assumption and it was incorrect, and nothing annoyed a Jawbone Man more than being wrong. Technically he wasn't supposed to be assuming things as Jawbone Man, but bad habits were hard to break, and when one was as old as Wickwright, it was easy to fall into the trap of assuming that he was always right. He rubbed his temples and shot a look at Meschke, who seemed to be regaining his senses slowly but surely. "Somehow, I doubt he knew either," he replied wryly, and sat down heavily on a cushioned crate, leaning on his desk.
"Thank you," he acknowledged offhandedly, looking around his home. Everything that Wickwright owned was in this wagon, and having someone else in it made him nervous. However, now that his book was Hopkin, he felt strangely detached about the whole affair. The only possession he had ever placed much value in was his book, now that it was something else, what was left for him to protect? He didn't even have use for his tools except to teach Hopkin.
"I'm heading into Shyregoad. If you have no one to meet, I'd prefer it if you got off at the next town," he stated. "I don't have enough supplies for us both unless you're willing to work, and I prefer to live alone." Prefer was the key word. He thought about the plague in his hood...
Only to realize he couldn't feel Hopkin's weight on his back anymore. Looking agitated, he almost got up, but scanned the wagon with his eyes instead, trying not to call attention to the fact that something was wrong.
Hopkin had decided to leave Wickwright's hood as it grazed his desk. He was sure that if he kept hiding it would be okay, and as long as he couldn't show himself or do anything, he wanted a good look at Meschke. He hadn't been able to look closely at either of the men in the pub, and this one was right there in the wagon now, with plenty of better hiding places nearby to catch a glimpse of him. Having moved down the desk onto the floor, he skittered behind crates and blankets, trying to get a good look at Meschke. Finally, he landed in a dusty corner of the wagon and breathed in too deeply, exhaling with a tinny cough. He was near Meschke's hand now, and he skittered backwards in case Meschke noticed, maybe a little too late to be safe.
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 9:06 pm
"Yes," Dragomir agreed softly, shaking his head, "I think I'd have to agree that the only one who had any idea what they were doing was you."
He grimaced, not liking to admit much that he had been and idiot to get that drunk. He shook his head slightly and sighed, rubbing his arm as he looked around; it was loaded down with stuff but not nearly as much useless junk as what Dragomir possessed, so that was probably a good sign (no one should own as much useless junk as Dragomir, he knew he was almost an obsessive hoarder over his silly trinkets), but it seemed empty without them. He ran his fingers through his hair when Wickwright spoke of destination; no, he had no intent on going to Shyregoad any time soon, especially with nothing from his own house.
"No, thank you, that's fine; I'll - I'll leave you when we get to the next time. I wasn't planning.. on going too far anyway. Thanks."
He looked around when Wickwright did, racking his brain to make sure he hadn't touched anything so he wouldn't get thrown off and came up with nothing - only to hear a cough near his hand.
He blinked, without panicking, to his credit, although he turned and scanned the area the small cough had come from. There was a pause in which he thought before speaking softly, not wanting to offend, "I think your restless ideas are coughing near my hand."
Narrowly he resisted the urge to lean down and look harder - so, for now, the little excito was safe.
It seemed as though his awkwardness in this wagon was never going to go away unless things got a hell of a lot more normal around here.
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 9:23 pm
Wickwright leaned back against the desk. "Having an idea of what you're doing is the only compensation you get for old age," he observed dryly. "Were I so self-aware in my youth, I'd have a few less embarrassing anecdotes to remember."
Leaning forward again, he examined Dragomir, penetrating blue eyes sizing up his surprise passenger. "However, if you didn't know Arelgren, why were you getting drunk to death in that town? I can't assume you're a native, you hardly protested leaving. You've more than played the fool, and usually there's some kind of story behind that. As long as we're stuck together for the time being, you may as well enlighten me." Wickwright had never had a captive interrogation subject before, and thus his nosiness lacked its usual tact. "So tell me, Meschke, how is it that you ended up..."
"Well, you know."
He looked next to Meschke's hand, but Hopkin had hidden himself again. "Probably just the rats," he hazarded. No harm in hiding Hopkin a little better and making Meschke more eager to leave all at once.
"No," a painfully honest voice corrected almost inaudibly.
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Posted: Sat Feb 26, 2011 10:08 pm
Dragomir looked up when Wickwright started sizing him up, those blue eyes enough to sober him up the rest of the way so that his spine locked in place, coldly, and he looked down at the floor under the weight of his memory. Did he want to share it? Did he really want to tell this stranger everything, when there was, with all likelihood, the fact that he would never see this man again?
Would it help to speak about it was the far better question, and the answer was most likely yes, so he looked down. "I uh. No, I'm a native of Imisus. Further south than that, at first, but... Eh." He shrugged lightly.
He paused. "I just ... was getting drunk like that to forget."
Here we go. It'd either soound entirely truthful or like he was lying to make himself sound bigger and more important than he was. "To forget that I killed a man."
He shrugged and looked down, suddenly not very interested in conversation.
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Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 1:16 am
"That would do it," Wickwright commented dryly. "That's... Quite a serious confession though. Especially in your, ah, condition. How exactly did you wind up, uh, killing a man?" The boy looked so green that Wickwright doubted he could kill a cat, let alone a human. He had his doubts, but as a Jawbone Man, he was willing to humour the confession and see what it was worth. Times like these, who knew what kids were capable of? Panic and fear ran like rats in the streets.
He felt oddly lightheaded. Even if Meschke was a murderer, it was hard to be afraid of a boykin like him. His face was younger looking than Wickwright's had been when he left home for the first time. The incongruously grisly confession seemed almost funny, in a sick sort of way. If it was true, he fancied he might sober up, but who knew? He might just end up laughing aloud. The world was too funny to take seriously anymore. Thirty years of work and now his book was sitting near a possible murderer's hand contradicting his statements while boys went out killing people. it was like he'd been sleeping ever since his book was plagued and he woke up in a new world.
If only he hadn't seen how his world hadn't become this one. If only he hadn't recorded it so thoroughly in the record that now only existed in Hopkin's head.
"And why did you want to forget? Thing like that, you must have put thought and effort into it, otherwise you wouldn't have gotten away with it to sit on my wagon's floor right now. Seems like after all that effort you'd want to remember the result."
Next to Meschke's hand, Hopkin felt sick. He had to cover his mouth from gasping, because unlike Wickwright, he believed Meschke without a second thought. It was hard to imagine someone that pretty and delicate killing, but why would he lie about something like that? Hopkin backed up further into his hiding place, thinking of all the stories of terrible deaths and murders in his head. Hopkin knew what death was. Death was permanent and terrible, the bad end to hundreds of stories. He couldn't see Meschke inflicting that on someone, not with hair like his and hands like his and eyes like his...
Hopkin wondered if the man he had killed had at least been ugly or vicious. The thought didn't particularly help.
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Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 1:18 pm
Dragomir blinked and lowered his head into his hands, merely staying quiet. He found that he did not want to discuss this, not now, if ever, though it was a continual weight on his chest, constantly oppressing him and making him feel as though he were about to be crushed under its weight, and he merely listened to Wickwright talk, unwilling to say anything himself.
It was only after the fact that Wickwright believed he thought Dragomir would want to remember his effort, and he shook his head, already messy blond hair flying every which way as he formulated what to say. He found his mouth was dry, and that made it hard to talk about anything, but especially this. He shuddered almost violently with an expelling of air that wasn't quite a sigh as he stared intently at his feet and the functional shoes of them before he moved and his large pants moved to engulf them.
"It was ... for the House." He shook his head. "And.. when they tell you to do something... you don't say no."
He shuddered again, more violently this time, and covered his face more completely. "They're also what's protected me... I doubt I'd be here, otherwise."
Absently, he removed one hand from his face and put it back on the floor before he stroked his fingers over the floor of the wagon that he was sitting on, his attention half-on Wickwright and half-elsewhere, though the attention he was giving to the wagon as a whole was much sharper and focused; telling Wickwright he was a member of the House could have been a mistake, but there was little he could do about it; he was a captive audience and though he had started telling it and could have finished with a lie, he did not have the time or mental acuity at the moment to come up with anything worth-while and believable; it would have been quite obvious he was lying.
Something felt wrong in here, and he was almost determined to find out what had been making noise using nothing but his eyes; if it were rats then they should show themselves soon - the rats in his home always seemed to know when he was looking for them and they scurried just to tell him they were still there; maybe Wickwright's rats were the same way.
"I should... probably shut up before I dig this ditch any deeper." He commented quite dryly, perhaps taking a cue from Wickwright.
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Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 3:28 pm
Wickwright recoiled slightly before he was able to catch himself. The cult had converted many of his fellow Jawbone Men, to the point where it had become a serious threat to the Society's continued existence. However, apart from the fact that the House was collecting plauges, and the basic mythology it held, not many Jawbone Men knew much about it. They joined in hopes that it was a safer option than just sitting around and waiting for the plague to take them as their truth god did nothing. Wickwright was one of the few really faithful left, and he had been trying to find out what the House really did since the first few Jawbone Men converted.
He hadn't expected to discover an opening in such a sickening way. Did the society really ask men so young to kill? There was the urge to leave Meschke on the roadside for fear of a trap. What if he hadn't been drunk? What if he knew about Hopkin? The House was collecting plagues, everyone knew. He wasn't sure if they bothered collecting Grimms as well. But Meschke smelled genuinely drunk and looked genuinely scared and most importantly, was an opportunity right in front of him to find out more.
Finch men were always less cautious than they should be.
Wickwright took a moment to compose himself and eyed Dragomir carefully. "I've been thinking," he lied, "about joining the Cult. So please, continue. You're among friends here."
"No!" a tinny voice cried out quite audibly from near Meschke's hand. Jawbone thoughts were swirling around in Hopkin's head, desperate, urgent stories and myths and legends, generations worth of the exploits of Finches crashing in his mind. Wickwright couldn't join Obscuvos. Hopkin would collapse like a stack of cards if he did. No longer caring about Meschke, Hopkin ran out into the open and tugged on Wickwright's cloak. "I won't let you, you can't!"
Wickwright jumped, swearing. "Corpus bones, Hopkin! You'll be the end of us both!"
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Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 3:40 pm
His blue eyes flickered distrust at Wickwright's beginning - that he wanted to join, that he was friends, but Dragomir had little time to formulate an opinion before someone cried No in a small voice near his hand and a small figure ran over to Wickwright's cloak.
His brain, half drunk, half tired, took a while to process what this little man was saying before he hugged his knees quite close to his chest and just peered at him. "You have a plague."
Though it was obvious as the Plague was standing right there tugging on Wickwright's cloak and was calling at him, forbidding him from joining the House, and his eyes flashed harder. The Plague knew something he did not and Dragomir did not like being in the dark. It was instantly decided that he would share as little as possible, just enough to keep him in the wagon until they reached the next city, and instead he changed the topic to the little ... being with the tinny voice, what in all likelihood had coughed near his hand.
However, Dragomir, in his own way grateful to the little thing for revealing something about Wickwright that he was about to believe without question, spoke to Hopkin, not Wickwright, "Hopkin? You're what coughed, aren't ya?"
They had names? Dragomir, being quite a bit of a shut-in, knew very little about plagues first hand; he knew they could do this and that they could grow to look very similar to a human, but he had never imagined their keepers would give them such a human sounding name. It seemed vaguely disrespectful. Abstractedly, Drago found himself trying to puzzle out what this plague had been born from, but he was getting nowhere in his attempts.
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Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 4:04 pm
Hopkin puffed up his chest and tried to look defiant but only managed to succeed in looking more distraught than he already seemed. When he looked at Meschke head on, he deflated completely and retreated out of sight behind Wickwright's robe, totally unable to look the blond cultist in the eye.
"Yes," he replied faintly from his hiding place. "I breathed in dust particles when I was trying to hide from you." He lapsed into silence, and in that split second, Wickwright tried to regain control of the situation.
"I have a plague," he admitted, since that much was now blatantly obvious.
He paused.
"I have a plague," he repeated. It was the first time he had said it aloud. It didn't feel good, but there was a sort of catharsis in hearing the words out there, directed at someone else, akin to the feeling that Dragomir must have had admitting he had killed a man.
"I have a plague," he said one last time, looking at the ground. "I'm a silly old man who couldn't accept that fact, went into town to get drunk, and ended up with you in the back of my wagon where you're not supposed to be after you had to go kiss Arelgren like a damn fool." He shot Meschke another of his penetrating stares, having recovered himself fully now. "But I got you out of that scrape in town despite that, which I didn't see any of your Cultist friends hurrying to do, so you can stop looking like a cat who's drunk sour milk."
"And you can address your questions to me," he added as an afterthought. He wasn't having Hopkin interrogated by a Cultist. That was practically like one reading his book, whether the damn thing was changed forever or not.
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Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 4:53 pm
Drago had, for once, been trying to do something kind; he did not mind that the Plague ran and hid from him but he stayed quiet when it answered, willing to accept that - he knew it had been the little thing anyway but he just wanted to ask it like a polite person and here he was getting glared down from something despite feeling lied to over wanting to be a cultist.
He just blinked, then shrugged, still hugging his knees tightly to his chest. "I thought it was polite to address the person you were speaking to, and he seems an awful lot like a person. I have yet to ever meet a plague before this. I don't know the proper etiquette, but he seems competent and able to talk." He shrugged again.
"And yes, thank you, again, for helping me, though Arelgren was the one who forced himself on me; I was a victim just as much as you were." He looked defensive because he felt that way; he was not accustomed to being made out with by force and would, if he had the chance, just as soon not ever do it again. Ever.
"But fine," he sighed softly, looking away, back to where Hopkin had been hiding for... how long? How long had the little plague been within touch-range but Dragomir had not been aware? He tilted his head curiously, thinking of it. "I will speak to only you, not Hopkin. Were you braining me over the head with the notion that you would like nothing more than me gone or were you simply making a point?"
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