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 Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 9:01 am
THE SMELL OF CHANGE
Between Claune (with a possible appearance by Nicholas) & Cuthbert Thoreau and his Plagued map
In Clearbarrow, Mishkan on an early winter day
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Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2012 9:02 am
This was the first time Claune had ever been to Clearbarrow. Predictably enough, Nicholas had insisted that he remain in his pocket for the entire duration of the trip. After amusing himself for some time by jigging about fitfully whenever he heard Nicholas talking to someone, the Plague finally discovered a tiny hole, no more than a hairsbreadth wide, in the fabric. He put his eye to it and stared through hungrily. Nicholas was at a market, and the stalls were heavy with food and cloth and trinkets, the latter of which Claune's gaze lingered on especially. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice the pinprick of eldritch blue light winking out from Nicholas's threadbare pants.
They had exited the market and turned down another street when Claune smelled something tantalizing on the breeze. He'd never smelled anything like it before. It called to him in a way he couldn't describe; and he knew -- somehow -- that it must be the Plague. Perhaps it was even another excito, like himself. He drew his long, slender fingers down the inside of the pocket and trembled.
He had to see it.
Nicholas was distracted by a window display. By the time he noticed Claune's escape, the Plague already turning round the corner, clutching his bells to muffle their noise and directing a gleeful stare over his shoulder as he disappeared. Surely Nicholas would find him eventually, but Claune would find the other Plague first. It would be a delightful game.
Claune was idly considering withdrawing that assessment several minutes later, after he'd nearly been stepped on for the sixth time, but then he reached the odor's origin, an unassuming little cottage, and every thought but one vanished from his mind. He scrambled under the door and shot across the floor, bells jingling. He nimbly scaled Cuthbert's nightstand.
And then he stared at the map, which was just a piece of paper, while his expression gradually grew set and unfeeling. When all the wild longing had finished draining from his face, he abruptly sat down with an anticlimactic tinkle.
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Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 4:02 pm
It was beginning to sound a lot like Yuletide.
Slender fingers scribbled to a halt at the unfamiliar tinkling. As if stolen from a deep trance, Cuthbert's tired eyes dragged from the oak desk and it's half scribbled parchment to the open window. Moments ago everything in the outside world seemed cold and quiet. He managed a quaking smile in the jingling's absence, lips the chilliest shade of pink. Taken by some childish urge to capture the lilting sound, Cuthbert found himself pressed against the window sill, brows lifted in a curious arc. It wasn't so still out there after all. Winter was busy with song, mulled wine and smoking chimneys. Cuthbert's stomach ached. He could taste baked apples in the air. Terribly eager for any sort of festive relief and without the pressure of Summer business at his back the boy reached absently for a proper map-tie.
The tinkling returned.
That most definitely didn't come from the square. Eyes narrowed, Cuthbert peered into the open drawer with visible hesitance. At first he mistook the tiny visitor for a wax seal or an old cloth eraser. After all, the unfamiliar piece seemed natural beside his aged and all but forgotten relic. It wasn't until he reached out to touch the object that it stirred, raising it's familiar chime. It was no beast, nor was it a stunted. Regardless, it was alive. Not so unfamiliar with Plague-kin, the young man sought a relief-seeking breath.
"What are you doing here?" Cuthbert stammered, reaching to his map for fear that the little monster had come to claim it.
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Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 8:47 pm
Claune just sat and looked up at Cuthbert for a moment in silence. Then, like a puppet whose strings had just been severed, he abruptly went limp and collapsed onto his side.
"Nothing," he said tragically, with a fixed, sideways stare into the middle distance.
Eventually, however, his curiosity seemed to overpower his penchant for drama, and his eyes narrowed and shifted back to Cuthbert. His gaze was much like that of a house cat: still, penetrating, and utterly inscrutable. Finally he hefted one limp hand from the nightstand to point a finger at the map. "What is that? Aside from a piece of paper with a string tied around it." He paused, considering. And then he added rather inexplicably, "You aren't dying, are you?"
To Claune, of course, this question wasn't inexplicable at all. It had just occurred to him that this man might be infected with the Plague, and that the wonderful smell might have been coming from him -- and not the paper -- all along. The fellow was pale.
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Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2012 10:32 am
Nothing indeed.
A sudden redness flooded Cuthbert's cheeks and the little Plague crumpled like an abandoned hanky. Making no attempt to stopper the little puffs of laughter which escaped him, the young man inched back to his chair on uncertain feet. The cowardly human boy, afraid of a little doll - and the doll itself, surreal in it's very existence. Both displays were comical at best. Once again meeting his seat, Cuthbert sighed gently into the clutched yellow map. Time and time again he'd failed to open the cursed thing yet here was a Plague. Not his Plague, but a living blight all the same. He could tell by the very nature of it.
"It concerns you? You know just as well as I do what this map might be." Like a good host, the humble Cartographer made no mention of the little thing's intrusion. He knew little about living Plagues and had no interest in touching the cursed creature but a lingering sympathy eased him toward the ghost in his drawer. An attempt to display the map was met with the usual resistance. It would appear the little Plague had no effect on the red twine barrier separating the possible Grimm from his destiny, should there be one for him at all. Disbelief tore at the map's bindings more often than understanding.
The second line of questioning, however, failed to manipulate the heart strings.
"I-- I'm not!" What a horrible thought to entertain. As if the map were as sensitive as it's keeper, Cuthbert stroked it's back absently. His tongue loosened, charm forgotten beneath the young man's anxious feet.
"Please, little guest, out of the drawer." He shooed, failing out of uncertainty offer the stranger a hand. Still, his own curiosity was far more intolerable than the presence of a Plague in his office.
"How did you find us?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 12:24 pm
Claune didn't say anything for a long moment. His eyes shifted from the map to Cuthbert and back again. "Aha," he replied eventually, rather slyly, "but I didn't know it was a map. I know nothing about it at all, except for that, which you've just told me. What sort of map is it? It doesn't seem like a very useful one, if you can't open it."
Did the map concern him? Claune wasn't certain whether Cuthbert was asking him whether he found the map concerning, or if the map was of interest to him. If the latter: he had hoped so, at first. Now he wasn't certain. He had fancied finding another being like himself, one that he could talk to, instead of an inanimate object. He'd never met another Plague before. If this map was a Plague, it was clearly the sort that hadn't come alive yet, just as he had been before during his time as a violin -- but Nicholas rarely ever talked to him about that. Claune had, in fact, learned the truth of his origin not from his Grimm but from a child named Isobel, one of Nicholas's occasional patients. Claune suspected Nicholas had liked him better when he'd been a violin. That was all right; Claune had liked himself better that way too. He watched Cuthbert stroke the map and his gaze intensified.
He was still staring at the map intently when Cuthbert beckoned him out of the drawer, and he crept out onto the top of the nightstand without taking his eyes from it. "Oh, I smelled it," he replied vaguely, distracted, as if this weren't an odd thing to say at all, and then asked, "It's a Plague, isn't it?"
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