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 Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 11:06 pm
He's been making more trips into Other Ashdown lately, for some reason or another. He's been more acquainted with the Other place now, been feeling better about being around. Between the training and the time to himself, it's been a nice change. He still doesn't trust Other Ashdown, no not a bit, but he's more comfortable if he has to go into it.
Today he's taking a trip around the area that comprises the Otherworld version of Coalsmoke, trying to get himself acquainted if he ever ended up in it from normal Ashdown. It, honestly, doesn't look very different except from the wild growth of the green but it's still a bit of adjustment. A still bit of a direction mix up, a change in sight.
For the moment he's idling around the streets, not really thinking of anything. Just looking.
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Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 11:11 pm
"What are you doing here?" Mare asks.
She is standing on the staircase that leads up to the door Thorne has taught her how to jimmy. The mechanics are the same, it seems, even on the other side. Her arms are crossed, her regular scarf replaced with a black one that is run through with gold. It matches the tiny rivulets that hold her skull together, that cross her sunken eyes.
She is a work of art. A terrifying, inexorable thing.
She looks down at Chris, curious and imperative.
"Do you have some business here? The Lord Alexander is not on this side at the moment, and I see no reason why you are at his residence of the Other side."
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Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 11:15 pm
Chris' eyes flick up at the question, but he knows who it is before he looks. Mare has a easily recognizable voice, one forced into his consciousness by her long streams of thought he'd been subjected to.
Lovely and terrifying as ever, Mare stands before him.
"Lady Mare," He says, as way of hello. "I see you've gotten a new scarf. It looks lovely."
He eyes her on the porch of Coalsmoke, but says nothing, He wasn't going there at the moment.
"I'm just looking, making myself familiar with the area in the case I'm ever sent here. I don't intend to walk into Coalsmoke, I'm just making sure I know the streets. Sometimes things can get a little odd here."
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Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 11:20 pm
"Thank you," Mare says agreeably, "The Lord Alexander gave it to me as a present. I think he wanted to apologize to me for his actions, but I only threw a fit because I was not sure the action was one that could be delegated to another party when I am by far the superior choice."
She whuffles and comes down to greet him, stepping across the gravel with quick fleeting steps. The rain dances and shines across her corpse skin and bone. She is terrifying as usual.
"And whyever not?" Mare asks. "You must be acquainted with it on the other side, as you have remarked upon your time spent in the Lord Alexander's bed, have you not? Surely it is a place of welcome for you even when the master is otherwise occupied with his time."
She hums a soft note.
"As it is, the Lord Alexander has permitted me to be watchful for you in that you are a favored companion of his and he would like your safety to be invested upon," she says, "if anything odd happens, I will keep you safe as it is commanded, and until such time those commands are rescinded. Would you like to take a walk?"
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Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 11:26 pm
"What action?" He asks, curious of what could have possibly happened. Of who Thorne could've possibly given something to that Mare could've done - the options are limited and he's not sure he'll be able to figure out the answer on his own.
"I am," He says mildly, "But it's rather.. it's lonely I think. Just on this side, without him. I'd rather go with him into it on this side, if it happens. So I'll come into it another time, even though I know it's safe."
He tilts his head at her, a soft smile on his face but says nothing as she talks. Thorne looking out for him with her was nice, a little protective, but nice. He appreciates it.
"A walk would be nice," Chris agrees, "I do enjoy company and I figure you won't get me as lost as I might on my own."
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Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 11:36 pm
"I'm sure it will be yours eventually," Mare says, her tone soft and pitying. "I have heard many tales that one is drawn to a place of old residence in new cycles, but that is only secondhand. It is a romantic notion though, is it not? And I would like to think it holds some weight, because we put so much of ourselves into the place or person to whom we belong."
She warbles softly. She seems sad.
"As I have said before," she perks, "You must assert yourself as a man worthy of a marriage within your social circles. For this cycle at least, it will give you a sense of companionship for which you lack. Unless of course you are drawn to the Lord Alexander's company, which is good company nonetheless, but should be reserved in marital rights to one of his status for the sake of both parties."
She turns and offers him one bony arm. While her face is entirely skeletal, the skin of her arm is not rotted the way one might expect, but rather patterned almost like fleshy bark, tightly clinging to bone.
"I will not get you lost for I know my way around, unless it is to this garden which you speak of, which has never made itself known to me," Mare says easily, "But I suppose that is because my duties are at court, and once Lord Alexander has fresh schedules in place, I will be there longer, unless it is of course to feed the plant otherbeings while he is away. And he has been away more - to here, I mean."
She pauses. Ponders.
"He is sad," she says. "And that makes me sad. I wonder why, when it is his duty to do what he must, and to be alone the way he must. Oh, but I do not mean to expect you to be able to do anything about it, only a Lady must let her thoughts out once in awhile, and the court is divided among its own delegations, which do not usually prefer conversation unless it is explicitly demanded of them."
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Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2016 11:48 pm
Chris laughs, but it's slightly uncomfortable. "I don't plan to ever take it though. I want.. I want to finish it in this cycle. I want it to stay Thorne's and I want to stay there with him and maybe break us from the cycle. So don't talk like it'll be mine, because it won't. I'll make sure of it."
He blinks over at Mare, wondering why she seems so sad. Why everything feels a little off kilter today.
"I'll be fine, Lady mare," He smiles, "I don't think I'm ready for the thought of it yet, honestly. There's so much going on, I don't know if I'd like to complicate it with thoughts of that. Why for the sake of both parties though? Are only other Lords good enough for Lord Alexander?"
He glances at her arm and then takes it, curious at the feel of it. It's not what he expected at all and while still a little creepy, a little unnerving, he doesn't let it bother him. He's touched far worse.
"I'd rather not go to the garden today anyways," Chris admits, "Maybe I can take you one day though. I think you'd be lovely in it."
He considers what she says, eyes narrowing in confusion.
"He's been spending more time here lately? Doing what?" He pauses in his sentence, then says, "I would like to help, if I could though. I treasure Thorn- Lord Alexander greatly. What is he sad about? Why must he be alone?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 12:03 am
"What you want and what happens will not ever be the same," Mare says gently, "You may lay in his arms for now, because that is what you both seem so desperately to want, but when his ghost is all that remains in your body, for you will forget him, you must take what you can. You must find solace where you can. The body remembers what the mind forgets."
She looks up at Coalsmoke. She seems sad but understanding of Chris's rejection, but continues to speak anyways.
"This will become a tomb," she says, "for those dreams you hold onto, for your heart, which is fragile when all is said and done."
She leads him away. The winds whisper and the soft pitter-patter of mist that is not quite rain comes down over them. Mare leads him behind Coalsmoke where the crabgrass stops growing in patches and becomes a field. It stretches far away, into a horizon line full of dark grey clouds. A storm forever caught in an endless approach.
"If you insist that you are not ready for the thought of it yet I will not push it, though you are an odd one for being so late in life and not inclined to consider pursuit of a companion," Mare announces gracefully, "And oh, no. You are perfectly suitable, only I would like to preserve the heart of my master for a quieter break. I do so love your company, you are pleasurable indeed in conversation and surely in cohabitation, and if the chance ever arises to actually take the Lord Alexander to bed, I will turn a blind eye because I think it is a merciful act upon both of you to allow that chance of connection, if only once like a mistletoe kiss in Christmas, but I do not want to see my master put to darker paths for a heartbreak that could shatter him through."
She looks over at him, blinking.
"Lovely?" she inquires. "I have not been lovely in years."
The questions make her titter softly.
"He is spending more time here because he has inquired about a guest and that guest has agreed to an extended stay with him, though it was a difficult decision to make and he spent days in agony over it," she says softly, "You see, it is for love that this guest is acting, which I find romantic but not at all agreeable to be the reason for such an undertaking. Love is what breaks us more than anything else in this world, and for love it is what makes us as weak as it could make us strong."
She takes Chris into the crabgrass, lets it snag on them as she walks. It feels like they're approaching a storm that will never come.
"He treasures you too, but he will be lonely in the end, and I will be there for him when it comes. He must be alone because the path that has been chosen for him has severed him from the people he once belonged to, those that he loves most. He was strong to do so, to rise to be a lord, but it was at a cost that must be pain in this way."
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Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 1:41 pm
"What if it can be though? What if there's a chance for it?" Chris asks and he sounds nervous, but mostly determined, hopeful. "I know you've probably seen us do this time and time again because of the cycle, you've might have even seen me honestly. Might have heard me the make the same promise."
He closes his eyes and it's a resolution, a promise in his words. "But I'm so tired Lady Mare. I'm tired of this, I'm tired of there being something I have to fight and fight again with no promise of defeat. This is the nineteenth time the cycle has happened, you know, and I'm tired of it all. I'm tired of the idea I will die, the people I care for will die, because of what we're fighting." He sighs, opens his eyes. "I want it to end, so I don't have to take my solace now and spend my time worrying when it'll end. When I will ever have the moment to appreciate it again. I don't want to forget him, I can't. So I'm going to fight and I promise we will win. I promise."
His words are a prayer, desperate. Like he's trying to convince more than just himself, more than just Mare. Like if he says it to the world, if he makes his conviction clear, the world will listen and help.
"I don't want it to be a tomb," He whispers, "I'm already one as it is, I don't want another added to the count. I hold so much from past lives, that even if I don't remember it, I know it has to echo in my gestures. It has to be in my face, the way I move. I talk." He pauses, when he speaks again he's still quiet. "Sometimes, I wonder what I did in those past lives. What I wished for, what I worked for. How I got pulled into this."
If I did it for Thorne.
He casts his eyes out over the field and lets her shift him away from it all, to the present, to the now. To the crabgrass and her arm in his and the faint drizzle on his head, which is only protected by a beanie he stole from Thorne. He isn't in the mood to find his umbrella, to open it.
"I'm only twenty four Lady Mare, there's still plenty of time. Most don't get married until their later twenties or even their thirties," He says, amusement clear in his voice. "How would I break his heart though Lady Mare? Well, I guess besides the whole possibility of death that occurs here." His face blushes a bright red at the suggestion of them going to bed, still not immune to the thought. "I don't think you should worry though Lady Mare, I don't think we'll ever go that far. He wouldn't go after someone like me." Chris laughs, nothing in him bitter.
"Oh maybe not to you," Chris says easily, "But I definitely see a lovely lady beside me."
Chris turns to look at her, eyes still narrowed in confusion. The more she talks, she answers some questions of his but others more are given in the details. "A guest?" He echos, clearly in thought. "He hadn't mentioned one to me and there's no one with us at Coalsmoke. Who is this guest, another Lord? I can't imagine any acting in love, but I've been proven to be wrong on many occasions. I wish he had let me help."
He muses over Mare's words as they walk, as the grass crabs at his jeans and boot laces. The grey stretching above them is unnerving and yet familiar, like watching a typhoon roll in on the beach. But this doesn't seem to want to land and Chris isn't sure if he welcomes its arrival.
"I.. I don't understand," He admits quietly, like admitting defeat. "I don't want him to be alone, but it sounds like I don't get a choice in the matter of being with him or not. It's frustrating."
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Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 6:01 pm
Mare sighs as she listens to him. She turns her dark skull to the ever-present storm on approach, the gray drizzle condensing against her corpse body and sliding down her bone face.
"You are very optimistic, and you sound very poetic and lovely in your approach," Mare says, as though breaching a delicate conversation, "I do admire the courage and bravery that you possess, the ambition that guides you. But you must understand that this is not simply a passive world in which you exist, but a war that has hidden itself in plain sight."
She realigns herself daintily and brushes out her skirts.
"You are a noble gentleman, and surely young, though perhaps not as young as one would like for marriage, but your mind is soft and sweet," Mare says, "You do not know the strife of war and loss, and you are untrained for the hardships which you must face. My Lord Alexander knows them only because he has endured them, which has given him his own title to command in fact. But you are a softer creature, born in the light, and I do hope that you succeed, but I will not be surprised to see you forget."
She looks over at Chris, pitying but gentle, like a mother who is consoling a child of an eventual, inevitable loss.
"There are quieter ways than death to break a heart," she murmurs, "You have met others of the court. The Spinel Lady, the Burning Man. Do you think they are happy? Or, perhaps I should say, do you wonder if they are lonely?" She blinks her large doe eyes at Chris. "It is not a matter of death, Sir Watts, it is simply a matter of what he is and what you are not."
She whuffles softly at his compliment and preens.
"Thank you," she says, "A lady will take a compliment when granted one."
She steps away from him and turns in a circle, hands out, scarf flaring around her. The crabgrass sways beneath her rotting feet. The rain dances over her skin.
"And why should he? His business on this side of the world is no business of yours, is it? This was no business to be helped by those that are not of the Court themselves, unless you are interested in such a path, which I might warn against, for it is very treacherous and should not be offered to the tender of heart." She looks down at Chris and draws her scarf between her fingers.
"It is not a Lord that he walks with, but it could be," She says idly, and looks up at Chris.
"There is always a choice, Sir Watts," she says, "he cannot make it for you, no more than he can make the rain fall or the world turn."
She takes one of his hands and holds it between hers gently.
"What you are, and what he is not," she reiterates softly, "is the difference. And until you cross that divide, he will be alone, no matter the lies you may give him to stay the pain."
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Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 6:23 pm
Chris feels like a young child again, being talked to, being told he couldn't do this. Couldn't do that. It's frustrating for Mare to do it, for her to take his words and act like he couldn't do anything. But she was right, in a way. She had experience, knowledge. He only had hope and whatever he could scrape together, what paltry sum of power he could use against their fight.
"I know I don't know," Chris says plainly and it's bitter, oh was it tough pill to admit and swallow. "I know I'm not fit, I know. I know. But I've been through this before. I'll get through it again. I have to."
He whispers the last bit and he stares at Mare like he's lost, like he doesn't know what to do. But Mare won't answer his questions and he lets his gaze drop, lets himself stare at the sky.
"What I am and what he's not?" He echos, still clearly confused. Their only difference was Thorne being a noble and well, while that came with a power change and a bit of a physical difference he was still Thorne. He was still in the cycle, still with Chris. Did he have a longer lifespan? That didn't seem right though, that felt like something he would have told Chris.
He presses his lips together at Mare's words but say nothing - she is right, even with her brutality, and there is nothing he can say there. Nothing except that he doesn't want the path that Thorne walked, that he knows that it isn't for him.
Something in her next sentence though, it strikes a cord with him. He puzzles over it, even as Mare moves on. Let it sit in the back of his mind, to wait it out. To see what comes up.
Mare is no less cryptic as usual though and he stares at his hand in hers, looking up with confusion, upset. "I don't understand, what is our difference? What difference could it be?"
He thinks back to what Thorne told him, thinks back a second time and -
Oh.
He looks up at Mare with alarm, with desperation, because it feels like the world is being ripped out from under him. There is panic clear in his expression, panic and pain and with a trembling voice he asks "Mare, did Thorne take a Tithe?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 10:19 pm
Mare sighs and shifts. She is dainty in her movements, a lady that would have wed a beautiful man and had beautiful children, if only she had not become this instead.
"No," she says, "You are going about it all wrong. You know, you know. That is the excuse. You know. But what are you going to do about it? We are born to crawl, and walk, and run, and reach, and if you do not reach, you will always be a bird that never grew out of its shell, forced to live in a cage. Why will you not change your ways, if you know you are simply continuing this cycle of rebirth as a passive child?"
She looks at him and there is a soft sort of sweetness in her tone - a would-be mother lightly chiding a child for refusing to get back up. She smiles at him, but the expression is ghosting and faint. She has seen ones like these before.
"You already know the answer to your question," Mare says. "Like calls to like. Nature calls to the creations sleeping in Noble blood. Every being has its purpose - you cannot blame a sword for the kill, you cannot blame the wolf for the hunt. You cannot blame yourself for your failures. You cannot blame him for following the path all of his kin take when the rest is ash and bone."
She spins further out of reach, but when she stops and looks at him, she is a picture in a storybook. All parts of her are illuminated from behind by the husky grey of the oncoming storm.
"He is in agony," he says, "But it was the other mans choice. For his husband, you understand. For the woman whom he wishes to save. But why do you look so strangled, so horrified? This was never your business to keep. You are only friends, are you not?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 10:37 pm
"I don't know what ways to change," He says, answering Mare's question. For a second, he wonders what she would have been like in life. What she would look like now, if she wasn't what she was. "Have I been doing this right? Have I been doing this wrong? What do I need to change? I know, but not enough. I don't know where to start."
Mare's chiding is soft and for that he is thankful, but still irritated. There is a piece out of his reach and he knows it, something there that he cannot put together. For once he cannot bridge this gap and he looks at her, frustrated, speechless.
"You say it's not because I'm not a noble, but then you say it's because he is. I don't understand," He tries again, knowing he's whining. He's frustrated and he wants this information, wants to know.
But Mare spins out of his reach, just as does everything else and he's silent for a long moment. A dangerous moment.
Because for the puzzle Chris does not have put together, this one's pieces have come together quickly. Mare's little details give him all his information and so now he sits. Because he knows, without a doubt, that Thorne has taken either Algernon or Jeremiah. That he has tithed someone dear to Chris.
"It matters," He says slowly, "Because his tithe is... a friend of mine. Dear to me. We may only be friends but we-. He promised to not keep anything from me."
He closes his eyes. Opens then again and when he looks at Mare he is a very dangerous calm. The silence before the storm, a whisper of violence. "Tell me, was his name Algernon?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2016 10:54 pm
"You are speaking the answer out loud," Mare says evenly, "You are being blind and stubborn and foolish. He will reach out forever, for you, from where he stands, and you will reach back, but until you are willing to step across that barrier, you cannot reach."
She sighs and walks past him. She is graceful in her wreckage. A truly otherworldly creature, even here in a place that is born from it.
"If that is your case, then you have been wronged on two accounts, the first for not being told of this transaction by the Lord himself and second by the one who wished for it, who acquiesced to it, for he is a dear friend of yours as well, is he not?" Mare whuffled softly. She looked at him with sad, sad eyes. "Promises are hard to keep, my darling. Promises break."
She turns away from him suddenly, her head tilted up to the clouds.
"He is here, calling for me," she says. "I must go."
She looks back at Chris.
"You will hurt him, I can tell, and I will let you, because I think to break his heart now will be a mercy. Your anger might be justified, I do not know because I do not understand your humanity anymore as mine has rotted away." She pauses, shakes. "I will pick up the pieces, because I know heartbreak too."
And then she is gone, a wisp or a ghost or a lullaby pulled away by the breeze.
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