Log:Making Elia Cry
| Making Elia Cry | |
|---|---|
| Participants | 6 December, 2017 This was an inevitable conversation. |
| Location
MT07 -- Quasey Cabin | |
| Chalk this up to 'disturbing habits belonging to her Gentry that Elia has somehow picked up, or coincidentally also has.' There's a bonfire burning at the Quasey residence, where Elia is waiting for Jack to return from one of his little Fetch-murdering sprees. There's a pile of clothing stacked on one of the seats... ... and a star-wolf literally sitting naked in the flames. Her legs are tucked up beneath her, her eyes are mostly lidded over, and the flames lick around her in a red-orange halo, burning away all of the excess oil and dead skin cells. It's a hell of a way to exfoliate; it leaves soot behind, after all. But it's also a great way to warm up very thoroughly after you've been running around in the very very cold pre-dawn Vermont woods. The moon in her belly is setting, matching the waning gibbous moon overhead. And she's singing again, that absent 'it goes with the time-ticking in my head'.
Nobody can look so nobly put-upon as Kowal. It's still true. Attracted by smoke and firelight like a moth, almost, an seasonably warm breeze smelling of gunmetal and roses blows into the cleared area in front of the cabin and sees the firepit. It's about to blow away when it sees LITERALLY A WOMAN SITTING IN THE FIRE and SINGING, and drops instantly into Long-Form Mode-- in other words, a tin man in jeans and a leather jacket, looking... you guessed it... put upon. "Are you serious?" he calls, completely exasperated.
She pops to her feet in the fire, claws phasing into existence, and then frowns, folding her arms across her stomach, across the subtle cuts of runner's muscles. "What?" Elia looks ... puzzled, and slightly defensive all the same. What is she doing wrong? There's no move to step out of the fire, mind you, because it's very chilly out there and her clothes are like, totally ten feet away. Plus she can pretend that there's some, like, modicum of modesty within the fire itself, for all she seems to care. (She doesn't seem to care, she wasn't wearing a shirt at the laundromat.) "I own all these a-crrres. This is my house," Elia answers grumpily. And there is a lot of acreage that belongs to Elia and Jack Quasey. Mostly Elia. Jack gets very confused about things like 'paperwork'.
Things like 'modesty and starwolf existing in the same place at the same time' are fairytales that Czcibor Kowal has long ago resignedly given up on believing in. It's not like the trenchcoats in City of Heroes which conveniently come lined with spirit gum in the chest area. When starwolves are even wearing clothes at all. He puts his hands on his hips. "There are much easier ways to get clean and warm up," he explains with the patience of a kindergarten teacher. "Like taking a hot shower. Unless you want to embark on the slow and steady descent into madness and lack of humanity that ends up with idiots like us turning ourselves into fucking Gentry, you probably want to start looking into them."
Ha ha about those people who turn themselves into Gentry, one must wonder why Czcyk brings this up when talking to Lia--Elia. Ahem. "I like sit-ting in the firrre some-times. I am o-kay, Ko-wal. I was rrrrunn-ing and I didn't want to get my hairrr all wet because I would have to come back out if Jack called. Then I would be cold a-gain." There is a certain sort of very dubious logic in that, and she acknowledges its dubiousness with a shrug. "A-ny-way, you didn't walk out herrre so I don't think you get to lec-turrre me a-bout use of magic." Harrumph. "I would have smelled you. Even in-side the firrre, you have a ... smell. When you arrre airrrr. That is different to your tin smell." Now she's got her hands propped on her hips, and her sharp teeth snap together. "I guess you must have left the irrrron at home to-day." Yeah, that's never gonna die.
"Walking is slower than it is for physiotypical people, and eventually hurts unless I use magic of some kind or another. I could also use a wheelchair, or drive everywhere, but unless you have an electric car, it's very bad for the environment. Even electric cars were made using things bad for the environment, and most powering stations use the grid, which is powered primarily by nuclear plants, which are badly maintained and dangerous and produce exceptionally damaging waste," Kowal says with a shrug, jamming his hands in his jacket pockets. "I don't like my token limb, and it's magic besides." His blank shiny metal eyes narrow and he sticks his chin out grumpily. "I don't take it with me unless I'm going into the hedge. Today I was doing the rest of my laundry and checking in on people." A beat. He eyes Elia. "My mantle doesn't go away unless I tell it to with even weirder magic, or pull my human skin on. So you will nearly always catch my scent if I am in the area. Why did you run away with your laundry and not even say anything? That girl is scared of me, she thinks I'm a monster, only pretending to be a person."
A pause. "I did not know you had a to-ken limb." She shifts her shoulders, then. "Well, it is o-kay to do that thing be-cause it is good forrr you. This is good forrr me. If you see me go-ing crrra-zy, well, you say so, I guess. But rrrright now I am o-kay." Her claws finally phase out of existence, and she adds, "You don't have to stand out-side if you don't want to. You can be invited in-side." Which involves her stepping out of the fire and picking up her clothing, and heading for the door into her house. Stopping at the door, she adds, "Unless you would rrra-therrr not." Leaving the fire to burn down is also the plan, apparently. It is very carefully sequestered. "I left be-cause talk-ing to peo-ple who arre just back orrr who don't un-derr-stand ba-sic things is... " A vague shrug of her shoulders. "I have to take carrre of peo-ple who need me much morrre than that girrrl does. I have on-ly so much en-errr-gy for ex-pla-ining how things worrrk, or fuss-ing overrr the peo-ple who can't han-dle rrreality. I just wan-ted to do my laun-drrry. I didn't want to have to give a tu-torrr-ial or deal with some-one's iss-ues."
Another mild shrug, maybe a little diffident this time, as Kowal turns his head away a little. "Okay. It's good for you. If you see me going crazy, then, please tell me likewise." All his weight is on his right leg. He glances up when she invites him in-- well, carefully walks around it as if she were testing if he's a vampire, which makes him half-smile-- and he flourishes the most ridiculous shorthand version of a courtly bow and walks in after her, gait predictably uneven. Once inside, he doesn't sit, but he does lean against the wall by the door, letting it prop him up. "Fair," he says, not even grudgingly. "I just didn't know why at the time, and neither did she, so we were both a little unnerved. I don't mind walking people through that stuff-- where I 'grew up', more or less, they got dumped in the deep end of the pool and generally had Autumn scaring the shit out of them, which made me feel really bad for them. I didn't have a problem with Autumn, per se, just with the way they dealt with scarred and already terrified people who'd just clawed their way back to reality. So I kind of like having the opportunity to help." He's silent for a second, then adds in a smaller voice, "I thought I'd done something to piss you off. I'm glad I didn't."
Czcibor comes in from the yard.
"No, you didn't make me ang-rrrry. I just... don't have a-ny patience forrr most of those kinds of things. It's not my job. I don't have the... men-tal space forrr it. I have to take carrrre of my peo-ple. Randos at laundrrrromats don't e-ven ... nah." Once the fire is built back up, she closes the door on the front of the woodstove with a little iron-against-iron squeak, and turns back to face him. Absently, she shrugs her way into her coat, and pulls on her boxers. That's enough for now, thank you. Also, her footwraps, she sits down to put those on, but that has the aura of 'I don't want to lose these' rather than 'I feel uncomfortably naked without them. "Why would you think you had made me angrrrry? You are... nice to me. E-ven if you al-ways seem sad when you look at me."
"Thanks," Czcibor replies immediately to the 'I will tell you', his gaze immediately snapping to Elia to give her an indication of the weight of his quiet gratitude. And then he nods. "The Queen is really nice," he says firmly, "unless you're a loyalist or a privateer, or otherwise piss her off or hurt or threaten her people. When I first got here, she was actually cooking in the Wayhouse." That comes with a grin. He shifts his weight a little, putting his hands back in his pockets and watching Elia move around the place, go about her regular business, move like Liane, act in so many ways like Liane, and in so many ways not, while looking just like her. "Because you left without saying anything to me," he answers frankly. "And I'm sorry about the sadness." There's a beat, and he looks down and away. "Can you tell me why you don't like cats?"
"Do you want some-thing to eat or drrrrink?" Hospitality is totally a thing. Elia pulls on the lapels of her greatcoat, hunching her shoulders just a little bit, and slowly blinks. It's possible to see that she's watching Czcyk now, without really turning her attention away at all, because of those hollow-moon irises, and how rarely they disappear when she looks away even for a fraction of a second. So much like her, but so much not. The pumpkin vines of her mantle send out little runners every which way, butt up against the edge of his mantle. "What you feel is what you feel," the star-wolf answers. And then? Long silence. "I -- " She pulls the front of her coat closed around herself. "When His Grrrace comes, and you can see him, it is going to hurrrrt. Just -- because -- even if you didn't do a-ny-thing wrrrong. Therrrre's a lo-gic to Herrr Grrrace. You do ... what she wants... and it's ... it's most-ly o-kay. But Him? No. Just... stupid... cat... whims." Her starry nose wrinkles up. "But you don't even think cat. Even." Even if that's what he is. Or was. "Why?"
"...you said you looked exactly like someone who wasn't Liane Fuchs," Czcibor says, letting out a long breath, still not looking at Elia. "But the last time I saw her, her Wyrd was so very strong, and her sanity was so seriously slipped... and she was with a man who was also a cat. His name was Baron, and he was also so very Fae by the last time I saw him." He's silent again as he looks for how to word things. "Sometimes she was my girlfriend. Sometimes we were only the best of friends. But I've seen other of my oldest friends lose themselves and become one of Them, Elia. I know that it happens." Finally he looks up. "So if I am sad and it stifles an ocean of wrath beneath it, it's because you look exactly like who I suspect Liane Fuchs became. And because that means that someone I was very close to, once upon a time, let the last of her humanity go and became one of the things she hated with all her being, and captured and tortured an innocent person, and made her-- made her look and act in the ways that she used to." A sharp breath, then, and his Mantle finishes its shift backwards into just out of Winter, only barely Spring: petrichor and snowdrops and bare vines with only the potential for buds of new growth beginning to edge out toward the surface. "And you are near to where I have settled for now. You are from here. And I am full of sorrow and fury, and I am afraid, because of what I could so easily become, because of how many other friends I may have lost and cannot know, because she may have some way to watch me. When I look at you and I think about her, there is almost nothing of my own season in me because that is not rebirth and renewal, that is not hope and desire. It's despair and grief. It's unfair to you. That's why I'm sorry for it."
Sorry, Elia, I think I used to date your Gentry. I mean, how is a person supposed to react to that? How is a wolf supposed to react to that? There are some implications in that admission, which, while Czcibor is not the most overtly sexual person, a wolf can draw. And I think I fucked your Keeper, sorry about that is just the kind of thing that a person can't really deal with. So she just doesn't react. He's seen this, too, and heard about the reaction more profoundly, to be sure. It's just... a bluescreen sort of reaction. She just -- stops, in the way that only someone who can become perfectly still can do. In the way that celestial bodies seem to be, because they move so slowly, so far away. She doesn't yell, or scream, or throw him out of the house by force, or imprecate against him, or any of that. Elia just... stands entirely still, and stares at him as if she doesn't understand why he exists.
He's far more fae than human at this point, and it's only his stubborn clinging to his sanity that allows him to remain anywhere close to it at this point. As Czcibor watches Elia's lack of reaction, a million urges run through the faerie part of his nature-- and they are all squashed firmly by the weight of his Clarity and of his self-assumed responsibility and his honesty and his fractured and glued-together empathy and his desire, always, to make things right even when they cannot be. So the toy solder in the leather jacket and battered jeans, with the prosthetic leg and the nerdy t-shirt and the engagement ring in his wallet forever? He pushes up off the wall and takes a step sideways, just far enough to put his hand on the doorknob and turn it, but not quite open it yet. It's cold out there and warm in here, after all. "I know it's not your fault; that you are truly an innocent in this, a survivor of the madness and cruelty the same as any of us. But since I am going to tell the Autumn Queen that your Keeper may know where I am, so I suggest you speak to her, first. That you swear loyalty to the freehold if that is your intention, so that no suspicion falls on you when I inform her of the potential danger to this area." He takes his hand out of his pocket, and it's holding a phone. "My number's posted in the Wayhouse. Call or text me when you've spoken to her so that I know it'll be safe for you for me to tell the Queen." Then his hand falls. "I'll stay out of your way. For what it's worth-- I'm sorry." A beat, and a very small, "Thank you for your hospitality." He opens the door and slips outside, closing it behind him.
At some future time, she'll come and talk to him, most likely, once she's had a chance to process this information -- that her torturer was once a person, had feelings, had people that she loved, that he loved, that they were not always Gentry. At some point. That point is not now. And when Czcibor is about halfway across the clearing, fifteen feet away from the doorway or so, a rather singular sound tears through the night, coming incongruously from inside the house, rather than from outside, where it belongs. A single long, ululating cry tears its way through the night: a heart-torn howl cuts through the Autumn air, confused and lonely and impossibly, crushingly sad. | |
