((Originally posted on November 20th, 2017.))
The twins had taken to their lessons far better than Mallory expected.
Aiko and Kana remained terrified of her, which was hardly surprising. Most of her clients found her either ridiculous or frightening, and it made sense that students would lean to the latter category; but their trepidation over her motives had only enhanced their commitment to absorbing her lessons and repeating her tasks until they were perfect. Their advancement in celestial magic beyond their means to control was an obstacle to learning the basics of spellcasting, but it was not insurmountable. She paired their tasks with their natural gift for language -- today, she had them heat a pot to soft-boil three eggs until the yolk barely set, by inscribing all the ways they could say "we heat," "you and I heat," "my sister and I heat," "Aiko and I heat," "Kana and I heat" in Koine, in concentric circles, and reciting them.
It would be months until she began to be satisfied with what they knew about magic, and possibly much longer until she felt they could actually control the power they were physically capable of harnessing, but the fact that they were making so much progress was encouraging.
What the witch found discouraging were her Hebrew lessons. That was where Aiko and Kana's trepidation about the witch's darker brand of magic, her rumors and reputation, and the tactics she'd deployed to make them see reason about their abilities all came back to bite her. Pronunciation was everything, but the twins were often too timid to correct her, to the point that she'd spend an hour saying something wrong before she glimpsed one of them wincing and finally knew to ask what she'd just fucked up.
The last three hours had been draining, and when the lessons had finally ended and Mallory was left alone in the upstairs library, she couldn't muster the will to focus on her "homework." She sat on the floor with a Hebrew Bible open to the Psalms and resting in her lap, pages illuminated by the warm, comfortable light of the fire crackling nearby. Her eyelids drooped, and she jerked her head as she jolted awake again. She tried squaring her back against the end of the bookshelf behind her to keep her upright, folded her arms and squinted down at the tiny words before her, gaze ticking over her notes in the margin for any clue... to...
Fuck it, she decided, and let her eyes drift shut.
* * * * *
A long-fingered hand drifted into Mallory's flickering halo of light, drawing her eye to the stone table she hadn't noticed until now, and the dead ostrich piled on top of it, neck and limbs dangling off the edge. Flesh puckered... then relented with a soft pop as the man plucked another feather. There were a dozen more discarded on the cold stone slab and fluttering away from the heavy slab and into oblivion.
"What about this one?" an old voice growled, and he held the large feather out to show it to Mallory. "Is this the one?"
"That's not fair. You can't do that," the witch snapped at him.
A jackal smiled back at her in the darkness, and another hand came into the light, cupped around a pile of crumbling black dust that sifted through his fingers as it broke down. "It hardly matters. There isn't anything to weigh."
"That's not fair!" the witch repeated, to the sound of low laughter rolling in the man's throat like gravel. "I know it's not your fault, but it's... it's not fair!" The laughter rose to something deep, belly-shaking, raucous, and Mallory's eyes filled with angry tears. She growled back at him, grabbed the feathers and flung them in his face. "See? They don't weigh anything! None of it fucking matters -- !"
Mallory's words were silenced when the tip of a sword slid out of the darkness and pressed against her throat. It didn't belong to the man, but it was held by his wife. He bared another feral smile at the witch and growled through his teeth at her: "Your words, not mine." Then he sighed out a long breath like a death rattle, blowing the rotting dust into her face until her tiny halo of light went out.
* * * * *
The witch's eyes shot open. She was laying on her side in her and Eri's bed, staring at the alarm clock that announced 21:15 with its soft blue glow. Eri must have found her and walked her to bed, but a glance over her shoulder showed no immediate sign of the delinquent. It was pretty early for bed. The only signs that she'd been there at all were that Mallory was in bed instead of slumped uncomfortably on the library floor, and the bookmarked Bible resting next to the alarm clock on her nightstand.
She reached for it as she tried to find focus through the fog of exhaustion and remember what she'd been working on before she dozed off, and the bookmark fell out, a tarot card Eri must have grabbed to mark her place.
The Fool.
Winter Dreams
Moderators: Mallory, Eri Maeda, Patrick
-
Mallory
- RoH Admin
- Posts: 921
- Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2017 9:25 pm
- Location: The Lyceum or Kabuki Street, most of the time
Re: Winter Dreams
Drums.
Mallory couldn’t make them out in the darkness, and they echoed strangely out of the impossible vastness beyond the twin haloes of flickering light from the braziers nearby. Each brazier was a brass bowl set atop an ivy-wrapped obelisk. One emitted white light, with lumps of ice piled like coals that bled frigid mist and crackled as the freeze deepened, the vines hardening as they grew icicle thorns; the other was a vibrant shade of blue, flowing like a fountain, drowning and breaking the vines as the softly glowing water flowed over the sides, comingling with the bloodstains spattered across the cracked marble floor.
A trill of laughter sounded from the center of this space, and Mallory squinted through the strangely flickering lights, making out only ruined stone shapes overgrown with ivy. “Hello?” she tried to call, but she could not hear her voice over the rising strings that accompanied the drumbeats. It was the sound of fiddles, each playing a different song to a different beat.
One was fast and frenzied, joining a furious drumbeat worthy of a raucous party, but too fast, too chaotic, too much for the witch’s mortal ears to enjoy; the other was slow and mournful, joined by a drum cadence fitting for a funeral dirge; and it was to this slower, steadier beat that Mallory wound her way through the strange, ruined shapes, following the streams of blood as they flowed over staggered steps from a raised dais.
When she reached the center and saw an ivy-bound throne, the laugh rang out again. It was shrill and much longer, losing control as the frenzied fiddler played faster and faster, with the sound of snapping bowstrings echoing through the darkness. The rivulets of blood flowed from an apple seated upon the throne, its skin shiny and glistening with condensation and silently promising that it was juicy.
“Go on, mortal girl… take a bite… see how it tastes!”
The laugh rose in pitch, and Mallory clapped her hands over her ears and cried out in pain as the icicle vines and frozen coals all shattered.
* * * * *
Mallory awoke to find herself hanging halfway out of bed, water dripping off the nightstand and onto the floor where her left hand dangled among broken glass. She hissed out a pained breath and held up her hand to better see the cuts, illuminated by the soft glow of her alarm clock.
“Mal?” She could hear Eri sitting up in bed behind her, her voice full of worry.
“Knocked over my ****ing water…” She shook her head as she carefully climbed out of bed, mindful of the blood and water and broken glass on the floor. “It was just a stupid dream.”
Mallory couldn’t make them out in the darkness, and they echoed strangely out of the impossible vastness beyond the twin haloes of flickering light from the braziers nearby. Each brazier was a brass bowl set atop an ivy-wrapped obelisk. One emitted white light, with lumps of ice piled like coals that bled frigid mist and crackled as the freeze deepened, the vines hardening as they grew icicle thorns; the other was a vibrant shade of blue, flowing like a fountain, drowning and breaking the vines as the softly glowing water flowed over the sides, comingling with the bloodstains spattered across the cracked marble floor.
A trill of laughter sounded from the center of this space, and Mallory squinted through the strangely flickering lights, making out only ruined stone shapes overgrown with ivy. “Hello?” she tried to call, but she could not hear her voice over the rising strings that accompanied the drumbeats. It was the sound of fiddles, each playing a different song to a different beat.
One was fast and frenzied, joining a furious drumbeat worthy of a raucous party, but too fast, too chaotic, too much for the witch’s mortal ears to enjoy; the other was slow and mournful, joined by a drum cadence fitting for a funeral dirge; and it was to this slower, steadier beat that Mallory wound her way through the strange, ruined shapes, following the streams of blood as they flowed over staggered steps from a raised dais.
When she reached the center and saw an ivy-bound throne, the laugh rang out again. It was shrill and much longer, losing control as the frenzied fiddler played faster and faster, with the sound of snapping bowstrings echoing through the darkness. The rivulets of blood flowed from an apple seated upon the throne, its skin shiny and glistening with condensation and silently promising that it was juicy.
“Go on, mortal girl… take a bite… see how it tastes!”
The laugh rose in pitch, and Mallory clapped her hands over her ears and cried out in pain as the icicle vines and frozen coals all shattered.
* * * * *
Mallory awoke to find herself hanging halfway out of bed, water dripping off the nightstand and onto the floor where her left hand dangled among broken glass. She hissed out a pained breath and held up her hand to better see the cuts, illuminated by the soft glow of her alarm clock.
“Mal?” She could hear Eri sitting up in bed behind her, her voice full of worry.
“Knocked over my ****ing water…” She shook her head as she carefully climbed out of bed, mindful of the blood and water and broken glass on the floor. “It was just a stupid dream.”
-
Mallory
- RoH Admin
- Posts: 921
- Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2017 9:25 pm
- Location: The Lyceum or Kabuki Street, most of the time
Re: Winter Dreams
Friday was another restless night for the witch. She was bone-tired after a long day at work, two hours being thrown to the mat (over and over) by the Summer girls, and a marathon training session with Aiko and Kana…
…yet sleep eluded her for hours. Past midnight, with Eri sleeping soundly beside her, she had her bedside lamp turned on low, attempting to focus on the pages of Portae Lucis -- “The Gates of Light.” The Latin translations proved easy even in this state, but moving back and forth from Latin to Hebrew felt like trudging through mud up to her waist. She gently flipped the book shut, holding her place with her left ring finger, and gave in to the growing impulse to try shutting her eyes one more time.
* * * * *
“Look,” said the man with the jackal’s grin, and Mallory looked.
A Child of the Forest knelt in the center of this vast space, illuminated by a faint crimson light, different from the hellish red of the Name Thief’s infernal power. They cried like a child, as slight and mutable and full of growth as a sapling, but there were impossible centuries of pain and betrayal in their eyes and flowing out in their tears. They clutched their own throat, blood and tears commingling in the dip of their collarbone and flowing in three stark, glittering lines down their torso.
“Look,” the jackal repeated, his grin a swiftly breaking mask over a rictus snarl, and Mallory looked at the silver knife she held in her left hand, bathed in the crimson light and the blood of the Child.
The old elf let out a high, pitiful wail as the three streams of pain and sorrow reached the ground, drawn rapidly outward by the growing halo of the luminous magic that surrounded them. Blood and water flowed into intricate channels in the forest floor that spiraled out from the center, flowing into three grooves that came together to form a triquetra.
In the center of the knot was another Child of the Forest, weeping tears of joy as they dipped their long, slender fingers in the fast flowing stream around them. Dry leaves turned black as they drifted down from the canopy, disintegrating into dust before they could reach the forest floor, feeding the hungry roots of wildflowers blooming out of the bloody triquetra. Tears of joy gave way to joyous laughter, and the Laughing Child raised their head to look the Wailing Child in the eye:
“Féadfaidh tú lobhadh. Féadfaidh mé bláth.”
* * * * *
The light was still on when Mallory bolted upright in bed, sending the book tumbling to the floor. Eri remained asleep, though she could hear the delinquent stirring at the sudden noise. There wasn’t any time to explain -- not yet -- not when she needed to remember.
She scooped up the book, open to an illustration of a man kneeling in awe of an arcane gate, and padded barefoot into the library as she mouthed the strange words to herself, over and over.
The space she’d set aside for works on Irish and Slavic myths was smaller than most other subjects, sharing a shelf with assorted works of fiction she had even less interest in, a dozen or so titles that Trick had declined to keep for himself when she left Wayside. There was a minute of confused searching until she found what she sought: a small green tome with an unmarked spine but faded gold letters painted onto the cover, a secondhand primer on Gaelic.
She didn’t bother sitting, too afraid of dozing off again and losing this knowledge, standing among the shelves, thumbing through the pages to break the words she’d heard into the sounds Gaelic used, and from there to the words she was seeking.
She heard the house’s old floorboards creaking down the hall as Eri crept out of the bedroom. The bathroom door was ajar, empty. “Mallory?”
“I’m in here, babe,” Mallory called out, lifting her head for only a moment before putting her finger to the open page. The structure of the sentence was simple enough for her to surmise. It was mostly a matter of understanding the verb, and her eyes narrowed when she found what she was looking for:
May you wither.
…yet sleep eluded her for hours. Past midnight, with Eri sleeping soundly beside her, she had her bedside lamp turned on low, attempting to focus on the pages of Portae Lucis -- “The Gates of Light.” The Latin translations proved easy even in this state, but moving back and forth from Latin to Hebrew felt like trudging through mud up to her waist. She gently flipped the book shut, holding her place with her left ring finger, and gave in to the growing impulse to try shutting her eyes one more time.
* * * * *
“Look,” said the man with the jackal’s grin, and Mallory looked.
A Child of the Forest knelt in the center of this vast space, illuminated by a faint crimson light, different from the hellish red of the Name Thief’s infernal power. They cried like a child, as slight and mutable and full of growth as a sapling, but there were impossible centuries of pain and betrayal in their eyes and flowing out in their tears. They clutched their own throat, blood and tears commingling in the dip of their collarbone and flowing in three stark, glittering lines down their torso.
“Look,” the jackal repeated, his grin a swiftly breaking mask over a rictus snarl, and Mallory looked at the silver knife she held in her left hand, bathed in the crimson light and the blood of the Child.
The old elf let out a high, pitiful wail as the three streams of pain and sorrow reached the ground, drawn rapidly outward by the growing halo of the luminous magic that surrounded them. Blood and water flowed into intricate channels in the forest floor that spiraled out from the center, flowing into three grooves that came together to form a triquetra.
In the center of the knot was another Child of the Forest, weeping tears of joy as they dipped their long, slender fingers in the fast flowing stream around them. Dry leaves turned black as they drifted down from the canopy, disintegrating into dust before they could reach the forest floor, feeding the hungry roots of wildflowers blooming out of the bloody triquetra. Tears of joy gave way to joyous laughter, and the Laughing Child raised their head to look the Wailing Child in the eye:
“Féadfaidh tú lobhadh. Féadfaidh mé bláth.”
* * * * *
The light was still on when Mallory bolted upright in bed, sending the book tumbling to the floor. Eri remained asleep, though she could hear the delinquent stirring at the sudden noise. There wasn’t any time to explain -- not yet -- not when she needed to remember.
She scooped up the book, open to an illustration of a man kneeling in awe of an arcane gate, and padded barefoot into the library as she mouthed the strange words to herself, over and over.
The space she’d set aside for works on Irish and Slavic myths was smaller than most other subjects, sharing a shelf with assorted works of fiction she had even less interest in, a dozen or so titles that Trick had declined to keep for himself when she left Wayside. There was a minute of confused searching until she found what she sought: a small green tome with an unmarked spine but faded gold letters painted onto the cover, a secondhand primer on Gaelic.
She didn’t bother sitting, too afraid of dozing off again and losing this knowledge, standing among the shelves, thumbing through the pages to break the words she’d heard into the sounds Gaelic used, and from there to the words she was seeking.
She heard the house’s old floorboards creaking down the hall as Eri crept out of the bedroom. The bathroom door was ajar, empty. “Mallory?”
“I’m in here, babe,” Mallory called out, lifting her head for only a moment before putting her finger to the open page. The structure of the sentence was simple enough for her to surmise. It was mostly a matter of understanding the verb, and her eyes narrowed when she found what she was looking for:
May you wither.
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest