[hr][center][sub][color=cecece]Present - Morning[/color] [color=734e66]◈[/color]  [color=cecece]Marth Oldfox[/color] [color=734e66]◈[/color]  [color=cecece]Old Calder (Old Prue Gables Bed & Breakfast)[/color] [color=734e66]◈[/color] [color=cecece]Marth[@Memoria], Joanie[@Natty] (Mentioned)[/color][/sub][/center][hr][table][row][/row][row][cell][url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5661930][img]https://i.postimg.cc/jj6wNr82/Marthclearskin-tuxpi.jpg[/img][/url][color=2e2c2c]▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇[/color][/cell][cell][quote]

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The Old Prue Gables had a way of making mornings feel older than they were. Light entered through the tall front windows in slanted, dusty ribbons, catching on the beveled glass, the brass umbrella stand, the framed photographs along the hall. The house had been awake long before anyone admitted to being awake. It had muttered through its pipes, groaned softly in its staircases, and let the smell of coffee and blueberry-lavender scones drift room by room until even the most committed sleepers were forced into civility.

By half past eight, breakfast was in its gentle little commotion. 

Guests moved through the downstairs rooms in soft currents and murmured over Oldfox recipes in the dining room. Someone asked for more honey. Someone else wanted to know if the house was “actually haunted” or only marketed that way, which made Sybil look up from the sideboard with a face so blandly pleasant that Marth knew she was choosing mercy by the thread. His mother swept between tables with a vase of fresh-cut flowers, rearranging beauty as if beauty were a household chore. His father stood near the parlor, half-listening to an elderly guest explain a dream she had about the wallpaper of hummingbirds.

And then there were the bells too. Not proper bells, though the house did possess one of those too, a little brass thing near the front desk that guests rang with varying degrees of entitlement. These were smaller, household bells, like the spoon-clink of marmalade against china, the silver chatter of cutlery, or the faraway ring of Bone's phone alarm going off for the fourth time upstairs.

Marth sat at the old piano with a screwdriver in one hand and the expression of a man making polite war against a sticking key. He had not meant to tune anything. 

He had come downstairs intending only to help with breakfast, check the guest room list, and make sure Joanie’s first morning at the Gables did not begin with his entire family circling her like affectionate peacocks. 

But the piano had been sounding wrong all week, one middle note catching slightly whenever it was pressed, and Marth had never been good at leaving a wrong note alone.

Neither, apparently, had the house.

The Old Prue Gables leaned over him in all its plum-gray patience of high ceilings, dark wood, violet-colored wallpaper faded by generations of sunlight, and doors that closed only when they felt respected. Outside, the garden still glittered with last night’s rain. As did the Faraway Tree. Inside, the morning gathered itself around him in warm domestic increments. Cups. Plates. Voices. The soft percussion of ordinary life. It was a sort of mundanity some people might find uninteresting and provincial.

Joanie was expected at nine. 

He told himself he was not watching the clock.

At eight fifty-seven, he adjusted the piano key.

At eight fifty-nine, he stood to fold napkins.

At nine, Sybil walked past him with a tray of spoons and said, [color=silver]“Try not to look like an abandoned bride.”[/color]

Marth did not dignify that with much more than a glance. But he almost smiled. Almost.

He had told his family enough about Joanie to prepare them, but not enough to make her feel studied before she arrived. Eighteen. Recently aged out. A resident of St. Dymphna’s. Bright, capable, and proud. In need of a job and, perhaps more importantly, in need of a door she could close. His mother had immediately begun planning muffins, while his father had asked what sort of music she liked. Sybil had said, with unusual practicality, that everyone should behave as if a normal person was coming to work and not a wounded bird being delivered to a Victorian rescue aviary.

Marth had agreed.

Then Sybil had accused him of being the aviary.

Which was not entirely unfair.

He glanced at the clock again.

Nine-oh-three.

Not late enough to mean anything.

People were late. Buses were late. Nerves made people late. Hope made people late too, sometimes, when a person had to stand outside the door of a new life and gather herself before knocking. He folded another napkin. 

But then the floor trembled. Only once. 

A brief, low shudder moved through the house, so subtle that for a moment it seemed less like the ground shaking and more like the Old Prue Gables had taken a breath too sharply. China chimed in the cabinets. The chandelier in the dining room trembled, scattering small nervous sparks of light across the walls. One of the guests gasped. Somewhere upstairs, Bone shouted something about dying before breakfast.

Then it was over.

His father stepped into the hall, eyebrows raised. [color=silver]“Truck, maybe?”[/color]

[color=silver]“Or the boiler being fussy again.”[/color] Sybil said.

Marth’s mother put one steadying hand on the back of a chair and gave the guests a bright, soothing smile. [color=silver]“Old house. Sometimes it does such things.”[/color]

A few people laughed. Uneasily, but enough.

The room began putting itself back together. Forks returned to plates. Coffee was poured. Someone resumed talking about the weather as if weather had earned the privilege of being ordinary. The Gables settled back into its wood and plaster bones, creaking once, then going still.

Marth remained where he was. The napkin in his hands had gone half-folded.

It was not that the tremor had been large. It was not even that it had been frightening. But something inside it had reached him. A faint emotional bruise under the physical shake. A pressure in the mind. The kind of disturbance that did not pass through furniture, but through feeling.

His gaze moved to the clock. Nine-oh-five.

Joanie.

The name came into him with a small, cold certainty.

He tried to tell himself not to be foolish. Calder City had underground trains, old infrastructure, construction, heavy trucks, strange little moods of its own. Joanie had powers, yes, but not every tremor in the world belonged to one troubled girl.

Still.

He set the napkin down.

[color=silver]“Marth?”[/color] his mother asked from the dining room archway.

He had not realized she was watching him.

[b][color=DEE5F7]“I’m all right,”[/color][/b] he said automatically.

Her face did not believe him. Neither did Sybil’s. She had gone still near the sideboard, one hand resting beside the spoons, her eyes sharp as pins. Marth drew a breath and closed his eyes. Not fully open, he thought. Just enough to peek.

His mind had been closed most of the morning, the way he kept it closed in crowded places and family breakfasts, with every guest thinking three things at once and his relatives’ emotions passing through the house as intimately as smells from the kitchen. He loosened the latch by the smallest degree.

Naturally, the house came first. His mother’s worry, warm and immediate. Sybil’s suspicion, brisk and blade-edged. Bone’s half-asleep alarm from upstairs. A guest’s private irritation over runny eggs. His father’s curiosity, bright and painterly, already trying to turn the tremor into an interesting story.

Then the city beyond the windows. A blur of minds, traffic, hunger, grief, errands. 

But then...Joanie screamed. Not anywhere near close enough for him to possibly have heard it with his ears. No no no. But in the deep, inner country where pain had no need of air.

It struck Marth so violently that his breath left him. 

The room vanished.

For one terrible instant, there was only sorrow. Sorrow so raw it had no skin. Horror followed close behind it, sharp with dust and broken stone, the awful gape of something witnessed and impossible to unwitness. Joanie’s grief opened inside him like a door blown off its hinges. It poured through him, not as words, not at first, but as a feeling vast enough to drown the language that often came to his mind first before the emotional undercurrent. But this was certainly different.

Marth made a sound.

Small at first.

Then broken.

His knees hit the rug beside the piano.

The screwdriver clattered away. Someone cried out. His hands flew to his head as if he could hold his skull together through the force of it. The pain was not physical, and that made it worse. There was nowhere to put it. No wound to cover. No blood to press back inside. Only the emotional scream of a girl somewhere in the city, tearing through him with such force that his own heart did not seem to know whose grief it was carrying.

And beneath it, older terror woke. A hallway. Childhood-dark. The smell of medicine and old sheets. His grandfather dying behind a closed door. That first impossible cry. Pain not meant for him. Pain that found him anyway. Marth was young again for half a breath, small and frightened, hearing his grandfather’s mind crying out from the wreckage of his body, the agony of it so intimate and enormous that it had broken the world into before and after. His gift had begun there. Not with wonder or a starry light, unfortunately, but with suffering entering him without knocking.

Now Joanie’s suffering had done the same. This was the telempathic underbelly of his telepathy on cruel display. 

[color=silver]“Marth!”[/color]

His mother reached him first. He felt her hands on his shoulders, then his face, her fear striking bright against the wider storm. Sybil was beside him a second later, cursing under her breath, one hand braced against his back as if she could keep him from being pulled somewhere she could not follow.

[color=silver]“Marth, look at me,”[/color] Sybil said. [color=silver]“What happened?”[/color]

He tried to answer but only a low moan came out.

The psychic aftershock rippled through him again, and with it came pieces. Not clear visions. Not enough. Only telepathic impressions dragged behind Joanie’s scream. He saw gray dust rising, concrete split like a cracked tooth, a shape on the ground, hands reaching, the crushing absence where hope had been a moment before. Sorrow. Horror. Guilt. The taste of earth in panic.

Joanie.

Rowan?

He could not tell.

He did not want to tell.

The telepathic images were too amorphous. Perhaps distorted by Joanie's own emotional agony and distress.

His mother’s voice trembled. [color=silver]“Is it Bruno?”[/color]

[b][color=DEE5F7]“No.”[/color][/b] The word tore out of him before anything else could. [b][color=DEE5F7]“No. It’s...”[/color][/b]

He swallowed hard, eyes squeezed shut.

[b][color=DEE5F7]“It’s Joanie.”[/color][/b]

Sybil went very still. [color=silver]“The girl coming today?”[/color]

Marth nodded once, though the movement hurt.

[b][color=DEE5F7]“Something happened.”[/color][/b]

His mother’s fingers tightened against his cheek. [color=silver]“What kind of something?”[/color]

[b][color=DEE5F7]“I don’t know.”[/color][/b] His voice shook, and that frightened him almost as much as the pain did. [b][color=DEE5F7]“I can feel her.”[/color][/b]

The room around them had gone silent. Too silent. The guests were watching from the dining room as if the house had become a stage and no one had told them what play they had entered. His father stood in the hall, pale now, all the color gone from his painter’s face.

Marth opened his eyes and they were wet. But worse than that, they were lit. Not glowing brightly, not yet, but touched by that strange witchlight that sometimes moved through him when his emotions came too near the surface. Soft, starry, and troubled. Like moonlight seen through water.

[b][color=DEE5F7]“She’s screaming,”[/color][/b] he whispered.

His mother made a soft sound.

Sybil’s hand tightened at his back. [color=silver]“With your gift?”[/color]

He could not pretend. Not here. Not with them.

[b][color=DEE5F7]“Yes.”[/color][/b]

He forced another breath into himself.

[b][color=DEE5F7]“Oh my god. Something’s wrong. Something terrible has happened. I can feel the shape of it, but not enough to...”[/color][/b] He stopped as another image passed through him. There was dust, a hand, a broken edge of stone. A splash of crimson like paint. His stomach turned. [b][color=DEE5F7]“I have to go.”[/color][/b]

[color=silver]“Absolutely the fuck not,”[/color] Sybil said at once.

He looked at her.

She looked back, fierce and frightened. [color=silver]“You can barely stand.”[/color]

[b][color=DEE5F7]“I can stand.”[/color][/b]

[color=silver]“That was not the point.”[/color]

His mother’s eyes were shining now. [color=silver]“Darling, please. Let your father drive. Let someone call...”[/color]

[b][color=DEE5F7]“We can call as we go.”[/color][/b]

[color=silver]“You don’t know where she is.”[/color]

[b][color=DEE5F7]“The Docks.”[/color][/b]

The answer came before he understood where he had found it. It had been buried in the scream somehow. The emotional direction of Joanie’s pain pulling at him like a thread tied under the ribs. He could tell too, by the distorted scene that came to his mind. Ocean wind and old concrete. For a moment, he thought he could almost taste blood and sea salt in his breath. 

[b][color=DEE5F7]“I think she's somewhere in The Docks district,”[/color][/b] he said again, firmer now.

Sybil stood with him because he was already trying to rise. [color=silver]“Then I’m coming.”[/color]

[b][color=DEE5F7]“No.”[/color][/b]

[color=silver]“Marth.”[/color]

[b][color=DEE5F7]“No.”[/color][/b] Softer this time, but no less certain. [b][color=DEE5F7]“I don’t need you running into the unknown because you’re angry.”[/color][/b]

[color=silver]“I’m always angry. It’s never stopped me.”[/color]

Despite everything, despite the pain still singing through his skull, a broken little breath almost became a laugh.

Almost.

Then Joanie’s grief rose again, and his face changed.

There was nothing dramatic about the way Marth became decided. He did not square his shoulders like a hero in a story. He did not speak with thunder. He simply gathered himself around the point of someone else’s pain and moved toward it. That was all. That had always been the danger in him. Gentleness, when frightened enough, could become terribly direct.

He stood.

His mother steadied him. Sybil did not let go until he was fully upright. The house seemed to lean in around them and the guests were frozen over their breakfast by the spectacle of it all.

[color=silver]“Marth,”[/color] his mother whispered.

He looked at her, and for a moment the resolve nearly broke.

[b][color=DEE5F7]“I really have to go.”[/color][/b]

No one argued quickly enough to stop him. He crossed the hall, moving faster with each step. Past the parlor. Past the front desk and the little brass bell. Past the vase of flowers his mother had arranged too carefully. Past the photographs of Oldfox children in crooked frames, all of them caught in some safer century of sunlight.

The front door opened under his hand.

Outside, the morning remained bright. Somehow, that felt obscene.

Rain still glittered on the garden leaves. A delivery van rolled lazily past the gate. The sign for the Old Prue Gables swung once in the mild wind, beautiful and simple. The world had the audacity to look unchanged while Joanie’s pain burned like a brand through the back of his mind.

Marth stepped onto the porch.

And then he made the choice to reveal himself. 

He paused, fingers to his temples, his mind's eye carrying itself on an invisible psychic wind until it landed in Joanie's thoughts. Her pain hit him again, relentlessly. But he pushed through to talk to her. 

From his mind, to hers. 

[h3][i][color=DEE5F7]“ⱼₒₐₙᵢₑ. ₜₕᵢₛ ᵢₛ ₘₐᵣₜₕ. ₐᵣₑ yₒᵤ ₒₖₐy? Wₕₐₜ'ₛ wᵣₒₙg? Wₕₑᵣₑ ₐᵣₑ yₒᵤ?"[/color][/i][/h3]

Behind him, his family’s voices tangled together in fear and love.

Ahead of him, somewhere in the city, Joanie was screaming.

He followed.

And then his father followed after him, demanding that he would drive.

Marth did not argue with that.


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