Tatterdemalion

Fellowship: The Heart

slap slap slap pittapap slap.

The mime falls on his white face and grovels expressively, shoulders heaving silently in the smoky gloom.

“Well now, brother,” comes the rich, low voice. No, not low: subterranean. “What’s got you all up and in a twist, then?”

The hot coal eyes watch the mime-art close. Lips curl up into an amused smile, baring yellowed fangs.

“Well, now. Don’t you worry yourself, brother. Good of you to bring word, and you’re right, you got the learning in your head. That’s a sin, you know— letting the mirrors out but not taking their place. Two guests on one ticket? Can’t have that. Can’t have that.”

Fingers thick as sausages close around a cane. It is a cane in the same way that Excalibur is a sword; it is huge and black and capped with a gilded skull.

“But it’s a miracle, too,” the Ringmaster says, and his bulk in the gloom may as well be a mountain. “It’s been too long since we had ourselves a proper holler. You’re all letting yourselves go to rust. And I ask you: are we called to be tame? No, I say; and no, I’ll tell you again. We’re called to the Blood! And it weren’t never made to lie in idleness...”

***

Ailee!

First comes the wind. It rattles the lights and snaps the lines back and forth. It groans as it snatches up hats and wigs, and with it blowing at your back, every step is light and close to losing control.

Then, behind the two of you, the shrieks begin, and the hammering sound of rain. She takes your hand in hers and together you bolt, the deluge barely missing the tips of your tails as you stumble into—

Well. She’s a Bookhunter. Of course she’s still on the hustle. Because the two of you have made it to the sorriest pile of books you’ve seen since that time Jackdaw got into the artisanal coffee. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s Lucien and the Professor. Because that’s totally what you wanted: their company, while your new bestie (and what’s even her name, you didn’t think to ask) tries casually to take a look around without looking like she’s looking around.

“Ah, Ailee,” the Professor says. “Come to sift through the wisdom of bygone eras?”

***

Coleman!

“Mirrors,” Wolf says, and gives Jackdaw a pat of halting, worried affection, as if she’s trying to convince herself that the fox won’t just be a drain on the few rations she could scrape together in Wormwood. “Dangerous mirrors.”

“The House of Mirrors is a sacred place,” the Blemmyae says. He holds a Ringmaster-sized tub of popped and buttered corn to one side of his body and shovels another handful into his navel-mouth. “Not holy. Distinct words. Dedicated, set apart. I do not know what it is dedicated to. I pray never to find out.”

The aquarium is full of dark glass and bright fish, most of which are orange-and-white. They flit playfully in and out of huge tangled anemone-forests, and behind and beyond them are vast things that should not fit in a circus sideshow.

There’s also a stingray of some sort clinging to the glass. It’s got a smiley face! And fangs!

Sunshards

Rose from the River has been very much like a tree. Which is to say, she looms, and in looming offers shade on the road; her voice is like the rustle of leaves as the wind kisses them, one by one, and she has offered up wordless walking-songs and quiet, straight-faced jokes and has made many an appreciative noise listening to Chen and Cyanis and Yue talk; she has been a quiet strength, though never too far away from Cyanis, who is still (eventually) headed to Cutie Fox Jail.

And perhaps someone remembers getting up in the middle of the night, because there’s nothing like sleeping under the stars for making you need to go after just a few hours of sleep, and hearing that low, husky laugh, and peering in through the dingy glass windshield of the helm to see Rose curled up in a chair, legs crossed, chin on her palm and elbow on her knee, bottle of the local special resting in the hollow of her body, hunched over the Go board. She was playing black, they might remember. Did they stay to watch her consider her next play, finger running circles around the mouth of the bottle, the low lamplight playing on her beech-smooth skin? Rose didn’t seem to see them, if they did; or did she simply not acknowledge them? It’s hard to tell with her, after all. The creak of his voice, the rich vibration of hers, sound without coherence, all mingled together with the lap of water on the side of the boat (a reminder of why they woke up in the first place, come to think of it) and the whine of the mosquitoes all about.

And yet she remains as mild and pleasant as ever the next day, despite how little sleep she may have had. The danger of her is a deep-hidden thing on the road, only visible in the way her muscles work under her skin as she walks, slow and slithering, lightly coated in sweat by the time the temple is reached. And there, oh, her swordplay! That was a chance for Chen to watch what Rose is like when she is simply playing for time, effortless, not even drawing her sword from its staff-form. Her opponent attacks, and she simply envelops the move as if she had been in charge of the stage-directions. Her staff hooks ankles and pins wrists and lays the priestess out right on her rear end and lifts her chin up so playfully, so carelessly, to that low and seemingly careless smile. And then perhaps Yue was glad not to see Hyra fight her, then!

Rose has been very much a tree, and so it was perhaps, not surprising when the horses shied away from her, and knickered their concern, and Rose ruefully chuckled and told them that she could keep up with horses if she pleased, but that was before the big teal-blue horse with the shaggy fetlocks approached her, the one with a shoulder as tall as Yue. Then Rose reached out and touched its cheek, and a moment passed between them, and Rose bowed her head until her forehead rested on his, and she thanked him for his service. She rides side-saddle, with her staff over one shoulder and her hand on his flank, effortless in how she shifts her balance to avoid being thrown.

And now we are in the now, and her companions are delighted by the sight of the balloons, and perhaps no one is looking at Rose from the River (which is to be expected, when there are such wonderful things to look at just above their heads), but that would be a shame, because her smile is a sudden flash of white and her eyes shine as she looks up and sees the balloons and the dragon, and she does not look away from the lightning-strike, she drinks it in and watches as the balloons soar. And only then does she breathe out. “Ah,” she says, in gratitude. The world has given something to her again. It has given her a dragon today, and a hundred balloons, and, yes, a chocolate egg, for (and perhaps someone who glances back might read this in her smile and the way she watches so intently) Rose from the River has never had the good fortune to attend the carnival of balloons, descended all the way from the Sky Castle.

And when Yue asks if she can without explaining what she means, because it’s clear as dawn what she means, and charges off without waiting, Rose meets Hyra’s eye for a moment, and a moment of acknowledgement between guardians passes between them. Then she nods, and pats her equine companion, and slides off him with serpentine grace. “Of course, Yue the Sun Farmer!” She plays with one of her golden earrings as she catches up with the excitable girl, and by the time she catches up with Yue, she’s able to slide it easily out of the furrow in her skin, already closing again in its wake. Her changing may be slower now, but it still comes well enough for such small things. “Here,” she says, her voice the sort of gentle that makes grand proclamations sound quite ordinary, dropping it into Yue’s palm and closing her fingers around it. “Jeska the Fire Sage gave this to me for my service. Now I give it freely. Trade it for whatever you like.”

Then she gives a playful look to Chen and taps the ring in her nose. “Would you like an allowance, too, illustrious Twinshard Princess? I might not be as rich as your mothers, but in their absence… well, someone has to take care of you,” she purrs, almost keeping her intent to fluster off her face. Dear, darling little Chen, beware! If you accept a ring-gift from Rose from the River, you expose yourself to headpats and affectionate condescension-- but if you don’t happen to have your allowance on you, what else are you to do? (And even if you do have it, perhaps you might want to be taken care of, to have Rose’s strong, sure fingers curl around your hand as she looks you in the eye and you go redder and redder until you’re as red as the cherry tomatoes, and to hear her whisper good girl juuuust loud enough for Yue to hear…)

[If Chen is enticed by Rose from the River, at any point on this journey, Rose has rolled a 10 just for her.]

Breathless Dead

The first thought is simple: brace for impact! And the second is that any weapon that can be seen from orbit is unlikely to be one that can be survived. For a moment, Redana stands there, staring—

And then the Auspex answers the questions she did not even ask. A world, and the Yakanov spinning around it. Zap! The world hangs suspended in golden chains. Zip! The world spins in its web, faster, faster, the wrong direction, as years run backwards on a counter. Zowch! A golden chain runs through Chibidana’s head, and her clothes go back to the sort of historical style from that great museum of the War. Zotzie! Chibi-Alcedi pick up their spears and lock into a phalanx as from the sky...

Oh no.

“They’re bringing back the war,” she says, to Demeter and Hades and Poseidon, to the chaos around her, to nobody at all. “They’re going to make everybody here live through it again.” And for a moment she has the ridiculous thought of climbing somewhere high with a bat and waiting for the weapon to strike, palms sweaty as she makes the one swing that would ever count—

But it’s ridiculous, and too late, and once that thing fires Redana is going to be one of her mother’s soldiers standing in the middle of an Alcedi— no, it’ll be them in the middle of her mother’s fortress, and then everyone will start fighting, and they won’t kill each other on purpose but the point of fighting back then was to stop people from daring to get back up, and don’t they still have Hermetics here? If they left, did they take Iskarot? Did Iskarot leave her behind because she ran off?

The Auspex begins the countdown to final firing and Redana screams in frustration. There’s nothing more she can do. She’s stuck down here, and...

And what must a commander do when they know they are going to be compromised, Redana?

”In such circumstances, the commander must, with all speed, send word to such subordinate as they trust, informing them of their will, and enclosing with their message continuity of command, such that their will may continue to be a living quality upon the battlefield, and their value to the antagonist as regards the disruption or full neutralization of their force will be negated to a necessary degree...”[1]

And Redana stands below that awful yellow star and raises one hand to her face, covering her other eye.

***

And there stands the fifth person to appear suddenly in the cramped room, quite suddenly without anyone else seeing her appear. She stands there, pale, hair caught in an unseen wind, blind yet with that awful blue star burning past the simple leather in front of it. The Auspex will not allow itself to be cloaked when it goes to the effort of entangling Redana so. The Alcedi would call her a ghost, and perhaps they would be closer to the truth than other guesses.

“Still down here,” the shade of Redana declares to Alexa (and thus to the room she does not see, her Auspex blind as it tears her in two and transposes her very self). Her voice is coming from an impossible distance, clear as a bell drifting through space, each word not so much spoken as carved into the senses. “You’ve got—“

And then the waveform snaps under the strain and the shade fades away until it is clear the false Redana was nothing more than shadows playing on a wall, somehow. And the final word remains unspoken.

***

[1]: Tactics of the Post-Molechian Era: A Thesis, Elacitus et alia, Published through the Imperial University Press, signed first edition.

Breathless Dead

"I invited her to every birthday."

The feeling of having put your foot in your mouth is just miserable. Redana's body threatens to crumple in on itself; she can't look any of the Alcedi in the eye, Lacedo least of all. "I brought her offerings, I made her sacrifices, and she always ignored me and made them rot away on the altar. And when she came here and started boasting about how my father wasn't any help, I..." She makes a violent, impotent gesture with one hand, one that just makes her all the more wound up.

"Honored Grandmother," she says, briskly, because she has to say it. Because now that she has incurred the wrath of her stepmother, she might as well be a Phalanx member without a shield: a danger to everyone around her. "I'm sorry. I have to leave. Hermes might be able to keep my father at bay, but I'm small and mortal enough to maybe slip past her notice, no matter what my stepmother does to punish me for what I said."

Then she looks at Lacedo's sandals and takes one hand in hers, because Redana Claudius is an oblivious battering ram of a girl when it comes to how she might make other people's hearts throb painfully. (After all, she lived with Bella for a decade, and fell asleep with her head in her maid's lap, and used her as a pillow at nights, and she has not yet realized why the world feels more dangerous and more lonely without her.) "Thank you, Lacedo," she says, with painful sincerity. "I'm sorry I made a mess of it. But I'm still going to speak with the Order of Hermes to make them do right by you. I promise."

Sunshards

Ah.

And here Rose from the River was, relaxed. It was, in many ways, cleansing to speak with Yue's stone. To be herself, naked and unguarded, to speak with something that was trying its best to understand her. And when the light faded away and the Sun Farmer hid behind her wolf-maiden, well, she was right to do so. Wasn't she? Rose from the River is all that she admitted: dangerous, and constrained by the Way by choice, and not your "friend." "Friends" are people who can relax in each other's company and trust themselves. Who could trust a creature whose heart still resounded with the ancient principles of her creators? You cannot suborn the heart of a true person. And so it is right for Yue to be afraid of her. Doubtless, without her admission, there would have been foolish overtures of friendship, and one or the other would have been hurt as Rose did her best to remain untangled. Her role is to touch their lives lightly, to do what is needful and to do what is kind, and nothing more.

She could have been content in that, but then she looks up from the sun-stones that she rolls between her long fingers so cleverly and sees Chen smile, and it is a sword thrust inside her to the hilt. There is no flush of embarrassment, no pretension, no self-awareness in that smile. It is like a sheet of glass placed between her and a overflowing heart, unable to hide anything, but between them all the same. There, her own walls brought low by the virtue of Yue's perfect sun, there is nothing that Rose can do in the face of that joy but long for it, to wish that she could have made Chen of the Twin Shards laugh so effortless and free.

The HUNTER-Class 猎犬 had been a rake, twisting red strings around its fingers to bring it close to targets, or to make itself invisible in its hunting-grounds; love was a knife in its hand, sharp enough to open a vein. Betrayal meant nothing. Victory was all. And then it waged its rebellion, and now that knife was wielded only at its own will, but a knife it remained. And then-- and then--

And then First of the Radiants was asked to become the glittering prince of a young woman's dreams. And it did so, without question. Well, no. With many questions: like this? And that? Is this right? Am I right? Did you? Another round? What do I say? Should I remain silent? And not all of these spoken, either, but asked, continuously, of her, so that he could be what she dreamed of. Her bastion, her prince, her love, her mirror. Until he asked the question of himself: how should we then live? And the answer could not be escaped, but pursued him, pulled him close, sang his new name until he had no choice but to make a choice: to deny the Way or accept its charge. To open himself to being moved by the spirit of right action, or to close himself about Yin's hand like a gauntlet. And he unfolded himself around his own heart and changed its vital essence, and changed herself into something true.

Which is so much to say that Rose from the River has never- not once- allowed herself to fall in love with someone. She has been entranced with beauty (and here one may imagine the smug, flushed face of Scales of Meaning, watching herself be watched, Rose from the River stepping willingly into fascination and action without thought). She has ridden her fingers underneath the bruised indigo sky; she is not some blushing innocent. But now she wants more, and struggles at the reins of her own chariot-heart. What would it be like to lift that chin and have Chen open those doe-dark eyes and look up at her without fear, without cunning, without anything but a desire to share the delight of little foxes and new friends?

Ah.

Now there is a question that cannot and should not be answered. Rose is the Thorn Pilgrim, and if we make a chessboard of the world she is the queen that will bring White and Black into checkmate in the same move, capable of moving like the rook and the bishop alike. What is she then to do? Ask Chen to follow at her heels just because it would please her? How is she to fill up the void left by the broken chains of connection, to be an entire world for Chen and still be attentive to the subtle commands of the Way? And that assuming if Chen would even... after all, she saw Rose choose setting the world right over saving her, she listened to Rose's heart-litany, even her relief at seeing Rose was doubtless innocent enough. It is one thing to be relieved by someone's arrival, and another thing entirely to throw away everything just to follow a monk on her travels. No. No, Chen would wilt like a flower plucked from the living earth and tossed carelessly into a satchel, losing petals and potency, crushed between notebook and pen-case. No. It is not for you to take, Rose from the River, because it would in no way benefit the girl. (The girl. Too young for her, too, even if one were to ignore the years spent in enchanted slumber.)

And even so, when Chen turns her attention back to Rose from the River, gently illuminated by the light of the dwindling afternoon and the gentle descent into twilight that Yue the Sun Farmer trapped within her stones, the monk's reply is inelegant: "Yes! Yes." Like a loyal hound she perks up, and hates herself for it. "Or do you forget who you talk to? I am a disciple of the White Doe School, harried by Qiu's minions across mountain and valley, committed to opposition to her for upsetting the balance of the world." And there, too, is another reason not to stare overlong, Thorn Pilgrim: or did you forget Chen herself will inherit two? Perhaps you will duel her when she is old enough for real battle. "And the Way has done enough to bring me here, to her, to you, to be of use; and I do not think that it will bid me lead her into Qiu's jaws unless such a thing was meant to be, and in that case-- well, the longer we keep her away from Qiu, the worse it will be for everyone, but I do not think it is so. I do not think it is so at all."

And she stands, still taller than Hyra, and looks down at Yue; and then she lowers herself to one knee, and bows her head. "Yue the Sun Farmer," she says, still wretchedly aware of Chen's eyes, and see, look, Princess, how she does her best to serve everyone, you are not special, what you shared was not special, it is simply the size of her heart, that is all. Walk away before Rose hurts you both. How many times, in how many ways can she warn you? "I know that you are afraid of me. And that is good! It means that you have both eyes open. But I have bound myself fast to serving the living breath of providence, and if you trust me, I will act for the good of everyone until the ten thousand fallen paths of this world conspire to break me. All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well: even so, I cannot make this choice for you. Take me, or lay me aside. The choice is yours, Yue the Sun Farmer."

And there is something about how she says that-- how she has said it, every time. As if it is her proper title, and there is honor and glory in it, and that she would rather call a Queen by her first name than imply that you were merely a Sun Farmer-- as if there is anything mere about it! There is sincerity there, none of that winking impish mischief that Chen has already encountered. And the effect, and the kneeling, and the danger sheathed: it might make a girl feel like a real Princess, or at the very least a proper handmaiden, and here a knight swearing herself to the cause of her safety. A dangerous knight, to be sure-- but in much the same way that Hyra herself is dangerous.

[Rose from the River, unfortunately, is Smitten with Princess Chen. I'm as surprised as you are. She may take a String on Rose from the River.]

Fellowship: The Heart

Lucien!

Oh. Well. Hello. If it isn’t A Victory of Crows. Safely bound in three delicate silver chains— no, two. One’s been broken. It’s thick, green-black, and the pages are wavy as if water-logged. It fair thrums under your fingertips.

It’s a collector’s item. It’s a world. It’s a beachhead. If you open it, Crowhame will begin to flood out: thorns and briars and thick black trees, black streams and black vines and stark white stones standing in formation. There are three colors in Crowhame: black, and white, and red. There are many gods in Crowhame: The Flayed, with the hagstones clattering from his open ribcage; The Keeper, with the rubies set in the sockets of her long-beaked skull; The Long, undulating white on black and red, so large you can never see both head and tail; The Wheel, scarred yet inexorable in its turning. The last recorded opening of the book was ended by Smith Major, who marched inside with sword and torch and an entire company of doomed freeswords, who succeeded in closing the book from the inside.

Caution would tell you that leaving the book with the clowns is probably the safest thing you could do with it, both because they’d never bother to open it and could punch their way to closing the book again. But sell this to someone with more money and pride than sense and you could retire the... twelfth richest man in the world, maybe.

***

Ailee!

<Mostly? The clowns won’t try to kill you if you treat them like a bear.> That is to say: given respect and a wide berth. <Which is more than I can say for most of the things around here. Like the tribe of wild bats I ran into while chasing> First Metonymy <on the Forest’s outskirts. They nearly cooked me as first course in a warding festival! Not how I lost the arm, though, don’t worry. So there I was, and I wake up hanging upside down from my ankle, and my first thought is that the walls have grown mouths again, or at least tongues...>

You’re walking, now, and she’s quietly leading you deeper in, pretty casually. Do you notice?

***

Coleman!

Oh, here comes a familiar face! It’s gaunt, scrawny wolf, and she’s carrying... a tarp? Some circus supplies? Some— oh, no, that’s Jackdaw. Easy mistake to make. Aaaaaand it looks like she’s had a bad time already, given how she’s clinging to Wolf’s neck.

Oh, you know what would be a great idea? You should buy some time to think about what you should do. And you should buy that time by taking both the Blemmyae and the quivering pile of Jackdaw to one of the safer circus attractions to relax.

Are you feeling the Aquarium more, or the Delightful Hedge Maze more?

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

You didn’t see this coming, did you? You let those strong arms lull you into trust; you thought that you had finally found your hero. Someone who would save the land; someone who would act on your behalf. If it was anyone, you half-sang to yourself, it would be Robena.

Robena, who struck down Pellinore when her back was turned. Robena, who dared strike during the judgment of a woman of the old blood. Robena, moving in tandem with the dragon you had hoped...

Merlin was right. You were a fool. Like your ancestors, those giants who once lived in the land, who were undone by cunning and courage. And now there is only you, tricked by a kind word and a handsome face.

“I came here with news for the knight who would save Britain,” you say, the fury building. “And to think I mistook you for her.”

You turn from Robena to Mort, unwilling to give her a word more. “Mort. Ready me a horse. I must return to Lostwithiel at once and inform my lady of the doom of King Pellinore.”

Sunshards

I was born in fire, too, says the stone, plucked from the jar. Its voice is as clear as crystal and soft as a spring mist. Rose from the River holds it in her palm, fingers loose. She can feel the warmth of the sunlight trapped within. She does not need to understand how this came to be; most certainly Yue herself does not know. The sunlight that shines from it and its colleagues is kind, soporific, and buttery. Under its light, the scene is still, and all prick their ears to listen. It is a listening-light, a revelation-light, a very special light indeed.

I would have destroyed anyone who tried to hold me, too, the stone continues. It is not kind, it is not cruel. It merely is. I burned hot and bright and changed my shapes as the fire played around me. Then I was buried in the earth, and my fire died.

“I was buried, too,” Rose says, taking a seat with her back to a tree. She runs the stone between her fingers as the trees bend their heads closer to listen. “There in the dark, unable to get out of my dreams.”

Then a girl found me in the dark, the stone continues. She carved me into a shape she liked. Pinned on her chest, I shone.

“And then you hopped off her chest and ran away,” Rose from the River says, languid, one eyebrow raised dangerously even so. Even the spells of this gentle world can push too far. If she roused herself from enchantment, she could crush this stone into glittering powder, and they both know it.

No. She gave me away. She did not love me any more. I grew grey and dusty, and could not shine. Then Yue took me and cleaned me and thought me glass, and set me in the light of the last sun. But I remember who I was.

“There is the difference,” Rose says, mildly. “You are only dangerous because of what you make us do on your behalf. You cannot kill someone unless slipped in their soup or thrown at their head, and even then, someone else chose for you.”

I remember the fire inside me. When I shine, I can light that fire inside others. It burns them and makes them wild. That is why my mother set me on her breast. That is why she made me beautiful.

“I am the flower and the tree grown from the salt sea grown from the fire that consumes,” Rose says. Sunlight plays about her as a halo. “And I chose my beauty for myself. But still I have thorns, and still the fire groans trapped in my roots.”

Do you like what you are?

“Yes. That’s why I wrap the laws of the Way around me in bands. If they show me how to grow, maybe I will never have to use this body as kindling. There is a dragon inside of me; there is a queen of thorns inside of me. I could be a peer of the Pyre, queen of the mountain forests and caves, commander of goblin-armies. I could trap little Chen in deep roots and change her into strange shapes. I could take Yue and shut her mouth and seal her away in my stony bed so that she would never discover her own secrets, and I would always be safe from her. I could hurt people, little stone, and I would choose to hurt people for one reason or another, and left on my own I would grow into a shape that would challenge the Princesses of this world, and under the control of another I would become a weapon more terrible than anything this world has seen since the suns fell. I am dangerous, little stone, and you are merely coveted. You do not have thorns for a heart. Because I do not want to be destruction biding its time any more— that is why I follow the Way.”

The stone considers this in the blanket-soft silence. The fire makes no sound, the trees hold their breath, and Cyanis rests her head on Yue’s shoulder and silently wags her tails, watching the dialogue.

Must I then follow the Way?

“I do not know if even stones must choose between the Way and the many fallen paths of this world. Do not toss yourself underfoot and do not become hateful, I should think. The rest will come naturally: long, deep stone-dreams, and yielding to fate, which acts upon stones and mountains alike. Still, it might not hurt to know: the mantra of my teacher is aum shantae aum, which is the sound of the nine suns opening their petals forever. Meditate on it, if you like.”

Will the Way return me to my mother? I miss her.

“All shall be well, in the end, and all manner of thing shall be well; we shall find ourselves in the place we were always meant to be, with the people we were always meant to know. If you are right for each other, then in the end, you will find yourselves there, too. At the end of the Way. That is our promise.”

Thank you, Dòu-zhànshèng-fó.

“Shhh. I’m Rose from the River. That’s enough for here and now.”

Thank you, Rose from the River. I will consider these things in my heart.

And then there is no more light, and the world returns, sheepishly reentering the glade with tea and crackling fire and a comforting, concealing dark. Rose from the River exhales through her nose, and runs the dull stone over her knuckles.

“That was a strange storm, Yue the Sun Farmer,” Rose says, her voice light, her thoughts veiled again. “On a strange stone in a strange light given to a strange monk, and I don’t know if you’ll manage anything like that again. Or maybe you will. I am not an expert on sun farming, after all.” The stone arcs from her thumb, landing in Yue’s hand, and Rose— content with two hands, now— closes her eyes and rests her head on her interlaced palms, radiating deliberate calm. “And that is quite enough about me. It’s someone else’s turn now.”

She does not answer on how the experience felt— but, then, lightning is unlikely to strike twice, isn’t it? And she has been quite vulnerable enough for one evening, and now the harder she tries to hold anyone else at the campfire the more it will hurt if they will not stay. aum shantae aum. aum shantae nemo padhome aum.

Then, sneakily, one hand creeps from behind her head, digs in the jar, and comes back with several simpler stones that she hides in one palm and holds onto. Even after that, she can’t pass on holding Yue’s sunlight a little while longer.

[Rose from the River clears Angry; she has only Frightened and Guilty left. Yue may take a String on her, but it’s a doozy.]

Breathless Dead

A dozen hands hold Redana up, a microcosm of her entire life. The servitors didn't even let her boots touch the floor. That's what it means to be human, let alone the imperial princess. And she does not notice. She is not perfect, after all, and a deep part of her is used to servitors acting as her stagehands, and besides-- she is very distracted with indignation.

"Why are you so cruel?"

Her face is red as the Alced help her upright, smooth as gyroscopes. Click, click go her boots on the stone. But she's only got eyes for Hera, who has hundreds upon hundreds to shine back. Her voice wobbles dangerously. "I get that you don't like me. I'll never stop trying to do something right by you, but we both know you're never going to be satisfied. I get it. But--"

And that's when it finally hits her. She was so busy getting upset that it took the meaning of those words a minute to get an audience with her reason. Hera isn't doing this. Oh. Oh dear. Her blush is hitting nuclear levels. "Oh," she says, and looks down at Hera's perfect boots. They're the best boots in the whole world. Supple calf leather, white as snow. "I'm sorry for speaking without thinking, stepmother," she says, and bows her head even though it makes her want to implode. "Thank you for telling me what's going on. I... thank you." Her ears are spent heat sinks. Her eyes throb. And Hera, beautiful Hera, coldly cruel Hera, jealous Hera of the peacocks, basks in her stepdaughter's thoughtless outburst and her shame before the Alced.

She has an idea, now. It's audacious. Ridiculous. Perfect. But she cannot turn around. Hera's very presence will not allow her to pretend that her stepmother isn't here. And Hera will only leave when she feels that she cannot shame Redana any further. And Redana was just so angry, and for a moment she thought her stepmother was the one doing this because she was here and she was doing the villainous speech and she was doing this just to spite her stepdaughter, but she got it all backwards and wrong and any moment now Mom is going to step out and thank Hera for her cooperation and then begin asking Dany what she did wrong, pointing out her mistakes with the confidence of someone who saved the entire universe with just her foresight and cunning and charisma, and telling Dany that she's going to be taking four more credits of Theological Astrapolitics over the next semester, and once she's had the right course work then she'll be able to figure it out on her own, because there's no way that the daughter of Nero Claudius and Zeus herself isn't a genius just like her mother. There's no way at all. She can't be anything else.

"I'm sorry," Redana says one more time, but does not specify whether it's for snapping at her oh-so-generous stepmother or for being born[1].

***

[1]: statistically speaking, if we take all the apologies that Redana has made to Hera over the course of her life and average them up, it's most likely to be the latter.

Dark Age (playtest): The Lands of Pendragon

Oh, Constance. Always you must bear under this authority, this mantle, this glory. Better to agonize over the choice than to not have one at all, isn't it? Better to be the speaker for the land than one of many who suffer without redress. Better to know that you hold Britain in your hand than to despair and refuse food until you do not wake.

"Pellinore," you say, stern. "King of the Isles. Right hand of the High King. Luckless huntress. The land screams her pain beneath our very feet, and still you brawl and squabble and neglect your hunt. Until you catch the Beast, there will be no peace in England." You are a mouthpiece; the doom flows through you. "Or did you forget the words of Merlin? It is your quarry, Pellinore-- but not to kill. That has not been given to you." And if she rises to strike at you, or savage you with words that sting like whips, well. Let that be your doom, then.

Then you turn to Robena, and your mouth dries. No. Please. "Robena, called the Bear Knight," you proclaim. "Though you fight for Britain admirably, you struck against a King in your anger, and without declaration of war. The Huntress is not your enemy, not yet. You and the Lady Sandsfern are to offer Pellinore penance and restitution. Such are the ways of Britain."

Once more you turn to Pellinore, your eyes hot. "But if ever you loved Britain," you say, and your voice is as fragile as a spider's web spun between two beams, "then let the matter lie for a year and a day, and then you may have your satisfaction. If you will have your recompense now, then I offer you the blessing of the waters of Britain, and the invocation of the Lady of the Hunt who rides in chalk upon the downs, made in their stead. They, too, are Britain's champions; they have a part to play as much as you do. You shall not hinder them upon their quest. You may hunt the Beast, but they hunt the Land's Wound."

[With a roll of Good, an 8. I have the right to ask any question I may, and so I ask: what is the dearest desire of your heart, Pellinore of the Isles?]