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Post by Rowan on Mar 7, 2021 16:10:13 GMT -8
"Right. You said they wanted to talk. How do you know? And you couldn't see then until after... After what?"
His eyes darted first over Golden, then across the room - it was the same as it was during Yule. The creepy hands, the cold. He had no idea what was going on, but he tried to commit as many details to memory as possible. He looked around the motel room for a pad and started writing things down. Chains, glow, hands. How the Fairest had been handling it so far.
Grief? He understood that Winter dealt with Sorrow, so some sort of Contract?
"How long ago did this start? Tanner said this was likely Glamour related and you've said something like that too. Do they react to your Contracts at all?"
He was going down a list of questions to gather as much info as possible. He knew he was going to have to do research anyway and he didn't want to have to call Golden for every question that would come up. He was watching, and waiting for something to happen.
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 7, 2021 16:28:21 GMT -8
The Dragon Knows.
A servant of sorrow tapping into the depths of a powerful haunting with an Onyx contract would be devastating. Golden Boy could take away a deep pain, for a time. For something dead and suffering eternal it would be an enticing experience to harass him over.
The Fairest shivered, reflexively clutching his chest as a vice closed over his heart. A dark expression crossed his face as a deep, personal rage flickered behind the eyes, before completely snuffing behind a practiced mask. He offers a silent nod to Rowan as he wrestled a hand rolled cigarette from a tin in his pocket. He lights it alongside the question while passively smoothing one of the unused papers against the wall, covering it as he etched something in the center with a precise claw. Practiced hands begin folding the small white square as he blinked back to Rowan,
"Late September. Glamour related..." He blinked. "Have you ever tried to reap from echoes? It's like ash on the tongue. Their emotions are like the footprints after the event," he gritted his teeth, aware of that he had a different way of looking at things, needing the other to connect some of the dots.
Still watching Twilight, Rowan watches a small girl nervously peer at him from behind the thief. Golden's breathe starts crystalizing around the smoke as the room starts to cool. "This is going to get uncomfortable for you if you stick around." It wasn't a threat — he couldn't pass on his Court's immunity to dropping temperatures that came with the curse. The Darkling had time, at least. The younger had flagged the situation, and would likely give full warning if he needed to flee.
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Post by Rowan on Mar 7, 2021 16:40:59 GMT -8
"Can't be worst than the Fore-" He couldn't finish the sentence. The realization of what exactly Golden Boy had been dealing with hit him like a monster truck.
"What did you do? What exactly did you do to get dragged into Ghost Limbo?" There was no dancing around the question anymore. Golden seemed to answer his questions in the most direct way possible. 'Honestly, same.' Except it wasn't exactly helping.
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 7, 2021 16:51:24 GMT -8
The Fairest bit his tongue. "I had some bits and pieces about the coronation rituals. Yule is the most invasive, but your court doesn't participate." He shrugged. It wasn't a complaint, and he wasn't going to offer intricacies of Winter rituals.
"I already told you as much as I can on that. Do some research. Pay attention to the Rites. We can have a conversation once you're caught up. I'm not going to get you killed with 'telephone'-ing a ritual," Golden said firmly. He sounded the opposite of nervous now, sealing off the ability to feel in his people's armour. As his hand dropped, the girl clasped it. He clearly didn't see her before, twitching as she came into contact.
"You're fine," he said to her in a gentle tone, nudging the ghost towards the Gravewight; seeing how he was going to react and what he was going to do before he was ready to offer more.
She smiled at Rowan, without malice. A nervous grin split her face and she mumbled something in Spanish while holding out her free hand. Figures circled outside on the periphery, a shape in the shadow of the closet, someone behind the door.
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Post by Rowan on Mar 7, 2021 16:58:54 GMT -8
Tentatively, he reached out to the ghost girl. Now, a wiser person would have taken precautions, and Rowan wished he knew what precautions those would be. Golden did say he had to experience it himself. Things had happened so fast during Yule, he never even thought about Just Talking to Them as a solution.
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 7, 2021 17:09:28 GMT -8
The girl nudged both their arms to start swaying them like a swing, giggling quietly. Golden was calmly trying to detach his hand from the little game. Rowan's hand was starting to burn with the icy grip, the walls starting to glitter from the frosted condensation of the humidifier.
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Post by Rowan on Mar 7, 2021 17:18:44 GMT -8
"I don't speak Spanish," he said as his hand swayed and burned. Feeling cold this intense was unsettling. Rowan had been on the frosty side of the thermometer for a good while now and it usually didn't bother him. It wasn't hurting yet, but if Twilight was anything to go by, it wouldn't take long.
"Do you?" he asked Golden.
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 7, 2021 17:24:47 GMT -8
"Um...I can't hear them," he explained again. "Have a hard time seeing, too."
She laughed from swinging, tugging at Golden's jacket for another round. He continued to gently ignore her, like a long suffering older sibling. Rather, the attention was on the hands wrapping around the door frame, slowly opening it with the force of several hands. It was difficult for ghosts to affect the world beyond Twilight. Golden nudged it shut with his foot, the fingers being forced back into shadows as Rowan spoke.
The girl babbled something, doing a small dance on her own and bowing to the new audience. "I've been really vague. They nudged me for a while. I'd find stuff that would have normally taken me hours, like the right book falling from someone's collection," the dragon divulged. Opening up was clearly a foreign concept that took some untangling.
"After they tried to tear apart my essence and I layered contracts to redirect their focus- it was a lot. I don't intend to try it again," he held up his hands. Even with the lack of reaction, Golden Boy looked haunted in more ways than just the literal. The screaming. But to feel the pain of it all. To take the reigns of a disaster.
"I didn't have any glamour left," he chuckled again, flinching as the cherry of the exhausted smoke burnt his lip. "So..." there was a disconnect from the moments, his body language folding from the trauma of buried memories despite the detached address. Winter blanketed feelings, but couldn't erase a mental wound.
"I don't know if they're wanting more of it. To forget for a while. They like it better than the glamour."
The girl laughed as she danced around the dragon, swinging from his leg lovingly.
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Post by Rowan on Mar 7, 2021 17:43:27 GMT -8
"Never ran out of Glamour, no. But I basically tear my identity asunder everyday to try and fit in." He shrugged and switched back to the subject at hand because he didn't want to talk about his feelings.
"There's a little girl dancing around you. She's speaking Spanish. You're saying they're affecting the physical world to get messages across?"
He moved to pluck at the chains around Golden Boy. He had no idea of what he was doing, moving on mostly muscle memory of a kith that wasn't actually his.
Rowan turned to the little girl. She seemed to be having fun and demonstrated a fondness for the other Lost. "I'm sorry, I don't understand you," he told her. "What are you trying to say?"
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 7, 2021 18:58:03 GMT -8
"I think so?"
The Darkling mentally pulled at a chain, the link snapping with his influence.
There were so many.
He moved onto the sickly pallor of how the Fairest was glowing, hoping to shut down the way the ghosts were feeding off of him. It felt like closing a door to the Lost's soul, and Golden shuddered in response; something had been opened to these spirits' influence and had been making him sick.
The girl beams at Rowan, giggling as she hid behind Golden's jacket.
"Why?" He seemed genuinely invested in his statement about reworking his identity, "You're hurting yourself. That isn't going to help you, or the people who care about you."
He was beginning to take on a blue hue, and Rowan was starting to feel warm, despite the frost. White noise of a low hum was beginning to manifest in a detectable constant wail. The girl had stopped playing, smile fading and looking pained.
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Post by Rowan on Mar 7, 2021 19:50:44 GMT -8
He let out a tsch as the Lost decided to continue the subject. It took him some time to articulate words for a concept he didn't have a full understanding of.
"I feel wrong, somehow, all the time. I'm trying to find the right fit, one that doesn't make people immediately dislike me."
Rowan believed in the rule of tolerance through usefulness. People weren't going to magically like him, not without conscious effort on his part. But what they would do is tolerate him if he proved to be a useful asset. It was a short term fix that he believed would buy him the time needed to find a more permanent solution.
"I have only one friend to fall back on, and she's kind of a hypocrite. Anyway, I think whatever I did should hold for about a week? Maybe?"
The little girl didn't look too hot, but Rowan was getting warmer. Huh?
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 7, 2021 20:16:43 GMT -8
"Thanks," Golden said, noting the worried look spreading across the Darkling's body language.
He held up a hand, "You'll be okay, it's just-"
Loud.
The child's crying split the room, joined by a cacophony of screams.
The windows rattled as hands banged against the glass, desperate knocking at the door and drumming behind the walls.
They wanted to be let inside, to escape from the danger.
Golden clenched at his skull, gritting his teeth as he reflexively tucked against the plaster of the room. He asked a question to the Gravewight, but it was impossible to differentiate from the other voices. The child cried and clung, form beginning to warp and tear as if claws were wracking across the image, dragging into a torrent.
A beat passed to no resolution. Golden Boy pressed a shaking finger to his lips, tears streaming.
And it was like a switch. The cold evaporated in a gust, taking the storm with it. No signs of the spirits in Twilight, as the realm settled into quiet dusk.
Rowan was wracked with shivers, finally aware of just how cold he had gotten.
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Post by Rowan on Mar 7, 2021 20:36:59 GMT -8
"I-" No words. Conceptually, Rowan was aware that there were plenty of things that he didn't know. Practically, this was his first time realizing just how out of his depth he could get, how deep whatever it was that bound the Seasons and the Wards ran. It was like standing at edge of a precip-
'Screw you, Benjamin.'
He tried to keep a straight face to keep the situation from spiralling. It was hard to manage that, because his whole body was protesting at the temperature, shaking like a leaf in the wind. His pen, the one that he had put to paper to take down notes scribbled random lines and his muscles struggled to relax.
"Yo-you're b-boned," was all that he could manage though chattering teeth. "Need to d-do some reading."
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Post by Golden Boy on Mar 7, 2021 20:44:15 GMT -8
The Fairest blinked slowly, dazed with the sudden shift in environment. He seemed a lot less confident now; giving someone else a glimpse into a puzzle who was just as lost. Easier to ignore in a vacuum; now it was an exposed vulnerability.
"I do owe you a solid for closing off that door. It was a lot less...personified this time. It didn't pass through me, and I stayed grounded." Was he saying that the spirits were still dragging him off?
Golden Boy grinned.
"Did you get the information you needed?" he asked plainly.
The colour was gone from his face, and even the glittering scales seemed dull.
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Post by Rowan on Mar 7, 2021 21:07:15 GMT -8
He allowed himself a smirk. Golden was sharp. He gave an awkward thumbs up at the show of gratitude. "I'll c-call you on it."
"It's not what I needed, b-but it's a place to start. No promis-ses though." He managed to rip out the paper from the note pad and put it in his pocket. He untied his overalls and began to put them on straight.
He didn't promise to keep quiet about this, he couldn't. He needed someone who understood stuff like this to help him make sense of things. "Can you get home s-safely?"
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