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Post by Wayland on Jan 13, 2022 15:26:36 GMT -8
“You’re getting ahead of yourself.” Wayland says after a moment. She’s trying to keep up. She’d made the choice, the effort, to be honest and vulnerable, and Uriel is already moving past it. Wayland’s got to shift gears, and the wrenching of it hurts a little bit. Clearly, for Uriel, solving this problem is more important than understanding and validating one courtier’s experience. Which Wayland can hardly fault her for; she’s queen.
“Shit, it seems like everyone in this court tends to get ahead of themselves.” She goes on. There’s a sigh as she pauses a beat, before continuing at a more measured pace, “You said you’re trying to wrap your head around a greater problem. You asked me about symptoms, I gave you a symptom. That doesn’t mean we have a… a diagnosis, I guess, if we’re still on that metaphor.”
She picks up her beer bottle again and takes a swallow. “And for what it’s worth, I get that traumatized people can have trouble connecting. But we’re also all each other’s got. And we’re not the only ones with that problem. There are support groups centered on all sorts of traumas. Granted, we face some pretty unique problems that they usually don’t. But there are methods out there, there are communities out there, that have figured out how to help each other even when everybody’s dealing with their own custom baggage. We might consider…” She shrugs, “Adapting some of those tools.
“Because I know this for sure, and here’s another symptom for you: We’re not on the same page. It’s not for lack of trying, but we’re not on the same page.”
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Post by Uriel on Jan 13, 2022 16:37:56 GMT -8
Uriel blinks a few times, brow furrowing as the social nuance was lost on her.
"I feel like I've missed something. It wasn't my intent to..." she rested her chin in her hand, giving herself a shake as the scales of her skin prickled and the Thorns splayed spider silk across her vision. "...I apologize for overriding you, or... I guess I was trying to relate to what's been going on for you?"
She let the silence stretch, unsure why she had bothered going outside her bubble when she clearly wasn't suited for this sort of thing. The world stopped shaking as her attention swept to the Initial Issue that had prompted Dame Mary to kick her to talk to Wayland in the first place. A chain rippled into existence, bound around her arm in a spiral as she adjusted it from heating and eating away a small layer of flesh. The act dissolved the unreality of being trapped, as she hauled on whatever was pulling the links tighter.
"We're not on the same page. The irony of the term 'social butterfly' is not lost on me," she laughed, trying to alleviate the tension within herself. "The court's failed to welcome you, I think. Your experience sounds discouraging."
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Post by Wayland on Jan 13, 2022 21:45:08 GMT -8
They’re neither one of them social butterflies. They’re both just doing the best they can. But watching Uriel go through these emotions is a… fascinating experience. It distracts Wayland from her own feelings for a moment, watching the Queen shake herself and think out of the corner of her eye. Hearing her admit to a failing creates mixed emotions for the Ogre. There’s guilt, unjustified guilt, as if she was the cause of the problem and not just the one bringing it up. But there’s also an ease of tension. Validation can do that.
“It has been,” she admits. “Not always. But often.” She frowns slightly, sympathy in her expression as well as struggle, “Look, I don’t think either one of us is good at this. But I think it’s good that we keep trying. I want to be helpful to you.” She sighs, folding her arms over her chest. “But asking me what I like or dislike won’t do you any good if you don’t hear the answers. If you jump in to explain or… or try to leap to an solution. Because you said it yourself; you’re still trying to wrap your head around what the problem is.”
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Post by Uriel on Jan 13, 2022 22:01:04 GMT -8
The Queen chuckles again, nodding.
"I am playing to role." Showing weakness in her Seeming was dangerous, but it was constant tug to remind herself that she wasn't weakly fluttering through a world that sought to destroy her. "I think I need to be humbled once in a while. Thanks for the drink, and the advice you probably weren't looking to give."
A small shrug acknowledged that any sort of emotional labour placed on the Ogre was unfair, especially with the power dynamic. She was a General first in every interaction she could immediately remember. There was disappointment—that everything was still as raw when she was new to the Freehold, and the Maker was echoing things too close to home.
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Post by Wayland on Jan 13, 2022 22:20:05 GMT -8
The silence stretches out for several long, uncomfortable beats. Wayland reaches for her set-aside beer bottle, “And this is why we’re so boozey,” she suggests with a lighthearted air, raising it in toast to the Queen and then taking a pull. Getting out all that was hard. Forcing out those words. This is more than Wayland usual talks, at all. And with the way Uriel is acting… she kind of feels like she’s been an asshole, without really knowing why.
She wants to ask what they do now. Do they keep talking? Is Uriel going to call it a day? Do they go back to likes and dislikes? Move on to some other topic, or come at the previous one from a different angle? She keeps those questions to herself. Sometimes silence is what the situation calls for, and there's no need to rush. It's not a comfortable silence, but it could get there. The Ogre takes a moment to stretch her neck, first one way and then the other. Then forces her shoulders to relax.
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Post by Uriel on Jan 13, 2022 22:45:17 GMT -8
Beer escaped through her nostrils as she snorted, causing the Beast to hunch in equal parts of amusement at herself and mortified embarrassment as she reflexively dragged her arm across her face.
You're so attractive.
She muttered something in Farsi as she fanned herself and teared up from the burning sensation currently wreaking havoc through her nasal passage.
She knew at this point, deep down, that asking was undoing any scrap of rapport that she had managed to build, and that she should have just dropped the order task. "I have a very- specific- weird issue that I need your expertise on," she coughed, eyes darting for an instinctual exit that she would never actually follow through with.
"But that's not- I wasn't lying about before. It's just the reason I'm here- I mean. We can keep talking instead, if you want." She slammed a fist into her chest, clearing her throat as her posture went rigid and towering to its proper height.
The fuck are you on about, Sovereign?
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Post by Wayland on Jan 13, 2022 23:01:55 GMT -8
Wayland is stunned for almost half a second before she reaches across the office to where some cheap paper-towels rest in a neatly folded stack. She swipes a wad of them and holds them up towards Uriel. Holy shit, what the fuck just happened? Her joke wasn’t that good, was it? And then Uriel is rearing up to her full height. Which is considerable. Wayland’s heart thumps. Somehow that moment of vulnerability, the choking and the gasping, humanized Uriel just enough that when she composes herself in all her statuesque glory she still seems… realler, somehow.
“Uhhhm,” okay, score one for gay panic, “I, uh… I said I want to help.
“And I meant it.”
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Post by Uriel on Jan 15, 2022 9:49:31 GMT -8
The Iron Queen stood from her chair, motioning to draw a sword. The wash of heat blew her hair back as smoke and ash rains from the silhouette of her Mantle, and the sword manifested in her hands as if it had been there the whole time. The pommel was hollowed out in a ring, with the strange detail of tiny angry teeth, while the chappe was larger than necessary to seemingly support the twisted wrought-steel that smoothed into the blade itself. It seemed stained, or having a smoky marble pattern that threaded through the blade. Uriel cast it on the metal desk with a light clatter with a casual familiarity, glancing at Wayland only briefly as she watched it.
Whether the Beast intended to be dramatic or not, the chappe peeled back like an unfurling lid to reveal a wet, ruby eye. It flared to life with light in the muscle fibers of the iris in angry, concentric rings. It rolled in its metal socket, squinting at Wayland before it started to rattle, freeing itself from the gravity of the table just as Uriel hauled in the biting chain that appeared again around her arm. The swing at the Ogre went wide, flying back as it bounced harmlessly against the wall and crashed to the floor, eye shut once more.
"As you can imagine, it isn't supposed to do that."
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Post by Wayland on Jan 15, 2022 14:22:32 GMT -8
Of course it’s a sword. It has to be a sword. That feels true, that feels right, that feels damning and glorifying, condemning and elevating, all at once. That feels like Wyrd. For a heartbeat Wayland sees herself in her forge with a freshly remade sword of shimmering black metal, not knowing where that blade would take her the moment she laid it’s edge against her anvil and cut-
It’s just a moment, a moment’s reflection on the past broadcast into the present. This is the present. This is here. This is now. This is a blade her Queen has pulled out of thin air. Or maybe that’s not right? Pulled out of her mantle, out of her Wyrd, out of the very stuff that binds her to and keeps her from what anyone not as crazy as her or Wayland might consider ‘reality.’
Wayland’s heart beats in her chest, that echo of hammer on anvil banging. Her lungs fill like bellows, in and out, chest moving and shoulders rising as she tastes the steel and ash and smoke in the air. Her eyes are fixed on that weapon. There is hunger there. And some of it is for possession. Something at her core, at her Wyrd, curling in jealousy and shrieking ‘Mine mine mine mine mine!’ with desperate, impotent agony. And while that hunger is true, it’s not alone. There is another hunger there, a deeper hunger. ‘Mine to know,’ it whispers. ‘Mine to comprehend. Mine to know down to it’s last atom.’
Her eyes widen and her breath stops when the sword finds her. Looks into her. Finds her wanting. Her chest clenches, the hammering stops. She gapes as it lift’s itself off the table. Uriel saves her life, but Wayland’s reflexes do their part, throwing her backward and down onto the floor as the blade cleaves through the air of its own accord. Splayed on the ground, the Ogre takes a great, gasping breath. She picks herself up, rising quickly, almost too quickly. Like she wants to brush that off, play it cool. She even lifts one hand and wipes her hair out of her face, arranging the fall of the white strands to one side.
“Well… alright,” she finally gasps after a moment. There’s the threat of a chuckle in those words, excited and relieved. She licks her lips, without any self-conscious twinge this time. And then, inexplicably, they form a smirk, sharp white teeth gleaming between her lips.
“So… let’s start with; what is it supposed to do?”
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Post by Uriel on Jan 17, 2022 21:44:30 GMT -8
"It was a guardian of a Keeper's domain, but it's been bound," she explained, unconcerned with the implications and potential hypocrisy of Hobgoblin servitude. Those who signed the contract of the Arcadian Crown did such things as a second nature. Picking up the blade, the marble veins glowed white-hot before the sword lit itself, several other eyes opening along the base as they roved around the room with pinned excitement.
"It's supposed to kill whoever separates me from my weapon. Or remain asleep unless I wield it...not swing and chop at members of the Freehold as soon as I take my hand off of it."
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Post by Wayland on Jan 19, 2022 22:54:31 GMT -8
Finding that her throat is dry, Wayland swallows as she processes the information she has so far, attention focused on the edged, living metal held before her. Then her eyes flick back up to Uriel’s face. The Queen brought her magical sword here to be fixed. That thought is a blessing and a curse. A blessing; this is something she can do. Probably. Maybe. This is a way she can be useful. A curse; this is how it happened the first time. Fixing a magical blade. Not that she new it was magic then. Not that she believed in magic then. There’s a burning tension in her middle, just before her spine. Like something pulling up and down at the same time.
“I’ll need to take a closer look,” her voice is a little hoarse at first, but it clears up. She gestures to Uriel’s hand on the blade, then looks back up to her Queen’s multi-faceted eyes. If the sword is going to react violently to being separated from her, then the two of them are going to have to work together. She steps forward, closer to the towering, terrible, beautiful sovereign. Is that the curse of the crown? To become a little bit more like the Fae? It’s silly, but for some reason, Galadriel’s speech to Frodo at the mirror rings in her ears.
’Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the morn…’
She watches for Uriel’s assent before she reaches out to grasp the weapon, and finally lower her attention back to the task at hand.
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Post by Uriel on Jan 22, 2022 22:16:14 GMT -8
Uriel extended her arm horizontally in front Wayland, wrist pointing it parallel for the Maker to look from chain to tip. Wayland knew of legends of living or cursed swords with personalities, that drive wielders into frenzies, or striking out on their own to deal death whenever unsheathed. It was literally bound to the Queen's mein as an extension of her, so how was it acting against her?
Uriel's flesh was aggravated from a biting chain that tore around the seal. Going over the runic patterns bound in the leather and edges, the Maker's mind followed the legend. She sensed the intent that the fire was not its own, but rather the will of Summer itself channeling power through a blood pact — The Hobgoblin...Token...? — the sword was granted freedom from its Fae Master under the new promise of feeding its solidary aspect of cleaving and killing. A pact with the Summer Avatar rather than a pact with Uriel the Beast. She was failing to meet these needs and so it acted on its own accord — without the bargain honoured, it had permission.
It was hungry.
The Ogre could alter it, potentially, but it needed to be satisfied to be malleable again, or the blade might break in its starved state. Someone else must have designed this pact in the first place; Uriel designing the very thing she was now confused with made no sense.
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Post by Wayland on Jan 23, 2022 14:56:02 GMT -8
As she turns her attention to the blade, she becomes engrossed. In the way that a master of any trade might devote the whole of their attention and thought to analyzing an example of that trade. Part conscious, part unconscious, her hands reach out to examine. Silver digits play along the glyphs, as if reading their indentations by touch. They test the links of the chain, carefully caress along the flat of the blade. She examines it from every angle. If this were an ordinary sword, she could knock the handle loose from the steel, examine it from tang to tip. But it is not an ordinary blade. It seems… alive.
“This is not just a sword,” she says after a moment, voice low, filled with a mixture of awe and certainty, curiosity and discovery. You can almost hear how she is learning more with every moment. “It’s almost a Contract. A bargain.” Her eyes narrow slightly, “I don’t know if it could swear a bargain because it is awake, or if it was awakened by swearing a bargain. Not that it really matters to us here and now.”
Her eyes finally lift from the sword, back to Uriel’s face, so close now. “The bargain wasn’t made with you. Not you as a person, not Uriel. It was made with the crown you bear, a bargain with the office of Sovereign of Summer.”
Her eyes drop back down to the blade, fingers once more moving along the runes, as if to read them out loud. “The bargain promised the blade that it would be free from it’s former master, but that it would still be fed. It would still cut. It would still kill. If that promise is not honored, the contract guarantees it the right to act in it’s own interests.”
Finally, her hands leave the sword. She takes a small, half-step back, watching the blade with new respect and understanding. “If you want it to obey you again, the contract must be honored.” It’s a sword in the very truest sense. You could call any piece of edged metal sitting over a mantle a sword if you wanted, but what swords are meant to be, what swords dream of being, what makes a sword itself in the most real sense possible is only this: “It has to cut. It has to kill.”
She lets that statement hang in the air for a beat, before she goes on. “I could change that. I could change the nature of it’s bargain. But it’s… alive in a sense. Fulfilling the bargain feeds it, and in its current state it’s starved.” Her gaze rises back to Uriel's face, and she crosses her arms over her chest and cocks a hip as she expands on the challenge the Queen has presented. “If I tried to work with it now, it might shatter. Besides which, leaving this bargain unfulfilled, it would have no reason to cooperate in forging a new one. No reason to believe those it will be sworn to are acting in good faith.”
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Post by Uriel on Jan 24, 2022 22:18:31 GMT -8
Uriel watches Wayland's hands move, blinking to attention as the Maker started talking.
"I had it before the crown, so I guess that means it's the Mantle," she sighed, annoyed as she reflected on the circumstance. Her arm twisted as she squinted at the familiar with new context. "Or there's a bigger demand on my part. It has gotten stronger over the years...You would think a King would be enough to tide it over."
Well, it had, where issues were only manifesting now.
She swore, spinning the weapon to put her energy somewhere else as she almost started to pace, sinew twisting from the weight as the afterimage of angry eyes and flames dragged behind. "My responsibilities are higher than a Hedge dive these days. Or does it need to be someone truly sentient?"
The delivery was meant to be stoic, but she winced as she considered the demands.
"Right- thank you for diagnosing it."
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Post by Wayland on Jan 25, 2022 20:46:17 GMT -8
She archs a brow at Uriel's explanations. She'd assumed such a strong bond with Summer would have to have been forged with the Sovereign, but Uriel has proven her wrong if the blade came before the crown. Could a goblin, an awakened hedgespun, swear such a powerful pact with the season? Wayland doubts her own mantle would be strong enough to forge such a bargain, and she's a full Changeling. She rubs her chin with her index finger as she ponders this new insight.
She watches the Queen as she starts the pace, and answers; "The language of the pledge doesn't really translate perfectly, but 'sentient' would be a fair way to put it. Yes, it feeds on killing people, or close enough. I'm not sure if hobs would satisfy it, that might be something to test out."
She frowns, "I realize this is kind of a weird question, but... how long since you fed it last?"
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