The Abbey

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

He swept in like a quiet breeze as the door shut behind him; listening to her as he embraced the rest to be had with an insuppressable smile.
With a relinquishing sigh, he undid the clasps of his cloak and tossed it almost gladly aside, at the foot of the bed where it seemed to laze upon the spartan structure. His white shirt seemed to flow freely now, and trailed behind him like sheets on a ghost.

It was when Tilly's spoken venture came to poetry, noting her own theatrics from the corner of his eye, that he paused. Raising a surprised brow, with pursed, amused lips that only widened and intensified the dimples in his cheeks.

Slowly, he turned to face her. Resting his toned derriere against the woody table, he hid his amusement behind a hand, as he wrapped an arm about his waist and stiffled a small chuckle at her dainty pose.

Another little sigh, and he brought his hand down loosely; his other holding the elbow up while it rested.
Having lost himself to the humors, he perked up and regained composure; shoulders straightened and he brought his hands together in quick, quiet claps as he bowed.
"Bravo, bravo!"
He declared with a quieted dramitas of his own.
Though... He paused, and hummed; a look of utter critique crossing his face, like a tutor scolding a pupil.
"Though, I think 'naught' would've been better." His lips curled to a teasing smirk.

Then he shrugged, and pulled himself away from the table; meandering to show naught but his profile to Tilly, as he idly flicked dirt from 'neath the nails of his hand with his thumb. Taking a poignant interest in the nusiance of the chore.
"Yes. Indeed." He mimicked, and glanced to Tilly from his own dalliance of theatricisim.
"Passable. I'd say my ego's inflated least--" Humming and hawing, he made a show of mathematizing the imaginary value.
"--Half? Perhaps twice its size; being generous to your efforts, at least."

//

[Vanitypirate]

Tilly gave an artistic scoff and set about resuming her pose, shoulders back and finely grooming her invisible mustache.
"You can't criticize art." She insisted to him with no short supply of pseudo-wisdom, though the smile that grew on her face betrayed that she had that much self-awareness. She straightened back up into her more typical posture, if only before a moment, before she plopped down at the foot of the hay-bed, beside the cloak.

She admired him from her perch, almost a bit dreamily-- although that could have been just as attributed to the hour.

Here she was, shamelessly pledged to another man before Roderick was rightly put in the ground. Shamelessly, of course; she hadn't felt the slightest twinge of guilt, not once.
It was just simply on her mind...

She gave a small start, eyes flicking down to her boots, which she had scarcely remembered to slip off. She started on them, the worn things-- she tried not to think too long on how she pulled them off of the still-warm feet of a corpse, although their slight over-sizedness attested to their second-hand nature, in the way her feet, long and slim, slid easily out from the leather after a brief unbuckling. Tilly sat them by the bedpost and waggled her toes.

"I've been meaning to ask, though-- and it's not something I could've... rightly asked in public."
She tap-tapped her fingers on her knees.

"Your... Curse? How'd you wind up with your Curse?" Tilly quirked her head, the crown of her hat leaned with her motions. "Because I'd gotten it from... y'know..."
She let the remainder of the statement be left unsaid.

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

He shrugged, nodding as their little social extravagance disipated; finding her delicate fingers evermore alluring, even in their damnable comical dances.
The Ex-Lord bit his lower lip in a means to keep himself tame as he kept a smile warm, thinly veiling a lascivicious desire. It hardly abated as he watched Tilly's hands dip low to her boots, even with whatever odour arose from it, a hint of yet more of his Only was all he ever needed to step forward.

Her own, vocal, steps towards a question brought Lekalis out of his lustful momentum; the desirious look slipping away to due consideration in nigh an instant. Even if his steps didn't stop, which had his feet take him to Tilly's side on the bed.
He found a seat as he listened to her query in true; it took him aback, his surprise only just hinted at in the smallest of pauses before he sat flat on the bed.

Indeed, some quick consideration was taken; his brows furrowed, and he chewed his lip yet again, though less in self-restraint and more rumination.
"I hadn't taken on this curse as you'd recieved it, if... that's what you're curious about." He chuckled awkwardly, shrugging his finely groomed brows; though he brought a hand up to scritch at the corner of his leftly brow.

Lekalis' eyes drifted away, to a high set, rectangular window of the Abbey's cell. Though, his hand reached out and, pinky first, prodded at Tilly's own in a smallish tease.
"Truth be told... I find myself confused by its happenstance on me. I both... know, yet don't know its specifics."
Another shrug, though this time of the shoulders; his embersome eyes flicked to Tilly, though they were cooled and dark with naught but the glimmer of moonlight spilling in from the window to illuminate the definition of his iris and pupil.

"T'was... the end of my campaign, for certain. After a bloody route. My Only route, that I found myself in my castle again:--" He flourished his hand, realizing the detail hadn't any context, so he served it there: upon his hand.
"-- It's where I recieved my Curse. I'm certain of it."
That flourished hand, though by no outright intent, seemed to flourish yet again. This time, to his amulet: his fingers padded lightly upon its red surface which he produced into the fresh air, atop his attire.

"The rest are... Scattered fragments." His eyes drifted away, to the door in a measure of respect and mourning. Contemplation, perhaps; or frustration as his brows knitted up again and his lips creased.
He took a heavy breath, quirking a corner of his lips into a frown as he looked to Tilly with his own skepticism behind his eyes.
"It was a bloody battle when they breached my keep's halls. I'm unsure which... visions are memories and which are nightmares." He admitted, as his little finger curled around hers in some desperation to hold hers in some measure of reassurance...

//

[Vanitypirate]

She couldn't really help but lean into her Dearest beside her, as he made to go and sit beside Tilly, so complacent was she with his gravity. She let her eyes close, too, not only from sleep but also to more forcibly envision the scene she had heard often carried on rumors, so like leaves on a breeze.
It was understandable, and she knew rather intimately well how the mind stored away unpleasant memories; some histories she knew were but a hazy soup of recollections, images, scents... and indeed, if she were present for that famous castle raid, she reckoned she'd be wont to do the same.

Tilly tilted her head against his shoulder, letting the crown and brim of the hat fold and compress as physics demanded.

"So you've had it a while...?" She sighed, almost in resignation. This was her curse, too, wrought by blood and indecency, and she supposed it was rightly earned. She knew better not to indulge, but the consequences of forgoing her own intuition were unknown to her except in hindsight.
That was not to say, having surpassed the earlier hurdle, that conversation of marriage and vows, that she would not have done it again, given the opportunity.

"Does anybody else have it?" She probed further, although she was certain she might not like the coming answer-- she was well-aware of his preceding indulgences, after all. She knew what he had done.
She intertwined her pinky with his, and gave it an affirming squeeze before making to take it up in her closest hand.

"Doesn't it frighten you? Curses are hardly any good... Nobody gives out a curse for no reason, and it doesn't just give you awful visions." Despite the voiced worry, her eyes still sunk closed, tiredishly, although her words did not slur. She was simply relaxed, her limbs slack.
"That thing I saw, he... reached right through me, you know. Through my skin and bones. I could feel it. Has he ever done that to you? You said you've seen the same thing I saw."

She gave another moment of thought, then continued with her own layman hypothesis,

"You don't reckon worse things are at play? It's not a comforting thought, but... I don't know, I don't think folk that hand out curses and can go feel around your organs are all that benevolent. There's no reason why he'd only just give us some nasty dreams and nosebleeds."

[Vanitypirate]

Dawn had broken.

The good Crowgazer, hunched over some neck-breaking page of notes, had seen such a sight so often that she no longer needed to scry the time from the sun. When the shadows grew long and warm, when the mists fogged the windows, that was when Florence knew that she had fully spent the night.
The candleflame danced vainly about its wick in spite of the waking sun, set precariously to the edge of the lined-draped table. It cast a heated glow against the ink, so still and whist that it rivaled glass, only periodically shattered by the featherquill that pecked at its surface.

She was writing-- or, it seemed, she was attempting such an act. Each time she would ready her quill, her hand would halt just above the paper, as if frozen, and the ink would drip, drip, drip in splotches over the paper, which was entirely blank, except for the heading at the top that read,

'Dear Tilly,'

Florence sat there for a long while, repeating this. The dark blotches of ink grew like a mold from the corner of the page, though the paper remained firm; Florence had thankfully chosen a sturdily-pulped parchment, one of her nicer ones, for this endeavor. Her hand hovered over the space beneath the 'Dear Tilly'.

Drip, drip, drip. The quill ran dry.

The crow-beaked doctor renewed the ink, and the cycle went on.

Drip, drip, drip.

Writing letters was difficult.

Drip, drip, drip.

What was one to write to a grieving woman? The loved ones of patients who had died under her knife were entirely sympathetic to the doctor, and the ones who were not simply avoided her-- she had certainly never endeavored to contact such a one directly. There was typically no need; they would return when they needed her, more likely later than sooner.
That was the way she knew.

Drip. Drip.

The quill went dry again. Florence's arm moved, like a lever forced into action once again, and the point kissed the glassy ink once more.
But then she stopped, prematurely, not above the paper to rain the ink maddeningly down, but inside the ink, as if it had frozen with her pen in it.

It was all so simple.

She spurred into action with such vigor that she trailed ink onto the hempen tablecloth, but that was no matter: a surge of inspiration had struck her as lightning twice strikes the same place on the ground, and she could not afford to delay this valuable and rare creativity.

'Dear Tilly,' The top of the page read, which Florence wrote furiously beneath, 'I apologize for exsanguinating your friend.'

It was coming together so well! Mind and soul: she finally understood art.

Florence signed her name at the bottom. She signed it with great care.

'Love, Florence.'

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

Ease spilled out from his brain like rain through his veins, as he felt Tilly's gilded hair and brownish hat scrunch up against him. A small smile coaxed by the love he held for her... it all only served to engorge the growing pit of despair at the pit of his stomach.

Even as he relaxed, he still shifted in his seat anxiously; eager to see the end of the curse, be rid of his past once and for all.
But, he moved his plays with his little finger to encapsulate all of Tilly's hand, like a hungering, or perhaps dying, spider it closed around hers.
"A year..? Two.. .Maybe three. Only--" He paused, taking a quick breath, enough preface to warn Tilly that what he was about to say was rather... difficult. If not for him, then for his dearest.
"--Florence..." He dragged the word out awkwardly, quickly giving a squeeze to Tilly's hand. Looking to her eyes as though to capture her for a few moments as he explained.

"I-it's how I know there's more than just... Our means to spread this curse. It may well be time and proximity alone can let the curse bleed into others." He believed did justice to the damning sentence he'd spake.

Easing again, he rubbed his thumb along Tilly's knuckles.
"She's been helping undo this curse. The only reason I'd thought it even possible, really;"
It was doubly damning, perhaps irreversibly, how he spoke with barely contained affection come the end of his words.

"It's why I'm not frightened by it, in truth. Already we've taken strides in understanding just what the curse does; I'm to see a mystic on the morrow, 'fore the expedition, hopefully, who'll aide us in understanding the curse even more."
He pressed some rationale, and gave one last squeeze to Tilly's hand; like the knells of a bell, and loosened his grip. Enough for her to slip away, if she'd any desire to.

The Ex-Lord chewed his lip thoughtfully; for a moment, his lover's gaze faded and a more contemplative, estudious nature overtook him. His eyes averting to her hand, as he furrowed his brows in due thought.
"I've no doubt more vile plays are in the works. Yet..." His free hand rose to stroke an edge of the amulet at his breast.
"... T'is only my thoughts, and paranoia. In truth, I feel kindness and intimacy when I see it; its never run me through like you'd said, but I've had it warm my veins on cold nights, and keep me focused, alive in fights.
If not for its presence; I'd be paste on the cobblestones on my first day. I'm sure of it."

Another humming sigh, and he shook his head,
"Perhaps its some spell... But you'd think it would abate any desire at all to remove it. Yet I've the desire true, and a sense of loss all the same."
His hand tapped on his amulet, before quirking his lips, and looking back to Tilly's mossy eyes. His other hand drifting down to lay atop his other.
"It may not be benevolent, but I don't think it malicious neither. Like... a leech, or perhaps--" He chuckled and shrugged,
"--Perhaps like vampires may suck blood."

//

[Kidney]

It was the small hands of Mercy that suddenly began to grip across the sides and abdomen of Grace, her hair in disarray. Her words came out in warbled babbles, groggy sentences slurring out. None of these sentences made any sense to anyone around, but the grumbles of her small stomach and the pats of her small hands very obviously showed her want for something.

[Outisakanobody]

Grace was roused from her long stupor by her young charge stirring in the bed. "Oooh poor girl, are you hungry?" she coos, picking the child up to look her over.

[Kidney]

Grace's eyes fluttered open, her hand waving in the air as she mumbled to herself again. She nodded at the question of hungriness, her legs lightly kicking the air as Grace held her and checked her.

[Outisakanobody]

Grace smiled at the girl and hugged her close. "Do not fret, dear, I will get you something to eat. Let us go." she says, getting out of bed while easily carrying the girl. She left her musty room and started heading to the abbey kitchen.

[Kidney]

Mercy's little limbs clung to her tall companion, her eyes wandering to the various nuns and monks. Her face was mesmerized, as was her mind as it was focused on the new environments she was being dragged into. Her eyes opened as wide as they could for the kitchen, the entire place a big metal and stone deathtrap for a girl her age.

[Outisakanobody]

Grace thought it was rather adorable to see the girl looking around with wide eyes. She patted her head and nuzzled her gently as they walked into the kitchen together.

[Kidney]

Grace was being friendly! Mercy's wide eyes now turned to her at this moment, her hands holding onto Grace's face as she nuzzled her. She giggled, enjoying the warmth she now felt.

[Outisakanobody]

Grace also giggled at the girl grabbing at her face. She did try to look around to see what there was to eat around here. Eyeing some apples, she wondered if the small girl would be able to eat a whole one, or if she should cut it up. She quietly thought about this as she walked over to the bushel.

[Kidney]

Mercy quietly pouted as Grace's face left her hands, but soon her eyes wandered to the apples. She had seen them, but sadly her lips had never touched an apple of any kind. Her arms extended to reach for an apple, fervent curiosity awakening.