The Abbey

[Outisakanobody]

Grace smiled at the girl's enthusiasm. She carefully reached down to grab an apple and hand it to Mercy.

[Vanitypirate]

Tilly watched his eyes, those embers, as she had called them, and she vaguely felt her hand enveloped by his like a plume of smoke, if but significantly more welcome, easier on the lungs, and significantly less corrosive...
She was inept, an idiot, around him. He could have told her the most horrendous things about himself, and she would have happily accepted it.
Or it could have been that she was simply tired, but this news of Florence's involvement hardly shook her; that was his bitty, crowly shadow. This was not to say that it was a fact that Tilly appreciated very much, but it was knowledge Tilly had already known.

What was new information, and terribly interesting information at that, was that his curse coincided, at least roughly, with her arrival to this Estate.

"Hmm..."
As she gave a pensive yawn, her eyes flickered open, if only so she could seek a more comfortable position with her back arched across his knees. She even bent her arm behind her head so that it might make a suitable pillow.
The contents, handfuls of coins and the bulge of pocket knives, with their looping hilts, in her pockets pressed against herself and Lekalis. The sensation was unbothersome to Tilly, and so familiar that it nigh brought her a sense of ease. It was more soothing to have full pockets than the alternative...
It did not take very much for her to become comfortable, admittedly.

Her gold hair fanned out to one side, her snakesome fingers coaxed the brim of her hat back so that she could look up at him with a gaze that danced about the lines of his face.

"I don't trust it one bit. We've known people like that, you know; the ones who are so sweet and dandy 'til they don't need anything from you anymore. S'why we gave Brenton the boot." She decided, as if she had not already made it clear. "I'll eat my hat before it does anything terribly useful. 'Sides..."

Her fingers abandoned the brim of her hat, which flopped ineffectually over her eyes. This didn't matter so much, as she lazily twirled the hairs groomed to a point on her lover's chin.

"I'd never pinned my daggers in anything but trees and dartboards before I came here, and I survived just fine without some fancy curse. I reckon you were better-suited on your very first day than I was on mine."

She gave another yawn before letting that lazy hand rest, laying it easily across her abdomen.

"Yes, but I think I'd like to come with you to go see this mystic." She spoke easily from the veil of her hat's brim. Her fingers rolled in a wavelike tapping motion before lying still. "'Specially being cursed, too. Think I could get 'im to make cross and pile of what I saw."

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/


He watched a curious light of, while tired, still intensive thought glimmer in Tilly's eyes. Like the sun warming a pond in a dark wood. It was uniquely inspiring, reassuring... to see his woes and madness taken and considered so kindly and easily. Someone to listen, at last.
For all the grim and dark of the situation, he found himself ever reassured and... despite himself, found a content smile spreading his lips as she lay across his lap; his own hands raising for a moment to let her go without pinning him.

And so she spoke then, and he listened; with his hands idly going to caress her belly, tracing the line of her buttoned shirt to her ribs, then feeling those bones with flesh no doubt fasted many a days now and prior. He felt himself involuntarily flinch as some of those jarring angles of daggers, lockpicks, and coins pushed up against his thighs and stomach; the ribs and meat of a far more gluttenous creature, feasting on gold, and never sated.

He nodded, she'd a point... such was the whim of many decievers to put on a kind and warm face, only to be constructing a guillotine from the trust you give. It was a practice he was far too familiar with, he knew the intricacies and trust he gave to his amulet were damning.
Though, it could easily be said that the same kindness and trust was now growing between himself and Tilly.

Yet, she'd a point quick again after the first: he'd no need of the amulet before now but...
"... I don't know if I'd be here without it: the... The voices of My War still echo in my dreams." He explained, raising his caressing hand to snap the words into existence like fire.
"When... I'm alone, when I dream: I only see fires in the woody brush of a forest. Men, women... Children and the elderly all stuck upon pikes like fish." He frowned, he felt...
"... I feel nothing when I see it. Neither anger, or remorse, or pity, or sorrow; nothing stirs when I see these memories." His brow furrowed, and his hand began to pull itself to his amulet.
"Though, when I hold my amulet... I feel again; I feel the warmth, the shame, the assurance it was worth the price..."

//

[Vanitypirate]

There was a dreamy, sleepy echo of a smile on her slips, and she gave a small, ticklish twitch as his fingers traced on up to her ribs-- the normally dormant reflex was amplified by her hat-sourced blindness. But she still remained slinksome in that lazy, drowsy way. Even her fingers had ceased their tap-tapping as she toed the line of sleep, half-heartedly resisting the urge to step over the threshold.
It helped, somewhat, to remember that this night would be the beginning of a change. So long had she fought sleep, and the nightmares that inevitably entailed.
Perhaps this was the blessing of such a curse: one nightmare replaced by another.

The anticipation, ironically enough, was what kept sleep at bay.

"Maybe you're s'posed to grow numb to it...?" She suggested, as if it were some easy option, from behind the brim of her hat. "If you keep holding onto those... feelings and such, you bend easier. S'too heavy, carrying what hurt you then and what's hurting you now. Makes people snap. It's better to let it go."

She snapped her fingers softly for emphasis.

"And, besides... nobody's taking away your amulet. We're just getting ourselves cured and the like." Such talk, curses, spoken so haphazardly. To gaze into the unknowable without gazing too hard was a skill Tilly had learned to perfect throughout her time at this Hamlet.
Her hand rose and made to cup her hand over his, atop the base of the amulet.

"I'd hope you know that I'll be there with you to make you feel warm and assured-- and... I suppose ashamed, too, if it helps."

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

"Seems awfully damning don't it though? Feeling... Nothin' for all those people killed, all those sacrifices and here I sit; not feeling a damned thing."
He sighed, if there was any frustration, it was rather plainly and as explained: absent. Truly an absence of anything but perhaps a slight furrowing of his brows, though, only as the thought passed.

Lekalis looked down to Tilly, keeping a straight back... Though he sighed again, into a smile as he nodded and found the woman so promiscuously lain atop his legs ever more enticing with every breath she took, and word she spoke. Though, her jutting nose, like a carrot so silhouetted against the brim of her cap gave his romantic thoughts pause to the comedy of its length. He stiffled a chuckle before looking to her hand, subtly surprised at its arrival.

Warmth bled into him like a stone from a fire; no sharp heat that seemed to spread like waters gushing forth from a vein. Rather, a sooth: a home's hearth, a campfire amidst friends... A lover's beating heart.
His smile warmed and he curled his fingers between Tilly's own, while stooping down and over her as his hand continued to meander about her ribs; finding her sternum again, before raking slowly up to her collar.
Their cojoined hands he brought up above her head as he did so.

"You're right... the amulet will stay... The curse will part; and we'll be together through it all." He nodded, his nose brushing against her carrot of one, he pursed his lips and gave it a light kiss, before moving down to her jaw. He spoke quietly, intimacy abound as he watched the artery in her neck pulse;
"... Though, the morrow... The Mystic; you needn't come. It may prove to be all but a farce, if the man's not worth his merit."

//

[Kidney]

The apple, being the size it was, was not eaten or bitten into at the moment. Instead, Mercy rubbed her hands over it, mesmerized by it's color and size compared to her not-so-plump body.

[Vanitypirate]

"What's so bad about that? About not feeling anything... the dead don't complain very much, y'know. They're terribly tolerant. It's why I took to robbing them." Tilly murmured, lax against his legs. She kept her eyes closed behind her hat, which served almost by design as some sort of rudimentary sleepmask.
"You don't make them more alive by suffering for them. It's something I had to learn, too..."

Her pulse was slow, in tune with the sleepsome beat of her heart, a wave that frothed gently at a shoreline. Her hand held onto his, pinned just behind her head, and it did not squirm.

Her words came strong and clear, then, lucid in their determination just on the brink of sleep. Raising her brows behind the band of her hat, she said with conviction to Lekalis,

"It's my sodding curse, too. I want to see the Mystic with you."

[Outisakanobody]

Grace hummed slightly as she saw and felt that Mercy might be a bit underweight, and resolved to fix that. "Eat up, dear. They are good for you." she encourages gently.

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

He sighed, or perhaps yawned, before shutting his mouth to stiffle it; turning it into a long winded inhale along her neck, letting it out contentedly... He wondered if he'd ever felt so keen and happy to have someone along as he was now, with Tilly.

Narry from his old Jolly fellows or his present companions of Lavinia, Florence even... Had he ever felt so sure to share this fate and its reprecussions and its inevitable conclusion. Though, still, she'd been the only one he'd ever truly abandoned, back on that venture.
He was sure that was the last he'd ever let it happen; that they'd ever diverge a path without being at eachother' side.

"Aye... 'Suppose you might be right in that." He sighed, nuzzling into her neck as his hand around her collar thumbed her neck, then drew down to the buttons of her shirt and eased one out, then another. His brow pushed up against hers, invading the small alcove her hat's brim gave, glancing to her occasionally as he went on past the fourth button.

"That settles it then--" He started, harumphing as he slid his fingers into her shirt and around her back; pulling her close as he settled into the bed beside her. Breast to breast, he gave her a quick goodnight's kiss before closing his own eyes.
"-- We'll go it together?" One eye winked open as he pulled their hands, seemingly locked for eternity, between them now.

//

[Vanitypirate]

It seemed that fate's winds had picked up a different direction.

Where was she a week prior to now?

'Beaten' was the answer, in all respects. A traipse through the woods, a secret message: she had inadvertently founded a religion, even if no one bought it so much as to claim it for their own. She'd been momentarily airborne; she had fended an old friend against a crossbow-wielding brute and defended a stranger against a robbery at knifepoint. She'd found fellows who weren't like to excise her jugular. She was getting married. She'd found love so genuine it shook her.

And yet, in doing this, she had left a trail of damnation in her wake. Roderick had found his undoing by her hand. Ariana was gone. She was losing Grace, and she certainly had already lost Courcy. And of Edgar? She had established herself as a beacon of kindness to the boy in chains, only to condemn him when he opened his mouth for what veritably sounded like the first time in ages.
She was bringing a child into a world that Tilly was unsure would truly foster it. A deep, nauseous dread shook her: this child would share her curse, too, if sheer proximity was cause for contagion.
Perhaps it was too ambitious to fret over the world's capability for one more little one-- it was more imperative that she fret over her own ability to bring one up.

"Together, then." She breathed and pulled him closer, as if afraid of literally drifting away, pinning their hands between themselves.
Then she'd let sleep wash over her. She willed it so.

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

Indeed, at times, Lekalis wondered whether Fate was truly some whimsical wind, or a string pulled by a hand unseen.

Yet... Times like now, were reassurances that the only hands that mattered were his and his Only. To hold eachother in the coming night, as he held her closer; unsure if it was her cap or nose that jabbed into his shoulder.

With their hands they'd not be pulled along by winds or strings, they'd claw and pull themselves along their belly through the world's woes.
A child or no, they'd make it. They had to... Yet the prospect lingered on him, that of a child of his own seed. Something he'd thought impossible by the largest margin, he pondered if there were any other children he'd sired unintentionally; it was a thought best left unanswered, as what he'd felt with Tilly was truly individual among the rest.

His hand traced the lines of her back, feeling a winding, burning, porous scar that wound around and round. Eventually, he pulled his hand away to feel her belly, the womb further down. Warmth... So stewed and set in the belly, it still surprised him.

Time in the Hamlet seemed to pass at both a crawl and lightning's glance; just a week ago he had been sharing words with Florence, in some dingy forest, worried for their life after barely escaping the barbarous Fenrik. Then they'd conversed, relaxed...

... Then he found Tilly, apologized and sought to make amends with she and Courcy both; only to find himself opposed with the Barbarian again. Yet, this time, he and Tilly faced him down together: found a bond he hadn't realized until now. That delicate strand he'd played at some years before, plucking at it like a chord of a harp as he kissed and teased her ankle, truly bloomed to a flower he'd never known.

Yet it fed itself upon bloodshed and gloom, he cared not to remember it at all; like corpses, memories were indifferent... If they did naught but bring ill tides, why should he bother?

For once... Sleep came easily. With a warm beating heart next to his, the blood in him flowed with desirous chorus as he felt himself curl about his Lover's frame, as his mind too spun unto itself like a whirlpool to slumber.

[//sleep.exe]

--

Their dreams were one in kind; both found amidst a raging storm of red and ruin with distant lightning cracking the sky with piercing lights of white and green.

Both were aboard a boat in a sea's ocean of such deep red it was black like ink. Faces curled and contorted behind them, screaming, wailing and clawing at the two's escort:

A boat made of five sides... A casket, they might realize; whose wood was marbled in black and red. They lay so intertwined yet knew they were one of different minds.

There was no end to the ocean and the storm, as harpies, banshees sailed across the sky in ephemeral shades of red and glints of green.

Something quickly thundered against the hull of the casket, and they knew there was yet more to come: but a hard knocking pounded harder and harder, until reality ripped the vision of the Red Storm asunder and their cell lay bare before them...

... The night's bluish shade still kept the room dark, though it was lighter than it was when they went to slumber. There was a knocking at the door, and a shuffle of chains against metal, against nettle cloth and scrubbed skin.

--

/Lekalis/

He awoke with hardly a sound, opening his eyes to see Tilly's face and brow; as it was in the dream, he took a breath, squeezing his eyes shut, before opening them again and swiftly rising. He figured Tilly wouldn't mind as he heard the knocking, going so far as to hastily button up her shirt to cover her decently as he now knelt on the bed and over her leftmost knee.

"Seems we've... We've company..?" He spoke drowsily, clearing his throat as he rubbed the growing hairs on his chin and sneered at the door, squinting his eyes into a fine line that relaxed as he scooted off the bed and rose with a groan...

//

[Vanitypirate]

Tilly did not wake with a start, but slowly and gradually, rising bleary-eyed with a slow and sharp inhale. She squinted, as if puzzled by this mundane world, and made out Lekalis's face and his hands, tending to the buttons on her shirt. Her eyes watched his own ember-like ones in the dark.
"...Huh."

She rubbed an eye and rolled over, slipping her bare feet into the boots left beside the bed in an easy, singular motion.

"I'll go an' get it." She decided on a whim, standing up in her unlaced boots after deciding that the effort of readying them was more than it was to simply walk with more heed to her steps.
The mouth of the boots sagged at her shin as she tilted her hat upright and opened the door...

[Bloodtrailkiller]

/Lekalis/

He winced as she rose and seemed to apparate at the door sooner than he'd realized; his eyes widened as he groggily stumbled to the wall to hide himself. To what end? It was largely reflexive, to be true, as he doubly plucked up his cloak and spun it about his shoulders to rest and bind it about them.

The Ex-Lord made to retort, though, with the door quickly opening, he held his tongue and found a seat in the chair at the table; more or less out of frame from whoever it was that stood at the door.
He couldn't help but rub his palm against his temple in some measure of frustration and fret as he watched Tilly's bony, slowly rising frame bumble out of bed like some drunk mouse.

//

/Quiet Monk/

Before Tilly stood a boy, scarce ten and five, holding up a sword by its crossguard; blade pointed to the floor. A chain of brass dangled from one hand and idly clattered against the sword in his attempt to hold the weapon up in his admittedly wimpish arms.

The sword was polished, and sharpened; yet the wear and tear of the Darkest Dungeon's terrors and woes were all but apparent and signature to the sword.
It was Roderick's...

There was no words or ceremony spoken; whether due to the boy's timidness or some physical malady, neither were apparent as he held the sword higher now, for Tilly to take...

//

[Kidney]

Mercy's small mouth opened, her tiny teeth sinking into the flesh of the apple. To her, it's sweetness was something she had never experienced in her life. Her hands pressed against it, holding it's form as she chewed for minutes. She swallowed, her eyes searching Grace's face, looking for incentive to do something.

[Vanitypirate]

Tilly blinked a few times and stared. The hand that rubbed the corner of her eye halted, and paused, before sinking to her side. She was quiet a moment.

"Oh..."

It was a small utterance that shattered the silence. Her fingers squirmed at her sides, as if to coax the blood to a more wakeful pace-- with her heart caught in her throat, it would certainly use all of the coaxing it could get, being given that sword so early in the morning.
That sword...

The blade was unmistakable. She'd seen it with waning vision, watched it avenge what could have been her bayonet-lead death had she been more unlucky (although one could argue that it would have been more lucky to not have been stabbed at all) that day.
It'd cut into men and beasts alike, but the last target it'd been set to destroy was Lekalis.

And it was hers now.

It was warm in her hands, wider than her arms, and frightfully heavy. She could smell it: the acrid tang of liquid meat, a mask just barely strapped onto a sloughing face. She'd stood in his blood. His death rattle called her to slay the evil downstream in that crypt, to take up his sword.
And she did, partways, but incompletely. It was the first time she'd held a sword.

She caught her breath and held the longsword. This one was equally as heavy. It weighed her arms down.

"...Thank you." She said, meek in the face of it. She looked down to the metal with some intent to let the hat veil her eyes, a temporary repose.