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Post by rosallora on Jul 9, 2020 15:45:56 GMT -8
[Toustain]
She doesn't know how to resist him, so she doesn't. She's blindsided by his words, his immediate concern, the way he gets an arm around her and starts directing her, supporting the side of her that was weakened. She wants to yell, to jerk away from him, but it was just so quick. She ends up looking to Harold, saying "Light be with you" back, and it's all the distraction Volundr needs to pull her around to the back of the forge.
She is sat. It feels good to take the pressure off of her leg, she can't help but feel relief. Then panic settled in, cold and clear. He wants - what. Her feelings? Her truth? A confession?
"I confessed in the penance hall," she says, trying to make her voice sound angry, acrid. Sting him, push him away. "I made it all known to the Goddess, my sins are cleared. I don't need to confess to you."
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Post by EloHim on Jul 10, 2020 11:12:52 GMT -8
[Volundr]
"And yet you still don't feel at ease, do you? That pain is still there, and it cannot be warded away with a confession to those that do not answer. Not that kind of pain. I know that pain. Know what it can do to a person.” - he looks at her quizzically as it is hard for him to get into the mindset of a priestess right now. But then it became simple. Of course she didn't know about any of that stuff. What do you fucking expect from a child taken away from parents at a young age, placed in a monastery filled to the brim with cloistered nuns and books filled with a bunch of high-moral bullshit and too little in terms of life lessons?
“It's not a sin, stjarna, it's a natural, human reaction, one you can never pray away, one you will never be above of. He became part of your life. And then you lost that part of your life. And every day from this point onwards you would see empty spaces where he once was. Sometimes it would even seem as though you hear his voice. He would come to you in your dreams and memories. It is just something you have to live with until that wound closes itself with time.”
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Post by rosallora on Jul 10, 2020 11:21:33 GMT -8
[Toustain]
"Don't call me that," she tries, and it sends such a pang through her heart. Sweet names and kind gestures. All things she does, all the things she wasn't supposed to do. "I'm just a vestal, just call me Sister. And if I was better at being a sister, it wouldn't feel this way. I'm suffering - I'm suffering because I'm no good at this. Because I sinned, because I let him into my life, because I let people into my life. Like you, even like Grace-" her voice catches, and she stutters a breath, her hand clutching to her robe. "It's everyone. It's everyone and I can't... I can't let this happen. I can't go against my vows, I have to be better... I thought I was being good when I did this. When I talked with you, when I helped Roard, when I assisted Grace or spoke with Andy, but it can't be. It can't be virtuous if it feels like this." She wishes she could rip her heart from her chest. "If it was virtuous then it wouldn't... it wouldn't feel..." she wipes a fist across her eyes, a motion that feels practiced, terrible. Her face feels so raw from the crying she's done.
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Post by EloHim on Jul 10, 2020 11:47:00 GMT -8
[Volundr]
He kicks back on his seat. This was so much worse than what he became. That mirror in the past was too twisted and contorted to resemble him. He almost wanted to just scream at her, tell her to go away. But he still wants to get through to her. He knows she is in a vulnerable place right now and she needs help...but this was something even more fucked up than what he did.
"If you wouldn't feel...Sister"- he makes an accent on that word, to see how she likes it.-“That means you're not human. Regardless of whatever your vows tell you to do. More than that, if you wouldn't feel... It would mean that Roard didn't matter to you. Wouldnt it? Is that what you're saying? That to you, Sister, we shouldnt matter at all? That when Grace dies you wouldn't weep for her, like you would mourn a loss of a sister? When Andy keels over, would you just ignore that and move on? Does being virtuous mean that you are forbidden to care? Forbidden to love someone not like a woman would love a man...but like you would love a brother...or a father, sister...mother? Or is that for some twisted fucked up reason is all the same to you?!"
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Post by rosallora on Jul 10, 2020 11:59:29 GMT -8
[Toustain]
Each hypothetical hits her in the chest, a barrage of arrows that asks for her defense. But she has none, and they impact, the visions of things to come slamming into her one by one. Blood. Death. More pain, compounding, striking in seven different ways, lashing over her heart. Her tongue is heavy in her mouth, an animal unto itself, and she has to navigate her words around it. "I thought it was different," she says, mouth trembling. The tears come, thick and hot and terrible. "I want-" she chokes on her breath, coughs. Her throat is raw, her face is raw. She is an open wound of a woman, bleeding on the stool, her visceral mess coming into the world with the sound of her cracked lips. "I don't... I don't want to feel this way..." Her hand clutches over her heart.
She doesn't sound Holy. This is not the voice of the Divine.
Toustain presses her forearms to her face and wordlessly wails into blue fabric, grief overcoming her.
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Post by EloHim on Jul 10, 2020 14:26:01 GMT -8
[Volundr]
He rises from his stool, walks over to her, kneels before her and gives her a big long hug. That's all the comfort he could think of at this very moment.
"Well...no one wants to feel this way, stjarna. No one ever does."- his face, his voice... all of it sad as he says those words. He holds her as she cries her heart out...
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Post by rosallora on Jul 10, 2020 15:03:23 GMT -8
[Toustain]
The way it happened - him from below, reaching up to her, holding her.
Roard had knelt. He'd taken her hand and promised himself to her service. That she was somehow a Lady, despite everything, despite her station and her looks and her lack of titles, or land. He had been so serious and so sincere. He had lowered himself, he had promised...
And she. She let him die. All of it, unfulfilled. A story, untold.
And Volundr wraps his arms around her, surrounding her with his warmth and strength. She wishes... she wants. Her head rests against his shoulder, hands and arms trapped within his embrace. She howls a sob, then presses against him, uncaring of bare skin and soot that she turned into black tracks on him with tears. Her breathing is uneven, barely able to push the words through her mouth."Why won't S-She help me," she shudders. "Why won't She m-make this... go away..."
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Post by Kidney on Jul 10, 2020 20:11:03 GMT -8
Under the cover of Night came a man with a crooked face, and a crooked walk. The man's nose was bent, and his morals there too, a hand on a sword at his hip, and his eyes askew. They, presently, stared to the stained windows above the main door, and to where possibly Dane could spy an Heir, whoever he may be, looking down to him. He did not spy him, unfortunately, and instead spied two guards by his imperial doors. A shame, truly, for a man to coop up in his home. So unavoidable, so tedious.
"Citizens." He offered, finally, measured and callous, to the gentlemen in question, dark facial expression on his head, unmoving, yet dynamic. His eyes assessed the two of them down to the amount of rivets on their breastplates. Surely, Dane could take these two, if speech did not grant him quick access. "I need to speak to the Heir." He said, alone in its presentation, no context added to the bloody flyer or the severed hand in his...hand. "He offers work, that of which I need. Krosis, for the time of my arrival, but I work better under cover of darkness."
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Post by rosallora on Jul 10, 2020 21:29:37 GMT -8
[Guards]
Nathaniel looked to his companion for some sign that he had an opinion on the matter of the newcomer. The other, Haran, wore his hair in a long beard that obscured his expression near completely. It was useless to try and get a read off of him, much less so in the middle of the night. Nathaniel turned his eyes back to the man, with his bloody scrap of cloth and air of general indignation.
He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, Haran pipes up, his voice gruff. "It's the middle of the damn night, don't you think the man might be sleepin'?"
Nathaniel shuts his trap so fast his teeth click together. He nods.
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Post by black379 on Jul 11, 2020 6:39:33 GMT -8
[Andy] "No... from a crossbow bolt. An act of mercy. To hear the vestal tell of it, the sickness had come on and progressed in a matter of days." They nod carelessly and turn, walking through the door to wait in the street. [To Miscellaneous Buildings]
"Ah." He knew too well this sort of mercy. Cutting short a life, if it was only to be suffered through. He wished there was another way. Talea spoke of spirits and souls, warned him against taking matters of life and death into his own hands. Audrey, his once cherished student, was a shell of her former self after he gave her such "mercy" and desperately grasped to save her beyond death.
The doctor shook his head, flustered as he followed Andy. A disease that claimed its victim in a handful of days was concerning, though unsurprising to hear of in this wretched town. He only hoped burning the body would be the end of it.
"I should like to speak to this vestal as well. You were good to find me promptly. My name is Adeney." He added.
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Post by Kidney on Jul 11, 2020 14:29:25 GMT -8
Dane's expression fell into a deep sneer. Exposing yellow teeth, the pulling of the mouth-muscle made it look as if he had almost had his face twisted at birth, with the added trait of the badly broken nose, healed into an askew-water-hydrant shape. He was breathing with his mouth, slightly open with slightly ragged breaths. His patience was wearing thin. What two guards could stand in the way of Law. But, he found this rage misplaced, and evened his tone, reaching to clutch a strap across his chest.
"Then we will chat in his bedchamber."
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Post by rosallora on Jul 11, 2020 14:46:12 GMT -8
[Guards]
Nathaniel looks to Haran. Haran looks to Nathaniel.
Haran eventually pipes up, looking at the half-rabid man. He looked diseased. Like he got colic as a child and never got over it. "Sir we're going to have to ask you not to do that. The Heir's bedchambers are for him and him alone. Or anyone who he likes to invite. Rest assured...." Haran gives him the up-down. "That is certainly not you."
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Post by Kidney on Jul 11, 2020 14:52:41 GMT -8
"Feh." Dane offered, shrugging heavy shoulders before he simply began to walk. A hand and a flyer in hand, towards the doors of The Mansion. He cared very little for these Guards, and would not let them hold them any longer. On the way, he pointed with his nose away from the door. "Zu'u fen dreh daar. It is very important."
He placed a hand to his sword's handle, marched to the door, meaning to push his way on through it, should the guards not intervene.
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Post by rosallora on Jul 11, 2020 15:07:32 GMT -8
[Guards]
Nathaniel puts his hand on Haran's shoulder as the man pushes past, making his way to the door.
"Just let him deal with it," the younger said. The elder shrugs his shoulders, looking back as the bounty hunter made for the door. "He obviously doesn't want to kill him."
Haran frowns slightly, the only indicator of such being the strange dip at the ends of the man's mustache. "Suppose so."
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Post by Kidney on Jul 11, 2020 15:13:45 GMT -8
Dane's face shifted to a small smirk, pushing past the two without much of any other word before he gripped the iron handle of the home, and pushed his way into the foyer. The presentation was not entirely amusing, though Dane stopped to admire what little decoration remained. What was once opulent seemed...squalid, and Dane 'Feh'd at its meager selection of chandelier and painting. His next point of action was to adjust several straps on his body, and make sure his sword was securely fastened in his sheath. Seeing that these items were in order, Dane pressed a finger to his face, dragging it across. The shift pulled Dane's nose a little, and a sputtering breath was pulled through it, Dane closing his eyes to savor it.
He began to walk up the stairs, whistling his way up them, and through the halls, eventually falling on several doors, each of which he looked upon with dark, hungry eyes. The blood dripped from the several digits in his hand, and as he finally admired the door to The Heir's room, he smiled.
He gave one...two...three knocks. Heavy and meaningful.
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