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It's All Smoke and Mirrors.
Posted: 19 May 2006 08:40 PM |
((I hate it when RL things mean I have to log off in the middle of events and RP. It happens a lot, so I've tried to learn to make do. Yet sometimes - most times - it means I'm stuck somewhere... unexpected. And dramatic! You can tell because of all of the '...' I use.))
The story begins...
"Pear juice. Rations. Half-bottle of rum. Camp fire gear. Bat heart... oh, ew! I still have this thing? Gross. At least its dried out...
"Okay, um. *sighs* Sweet goddess, it's hot."
Karlina's gear lay in organized piles in a semi-circle before her knees, settled into the sands of the desert with silent patience. Briefly reminded of her girlhood tea-parties with her dolls, Karli's mouth salivates as memories bring to life the ghosts of cookies upon her dry tongue.
"I'd kill for a plate of those jelly-centered ones Cook made every Farmer's Day. This is what I get for trying to follow orcs into war," Karli pouts, kicking up a small dust-plume as she resettles herself in the waning shade of the cliffs. The small nook wasn't much cover, but then again it was the only cover available. Stingers lurked in every other available bit of shade while their brothers and sisters infested all of the sunny places as well.
As a fighter, Karli made a fantastic coward. Fighting led to being sweaty, and nothing screamed "Socially awkward" like sweaty pits. Except maybe food stains on lace lapels, but since she was in leather at the moment, she wasn't so concerned about that one. Of course, it was blood-stained leather, now, and didn't that just make Vilyave weep? Especially since it was Karli's blood. Seeing the blood as she repacked her travel duffle, reminded once more of the possibility of scarring, Karli's eyes began to sting once more with tears.
No! No crying! All I've got left is my unerring sense of properly applied cosmetics, and if I lose that, then there is no hope. With mascara, all things are possible!
So emboldened, Karli sets her back once against the layered sandstone cliffface, and pulls out her small travel mirror. Her reflection comforted her. A thing of beauty is a joy forever, or that's what her father always used to say. Of course, he would always say that in reference to whatever lady-of-means caught his attention that particular month. Still, it seemed mostly true, and that was usually the best anyone could ask for.Beautiful things soothe even the roughest, most frayed nerves. Didn't Beauty move the Beast to love? Didn't fair princesses inspire knights to quests of valor? Absolutely! A mirror is a girl's best friend in times of trouble. Sure, she was dusty and there was some crusted bllll... blluhh.. blooo-huuuh...*pauses* ... red vital liquid on her collar, but her hair was still coifed in lovely (if somewhat frizzy) curls and yes, her lips still bore the traces of her ensemble-coordinated-colored lip paint. Yes, all was still well. All was still in order. The universe could continue it's spin about her raven-haired head without worry.
"Karli, girl," said her reflection. "You have some judgement problems. Let's review the day and try to figure out where we went wrong, alright?"
"Alright," Karlina replied, because she was always right and it paid to listen to beautiful people. Beautiful people make the world better, so what they have to say always, always counts for something.
"We woke up this morning...where?"
"In the royal bottanical gardens, which really wasn't so bad because at least it wasn't totally public in that particular spot -way- unlike that alcove where Dante did what he did!"
"Oh, of course! I totally agree and we are so never going to give it up to him are you, 'because what he did was stealing and stealing is wrong, except when I need something really, really badly, right?"
"You are -so- right, Karli."
"Thank you, Karli!"
"No problem! OKay, so what did we do after we woke up?"
"We bathed in the fountain, which was nice except for being so cold but at least there was money in there! You know, we're going to ahve to do that more regularly, I mean, what's better than bathing in money except bathing in rose-oil drizzled champagne."
"That was the best birthday ever."
"Yeah. I really miss Lucia-mom."
A commiserate sigh of agreement emitted from the painted, kiss-luscious lips. "After the bath, there was the usual fruitless visit to the docks, then the trip out of town, then the visit to Buckshire and then there was the flour - oh! You know? Maybe that's where I went wrong!"
"Oooh, you're right! I mean, manual labor? And that dwarf only paid out fifty gold! I mean, we had to carry that stuff for -ever- and for, like, miles and miles and it was -heavy-!"
"I am never doing that again."
"Me, either. I mean, Dante gave us more just to apologize for being a jerk. Not that I am at all or in any way saying that I'm glad that happened. I mean, the nerve of him!"
"No kidding, but let's not think about him any more. OKay, so there was the flour, then the hill, then the centaurs, then the swamp, then the giant frogs and then there were those horrible little fairie things that tried to break my ankles with tangle-vines!"
"Oh, you are -so- not kidding! I almost lost my best Aramani-rip-off bargain-sale boots!"
"At least the fireworks were wonderful!"
"Weren't they just? For fifty gold, they ought to be! What am I gonna do?" Her reflection shrugged, and Karli felt the cool-chill of relaity settle vulture like upon her shoulders, and even a second coat of high-gloss lip moisterizer was powerless against the oppression of poverty.
Maybe I should write home to daddy...
No! You remember what he said! You remember his words when he kicked you out! You can prove him wrong, Karli girl! You can!
It'd sure be a lot easier with a little something to take off the edge, though.
Back to the task at hand.
"You know, I think all of this is just what comes of being too talented for my own good." It was an ever present problem. Being this beautiful, this well-voiced and this inspired toward musical greatness was a burden, though Karlina did her best to shoulder the responsibility with good grace. Strength was needed in order to dole out such god-given gifts to an unworthy public, and Karlin's charitable kindness about sharing herself with the world kept her warm at night.
It didn't, however, keep Stingers at bay. They, being gross-dirty-crusted-poisonous-monsters, had no appreciation for good music. They probably enjoyed polka, and Karlina had standards.
With a small sigh, Karli put her mirror away. It was getting dark, and she could only just make out the glimmer of her eye color (a daring yet subtle shade of aquamarine). The bedrool was uncomfortable, but it didn't have holes in it or fleas tucked into the corners. Never let it be said that she was finicky or fussy about her standard of living.
Of course, when she got back to civilization, the first narcotics dealer she found would find himself the recipient of a great deal of... well a good deal of...
... some money.
"It'll be better once this is all Fixed. That's all I need. Just a quick Fix and I'll be back on track. Just a little something. Not a lot. And then we're off it for good. People look up to me. I have my fans to think about. My fans... "
Karlina falls asleep to the hush of wind across the sand and the skittering of scorpion feet. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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Re: A Beautiful Mind is a Terrible Thing to, um... Something.
Posted: 20 May 2006 07:43 PM |
((The best stories come out of the unexpected. In this case, what begins as a real-life enforced log-out spirals ever-downward into a domino-effect of bad timing, poor judgement and pre-scripted NPC's. It's beautiful tragedies like this that prevent me from playing evil characters, most of the time: I don't need to torment my poor avatar. The server will do it for me. Enjoy!))
Port Royal.
The queen’s herald passes by without the music shop, pronouncing the hour to an uncaring public. Johanne stood nearby, but his attention was to the violin upon his lap and the customer invoice tacked to the wall. Karli stood with the other minstrel in his shop, and for the life of her, Karli could not remember her name.
She’d introduced herself an hour ago, this vibrant bird of purple and blue, but surrounded by music, Karli hadn’t honestly heard. It seemed a minor point, anyway. Names were usually never very indicative of the person they labeled. That was the whole point of a stage name.
Goodfellow. It was a very solid, comforting name. Simple, easy to remember, and it had a nice sound. It was a name for a celebrity.
“Are you sure?” Karli was asking her, her attention now on the guitar that was being stretched out before her, held aloft by the hands of the other bard. Karli received a smile and a reassuring nod from her, and the woman’s softly twittery, pleasant voice soon followed.
“Sure! I’m on the dole, so I can afford it.”
Karli cast a skeptical glance toward her coin purse, and knew the truth. Still. It was a guitar. And it was being offered freely. Not accepting it would be insulting, to her and to Fate and to Her.
“You have a patron?” she instead asked, looking up from the guitar being pulled away, away and away once more.
Tthe Sister looked suddenly sly and smiles so sweetly..
“Yep! And you know what?” came the giggling, proud response. Karli could only smile to hear it, this beautiful thing before her as pleasing as the gift.
“What?”
“She doesn’t like you.” She continued to smile as she thrust the guitar forward, the long neck now a spear that pushed into Karli's belly, piercing the flesh to pass through the vital innards and emerge in fire though her lower spine.
She grunts as she curls upward, hands flying to her belly. She’s unsurprised to feel the protruding tail, it’s hooked stinger already convulsing, pumping its toxins into her guts. Her blue eyes fixed and focused, and the insectile, humanoid face sneered at her as it chattered hate. Two more of its fellow surrounded her, lifting swords to strike and hands to cast. Karli felt her insides already going cold and still as the Stinger’s tail withdrew, dripping limp and triumphant as a rapist as she jerks to her panicked feet.
A sword slices through the backs of her knees, forcing her once more prostrate before them as suddenly she is wracked with magical, accursed pain. Dimly she hears wood splinter as they trample her belongings, and her body is cut, cut, cut. The only mercy comes as the poison and pain finally takes hold of her heart and the world becomes only tumbling, black relief.
No time passes and she is waking in warm, soft comfort, surrounded by color and silken luxury. Stunned, it’s nearly a full two seconds before the pain returns, slamming upon her with a hammer force of reawakening. Memory of each cut and impaling bloomed eagerly to bring context to the sensations. Someone was speaking to her, a kind, low voice of placation but the words were nonsense. Frantic eyes searched for the source as she tried to scream, tried to beg, but could say nothing. Slowly he faded into focus and his words began to congeal into understandable, bite-sized pieces.
“You are injured. Will you let me tend to you?” A gentle hand upon her body, and earnest, calm eyes holding her still with their stare. The head looming over her was shorn, save for a top-knot, and simple, dark robes covered the body.
Yes! Yes, it hurts so much, it hurts and it’s not fair please fix this fix this fix fix fix...
She must have said something, or nodded, because the man was soon mixing a poultice, laying out bandages and stems of pungent herbs. His hands moved over her body, cleaning sand from the deep, encrusted wounds. She’d beens tripped, her bloody leathers and rusting chain mail set off to one side as so much garbage, uselessly stupid in the hot desert even when not in such irreparable condition. At last, he tended the cuts on her face, giving balm to the bruises and swollen flesh, lifting her matted, dirty hair to unstick it from the dried lacerations.
“There. Just try to relax, miss.”
“How… how bad is it?” Perhaps her sudden whispering voice surprised him, for he looked up from his components of healing to her face once more. A look of concerned puzzlement brightened his face.
She lifted her fingers to her face once more. “Will it… scar?”
He smiled kindly once more in understanding, and finished packing away his things, preparing to leave her side. “Once they’ve healed, I do not think there will be any trace of the cuts, miss.” His tone reassuring if somewhat impersonal.
Enough relief filled the young bard that she could have wept again, though dehydration had stolen her tears and her voice. Soon, however, anger and humiliation took their place: she was ugly, now, and violated. Karli curled her body over itself to hide, quickly drawing her dirty clothing to herself. Her armor had spared it most of the damage, thankfully, but it was nearly purple with bloodstains. It didn’t matter. Suddenly it was important to cover up as much as she could. Karli pulled the vest over her breasts as quickly as she could, and set out to find her earrings when she realized that something else - something very important - was absent.
"Where... where is it? Where is my guitar?!"
"Miss?"
"My guitar! My guitar! Did you see it?" Karli's voice choked with frantic need, she started to pull her hair without thinking.
"I did not see a guitar with you when you were brought in," the priest returned kindly.
Empty. Cold. Loss.
"Do you know your way to Port Royal? I don't think the life of a desert adventurer is for you," he continued, admonishing in his same impersonal, soothing tone. "You may be more comfortable in the city. A man named Johanne has a music store there, and you should be able to get a replacement."
Karli nodded numbly as she crossed her arms around herself. "I know Johanne," she murmured. "That's where I got my guitar. It was a gift."
The priest nodded his understanding, though Karli doubted he truly could understand waht it meant. It had been a -gift.- A token of equality between beautiful creatures, and an offering of that sort was sacred. Music shared in the name of appreciation and sisterhood - it had no equal compensation. Karli's head fell, chin to collar bone, as her bare feet curled dirty against the woven carpet below.
“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll get some sleep,” she murmured, flushing red and hot in the swelter of the desert tent. The priest made his own excuses, and was gone before Karli found unconsciousness amid silken pillows and nonsensical, foreign babble.
((to be continued…))
((OOC: I apologize that I can't remember the name of the priest who helped Karli. It started with a 'V'. I suck with names and I forgot to write it down! Just let me know who you are, and I'll edit the post accordingly.)) |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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The Problem of Midor, My Door, My Door.
Posted: 26 May 2006 12:45 AM |
((Jumping ahead, ‘cause I gets me an idear an’ I’s just gotta goes wit’ it.))
Orsk was gone. Hours ago, maybe, but time had lost all meaning approximately ten rums ago. The Cutlasses wasn’t the best tavern in Port Royal, but it wasn’t the worst (that honor belonged to the Black Pearl, in Karli’s opinion). Oliver was still bemoaning the loss of pies, and the serving girl continued on her rounds as her voluptuous, used body jiggled ominously. Karlina Goodfellow, soon-to-be-famous actress slash singer slash fashion avante-guarde was drunker than she’d been in her life at a table near the fire place. She’d played with the dog until he’d lost interest, and was now reminiscing on the company of the large orklun who had departed some long while ago.
He was huge and he's old but terribly bold…
Stupid ditty. She’d given him something more worthy when they’d first settled down to one another’s company, but Karli was hanged if she remembered it. Instead what revolved around in her shallow mind was a matter of unfairness.
Nothing bothered Karli like unfairness. To her, unfairness and injustice were fairly much synonymous, and no one personified unfairness like the Vidus, White Bishop of Midor, He’d come up in conversation.. somehow. Orsk had likely brought him to topic because Karli couldn’t remember a time she had ever *voluntarily* thought about the most powerful man on Vives. Rum had been the instigator, perhaps, and the conversation had degenerated into giggles and laughter as they'd traded increasingly creative insults about him.
Settled quietly and contentedly in a near stupor, six hours gone from her life and all she could think about was that glorified, meglomaniacle murdering shite. Fundamentalists were scary, but nothing was scarier than a fundamentalist with power, validated by an actual god actually sitting in an actual temple with actual presence. At least, that’s what he professed and it wasn’t for the likes of Karli to prove otherwise.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Midoran had taken it upon himself to be the One True Light, and that her own goddess was left to swelter in the sidelines. It wasn’t fair that thousands of people were being told what was right and wrong by a man who wouldn’t demean himself by actually communing with those people. It wasn’t fair that the world was bereft of its paladins. The crucifixions and burnings, inquisitions and “purifications”: none of it was fair. One god, one point of view, and honestly, Vidus was just an ugly, ugly man, inside and out. “Justice” was a concept a bit too complex for Karli to appreciate, but “fairness” she understood just fine. Most of life wasn’t fair, she was discovering, and it was people like Vidus that made it so.
Another rum tossed back, and Karli ascended the table, a stairway to the Olympus of her drunken surge of righteousness. Inspiration at the bottom of a bottle was never safe, but safety never moved the world to change. Safety was what you got when you gave your life into the hands of fanatics and fundamentalists… assuming, of course, that you did what they told you to do. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.
The lyre Orsk had given her that day was inadequate. Only a guitar would suffice. Karli kicked her bottle off from the table, and the shatter of glass brought a brief pause to the inhabitants of the Cutlasses. Karli was only too happy to fill that silence with an awkward, half-tuned strumming of introductory chords.
Her voice, however, made up for the skill her fingers yet lacked.
Good people! Come, and listen ye
To what is true but rare bespoke!
What once was righteous, just and free
Has now become some cruel, sick joke…
Ohhhhh!...
They say the True Light
Is happy and bright
And righteousness shines
In these uncertain times
From the throne of the One
Like a glorious sun
O’er yonder in beautiful Midor!
The god has come home
To sit on his throne
To fin’ly make sure
That his people are pure!
So he gave us some nit
Some insufferable tit
O’er yonder in beautiful Midor!
The song changes chords as Karli fails to decide on a permanent rhythm or rhyme scheme, but continues to dance along the table top, playing and grinning, basking in the flood of inspired vitriol that pours through her fingers and voice.
Who thinks that morality comes at a price?
The Bloody Biship of Midor!
That conformity’s virtue and freedom’s a vice?
The Bloody Biship of Midor!
It’s a sin
When you’re into your own thing!
And the gods
Are just clods who defile!
Be it Aros or Gruin
He’ll bring you to ruin!
The Bloooooody Bishop of Midor!
So give thanks to His Grace!
Vive’s a happier place!
(Someone: piss in his face!)
The Bloooooody Bishop… of Miiiiiidorrrrrr!
Karli strums triumphantly, and bows. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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Re: A Beautiful Mind is a Terrible Thing to, um... Something.
Posted: 01 Jun 2006 01:09 AM |
Let’s see, now…
Lucky. Lucius. Um. Ducky? Plucky? Fu-… no, no, no…
Karli giggled with a flush of guilty pleasure, but the thought was brief and uninspiring to say the least. She plucked another morsel from the remains of the dried-out muffin set on her knee before leaning back, once more, against the wall of the Four Winds Inn. Her guitar was awaiting instruction at her breast, but all she could manage were random, melodious strings of input that wandered back upon themselves in endless loops of nonsense. The first part of songwriting was always the most difficult: finding the theme. It was like finding the first marks of a path in the forest, and once seen the rest of the way becomes much more clear.
Karli, unfortunately, was suffering the age-old sickness of all artists. The pressure of –having- to come up with a song was making it impossible to do so. It was worse than having complete freedom. She knew the subject – Lucius, wizard, mop-head and generally whiney, insecure genius – but what was there to sing about him? The temptation to make up some bawdy, hilarious ditty comparing his thorn-shooting staff to the rumored inadequacies of his manhood was difficult to overcome, but…
“…I’m a professional! And this is serious, serious stuff. Get a grip on yourself, girl! They’re counting on you. The future of Midor is at stake!”
The actress slash minstrel slash social musician slash celebrity-in-waiting sighed softly, and sought consolation for her mind block in the one place she could depend on finding some muse of genuine beauty. The source of her deepest worldly passions.
Her pocket mirror.
“Okay, so, well, that doesn’t make much difference,” she quickly reminded herself. “I mean, I’d feel bad about it, and losing that fabulously wonderful, expensive boutique would be totally criminal! But, I mean, let’s face it: Midorans are boring. And creepy.”
Still, it wouldn’t be fair to them, getting enslaved and all. It’s not like it was –their- fault that Vidus had come into power.
Oh, wait. Yes, it was. And it’s not like they were exactly doing anything about it.
“Now, wait, wait! To be fair they do have a god sitting in their midst. I mean, He spoke to you! Remember?”
Karli nodded to herself from the glassy depths of her small mirror. She’d been in Midor for all of three hours before the dock-side thug had accosted her. Jumping out from an alleyway, she’d received a jarring punch to her ribs, barely missing her kidneys. The shock of the filthy pig’s blasphemy was broken by the second punch to the side of her head, and she stumbled in a run toward the alleys of the western district, losing her assailant in the winding labyrinth of the Midoran slums. At first, the red armor of the Righteous Sword she encountered had been welcome, but he’d taken one look at her outfit, her dark hair and her darker, non-Midoran skin and had simply turned away to resume his rounds.
So she’d tried to make do, and in a corner-way, tucked by yet another closed, boarded shop, she’d sung to herself the sweet vibrations of the universe that would heal her wounds and bring relief to her pain.
Unbeliever!
The voice had startled her, but there was no question from whence it came. With a sneer of annoyance, Karli had simply looked toward the temple that dominated the Midoran skyline, and flipped a rude gesture.
“Give me a break, will you? It’s not like your so-called ‘guards’ actually do anything to actually, you know, serve and protect people in your city! Wow, like, you’d think being nice to visitors would rank high on your list for, you know, evangelism but nooo! You gotta give me a hard time! You have some serious issues, you know that?”
There hadn’t been any reply, and Karli was grateful for it, but she’d skulked her way back toward port in a sour mood and had been glad enough to fork over the one-hundred-fifty gold it cost to return to Port Royal. Midor, the beautiful. Midor, the haven of justice and faith. Midor, the seething chamber-pot of hypocrisy.
And so Karli sat, contemplating her importance in the salvation of what good remained of Midor, and the fomenting rebellion. It was a weighty, awe-inspiring burden…
“…but I am so up for it. I mean, who better than me, right?”
“I so agree! But this isn’t helping us get anywhere with the song. You’ve got to get through to him, and since his stomach and his winky-woo are pre-occupied…”
“…ew!...”
“Right, I know, but still! Go for his weak spot.”
Karli sat in thought a bit longer.
“His inability to properly accessorize?”
She had no reply for herself, so Karli only assumed this was incorrect. Still, it was almost right. Something about needing to be complete, like an ensemble. Something about needing to find his wizardliness as only he could properly discover for himself.
“Argh! I’m so close!” Karli pouted to herself from her glass in sympathy.
“Well, you do know one way to unclog that little brain pipe of yours.”
“Hey! You’re right! I think I…where did I put it? It was just in this pock- ah! Pig spit. This is the last one.” The small pink crystal sat tiny and malevolent in the palm of her hand as she mourned its loneliness. The last one, and thus far she’d been unable to find any more in Port Royal. Hemp was great, but it didn’t do the job. Not like this did. Not like The Fix.
Karli closed her palm quickly, realizing suddenly that someone might be watching, and so stood with her guitar and her Fix and shuttled outdoors. It was raining again, but Karli didn’t mind. The rain would cover the sound and the smell.
Find a covered spot in the trees behind the inn.
Start a small fire.
The crystal placed on the hammered tin, and the tin placed over the fire. While it cooks down, add in one part pixie dust, two parts of alcohol to thin it to a liquid that the blood would accept– the left over rum would work just fine.
Needle to the right. Plunger just below. Arm tie to the left.
Just about set, now. Tie off the arm, ignore the tingle of protest from the suffocating fingers. Plunger pumps the air from the hollow, stripped needle (actually a quill from some sea-creature, she’d once been told. Amenenon, or something.) Plunger sucks the liquid bliss into the needle.
Karli paused at that moment, just as always, allowing her body to shudder with the mounting anticipation. It was electric, this nervousness and need! She’s heard stories about how virgins in love awaited their husbands in the wedding bed, but the actress slash minstrel slash junkie couldn’t imagine how it might possibly compare.
That’s enough. The vein is standing ready, surfaced and purple at the inside of her elbow. The moment arrives.
There’s quick pain, but it’s familiar and quickly, oh so quickly forgotten as the blood sucks the content of the needle away, plunger released. The needle still remains embedded in her arm as she falls to her back, eyes wide shut and body helpless, blissfully helpless to the pleasure that comes.
An hour later, Karli is walking toward Port Royal, the new song fresh and lively in her mind. The earth beneath her feet feels like mince pudding, and the air is water washing her skin. The Music sings all around, and every blade of grass, every whisper of wind has a note. The trees are singing to grow. The sea was singing to swell. The daylight is a hum of eternity surrounding her, carrying with it the echoes of stars from dead nebulae of a million, million eons ago.
She’d run into Lucky sooner or later, and holy (*bleep!*) wasn’t he in for a treat? |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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A Song for Lucius Edmonds.
Posted: 01 Jun 2006 01:12 AM |
Lucky, in love,
or just lucky instead?
Who is it that made all those thorns that you shed?
No solace to you can I offer, my friend.
I can’t understand, or ever comprehend
Your life, made weary by a mind taken to task.
You’re ignoring the mirror to favor the mask.
Is it any wonder that the strange mysteries
Behind his own face is all that he sees?
Divined in the patterns of his footsteps going
Across planes of rhythms, strange and elusive,
Colors magnified by a thousand-fold knowing
Of answers that are never conclusive.
Steps taken to keep all emotions from showing
Intelligence comforting, safe and reclusive.
Is it any wonder that the strange mysteries
Behind his own face are all that he sees?
Inspired, ingenious! this way that you Weave
The brighter undoings of our reality.
Your ambitions you honor;
But your payments you grieve!
So, lost in the fibers of this rare tapestry
Your searching continues, in what I believe
Is only a longing for kind sympathy.
Is it any wonder those bright mysteries
Have so overcome all the life that he sees?
Not knowing his grace!
Nor the way his sweet face
Itself is a mirror to a far greater find!
For what greater gift to a hideous world
Is the power you grant with your beautiful mind? |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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Bottoms Up in Brandibuck!
Posted: 04 Jun 2006 08:43 PM |
Bottoms Up, in Brandibuck!
When you’re feeling low and weary,
Or just down on your luck
Then follow me
And soon you’ll be
Bottoms up in Brandibuck!
If you want to see the sunshine
Or just escape the ruck,
Just hop a horse
Or ox, of course,
And get to Brandibuck!
You can bask in endless sunshine!
Or dance at Swiftfoot Hall!
If fun and revelry’s your wish
This is your port of call!
You can smoke yourself to drooling.
There’s always a full bowl!
Can’t take the fume?
Then grab a ‘shroom
From Salty’s stinky hole!
Oh!
Give yourself a reason!
Come play! Don’t be a schmuck!
You’ll be a star
‘Long as you are
Bottoms up in Brandibuck. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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"I Need a Hero!"
Posted: 05 Jun 2006 07:31 PM |
Men were a problem. They were THE problem in Karli’s life, at least as far as she was concerned. Starting with her father, working around through her cousins, and back again toward every male that had ever hovered circles around her with romantic or lustful intentions, vultures waiting the death of the bard’s self-interest for their chance to feast. Every one of them unworthy of her, and every one of them angry at her about it.
As though it was *her* fault! As though Karli was responsible for their flaws and their emotional hang-ups and their poverty of spirit.
The further trouble was that the alternative didn’t interest her overly much, despite all of the obvious benefits. Another woman in her life in that regard would be so much more practical. She would always have a sympathetic ear that understood the woman’s perspective, instead of having to try to beat it into the mind of a man who couldn’t get his brain out of his trousers. If she had a woman lover of the same size, then shopping would be easier, and dressing up with exchanged clothing was always fun! Another woman at her side would only enhance her beauty, whether or not her partner was less or equally attractive (the possibility of a more attractive woman didn’t even register in Karli’s mind); if less so, Karli would seem more beautiful by comparison; if equally, then Karli would be recognized for her discerning taste and appeal of attraction for having won such a prize.
Unfortunately, while men were mostly obtuse, boring or whiney, women were generally insane. She had a career to think about! Karli certainly didn’t have time to try to deal with someone … well, frankly, someone like herself.
Let it never be said that Karli was not a creature of self-examination, in all ways. She knew herself to be beautiful down to the smallest detail because it was only the truth. More than truth, it was fact. She knew she didn’t encompass every –type- of beauty, but that hardly mattered; she was no less breathtaking for it. Karli knew herself to be talented with music because, again, it was only a fact. While not the most skilled, maybe, she recognized that her talents far exceeded any of her peers. She was, after all, still learning. And while forethought escaped her, Karli understood that this was because she was a creature of the moment, for whom life presented itself not a journey toward a goal, but that the journey was the goal. Mistakes were made, but no more so than anyone else and less than many. Karli understood that being this near-to-perfect was a great deal to handle, and most people simply couldn’t deal with the responsibility.
Confident, radiant, well-bred, fun, emotionally stable (mostly), and with a promising career that would surely see her famous and wealthy and remembered in legend for centuries! Caring for Karli would doubtless intimidate anyone, so she tried to be accommodating, so long as it didn’t violate her very particular and very understandable standards. Such a gem of a woman – of a human! Of a creature! – was precious and to be savored, and no one savored Karli like she did.
Which was, of course, upsetting.
She tried not to let it bother her. Karli had a great number of guidelines in her life (she wouldn’t go so far as to call them “rules.” “Rules” implies enforcement, which implies punishment, and punishment for Karli would only be blasphemy). One of the most important, besides to always moisturize before sleep, was that the opinions of others would never affect her. Everyone made their opinions based around their own views, which always centered on themselves. Allow anyone’s emotional insecurities, self-loathing or tragedies make Karli feel bad about herself?
Puh-lease! Karli did more than just love herself; she liked herself. There was every reason to do so, and no reason not to.
It was this simple inability to understand pathos that made men so aggravating. 999 out of every thousand of them were compensating for something, whether it was a lonely childhood, a bad parent or no parents, some conceived notion of victimization or, worst of all, some self-made demon of regret that prevented them from their own potential. Men not out to satisfy the weakness dangling between their thighs were looking for replacements for their mothers.
Or they were possessive.
Or overly involved with their problems.
Or ugly. Or stupid. Or desperate. Or any combination of the above.
Perfection demanded perfection! That didn’t mean without flaws, of course- such a thing was impossible for mere mortals. But, for the sake of Vilyave’s blessed grace, it *did* mean confidence enough to accept flaws and move past them! Obstacles were never walls, and even a wall could be scaled with the right amount of determination. How many times did Karli watch as people risked their lives, their souls and their dignity for the sake of their friends, but then, when the slightest thing went wrong in their own life, they wailed and moaned like babies?
More than she cared to contemplate. It was depressing.
Like Songbird. Kal…something. Not devoid of musical talent, skilled with the crafting of the most adorable magical handbags (she would have to remember to request ribbons on the next one) and quite delightful to the eyes. Exotic but approachably so, as all half-elves were. His prowess in battle was quite thrilling! His companionship with his wolf, Calla, was enchanting.
But lose one stupid little finger and oh! Well, wasn’t *that* just the end of the world?
Suddenly he was crying and moping at every turn. He’d done the proper thing and put a glove over his maimed hand (I mean, ew…), but rather than just learn to overcome the handicap, and by doing so prove himself even more skilled and talented than those with *all* their fingers, he’d decided to go off to extremes of self-abuse. Drinking. Hunching his shoulders. Inserting speeches about unworthiness and loss into every damned conversation. He’d even let his Music and his Craft wither near to dying, so sorry he felt for himself! His solution to the problem hadn’t been more practice or self-improvement, oh no! That would have required maturity and dignity! No, he was going to let some wizard cut off his entire hand and replace it with metal perversion.
It was disgusting. The sacred flesh with which he’d been born, even lessened, was greater by far than some imitation; some mock-up that fulfilled someone else’s idea of what a hand ought to be! Heresy.
And then there was Dante. Okay, so, she could admit she’d been a bit cruel with her words. Karli could admit that she had a bit of a temper, and she’d honed her tongue to a double-edge: poetry that could enable others to courage and valor and emotional glory paired with a scathing serration that could cut down all but the hardiest soul to weeping.
Dante had sacrificed his time and his energy for her sake (as was proper) so that he could show her to someplace beautiful. Such a gift! And that he was doing so just so that he could give her a foot massage… well! It was almost enough to make her think about ignoring his terrible fashion sense (really, the whole black-and-red thing was so overdone, and smacked of Naruthian influences). Dante, at least, gave her deference (even if it was somewhat sarcastic). Dante, at least, paid homage to her generosity of allowing him to employ her, and paid her well for her time and exclusive promise to model for his line of jewelry.
He’d taken her to Elbereth’s Tears, and oh blessed Vilyave, it was beautiful! The elven Earth Mother was to be revered and respected, and such places were the reason why. The waterfalls created a gentle mist that embraced the vibrant emerald greens of the trees and the mosses. The hillside was carpeted with soft ferns. Flowers, coy and charming, seemed to wink at them as they passed, bobbing in the gentle breeze. They’d ascended above the earth, to the realm of the birds, sacred messengers of Vilyave and Karli had looked down upon the world, looked down upon Midor gleeming like a bright cancer and knew that it was right that she do so. Nature was not a firs tlove of Karli, and more often than not, Karli cursed the insects that defiled her flesh for their own hunger or wailed at the grasping thorns that tore at her clothing. But here, there was peace between the bard and the strange chaos of the Mother, and Karli had been moved to sympathy with Her loss.
A deer had come to inspect Karli, curious and unafraid. Karli, enchanted, had allowed herself this one time to seek the closeness of a lesser creature. It was beautiful in construction, perfect to its nature and majestic in bearing. It was worth of her attentions, and Karli took care not to disturb the creature. Of the two, Karli had been more nervous of the encounter.
And Dante had spoiled it. Sneaking up behind, he suddenly lurched forward and pounced, shouting with a roar like some great bear as he’d laid disrespectful hands upon her. He had, in other words, attacked her, no to harm, but to humiliate with her own sensitive fears. Karli had screamed, like he’d wanted her. The deer had fled, like he’d intended. And he’d been surprised when Karli had only gone silent, stunned at his affront and his impudence. He’d been confused when Karli had refused to forgive him, or allow him to make an apology.
He’d said, later, that he was just playing. That he’d expected her to go along with it, like other girls.
“But I guess you’re not like other girls,” he’d continued, stuffing his hands into his jacket pockets in a way that, she supposed, some girl would find boyishly endearing. “I suppose that’s why I like you.”
Oh… joy. It was the frog-in-your-hat-box trick again, and oh, wasn’t it funny? Didn’t Karli just think it was great, that he could find her weaknesses and poke at them for amusement?
“That’s because I’m not a girl!” A girl! When so clearly she was a woman, or at least, near to it. A woman who deserved a man who understood the ways of men.
He’d stood thoughtful a time, then only smirked.
“Well, in any case, you’re ‘it.’”
“I’m ‘it?’ What is ‘it?’”
“What? You never played ‘Tag’ when you were a girl?” Karli admitted she hadn’t. “ It’s a game I played when I was younger.”
Karli’s rage had been lightening, quick-snap and brief but devastating.
“And you’re still playing it! But you know what? I do not have time in my life for boys who wear their emotional problems on their smiles! If you want to be my boss, fine. I can still accept that. If you want to be my friend, I’ll think about it, but you’re –this- close to ruining that, too!”
Dante had just stood there another moment, then turned away. “Right,” he muttered, his voice ice and stone, his eyes a granite fortress erected suddenly to protect his feelings. For a few moments, Karli had felt… well, not guilty per se, but reflective. He wasn’t all that bad…
Still, the fact that she *could* hurt Dante’s feelings only proved that she’d been right. Dante wasn’t worthy of her attentions or her intimate company, though she inwardly applauded that he’d been brave enough to make the attempt, pathetic and childish as it was.
She’d have to let him know that, next time she saw him.
It was terrible and tragic that Karli must suffer for the inadequacies of others. No one understood. No one saw. All she had was her goddess and herself, and Vilyave was far, far too perfect and glorious to condescend to the prayers of even a mortal as close to Her idealic self as Karli. Karli understood perfectly, and so never begrudged that her prayers went unanswered. It was merely another obstacle, a sign that she could still improve and had greatness yet to achieve! Which, of course, she would.
But in the meantime…
In the meantime, it was very, very lonely at the top.
Where were the men of confidence and empathy? Where were the valiant gentlemen of chivalry, who would treat her with the sympathy and awe she so clearly deserved, while still self-assured enough to realize that doing so did not belittle his dignity? Where was the man of manners and gentle speech; strong in heart and body; well-groomed and handsome; practical yet sensitive to the arts of poetry and music and painting? A lover of beauty, and a beauty of a lover?
Where, in short, was her knight in shining armor, her Prince Charming?
She was starting to suspect that all the stories she’d been told by Nanny were lies. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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An Unexpected A Chord.
Posted: 09 Jun 2006 11:34 PM |
Part One.
Magic, like anything else in life, is something different for everyone. It comes in all forms and contexts, means and reasons.
Wizards seek out knowledge, and by knowing, they have power over what they know. The magic of Mind.
Sorcerers are energy conduits, and attract power to them like magnets attract iron filings. The magic of Heart.
Priests channel the power of their gods, which power made strong according to their faith. The magic of Spirit.
Druids lift from the earth, the trees, the rock and all the unfaltering power that moves the machine of the cosmos. The magic of Elements.
Rogues, unable to make magic for themselves, can steal a little of it through the use of items made for such things; their cunning and adaptability to survival a key to powers that belong, more properly, in the hands of others. The magic of Need.
Everyone does a little magic, whether they are aware of it or not. So prevalent is the phenomenon that most of the time, what is done or changed or created is not even called ‘magic,’ though that is its true nature. The flow is the same. The altering of reality is the same. Only by degrees is magic measured and known, while most magic is ignored as ordinary coincidence or, more often, simply “the way it is.”
Magic comes in all forms. One of the most common, least known yet most powerful is music.
Two weeks ago
The world had become strange, a cyclone spinning from her arm in colors that distorted and sounds that clamored in unintelligible shrieking. It would pass, she told herself, though she could barely hear her own mind. All there was instead was the strangeness, the pain and the need. The terrible, awful need. These visions, they were a mockery of what she required, taunting her and tormenting her in punishment for lingering too long in the realm of the Mundane.
Karli struggled to put one foot before the other. Left. Right. Left. Right. The ground below refused to cooperate with her efforts as the cobble stones became mouths with teeth that snapped at her suede boots and tongues to lick at the high heels. Look up; gain no respite. The sky, full of grey storm clouds that rolled and swirled, forming faces, faces that mocked and babbled in the unspoken language of elements. The slums of Port Royal rose to meet her, heaven and hell, world without end, amen. Bald Rick danced upon his cloven hooves and flashed his madness in her face, begging for the Turnip, the Turnip, the Lord Turnip! Madness below. Madness above. Madness within.
With a whimper and a stumble, Karli pushed open the door to the apothecary.
Inside, the smells, thousand-fold and unknowable, assaulted her and stilled the voices, and the anvil of reality descended upon her in a blink. It was as though, in dreaming, some sudden sound had woken her in a sudden surge toward utter silence. She stood panting in the door, her eyes wide and flesh beading with perspiration, staring at the normalcy of the scene with wonder.
It had passed. She had known it would; yes. But it would be back, and each time was worse. Until she Fixed it.
“Could you close the door, please,” came a soft, somewhat muffled voice, the sound of it full of weariness and grief. She could hear the rain-clouds behind it, a heavy front of resigned misery.
Lucius. He was sitting on the floor, curled into a corner to her left, his face and mop hair covered by some odd helmet. She knew that posture. It was the “I’m not here at the moment, please leave a message” sprawl that she knew well, falling backward into bliss as a sweet needle pierced her vein. Salty stood in his stoop of concern over the cursed wizard she’d given the ironic moniker of “Lucky.”
Wizards doing the mysterious things that wizards do. “Hey, Lucky. Hey, Salty.” She didn’t wait for a response, nor care about receiving one. She didn’t. Karli only watched them a moment or two more as an entomologist might two familiar but beloved beetles passed upon a rose leaf.
Lucky was going on about someone she didn’t know. Salty seemed to, though, and was being … well, she guessed it was compassion, in the way that wizards are. He was probing and questioning, guiding, perhaps, whatever vision Lucky endured. Lucky’s head rolled slowly in an oscillation he was likely unaware was occurring, the arm attached to his bandage-wrapped staff limp. She knew that posture, oh yes, and visions? She could tell them something of visions.
Still… wizards…
Always messing with alchemical things and secrets, which was why Karli had come to this place, wasn’t it? Oh, yeah. Right. Her left arm began to crawl with the insects of her cravings again, and she knew lucidity was fast, fast escaping. She took a seat quickly, upon the floor for wizards apparently didn’t believe in things like chairs which was just as well since chairs, this day, had a habit of coming alive and trying to devour her. They ignored her, busy with their wizardy talk. It was becoming garbled. The walls were starting to hum. It was the light, again, around her and through her, plugging her ears with that humming, humming, humming.
She hummed with it. Divine light of C. Eternal C in the middle of Everything, that was the light. There was a surge of magic, an orgasm from the divine ether of Everything, and Karli began to glow. No on noticed. Didn’t matter too much.
The grains of the wooden planks began to slither beneath her, and so Karli watched as they danced and turned in on one another. The walls were pulsing in a regular rhythm now, breathing. Lucky was leaning against a breathing wall, didn’t he know? No. He was busy going on about his father or being a bastard. Like it mattered? Some people have issues about the dumbest things. Lucky was himself, so what did it matter who was his father or mother? E flat, D, E flat, D.
Karli fell back against the book case and rode the wave that crashed relentless on the shores of her consciousness, eroding sands of sanity but leaving the occasional bit of flotsam in payment. Bits like, hey, Salty, Salty smoked with us, smoked and Salty has smoke, Salty with us in the hole, the hole, the mushroom hole where there was smoke and oh yeah, a job. Lucky, the job.
A job she’d failed to perform because, frankly, she hadn’t been smart enough to figure out how to manage it without compromising The Standards. That sort of stung a bit. She’d have to work on it some more. Later. Right now?
Smoke.
“Hey, Salty?” as the wizards finally, blessedly, paused in their babbling stone-tongued nonsense that some part of her had participated in, some automatic pilot of fabulousness that was never, ever touched, not even by the Fix. “Hey, you got any smoke, maybe?”
Salty turned to look at her. He saw the wild, bloodshot eyes. The sallow sweat and sour stare. Her constant twitch and still wet hair. He didn’t have smoke, no. He had something else, though.
“It helps,” is all he said, and handed over three vials of It. Not a Fix, but a bandage, but maybe that was enough. The spinning liquid in the small bottles was a golden brown in color, and seemed to laugh kindly from within the glass.
“Not too much. It doesn’t do to have too much clarity at any one time.” Salty again, giving Karli a last tone of understanding in G. Karli said something. Lucky was going on again as he stood with the world on his shoulders and the storm-front in his voice. Karli moved toward the bookshelves again, and drank.
And everything suddenly became so, so much worse. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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An Unexpected A Chord.
Posted: 11 Jun 2006 09:25 PM |
Part 2.
Karli…
Heavy. She was heavy. She could feel every cell, every hair on her skin, every twitch of her eyes as they flashed. The pressing reality of things was doing just that: pressing. The light was singing, singing so loud it nearly deafened her thoughts.
…no use to me!...worthless, stupid girl…
Nearly.
Then the veil peeled away; the potion dispersed, sinking in through the lining of her stomach and tingled outward through the capillaries into her blood and shot to her mind. The floor stopped moving, becoming solid, too solid beneath her. The walls were no longer breathing, but the confinement of them, the way that walls confine became all too real. The world was shut out by walls; that’s what they were for. The bookshelves, so square, made of the stolen lives of trees were suddenly flimsy and unreliable behind her back. She stood.
The wizard’s were still talking. It was clear, now, each word a thunder of sound-waves. Lucky was whining again.
“She told me that every time I summoned a demon, I wasn’t so much summoning a demon as creating one,” the weary wizard was telling Salty. “She said if I ever did it again, there would be… consequences.”
“What kind of demon are we talking about?” Salty inquired, his voice full of patience, patience and curiosity, and he was young! So young compared the knowledge in that voice. Lucky, by contrast, sounded old, burdened by his magics or, rather, the limitations of them.
“I think it’s called a Balor. A demon of fire and death.”
Karli slumped back to the floor at the mention of it. Memory of the beast had been happily repressed, a talent she possessed, her mind undesiring of unpleasant thoughts whenever possible. But memory was real; it made one’s life real. She’d died to that demon, the one Lucius had named Sam, and beckoned about as a dandy lord does a butler, careless but that it might turn on –him- in the midst of its evils.
Her death had annoyed him.
Suddenly she was there again, the desert behind and the jungles ahead, the mountain tunnel short (as such things are measured) but apparently long enough to divide the two ecosystems and keep them heedless of one another. Sam had been sent ahead, and why? Why had Lucky conjured the powers of the Abyss and the eternal torments of Hell? To kill snakes.
Big Sam didn’t care much what he killed, so long as there was murder done. Karli had thought she’d given him enough time to do what he’d been created to do, but Big Sam hadn’t been sated. She stepped from the tunnels into steaming jungles and hell fire.
“My skin,” she moaned aloud, unaware it would be so, but there it was. She could feel the heat again. The way every nerve ending on her body had screamed as the flesh, the sacred flesh of Vilyave’s grace, had blackened to ash on her bones before her eyes. Her eyes hadn’t lasted, popping like grapes in an oven.
But not dead. No, not dead.
“My eyes, melting!” she wailed, falling back against the bookshelves once again, trembling hands going to her face, her blessed face, and still she wasn’t sure if she was whole again.
“Your eyes didn’t melt,” Lucius chided, finally acknowledging her existence, though it was far beneath him to do so. He’d only gotten her nearly killed. She was fine. What did she have to complain about, anyway; he was dealing with his own demons, right now. Karli was just being her usual self, making every situation about her, her, her.
The bard gasped softly to hear his voice, only just remembering he was there. Anger. Why had she forgiven him? For a necklace? No. For friendship. Friendship he didn’t want, after all; she could see that now, too. Everything was clear. Such clarity. Her death – her torment in a state so close to death she would have preferred it – had been an annoyance, and so was she.
Clarity. It helps.
She stood, uncertain of herself though not of the solidity around her; she was water. Nothing but a bag of water with pretenses and chemical impulses, seeking some higher state through more chemicals. The bruise of her left arm writhed and pulsed, still, but it didn’t seem so bad; it just seemed pathetic. She was pathetic. Karli, gift of Vilyave, was truly and honestly pathetic. Just like everyone else.
At least she looked better than they did. That was some consolation.
There were words. Lucky again. He was standing, but only because he had grown tired of sitting, his visions completed. Karli watched, and listened. He was annoyed with her, yes, and he spoke of reasons. His brother? Dead, likely; that seemed right. He had a rabbit’s foot that obviously hadn’t done its job. And the foot was…
“I gave it to Solus,” the rain-clouds sang from Lucky’s voice, and she heard the tumble-rumble of pain and frustration… then felt the chill solidify around the wizard. He turned toward Salty. “…you don’t think he’d… he wouldn’t!”
Ah, right! Pops.
“Necromancer,” she murmured. The ways of wizards was beyond her ken, and so everything seemed possible to them. Her imagination never lacking, she thought of the stories, the witch-trials and the legends. Personal belongings could be used to summon ghosts or, if the aura remained, bind spirits to the mortal world. She idly considered the possibility that it could be used to somehow recreate and then animate the corpse.
Pops was disgusting. Clarity.
Karli stopped, and her anger drained away, the tempest stilled and the winds within paused by an unwilling sympathy.
“Why did you give me that stuff, Salty?” Karli sighed, her eyes on the aged wizard. He looked at her, and offered a consolatory half-smile of knowing. It broke her. She ran to the back of the store.
He knew. He’d known when he gave her the stuff! It was betrayal; betrayal by someone she’d wanted to count amid her fans, amid the numbers of those she knew would love her and whom she could love in return. He was just an old man, after all and she was just a girl looking into places she didn’t belong. Wizards.
“Where is it?! Where is it? Gods dang it, woman!” Karli screamed at the alchemist. Karli nearly lifted her fists, then whirled upon an eddy of need to the potted plants. She began to root through them, dirt and all, smattering the carefully tended soil. The woman started forward to protest.
“I’ll pay for them, all right? Back off! Where is it?” Where were the mushrooms, the hemp or the other many varied green, lovely chemical offerings of nature? None here were familiar, and seemed incomplete, needed to be combined or cooked, ground or boiled. Karli tried to scream, and only whimpered in defeat instead. She slunk back to the front, dirt beneath her nails and skin smelling of biodegradable elements.
Salty shuffled forward. He left a smoke upon the floor, near to her. An offering. An apology. Tobacco, but good enough; it was something, anyway. Karli took it, and let the weed calm her nerves and kill her lungs.
By the time Lucius was turning toward the door to leave, Karli felt more herself. She wanted to apologize for being such a problem, but then again, she wanted an apology for him making her such a problem to him. It wasn’t right that he should tlak to her that way, but some people couldn’t see beyond their own noses. Lucky was fairly self-absorbed, most of the time. Everything was his burden to bear or his puzzle to solve or his quest to conquer. The man would have made a good paladin, Karli thought, if he actually had any muscle tone.
And speaking of paladins…
The door opened, and a tall, bright-eyed water-being in human shape walked in, covered in brown and singing with good intentions. Cedrych. Karli had seen him around, first in passing once at Port and then, for a few seconds, at the Four Winds before he’d left to go do secret things with Brandt.
He was handsome, if a big heavy in the middle, but on a man that looked just fine. His eyes – sweet Sister of Beauty, those eyes! He carried himself so surely, though there was something wary about it, as though the next step might be over some abyss to send him tumbling to disgrace.
Lucky seemed to be a bit better, too. Karli presented herself forward, and fixed her hair a bit, though without a mirror… and this was no time to be pulling it out. Faith; she had faith that her beauty would endure in superior endurance beyond the temporary stumblings of mortality. Thank you, Vilyave.
“Hi, Cedrych.” Lucius.
“Lucius! Salt…” Cedrych greeted the wizards, then nodded to Karli. She took her queue and smiled in return, poised. She quickly flicked the remainder of her smoke away and pretended it hadn’t been there.
“Cedrych, right? We sort of met at the Four Winds a few nights ago, but we didn’t have the chance to be properly introduced. I’m Karli,” she said, her voice letting him know that he could be forgiven for not immediately associating the current woman with the doubtless iconic image that the name would conjure in his mind.
He was polite and -in some miraculous way only he could likely manage - casually formal. “Ah, yes! Karli Goodfellow. I’ve heard of you. And… actually, I think that we might speak together, if you have nothing else pressing.”
Just reality, she thought, but only shook her head and smiled.
Tha-dump. Tha-dump.
“No! I mean, sure! I mean, no, I don’t have anything going on right now, so like, yeah, if you want to talk that’s absolutely fine.”
Lucius was still wearing that idiotic helmet, so she couldn’t see how he rolled his eyes. She could hear it, though, when he spoke in a low tone of …well, she supposed that, for him, it was humor.
“Maybe she likes the big, brawny type better than the wirey, lean sort.”
Well, yes, as a matter of fact…
“No need to be bitter, Lucky.” Was there forgiveness in the air? She couldn’t tell. The potion was leaving her blood and entering her liver, there to pass, eventually, into the waters once again.
“Bitter? Don’t flatter yourself. I was just making a joke.”
Mm hmm. Ah well. It was forgiveness enough for Karli. She smirked and wished the wizard well as he departed, then turned toward Cedrych. He beckoned her to the side, and she followed with a wiggle and a hope.
He had a job for her. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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An Unexpected A Chord.
Posted: 23 Jun 2006 04:36 PM |
Part 3
When will you learn...
Cedrych von Maistlyn. Something about the name was both intimidating and comforting, and the man himself seems just a riddled with contradictions. Eyes bright as sunspots, and beautiful as gems. But like the shimmering lagoon beyond Brandibuck they reflect shallow depths of crystal clarity. Shallow, because he's a paladin. A knight. A knight in shining... shining...
... okay, dun colored leather. With brass accent buckles.
Close enough.
Tha-dump.
"Lady Karli, if we could speak a few moments, it would be appreciated." Well, of course it would! Karli turned away a moment to fix her hair and straighten her posture. The leathers she wore were nearly new (she never adventured in her leather armor, goodness, no! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to clean white leather?) and held her form in tight but modest contours of orchid-splash array. Surely, he noticed.
...to know your place...
Karli turned back toward Cedrych with a smile. He was talking to Lucius the Departing Wizard.
No, he didn't notice. Stupid paladins. Stupid handsome, broad-shouldered, long-haired, mustachioed paladins. And okay, a bit on the paunchy side, sure, but paunch on a man can be attractive! It spoke of easy contentments or, at worst, an affection for sweets - both of which Karli could *certainly* appreciate! The sudden image of a warm, round tummy beneath her cheek, gently gurgling as they snuggled...
... getting ahead of ourself, Karli! Snap out of it! Wake up! Job. Job, job, job. Never make the first move, anyway... you're worth his notice and that startled look of realization when he sees you for the beautiful nugget of perfection you are!
Cedrych was turning back and Lucius was finally gone, leaving only a green-robed, bearded fellow at the alembics to populate the front of the alchemist shop. Cedrych motioned with a beckoning finger, and without even pausing to question following, Karli squeaked and wiggled herself in his wake to the side of the shop.
"So nice to meet you!" she perkily pipped, derailing the paladin in pursuit of his speech. "A job, hmm? Oh wait, is this some seeeecret, conspiracy thing that you paladins are always up to, 'cause I *know* you are! Don't play coy, 'cause I was there the other night when you and all the other ones, you know, Rosie and Ooleemoo, all got up and left me at the table, which I totally forgive you for I mean it's all likely very important and hey, I'm just totally thrilled to be involved, you know?"
The paladin, clasping his hands behind his back in the way that soldiers do (so cute, don't you think? Oh yes, Karli, I certainly do!), just stared a moment or to before muttering his uncertainty.
"Uh, something like that. It ... would be best if it was kept a secret."
Something about the paladins manner broke one side of her ego and preened the other. Karli gasped and, with an excited little bouncing that sent things within her leather casing to a pleasant jiggle.
"Oh wait! I know! I know, oh my goddess - it's alove song, isn't it?! You want a love song, eh?" Wink, wink. The thought of a shy love triste on the burly, handsome paladins behalf was romantic enough and sly enough to over-rule Karli's understandings that, as the author of the song, she would not be the recipient.
...useless, stupid girl...
Cedrych's face continued it's slow morph from uncertainty to confusion to sudden befuddled denial.
"No, not exactly..." came his bland reply.
Poo.
The bard crossed her arms over her chest, creaking with leather that protested the tightening around her bound bosom. Her pout could have launched a fleet of warships. Her disappointment was tempered only by a simple rememberance. Paladins are, typically, virgins. He probably wouldn't even know how to be romantic if his soul depended on it.
Tha-DUMP!
Too bad he was a Midoran. Ah, Karli! So close! So close, he is, and yet he would never let himself worship you as you deserve! Still... no sense in wasting a good opportunity!
Karli licked her lips and gave her hair a toss.
Cedrych didn't even blink.
Poo. To the Hells with him, then.
"So, what's the job?" she asked with a sigh, recovering the tossed peices of her pride with a bit of preening.
"Perhaps we could go somewhere else to talk?"
Karli looked around. That guy in the green robes was still fiddling with the glass tubes and bubbling brine of the alchemical table. If he was listening, he was doing a good job of pretending otherwise but, clearly, the paladin was in no mood to take chances.
"What, you mean somewhere more private? Just the two of us?" Okay, so, maybe Cedrych wasn't so clueless as he seemed!
Setting her heart a flutter in an instant, the paladin nodded, and gestured toward the door. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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Re: An Unexpected A Chord.
Posted: 25 Jun 2006 12:43 AM |
Part 3 continued...
Age 15...
"Stop fidgeting!" Nanny tugged violently on the thick strings of the corset, cinching Karli's slendor waist to anorexic proportions and exaggerating her hourglass figure. Karli's ribs groaned within, bruising at the abuse as she inhaled... and inhaled...
"...'can't breathe..."
"You don't be needin' ta breathe, girl, just be your beautiful self!" Nanny's voice was rough but affectionate, sliding against Karli's ears like a mother cat's tongue. Hands to her tiny-fied waist, Karli lifted her shoulder blades as best she could to stretch her diaphram as best she could. Staring at herself in the mirror, Karli saw perfection, as was to be expected - but perfection molded and painted into a cartoon of itself. Stunning, that was the word. Whether with beauty or absurdity, she wasn't entirely certain, but there was no denying...
"He'll see you once and declare unending love for ya, an' then! Oh, then won't ya be makin' ya father happy, hmm? Get yourself a nice set-up in the Lord Cairon's estate! A tidy allowance! Set ya father's creditors a-packing once an' for-all, a-finally, I tell ya!" Nanny snorted as she absently fluffed Karli's black curls into place, glossing a few with perfume oil and dusting with just a hint of glitter. "They're a-gettin' obnoxious!"
Ahbnok-shush! That was Nanny and her hairlip. Karli smirked and rolled her eyes, but it was caught in the reflection and earned her a swat on the shoulder. Instantly, she set her face to rights: demure and grateful.
"Sorry, Nan," she purred, lifting her lower lip with the slightest of a contrite pout.
"Mmm. Well, ya be keeping that cheek o' yas well hidden from the good Lord, hmm? Ya father says he's not one for cheek, an' won't be taking any of ya pertness an' sass like I do! This is ya last chance!" Nanny's face melted to pleading seriousness on this last, a soft warning moan below her accent, and her touch upon Karli's jaw was gentle.
She tried to sigh, and only bruised herself further. A wince of vague pain went unnoticed as Nanny turned to skuttle to the wardrobe and withdraw the old chamise. The old thing had been tailored and re-tailored to fit the fashions that moved past it's original design. Just as with Karli's dress and shoes, matched to borrowd hair pins and jewelry scrounged as remnants from her mother's collection. The rest had been pawned off some years ago, but she had a secret stash. A secret place where she kept everything that was precious; the earrings bedded beautifully with the needles and tiny fragments of crystal bliss.
"So whatcha be sayin' to the lord when ya is bein' presented, now?" Nanny prompted, buttoning the short coat about Karli's slendor shoulders.
It was a line well rehearsed, well known and spoken no less than eight times since her thirteenth birthday, when she'd first begun to bleed and thus had proved her value to her father. Karli was getting good at it, by now. It was like a play, which reminded her: the theatre was showing "Songs of Winter" and Miranda had spoken of going.
There was no way that the actors up on stage would ever know what 'real' acting meant, when your father was staring at you over the shoulder of some old man, promising endless torment if she got her line wrong.
"I am only to honored to meet you, my lord," Karli began, inhaling with difficulty and speaking with the soft, whispering tone of pain and beauty that a corset promised. "It would be my greatest pleasure...
"...if I can be of any help to you paladins!" Karli chirped with a wink, wiggling past Cedrych and out of the door of the apothecary. "'Cause, you know, I am so totally there with you all on the whole, you know, thing with the stuff about the You KNow What."
Two weeks ago.
Cedrych smiled in cordial, clueless appreciation, and the two merely turned right to step a few paces down the alley to the Broken Mask.
Ah. The Mask. Yes. Well, wasn't that original and disappointing? You betcha.
They entered as people usually do, though in Karli's case it was done with the perfect step and lovely conquest only she was capable of while Cedrych provided a broad, brown background to her purple-and-glitter vibrance. The smell of cigar smoke and rehashed secrets was thick in the air, and distantly came the soft sound of some couple making violent love to one another. Karli turned it off and smiled to Cedrych, who stood with such beautiful deference.
"May I get you something to drink?" he lowed, a lion of a voice prowling stately through thick forest trees. It was enough to set a girl's thigh a-shiver, don't ya know.
"Oh, whatever!" Karli graciously allowed him the honor of choosing a drink for her, wondering what such a man might offer this prize, this glory, this unassailable woman before him.
"An ale?"
Ale. Right. Wouldn't want to tax those creative brain-bits would we?
"Something light and foamy," Karli simply churred, shivering her forgiveness as a ripple below her leathers. "I like the bubbles."
Cedrych nodded and turned toward the bar. Karli, understanding the importance of this clandestine rendezvous, meandered in graceful hip-sway toward the back.
"I'LL JUST GET US A TABLE IN THE BACK!"
Never let it be said that she didn't know how to have a secret meeting! Tables in the dimly lit backs of taverns were always the setting for these sorts of things. There was be appropriate shadow and a hidden, cloaked figure lurking nearby, and no one would ever think of listening in because that's just not how it was done! And, ah! There was the lurking fiugure! An orklun woman in a dress orbited like a planet near the shadowy tables.
Close enough.
Cedrych went still and winced with his entire body, his jaw still on edge when he joined Karli where the Mask ceased being entirely public and became nominally private. Her light ale was set before her as he sat on the chair. Well, rather he subdued the chair with his presence, heavy and imposing as it was.
There was little pre-amble, though he paused for some reason when she licked the dribbling foam from the sid eof the tankard and slurped the thick head through her pursed lips. Probably just overcome with the priviledge of having her attention all to himself! She would have to be careful not to do anything that might seem like unintentional sexual innuendo. The poor man might explode.
The paladin proved his resilience, however. He never once exploded. And considering the story he had to tell, and the secrets he had to reveal Karli was only more impressed!
Now, those secrets were with Karli, and the responsibility upon her shoulders was only too, too appropriate!
"You've totally come to the right person with this, Ricky," she assured him, running a finger through the remnant foam of her tankard then sucking it clean.
The paladin watched this with a distracted interest. Then blinked. "Ricky?" He said the word as though it might be some strange insect crawling across the dinner table.
No one ever liked their nicknames.
"Sure! Ricky. Rosie. Lucky. Red. You know. Whatever, right?" Karli shrugged. You'd expect that a paladin wouldn't invest anything in something so trivial as a name, but then again, they did torment themselves a lot. What a burden, that her talent and beautiful allure should demand that she bear the weight that these warriors could not, themselves, shoulder!
It was only natural. It was only to be expected. No one really thought that the paladins would ever move against Vidus and the Midorans openly; only that they should. But since that was about as likely to happen as Karli losing a beauty pageant, the bardess only shrugged it off. If the weaknesses of others must be hers to support with her unique blessings, so be it. It was Vilyave's will that she be the vessel of freedom and art to these poor paladins! First Rosie and the wizard (and by extension via Orsk, the Alliance!), now Cedrych.
Midor would not spread its pestilence into the free lands of Vives! Karli Goodfellow, bardess slash actress slash fashion model slash party-girl would see to it! It gave her tingles. Seriously. She was goosepimpling.
Cedrych was just asking for a few new verses to be added to her totally popular hit-single, "The Bloody Bishop," but this was becoming more than that. This was becoming a matter of spiritual sanctity to every last person on Vives who would - if Karli did not act in the most responsible and color-coordinated way possible - lose their immortal souls to a god who had decided that free will was far too inconvenient for Him. No, this... THIS... was going to require something BIG. Something MULTI-LATERAL. Something with dancing dogs in jester suits, maybe!
The paladin and the bard parted ways on amiable terms, and thoughts of Cedrych's impending heart-breaking love for her were gone from her bubbly mind as she exited the tavern into the dark rain of lower Port Royal. Things were afoot - oh yes. Many things.
Thank the goddess Karli had the mental clarity to handle it all. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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Re: An Unexpected A Chord.
Posted: 29 Jun 2006 08:05 PM |
Part Four
Back then.
“Well, it sounds ya got it down right, then,” Nanny fluttered, returning to Karli to primp at whatever invisible details remained. It was her nerves. Age had set into Nanny harshly, and arthritis bent her fingers nearly sideways, like tall grass blown by the wind. Still, no one knew feminine ways like Nanny, and her work on Karli’s hair was admittedly her best job yet. Of course, nothing else would do. Not for this. The weaving of the black tresses was accented by small white baby’s-breath, bringing the pearl-whites of the dress upward through the compositional sculpture that was the young maiden in the mirror. The corset lifted Karli’s bosom in ways that would likely stop the carriage traffic in the city streets below the urban manor. Shoulders accented with sparkling glitter dusted from the bottom of an old jewelry box, ancient chips of the paste and glass that had broken away from the expensive-looking jewelry that currently adorned her neck and wrists. The lace at her sleeves wasn’t entirely yellow. The slippers were new. Ish.
Karli felt ill. She looked the proper whore, didn’t she?
“Oh! Oh, I think I hear a carriage! I think... yes! Yes, he’s a-bein’ here! He’s a-bein’here!” Nanny fluttered and buzzed about the nursery-made-bedroom of her young charge, the brief look out the window confirming her worst fears and greatest hopes. As any proper biddy must, Nan’ clucked and bounced her way to the door and vanished, muttering excitedly to herself, leaving Karli some last, few moments alone with herself. Alone, with this cartoon version of herself gazing back from the mirror’s surface.
Vilyave forgive me. Karli’s mother
…Issabeau…
had worshipped the good Sister before her, and her daughter had inherited the goddess’s blessings of beauty through her. When the goddess had failed to answer her father’s entreaties and offerings on The Worst Day, he’d forbidden the blessed name be spoken in the house. Karli didn’t care. She kept the goddess a sweet secret from him, for his sake, tucked in her heart the way that the pretty, stolen trinkets were kept in the shoebox below the fireplace bricks. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
Nanny was huffing and puffing at the door as she came in once more, lingering in the doorway and looking at Karli in frantic, tearful panic.
“He’s just bein’ seated in the library now!” the old woman informed her charge. “Ya father is talkin’ to him, saying all the right things just as –you- will! He’s getting the good Lord all ready to meet you, but of course, he won’t really be ready to meet you, will he, dearest?” Dearest. Nanny always got emotional at these meetings. You’d think after eight, the thrill would have worn off for the old woman as it had for Karli. But no; Nanny never lost hope that Karli could regain the “honor” and “privilege” the House has lost in her great-grandfather’s generation. Three generations of only daughters married to wasteful men later, and suddenly it was all on Karlina.
To the Hells with that. Seriously.
Nanny came in just far enough to close the door all but a crack, and peeked and listened as, below, the arrangements for sale were offered and counter-offered. Karli could only look at herself in the mirror and try not to sneer. It would ruin the perfectly applied dusting of powder meant to keep away the moisture of the summer day. It was supposed to make her fair, flawless skin look downy soft and touchable; Karli just thought it made her look vaguely undead.
There was a creaking at the stairs as someone ascended.
“Karlina, my sweet,” her father called. Karli’s belly curdled, but her voice sweetly responded, on queue.
“Yes, Father?”
“There’s someone I am desirous of you to meet.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Will you come out?”
“Yes, Father.”
Nanny was near to bursting from her girdle as she opened the door, and Karli took her place at the portal to her future. Gazing out at her father, with him gazing back, she saw his approval (perhaps more than that…) and mentally flipped him a rude, unlady-like gesture. But to the world, she seemed only to inhale, lifting her pillowed bosom as the corset forbade true breathing, and stepped forward.
Show time.
Two weeks ago.
It would be a play. It would be THE play, and Karli was going to be the lead! And maybe not –just- the lead, but the director!!
Mr. Jessup was obviously a very wise and intuitive man to have so quickly ascertained the true nature and talents Karli possessed. Well, true, it would have been obvious to anyone who took more than two seconds to look above her breasts, but fortunately, Mr. Jessup was old and grotesquely ugly and probably had no notion about such things, anyway, ‘cause honestly, what woman would ever… I mean… ew. But it all worked in Karli’s favor, so who cared!
She certainly didn’t. Mr. Jessup was a sweet old man, even if he was immensely scary and probably could (and probably did) rip off people’s arms from time to time just to beat them to death with ‘em. Hey, well, that’s how it went; Karli, at least, wouldn’t be oweing him anything.
The meeting had been totally impromptu and the answer to every prayer Karli had ever uttered. And she’d thought Vilyave wasn’t listening! Phhht! Silly Karli!
“What’s the play about?” she’d squeaked. Not that she cared. The lead part could consist of having to wear a large, framed box of green fabric in order to be the Giant Slimke Ooze That Ate Port Royal, and Karli would ooze and burble and slime like no one’s business!
“It be aboud de trut’ o’ Midor.”
Clarity. Serendipity. Praise you, praise you forever, oh sweet Vilyave! Most beautiful of Sisters! Glory of Heaven! Daughter of Dragons! You.. are so faaaaaabulous!
Karli leaped from her chair with squealing joy in her throat and embraced the big, ugly gargoyle of a criminal mastermind with utter sincerity. He had no idea – and would likely never have any idea – of the greatness of which he was now a part! He wanted to be a famous producer; well, that was just perfect! Karli wanted to be a great actress! And… okay, well, sure he was probably just doing it for the money or as some front to illegal activities somewhere but….who cared!
She certainly didn’t. The play would be the best thing to ever hit Port Royal or Vives at all. And even as Mr. Jessup was going on about some lazy twerp named Williom, blah blah blah… Karli envisioned the play in an instant. There would be music! Dancing! (Not too much dancing, though, that would be tacky.) Romance and tragedy! Lots of tratgedy – it wa about Midor, after all. And Rosen and Salty would have what they wanted from her, and Cedrych would have what *he* wanted (the scene with this Lady Fri’el would be particularly scathing and hilarious!) and Mr. Jessup would have what he wanted, and.. well.. everyone would win!
Except The Bloody Bishop and his Crimson Creeps, of course, but so what? This play would be the greatest show that the citizens would ever see, and it would be the TRUTH.
More than that, it would have –depth!- For what was Midor truly about, but vanity? It was vanity that made the Midorians think they knew the right way. It was vanity that would bleed outward on some thin scum of truth and infect the world like a plague. It was vanity that led Vidius Khan to the pulpit to condemn the world beyond his ego, and bathe the innocent in fire. Karli knew all about vain people.
She used to be one, after all. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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Interlude in Icy Vale
Posted: 30 Jun 2006 04:13 PM |
Fast forward.
"How do they carry these gorram things?" Wil grunted, his body tense with effort. Karli pushed upward from the botom, her booted feet sinking into the ice-crusted snow.
"Beats me! And on one arm! Rose has...nngh!... one...ah, (*bleep!*), wait, I'm kind of slipping..."
"Don't stop pushing! I can't hold it! Come on; we're almost at the top!" Wil encouraged, grinning down at his young companion. "Maybe it's actually easier to carry on one arm; who knows?"
Karli gave him a brief glare of skepticism before heaving, once more, at the bottom edge of the tower shield. The huge metal barrier was one of those cut-cylinder styles, devoid of any greater ornamentation for the sake of costing less as well as providing less drag.
"How much did you say you ... BROUGHT! Nngh!"
"Phhh! Nggrrr! Oh, don't you worry, beautiful!" Wil chimed, leaning backward as he set his heels against the side of the hill. "I took a good few handfuls of the happy halfling hemp before I left."
Karli tossed him a grin as she pushed once again, and the two brightly colored minstrels lurched up the side of the small mountain another two feet. "Think it'll be enough for today?"
"Hah hah. The afternoon, anyway. I think over there'll be good! What kind have you got, anyway?"
"Couple of spotted ones, and, like, four purple ones."
"Ah, the purple ones are the best! What do the spotted ones do?"
"Mm. They kind of make the world slow and wobbly. But when you mix them with purple ones, you can kind of understand how to talk to mushroom people!" Karli chirped. "They don't talk or anything, so you know what they do? They move. Like, sort of slow, you know? Kind of just bob up and down and waaaaave their haaaaands..." Karli demonstrated briefly, which almost lost them the tower shield.
"Whoa, whoa WHOA! Keep a hold of it, will ya?" Wil admonished, using his incredibly manly, splindly guitar-trained muscles to keep the duo and their chosen vehicle from sliding back to the town below.
The chosen launching place was off to the right a bit, so the bardic heroes altered course and half pushed, half dragged the five-foot tower shield in a sideways lurching toward the drift. It promised a path devoid of too many trees and out of the line of sight of any of the many large, roaming bears. Karli had had enough of bears. The last three days in Icy Vale had been spent recuperating from her last encounter. She figured that Karli-blood-flavored-snow-treats were a grizzly favorite, which is why the damned animals plagued her, so.
How she'd runinto that bear was a story worth forgetting. There'd been an adventure, some weird, blue-skinned barbarians (Ophelia called them witches, or something), and it had all ended with arguments and insults while trapped in an undergound hut while armies of angry Frost-people with their pet dire wolves and magical trees surrounded them. The lesson for that adventure was: paladins have an uncanny ability to deny the motes in their own eyes while spotting someone else's with odd, ironic clarity.
Also, that Karli really, really hated bears.
"Okay, I think this is good!"
"Phew. Thank the goddess. How far up do you think we are?"
Wil held his hands around his eyes to deny the glare of the sun on the snow, but he squinted anyway. "No idea, gorgeous. You can see the whole village, though. Kinda pretty."
Karli nodded. Icy Vale wasn't a bad place for one to hide out from any impending maiming via underground criminal lords. And wasn't she just disappointed as hell in Mr. Jessup? You betcha. Sure, she wasn't going to get her play, but neither was he. Rumor was that he was going to cut off Williom's hands over the whole thing. Karli wondered how Jessup expected to ever get his play when he kept mauling all the artists who intended to create it for him. She supposed there were always more actors and playwrites, but as good as Karli? Phht! Not for a thousand leagues and a hundred years. Pity.
Losing her voice was also going to be a pity. Karli had spent most of the last three days in bed wondering how much it would hurt, and for how long. The only answers she could think of were "alot" and "probably longer than you think."
"Yeah, it is. Hey! We totally have to start entertaining these folks. I mean, I've probably only got a few weeks left at best," Karli began, already digging into her small pouches for the mushrooms. Wil had settled himself in the snow, and was breaking the hemp leaves into small flakes over a thin piece of rolling paper that promised a good cigar-sized treat. "I want to do as many new songs as possible."
Wil stopped his fiddling and turned his older-than-he-ought-to-be eyes toward Karli. She hated it when he looked at her like that. It was the Big Brother look of love that Wil gave, and it hurt way, way worse than any of those glares of incredulous disapproval Rosen was always tossing at her.
"You know, beautiful," he began as he resumed rolling the large joint, "I tried the whole 'stick with your conscience, screw the Man' thing once. It didn't work out. Lemme tell you story about a goat."
He did. By the time he was done, the two minstrels puffed half the thumb-sized smoke to ash, which drifted light across the surface of the snow. Karli had planted her right foot on the tower shield to keep it from any premature activity, stranding the bards on the picturesque hillside.
Karli wasn't sure how to take the story, other than to be totally disgusted. "So you're saying I should just apologize? I can't. I mean, if I can't look at myself in the mirror? I... I don't know. It just seems, like, totally the wrong thing to do. Like I'd just be validating her, you know?" Karli passed him the first purple mushroom and nibbled a bite of her own.
Wil took the offering, and tore off a piece of the cap before popping it into his mouth. He chewed and the bards spent a few silent moments together, letting the saliva seep the magical juice of the mushrooms into their cells, where it would trickle happily to their buzzing, stoned brains.
"Okay, well. Yeah, okay. I get it. But, like, if your whole point is to flip them off and show them that you're not afraid..."
"Crap, I'm totally afraid!"
"Alright, well, okay. But that you're sticking up for your conscience, anyway. Then why'd you leave Port Royal? Why go hiding out at all?"
Karli had to think about that a while, which was growing increasingly difficult. The view from the hillside was breathtaking. The entire world was gleaming white and pure. Cold, though, so in the final analysis, Icy Vale was a great place to visit, but Karli missed the green, carefree happiness of Brandibuck. Still, there was something you couldn't do in Brandibuck, and she glanced at the tower shield in grinning anticipation.
"You're right, you know. You're totally right. I'll go back. I think I just want things to cool down a little, you know? I mean, everyone there hates me, now! I had no idea people took that gossip rag so seriously!"
Wil nodded and shrugged, tucking the last piece of purple fungus between his cheek and gums. He was starting to smile in that helpless, ear-to-ear way that signaled the onset of a good time. Karli's own cheeks were starting to ache, so she figured her own face was likewise split. It felt good to feel good. It felt good to be with a friend, and Wilw as her best friend. Her only real friend, she supposed. He was sticking with her through this, even though he had nothing to gain from it. He hadn't chided her or, like Rosen, looked at Karli with smug disapproval and said, "I told you so!" when Karli had spoken of Jessup's verdict upon the bard for her insolence to Lady Fri'el.
"Yeah, it's a good idea to let it cool off a bit. Cool off. Chill down. Snowy chill. Heh heh. Ooh! You know what! Hey, you know what?"
"What?" Karli was staring at the nearby pine tree. It was beautiful. Dark and majestic, slow in its understanding. Warm within and delicate at the tips of its needles. It was a perfect tree. They were all perfect trees. Everything was perfectly and wonderfully made. Everything. Karli loved them all.
"What this calls for is good public relations management. You need to be a martyr."
"A martyr? Oh goddess, what, like a paladin? I am so not going to do that! I mean it's like, 'Oh, poor me! I pissed of a totally powerful bitch and now I'm all paying for it!' It's not like, 'Oh, I watched all my friends burn to death and I didn't do anything to stop it, woe, woe, woe!'" Karli beats herself on the chest a few times, turning mournful eyes toward heaven. "No thanks. Nooooo thanks. I just told the truth out loud that everyone else knows but is a fraid to say. Hells, she knows it, too, or else why would she go through all this trouble? I am so not going to feel sorry for myself about it; that'd be totally lame."
"No, no. See. That's not being a martyr. That's what we call 'brooding.'"
"Brooding? I thought that was something pigeons did."
There was a few moments of silence, then both the minstrels began laughing. It was hilarious! Pigeons! Pigeons were hilarious! The word 'pigeon' was the funniest thing, ever! Ahhh... pigeons... hee hee...
"You ought to go find that orphanage, see?" Wil continued when they were both able to breathe again. "Give them money! Support the poor. Be all giving and sh*@#."
Karli snickered another throat-ful of giggling stones. "Yeah, I know about public relations. You're right. I'll give it some thought."
"You going to hide out a bit, then?"
"Yeah, for a couple weeks, I think. I'm totally in-cog-neeeeto. Incognito. In. Cog. Neet. Oh. We should totally party it up at the lodge, after this. You can serve up that awesome pear brandy you made!"
"Karli, you do realize the point of being incognito is to not be seen, right?"
"It is? I thought it just meant I was in trouble."
"Well, yeah, you are, but the point of hiding out is to *hide*, see?" Wil explained patiently. Karli just looked at him blankly, with her ever present smile (a smile growing wider and brighter by trhe moment as the world started to go fuzzy at the edges...) "You don't -want- to stand out. You don't -want- to be noticed. We could... hey! We could redo your hair. Dye it a different color. Maybe blonde."
"Ew, blonde! I don't have the right skin tone for blonde. Hey! How about blue! Totally wild, dragon blue!"
"You don't want to stand out, Karli. Remember?"
"I bet I'd look fabulous with blue hair."
"Yes, I'm sure you would," Wil tried again, face puckering with exasperation. "But maybe something else? Something that doesn't scream, 'Hey look at me, I'm an attention whore!'"
Karli glared a moment, but her mind - such as was left of it - was already drifting along the path of Fabulousness. "Ooooh, white!"
"Yes, I think blonde would be a fine choice..."
"No, no! Not blonde. White! LIke totally stark, snow white! You know, like all those classically evil people have."
Wil just looked at her a few moments in silence. "How about brown?" Wil then offered in a smirking alternative.
"Brown? But brown is..." Karli made a face of utter boredom. "I'd never do brown."
"Yes! See? Exactly! And you could let those down a bit." Wil eyed her bosom a minute.
"Let them down?"
"Yeah, drop the lift."
"They aren't lifted! This is how they are!"
"Karli, I've seen you naked. You've got some lift going on. Not a -lot-, but some."
With a sigh, Karli fiddled with her top a bit. "There. That didn't help, much." She gave them an experimental shake. It was fun, and the jiggle felt oddly nice. She continued to do so, unless Karli felt the tides of the ocean upon her chest. The pretty, pretty ocean. Eternal ocean. Water elements. Ocean and women, moved by the moon. It was deep.
Well, it was kinda deep.
"Hrm. Yeah, we could get some bindings and strap them down."
"Ow!"
Wil shrugged helplessly.
Karli looked back over the cold, winter world. "I could totally re-invent my image," she muttered thoughtfully.
"There you go!"
Excitement growing. Grinning again. "How about street urchin! Yeah! I can do street urchin! Fake one of those accents, you know? Oi! Dun' oi be knowin' ye, govnuh? 'Ow 'bout me lads an' me be takin' ya coin purse, what'n loighten' ya burdens, eh?"
"That was good!"
"Thank you!"
"It could work."
"Phht. Yeah, right. But it'll be fun, anyway."
The two settled back in the snow once more and let time drift to meaninglessness. The world was bright, now, and the trees were beginning to sway. Karli could Hear, and the simple, crystalline chiming of the snow mingled with the low subphonic calls of the trees. The snow tern circling over Icy Vale was a violin-song of high melody, and it was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Flying in the sky was beautiful. Flying high, flying high, oh (*bleep*)ing gods, was she high! Learning to fly was the best. Karli wished for the billionth time to be a bird.
"You ready? I'm ready." Wil stood and thumped the snow from his rear-end and legs.
"Ooooh, yah! Wow. Holy... I can't stand up."
"Here, I'll get ya! I'll getcha... up we go! There!"
"Thanks. Ah, sheesh. I love you, Wil. You know? You're the best friend I've ever had."
The older-than-he-ought-to-be minstrel beamed at Karli in gratitude and because, at that moment, he was really wheeling. "I really appreciate that, Karli. I love you, too. I'm really glad we're friends." They stared at each other, and let the friendship sing and bubble between them. It wasn't sexual or romantic, and it didn't have to be. It was powerful, and that was the truth.
"Okay, call it." Wil flipped a coin in the air.
"Crown!"
It was.
"Crap. Okay, beautiful, you get the front."
The two minstrels, brightly colored parrots of tropical joy amidst the bare snow and void, climbed onto the tower shield, kneeling, hands upon the upcurled edges. Karli took front, and Wil nestled in close behind.
"You ready?"
"Yep!"
"You ready?!"
"Yes!"
"I said, are you READY?!"
"Wil, just push us off all ready!"
"Okay! Here we gooooooo!"
"AAAAAHH! Holy (*bleep!!!) Woooo hoooo! How fast are we going?! Ahhhh!"
"Karli..."
"Lean left! Left! The other left!"
"Karli..."
"Weeeeeee! What?!"
"I haven't pushed us off, yet."
".... oh. Well, gods dang it, Wil! Don't do that to meeEEEEEE!!"
Wil pushed. They flew.
The Icy Vale guardsman was joined by his fellow, and the two stood at the corner of the fence and watched the two bards.
“How long have they just been sitting there in the street?”
“A good twenty minutes.”
“Just kneeling there.”
“Yep.”
“Not moving?”
“Yep.”
They two guards stood a few more silent moments. Wil and Karli, atop the tower shield, were bug-eyed and grinning, laughing themselves to tears as they rocked, sloooowwly side to side. Behind them, a long, winding trail of flattened snow snaked up the side of the nearby mountain.
“Lean right! Lean left! Look out for the tree!”
“Ahhhh! Oh my GAWDS we’re gonna hit that house!”
“Sheeeeee-it!”
The first guard smacked his lips, gave the other a knowing look, then shrugged.
“Maybe we ought to tell them they aren’t actually moving. We are going to have to, if a wagon comes through.”
“Yep.”
“You want to do it?”
The bards burst into hilarious laughter and toppled over with a scream of joy, holding one another in their own private world of carefree bliss, where the world was colorful and bright and beautiful, and worries were few and inconsequential in the scope of the Vast Oneness of Everything.
The guard shook his head. “Nope.” |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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An Unexpected A Chord
Posted: 03 Jul 2006 10:58 PM |
Part Five.
The trouble with the trouble in Midor was that, in Karli’s ill-informed-but-probably-correct opinion, no one could quite tell what the trouble was.
There was Vidius Kahn of course and he was Trouble with a capital-T, but it’s not as though he worked in a vacuum. His every word was hailed, and his policies welcomed. The Midorian people were not, after all, known for their anarchistic tendencies.
There were the Righteous Swords, and they –made- trouble, but usually only where they discovered trouble or thought that it might, in some hypothetical future, be a possibility and therefore made the prudent policy of eliminating the trouble before it became manifest. There was no sense letting trouble actually do anything harmful in the first place, because, inevitably, people got hurt or things were lost or people formed committees to figure out a solution and no good ever came out of a committee.
There was Midoran Himself, but by definition anything done by a god, whether good or bad by anyone else’s standards, wasn’t exactly immoral, and morals were slippery things that Karli tried not to bother with, rather like fish or worms or satin pillow cases. Ethics were easier; ethics were practical, and while there was absolutely nothing ethical about Midor, there was something ethical to be said about letting Midor be Midor.
All in all, the whole thing was proving to be a bit more than ought to be stuck into a single play; at least not one that could be appreciated by the Average Joe.*
Midor’s real story – the whole story and nothing but the story, so-help-me-gods – was something more appropriate for those really long epic poems Karli knew the better educated of the aristocracy were forced to ignore as school children. Poems that began with lines like, “Thee fpringtyme zephyrs wodenst blow/Acrost thee lande uf bloode und snowe…” The sort of poems where people “spake” and all the kings were at their happiest when leaving their kingdoms entirely to go slay some monstrous beast that was, somehow, an affront to their manhood. Karli vaguely remembered Nan attempting to shove a few of those down her throat, but Karli had never been able to keep her attention much past the third recitation of some great hero’s lineage to much understand what had made them a great hero worthy of an epic poem in the first place. Midor seemed the perfect setting for such an epic work; that danged city didn’t make any sense, either.
“You know what the real problem is, don’t you?” Karli asked from within the two-dimensional depths of her mirror. Karli paused on the four-hundred-and-seventy-eighth stroke of the brush through her hair and considered.
“It’s their clothes.”
Karli nodded, and both resumed their brushing. Four hundred and seventy nine… four hundred and eighty…
“Not just the clothes, of course.”
“Well, yes, but; you know,” Karli reminded herself. Karli nodded in return to signify that yes, Karli very well understood herself.
“Everyone the same. Everyone knowing what the other is thinking. Everyone knowing what the other is doing, or, at least, is likely to do,” she mused, spraying her brush with two quick spritzes of her perfume before applying the final ten strokes of the brush to her black, glossy tresses.
“And they’re all thinking, like, ‘Praise Midoran and his servant, the White Bishop.’ Or whatever that arse is calling himself, these days.”
“It’ll be Holy Emporer of Vives, next.” Karli nodded in resigned dismay as she set the brush aside, and her counter-part mimicked in reverse.
“Do you think he’ll manage it?” The worry was there, though Karli tried to hide it from herself. But the problem with mirrors was that they revealed things, and so she faced the fear in her voice with the same accepting cringe as she might face an unfortunate eyebrow hair growing out of line.
“Probably. Eventually. He’ll have to, you know, kill a lot of people to do it, but…”
“… He wouldn’t have it any other way.” Karli finished.
Karli wasn’t stupid by any means, but she was, in the kindest term, simple. She liked things simple, and understood the world in simple ways. There was something that was, or it wasn’t. There was good, and there was bad (and though they might play together in the same person, that didn’t mean that good wasn’t any less good or bad any less bad; just that people were often complex and confusing, usually to themselves). Things were beautiful or they weren’t. The definition of “beautiful” was different for everyone, true, but beauty was, at the very least, always in an active state of being defined. That’s why beauty “standards” changed ever few years, and suddenly women all over the world were in a tizzy and panic because the most basic needs to achieve “true” beauty would suddenly become (for reasons none of them could truly understand) symbols of being cliché and out-of-date. Beauty was something that *evolved*. It was a process. But it was *understandable*, even if no one could quite say why they thought something was beautiful. Personal, human – and particularly feminine – beauty came with a set of knowable, universal, timeless accessories that Karli could count, categorize and play with. Lipstick, hair brushes, sweat-stopping body powder, gentle perfume, and a smile; these things were real. They were understandable. Vilyave was the same; as the true goddess of beauty and a general benevolent approach to life’s little accidents (such as lip-paint on one’s teeth, revealed during a tea-time luncheon), the Youngest Sister was an approachable, knowable goddess. Her gifts and powers were manifest in small, real ways that the average woman (and, much to Karli’s surprise, one male Hin named Alton) could appreciate.
Midoran, on the other hand, was a god of such nebulous things as “justice” and “law,” (or, at least, he used to be) and in Karli’s experience, the people who dealt with those sorts of things were typically best avoided. This included, but was not limited to, city guards (who smiled too little), advocates (who smiled too much), and Aunt ‘Tess (who never let Karli slide down the stair banister, even when no one was watching, because such things ‘just weren’t done.’) You couldn’t have personal and individual definitions for justice or law, because then they fell apart and became meaningless. You couldn’t quite tell what would be just, although hundred of judges had made themselves rich with under-the-bench “donation” by dispensing rulings that claimed to do so. Laws were more often made for the purposes of money than for the common welfare; the place where economics began and social laws ended was a cloudy place where advocates made great heaping sums of gold debating amongst themselves to no one’s benefit but their own. Karli supposed that somewhere, out there in the Ether of Ideals, was True Law and True Justice and, she further supposed, in that realm of bliss and delusion the two actually had something to do with one another. But as they didn’t here in the world, then what was the point?
“The only places of order and serenity in the world,” she resumed as she leaned forward to draw the first dark line of kohl on the outline of her right eyelid, “are graveyards. And even then, there’s no guarantee.”
“You’d think someone who had allied himself with Gukathul would, like, have figured that out.”
“Phht. Yeah, seriously.”
It was all very complicated and, in her usual way, Karli faced the complicated in her cunning, simple way. She avoided the subject almost entirely.
“What we need here is a metaphor.” The words slipped from her lips as she watched herself in the mirror, and Karli stopped her ritual of paint long enough to regard her reflection with admiration. Even more than usual, that was.
“Oh, yeah! Oh, totally! A metaphor! Everyone can get a metaphor. People like lies they’re supposed to figure out.”
Karli smirked, and purred with cynicism. “Yeah, it distracts them from the ones they aren’t.”
“Or reveals them.”
Karli loved metaphors. Metaphors were, after all, verbal mirrors; mirrors were Karli’s specialty. The trick was to find the right metaphor, which would require the right meaning, which would require a great deal of insight. Karli, being always honest with everyone including herself, knew a limitation when it arrived. She would have to seek out someone who knew things about the island. Someone who got around a lot and paid attention to details. Someone old.
Lucius was bound to be around, somewhere.
* Joseph “Average” Hergensen was the most boring individual to have lived prior to the cataclysmic wars. By virtue of his lack of distinguishing features, habits or ambitions, however, no one could quite say what he looked like or what his profession was, but neither was he disliked by anyone for any particular reason. He had, somehow, managed a good bit of popularity prior to his death at middle age by some common disease in his middle-sized house, survived by his wife and 4.3 children (don’t ask). His best friend, recalling him in a very moving eulogy before the family, was quoted saying, “He was the measure of us all, and the equal of none." |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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Break for a Musical Number.
Posted: 12 Jul 2006 07:46 PM |
A song about dawn. That was it. Of all the topics in the world, it was one of the most beautiful and one of the most overdone. No one ever got it quite right, and Karli didn't think she would, either. Some thing couldn't be put into words, you know. But Natalyia had more than paid for it, and Karli was eager to find something new for inspiration.
Lately, everything in life had been distracting, and music had been sitting on the back burner, turning into a reduced sludge, like overcooked gravy. The Music deserved more than that, she knew. It demanded to be heard and rejoiced and tasted.
So yeah, a song about dawn. Sure. But that was hardly good enough. Dawn, as a subject, was too abstract. It needed to be tied down, pinned on a person and otherwise solidified before it could be perverted by adjectives. Find the metaphor. Find the meaning. Natalyia had come to a dawn of her own, in a way, right? Wrap the elven paladin in a blanket of morning and call her reborn. Night time melts away and the hands of cruel, uncaring men fade. Find the meaning.
Find the joint! Where was that thing? Ah! Second pocket, good.
Flick the fire. Puff the paper. Ride the dragonfire, girl, and get your mind in the clouds where it belongs.
Karli began to seek the strings for the hidden music, fingers enticing it to emerge as a lover. Sex, drugs and music, together forever, can't find the blur between them, hallelujah. And, after a while, the Music comes.
An indigo haze
As star slowly fade
The beginning of days
More sweetly seen grows
Blooming proud as the rose.
Thing I did and said –
Goddess only knows
The price I have paid!
With the silent You show
As You turn once away –
I guess that’s how it goes
When, in the dark you
Can’t see past the end of your nose.
But some time in the night
Long though it was,
Our impotent fight
To hold to the sand
As it slips from our hand
Became only shadows
And ghosts of my own making.
So I looked to the light
I learned what was right.
A thousand fold choir
Of Vilyave’s graces
Lift high their small faces
In bright hallelujah!
And this blessed hour
Is bathed in a shower
Of orange, pink, and traces
Of the yellow of sunflower.
And the dew at my feet
As it covers this bower
Become diamonds discrete
With the secrets of Now.
For some time in the night
Long though it was,
Our impotent fight
To hold to the sand
As it slips from our hand
Became only shadows
And ghosts of my own making.
So I looked to the light
I learned what was right.
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"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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Break for a Musical Number - The Remix
Posted: 13 Jul 2006 01:33 AM |
She'd intended on working it into the play, somehow. After all, it was all the same subject matter, although how *much* it mattered anymore was up for debate. Midor had transmuted from cancerous desease to unsightly mole in the passing months. The xenophobia and isolation had remained contained, and no one seemed to miss the paladins. No one knew what they did for the world but the bards, Karli supposed. That was part of a bard's job: to remember the stories. In the stories, the paladins were always the heroes. Everyone hated them, anyway, but that didn't make them any less needed. A paladin made law and order digestable. They made it human, for lack of a better, more racially inclusive, word.
The paladins were expelled because they'd have stood in the way of the injustice and tyrrany of the Bishop, the self-proclaimed speaker for their own god. But for a paladin, the Truth was god. Law without compassion could never be justice. Punishment without the chance for redemption was only murder or torture. So they had to go. Midoran was to be the True Light!
Yet, the light of the world came from within, not without. Didn't the Aristi exist on that premise alone? Didn't Rosen, with her powers, embody the reality of that precept?
Okay, so, Rosen was a little bit comatose, but she'd get over it! Eventually. Philosophies didn't measure up to a god when it came to restoring a soul to a body, but to Karli's mind that was more than made up by the fact that so many souls had, historically, been separated from their bodies because of gods, anyway.
Cedrych had reminded her that she'd been remiss in fulfilling her promise to revamp her hit song, the one that had made her so popular and famous a couple of months ago. The play was taking too long, anyway. Best get to it.
The Cutlasses was the debut for the original, so it was only fitting that it would be the breaking point of the new, updated version. The new verses were sure to be a smash hit and get her lots of attention.
Karli hoped she'd survive the impending popularity with her soul intact. Fri'el did have a tendency to take things personally, and then, personally, make sure you suffered for it.
If she comes after me, she'd told the paladin, it's going to be your fault. Cedrych offhanded accepted the responsibility, but then again, it wasn't going to be his body withering prematurely or his tongue ripped out with hot pincers...
...geh! The cost of greatness was growing higher and higher every day.
Oh well.
Karli downed five or six ales and hopped up onto a table, kicking off the plates. Show time.
Come on, everyone!
You know this song, so I want to hear you from the back of the room! Sing it loud and proud, people!
Ohhhhh!...
They say the True Light
Is happy and bright
And righteousness shines
In these uncertain times
From the throne of the One
Like a glorious sun
O’er yonder in beautiful Midor!
The god has come home
To sit on his throne
To fin’ly make sure
That his people are pure!
So he gave us some nit
Some insufferable tit
O’er yonder in beautiful Midor!
Who thinks that morality comes at a price?
The Bloody Biship of Midor!
That conformity’s virtue and freedom’s a vice?
The Bloody Biship of Midor!
It’s a sin
When you’re into your own thing!
And the gods
Are just clods who defile!
Be it Aros or Gruin: he’ll bring you to ruin!
Be ashamed of yourself
If you dare schtoop an elf!
Pointy ears are worthy to revile!
Its tradition,
This mission of Midor
To bring light to the darkness without.
And purge lives of their chaos.
They’d never betray us!
Compassion’s what Midor’s about! (yeah, right…)
So give thanks to His Grace!
Vive’s a happier place!
(Someone: piss in his face!)
The bloody danged Biship of Midor!
Now let’s all lift our glass
To that powerful lass
Who gave us the hordes
Of red Righteous Swords
For the moral pittance
Of destroyed innocence:
The Lady Fri’el, late of Midor!
Who thinks that the gods are her servants on high?
The Lady Fri’el, late of Midor!
Who sent guiltless souls to the pyres to fry?
The Lady Fri’el, late of Midor!
So she says
That she pays her redemption.
But that doesn’t bring back what we’ve lost!
There’s no justice in getting your soul back
When the paladins paid up the cost!
Yes, she says
That she’s paid for her actions
And she’s suffered a lifetime in Hell.
She’s become a new version
Of that horrid person
But she’s so self-absorbed, who can tell?
So the Justicer’s pyres
Were Naruthian fires
And Gukathul’s will was instilled.
It’s the way that it should be!
It’s for *your* own good, see?
Midoran’s decree is fulfilled!
Praise the One True Redeemer
And that vain, prissy schemer:
The Beautiful God-Whore of Midor!
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"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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Re: Break for a Musical Number - The Remix
Posted: 13 Jul 2006 05:26 AM |
| ((ouch!)) |
Purpose in life: finding better ways of allowing players to kill themselves. Repeatedly.
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"...Cause he mixes it with love
And makes the world taste good."
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<@James42> Lawful good isn't in your vocabulary, it's on your menu.
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Re: Break for a Musical Number - The Remix
Posted: 13 Jul 2006 12:03 PM |
*bows down*
Wow! |
"You know, a gong. Large, flat object that you hit when you want things. Sort of like a waiter, but less portable."
-Radra |
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Re: Break for a Musical Number - The Remix
Posted: 13 Jul 2006 02:38 PM |
| *Veran is Smoked* |
The Legacy Saga |
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Re: Break for a Musical Number - The Remix
Posted: 13 Jul 2006 03:33 PM |
| *whistles and claps* bra-vo! |
T'mok Gurzi
Resident Gnoll Warlord
patron for the noble yet drink addled
Timik Gorozai the Mistake |
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An Unexpected A Chord
Posted: 21 Jul 2006 02:50 PM |
Part Six.
The woods are dark. A fog lays still and skulking as morass upon the fern-littered floor. The darkness is filled with the ever present skree-skree of tree frogs, crickets and skittering things. Sometimes, a strange grawl of the hunt will burble through the black, its origins unknown. Goblins are in the trees, on the ground, amid the roots; and their fire - they roast something foul. From a distance, they hear the approach of heavy feet, and speaking. Human speach, and human misery. It is a siren song to them; the goblins gather, chatter, pick up their spears and their bone-magics before heading off to find their hapless victims.
"That's pretty scary, gorgeous," Wil mutters, halfway to sarcasm but with enough admiration in his voice to be forgivable. He slouches back in the chair, his body a lithe violin-bow of skin and bones. Wilem Fuller: leaner than meaner, and twice enough irony in his mind than a dwarven forge. His hair mops from his head in strange braid work, so that he appears something like a long-haired doll found at Small Stones. His hands are large and skilled, and wrap around the throat of his guitar's fret when he plays with the needful desire of asphyxiated orgasm. Teacher. Confident. Playmate. Half-way-lover. Best friend. Willem Fuller.
"It's supposed to be scary," Karli returns, staring at the ceiling of the lounging hall of The Hole In De Ground. It is something of a ceiling, but it is also something of a floor, isn't it? There is dirt above it, anyway, so is this a top floor or is this a basement? Hins always make for great philosophies, and this is one of her new favorites: if it's over your head, don't worry about it.
"So you're just going to go right into the fight scene?" Wil, tipping back a bottle of one of his latest brews: a pear brandy, mingled with the smoky flavors of oak-wood and the tang of cherries. Wilem's alcohols are better than the deserts he makes, but only just. Only just.
"Yeah! I mean, we want to capture the audiences attention, right? And since most of the audience is going to consist of your Everyday Men and Women, they're gonna want some action to start off with, right? Something to get their blood pumping. You think we could get real goblins?"
Wilem chuckles and leans over the table again, repositioning the parchment. He dips the quill. Ink is re-engaged. "I don't think so, sweet-cheeks. Probably not too many goblins who'd want to volunteer for a suicide just for the sake of aesthetics. Not too big on theatre, I hear."
"Mmm. Too bad. I don't think I could kill real ones, anyway. Ooh, we can get some of the kids from Small Stones!"
"You want to kill orphans?” Wil teases.
Karli glares.
“Just kidding, beautiful! Wow, you’re in a state. Here, have a drink. I get what you mean: orphans in the play. Now that is an inspired idea! Make little costumes.."
".. have them lurch around, growling and jumping and dying dramatically! They'll be so cute!" Karli filed the idea away as an instant success, and the play moved on.
"What's next?" Wil asks. Karli answers.
Back then…
“My Lord Cairon, may I present to you my daughter, Karlina.”
Karlina stepped forward on queue, filling the space before the lord that her father vacated, sweeping an arm in a not-quite-grandiose gesture to close the introduction. Her eyes were kept properly to the floor, letting her long lashes and painted eyelids increase the mystery of her presence. She courtesied from the knees, straight-backed and slow, then recited her lines.
“I am only honored to meet you, my lord,” she began, wishing away the taste of ashes and bile from her tongue. “I would be my greatest pleasure to invite you to join us for tea, so that we may get to know one another better. I am sur-“
“Well, yes, that’s quite enough of that, don’t you think?” The interruption was unexpected and Karli lifted her eyes in a quick snap to look at her intended buyer (husband, husband, husband…)with shock. The Lord Cairon stepped forward, hands behind his back, and looked down upon her in literal and metaphoric ways. “Don’t gape, girl, please. I despise formalities such as this, especially considering the circumstances. So you are Karlina, then. You’re father described you to me, but I admit that I am still pleasantly stunned at his understatements of your beauty.” And then he smiled, a crooked sort of grin as he bent forward, took her hand delicately from her waist, and brushed his lips against the knuckles.
Karlina, likewise, was stunned. He’s actually good looking…. More than good looking, his age – perhaps 40 – only seemed to add to his character, and lent his features the hard edges of experience and his hazel eyes the soft understanding of patience. His nose was a trifle long and narrow, but it nicely complimented the wide set of his mouth. Dignified, well dressed, smelled nice... okay, so yeah, old and totally not what Karli wanted, but he was three for five over the previous seven.
Karli’s father coughed gently to break the moment of stunned silence that had stilled Karli’s lips. Her blue eyes flashed and were quickly lowered as she curtsied once again. “Thank you, my lord,” she murmured, though the simple acknowledgement of truth could not keep the self-assured vanity from her voice. It bubbled with ego, her voice, and her hand strayed to a twisting spiral of hair at her shoulder to gently fluff the black tress. The gesture was not lost on the Lord Cairon; he smiled in amusement.
“Perhaps we could get to know one another a little better at my estate?” he began, politely ignoring the fluffing inflation of pride and ambition that suddenly swelled the father’s chest.
Estate!
“.. I am sure that you would very much enjoy yourself there, Karlina. The gardens are lovely…”
Gardens!
“… and the stables are stocked this year with mares from the Plains…”
Horses!
“… and I am very desirous of you to meet my household. My children will be eager to meet you, especially…”
Karli’s mind slammed into a granite wall. Children?
“Children, my lord?” she squeaked. Her father cast her warning glares from behind the Lord Carion’s back, but she ignored him.
“Yes, of course. Surely your father… ahh. He did not. Well, but I have three children, though you needn’t worry overly much about them. I call them children, but in truth, they are grown now. My youngest is just about your age!” he said with the tone of someone who can’t expect that the recipient of the good news wouldn’t be relieved, thrilled, or overcome with his manliness. Possibly all three.
Karli’s eyes flickered to her father, and met the fire and promises of retribution she’d come to expect at these meetings. She’d grown immune to them, but that didn’t stop him from pressing his authority over her. No, it never did. Nothing did. So long as she lived under his roof began one of his favored exultations of parental wisdom. So long as that was the case, she was his to barter, and her maidenhood was a prize for sale to help him in his eternal search for social upward mobility.
Inside, she raged. Her gaze could have set the curtains ablaze, so she hid her eyes once more in what she hoped would come across as a gesture of demure shyness. “It sounds enchanting, my lord,” she finally managed, her voice tight as her throat seemed suddenly filled with her tongue and anger. This insult to her would not be forgiven, nor forgotten. In memory of her mother, in the knowledge and lightof Vilyave and for her own sake, no! This would be the final time.
“Excellent!” the Lord Cairon exclaimed, taken in by her posturing and the sudden approving glow of pride that her father displayed as the Lord turned from her. “Then we shall make arrangements! I will send word ahead by currier, and we can leave in the morning.”
“In the morning, Your Lordship! I hear you also have several acres of hunting grounds titled to your family jus beyond the city walls?”
The two were walking away, back to the library table where they would conduct the business of men – that is, the sale and bargaining of women and property, and wise was the one who could distinguish the two. Karli was left to stand in her place a few moments more, then, when assured neither was paying her any more attention, she wheeled about and stormed from the room, lightening at her heels and thunderheads of hate upon her brow.
A short time ago.
Wil puts the final dot over the final ‘I’ and the final cross on the final ‘t’. He settles back with his usual lazy grace, his body posturing in that odd mixture of languid confident and careless slouch that he pulls off so effortlessly. Karli paces, her feet unable to be stilled and her mind still buzzing with the final verses. She nearly dances, so high is her mind in the realm of the poetic and the transcendent. The smoke is helping that, but it pales in comparison to the raw energy that creation itself brings! The words, the words, the words oh how they flow and how they break against the shoreline of her consciousness! The spray of their beauty still bathes her inner being with the glow of accomplishment. Wil even seems impressed, and nods as he re-reads the last several pages.
“This is good. I mean, maybe a little high-brow what with all the poetry, but this is still really good. Dang good.”
“Yeah.” Karli stops at last and drops, her body limp and spent, into the cushions of the couch. “Yeah, but still. I don’t have all the story, yet! I have what Lucius told me after that meeting- you know he was angry at me?”
“Angry? What for?”
“For calling Dana a sharp toothed freak.”
Wil returns a blank look to her, then shrugs. Karli smirks at the minstrel and rolls to her side, stretching her legs along the length of the Hin-size couch to let her calves and feet dangle over the edge. “He took it personally, because of ‘everything she’s been through.’ Which is what this play is going to tell, you know?”
“Yeah, I got that.” A look of vague confusion darkens Wil’s expression.
“Hey, it’s not my fault if they’re all hypocrites and, like, can’t get over themselves. Yeah, sure it was harsh, but wow. It’s not like it isn’t true.”
Wil leans his head against a hand as he regards the Vilyavian beauty across the room. “You know, Princess – “
“Don’t call me that.”
“You know, Karli, just because something’s true doesn’t mean you have to say it.”
Karli takes her turn to give her companion a blank look of confusion. She shake sher head slightly and spreads her hands before her. “Why not?”
“Because people don’t like hearing it, most of the time.”
“Wil, it’s our *job*. We’re *bards*! We are… mirrors! Mirrors of a world lost to hipocracy and self-involvement!” Karli decrees dramatically, draping herself back over the arm of the couch and touching her wrist to her forehead. “It is my burden in life that I shall ever be the target for, like, everyone else’s issues.” Wil rolls his eyes, smiles and looks back to the play spread out before him.
“So what’s missing, then?”
“Mmmm. Not sure. It'll come to me. I’m going to head into Port, see who’s there.” Karli rises from the couch and gathers her pack. “Cedrych told me all about this Fri’el bitch for the song he wants, right, but I don’t know her *character*. See?”
“I see. I’ll go back to brewing, then.”
“’Kay! See you later, Wil and thanks.”
“No problem, sweety.”
Kisses are exchanged, then Karli leaves the Hole in De Ground for the Port in De Rain. Kusin is pleasant company, as always, on the way to Ladriel and the ship ride is… well, Karli doesn’t much care for boats, to be honest. The ocean is simply too big. What was the point of it all, really, if the vast majority of people didn’t even get to see the vast majority of the ocean? Still, the approach to Port Royal is lovely, and seeing the harbor emerge from the fog and mist of the coastal rain is hauntingly beautiful (at least until the smell of the docks hit you.) The palace lights above the tiered city estates of the noble families and the once-noble families seems a beacon, of sorts. A cold, unchanging beacon, however, for the Queen never emerges, never does anything but let the criminals and the aristocracy bully her decisions and never offered her subjects even the tiniest morsel of false posturing. She is a place holder, and Karli wondered how long it would be before the glow of lamp light became the glow of revolutionary fires.
Sheesh. Some people. Die, experience a little of the afterlife then get yanked back into reality and they go all to pieces. It only serves to show how lucky the world is to have someone like Karli in it.
Stepping off the boat is the usual fight for balance, but she’s fine by the time she reaches the end of the pier. Heading north along the harbor wall, Karli overhears a hubbub of conversation. Several voices, it is, and as usual where there is a crowd of people, there is the opportunity for an audience - or at least the chance to give her fans the opportunity to meet her again. She knows that makes them happy. Karli rounds the corner, waving to Candy briefly and receiving the usual withering glare in return, then spies the outer ring of the gathering. Dante is leaning against the support post of one of the run-down buildings that made lower Port such a distinctly attractive tourist destination. Dana and Lucius stand together like matching gargoyles under the eaves of the herbalist shop, and Niddles stands in his pointy hat and silence on the cobblestones opposite of Dante. Talion, of course – he’s everywhere, it seems – and Kneecaps. Cora.
“Mmm. Here everyone is again.”
They all stand in a ring, surrounding a pale blonde woman in a very elegant wrap-style dress. Her voice rings with plain-spoken confidence and her body language is poised and refined. Her nose is high and her ego fills the space between the buildings in Port so completely Karli feels crushed.
The songwriter slash actress slash poet slash junkie sidles up next to Dante and treats him to a touch on his arm, greeting him with friendly familiarity. Dante, however, is in one of his moods, and offers only a brief acknowledgement . But there’s something different about him – very different. Karli looks him up and down a few times and assesses the myriad of piercing about his face. The new haircut and color is interesting. Ditching the red theme for blue! Nice choice. Dante catches her looking and smirks at her in that crooked way of his.
“They’re called clothes, Karli.”
“Good evening, Lady Karli,” comes another greeting, however, and she directs her attention to Talion, the speaker. Karli waves and smiles to the strange man because he’s likable, even if quietly weird. Dana lifts her hand and nods to Karli, also smiling. With all the effort of her political acumen, Karli manages not to be entirely creeped out by the flashing of pointed, filed teeth tucked inside Dana's ugliness and returns the gesture. Somehow, Dana’s confusion about her humanity and her orc-ness makes her uglier than either species can achieve, but Karli isn’t sure Dana would care if she knew. Niddles – Nidarren – glances her way before looking back at the current speakers.
Karli realizes she’s walked into an argument when Lucius speaks and she sees that he has that look about him. That ‘I’m right, but I’m going to let you continue to make your point’ sort of look that he manages so nicely when he’s got his nose full of his own opinions. The blonde woman, however, is having none of it and simply smiles and continues on in her pleasant tone that makes Karli’s skin crawl and her stomach turn. The only thing worse than false politeness is arguing in a vacuum of ego.
“Well, from what you're saying Fri'el,” Lucky says in a sour tone of irony, “he seems to have the best of intentions- with these stones.”
“He does,” returned the blonde in her smooth, soft voice. “Regardless, it's best to just stay away from the stones. It's always best to avoid being corrupted by external influences.”
Fri’el?
“Oh, the irony,” Lucky muttered none-too-softly, rolling his eyes briefly heavenward.
“The internal ones are more fun, anyway,” Talion offers, though no one seems to pay his comment any mind.
Fri’el? -THE- Friel?
Dante is turning his attention more toward Karli, so she’s drawn back from the immediacy of her questions to regard his handsome, pierced face once again. “Red?” she comments, noticing the color of the jewels that accent the rings and posts and necklaces.
“Mm hmm”
“I like it! The jewelry is especially glittery and stuff. Is that yours?” Meaning his work, not his possession; she chose not to elaborate on the possible misconception.
“Mm hmm.”
Good old Dante.
“What irony?” Blondie (Fri’el?) was saying – no, purring – to Lucky, a look of mildly baffled innocence on her petite, pale face.
Lucky looked back over to her, apparently having dismissed her presence and her words as not worth much more of his time. “Corruption? External influences?” he prompts, likely in the hopes that his words would stir understanding in the blonde-woman’s mind. “Please.”
“Hmph. Dear,” she began and Karli didn’t think Blondie could squeeze anymore condescension and patronizingly feigned patience into her smarmy voice, “since you are likely ignorant of what you speak, I won’t be offended.”
A liar too, it turns out…
Karli leans toward Dante again as they return to spectating the show. “The blonde… is that Fri’el from Midor?”
“I don’t believe you always followed your current patron… I’m mistaken?” Lucky again, unable to drop a losing battle when face to face with an ego that easily matched his own for size and potency.
Dana chimes in her opinion on the entire conversation. She lifts a leg and farts, looking bored.
She truly is the most disgusting person I’ve ever met…
Dante murmurs back, shrugging to show his general indifference. “I don’t remember what they called her,” he drones in his careless (or uncaring) way. Good old Dante.
“I don’t have a patron.” Blondie again, likewise willing to continue the verbal fencing until such time as the world broke apart under the weight of her self-importance or there was a new sale at Aramani’s, whichever came first. “But no, you are not. I’ve followed four.”
Four gods? Karli winces and her opinion of the woman she thinks she might know through rumor falls from low to subterranean depths. Four gods? Instantly, Karli knows the vain posturing and the overly-styled hair and the “delicate” (scrawny) body for what it is: a mask the woman wears to hide her weakness and selfishness. In other words, she has issues.
Lucius again, ever resistant, ever ignorant of futility when it’s preening in his face. “So now you are immortal…”
Oh goody, it gets even better…
“… and follow no god…”
Vain AND stupid!...
“…and you have never been corrupted by external influences?”
Thanks for the synopsis of the last thirty seconds of conversation, Grandmagus of the Obvious.
“Uh huh. Though I most certainly have. Unfortunately.” Blonde smiles, so very pleased with herself! So very understanding of her circumstances! So very annoying.
“Hence the comment on irony,” Lucky intones, as though closing a book and shutting the debate. Fri’el, of course, wasn’t having that.
“Is it ironic for someone who has been corrupted in such a way in the past to advise others against walking into such a situation?”
AND preachy!
Karli reaches her saturation point, and tosses her chips into the game. All or nothing, of course. It's the only way Karli ever plays. “Uh, excuse me, since you know, I totally never want to interrupt and such but uhm, I know the name Fri'el! Lady Fri'el from Midor, maybe?” Karli can play the smiling game. Faces and names. Masks or mirrors.
The blond responds by turning toward Karli, and ice meets hot air in an explosive moment that shivers down Karli’s spine. Even before Fri’el speaks, Karli knows and what delicious danger dances on the bard’s tongue! She nearly drools.
Dana is snoring, now. Which only goes to prove something, but who really cares?
“No, not from. I’ve spent considerable time there, however.”
Words are masks or words are mirrors….
Karli grins in genuine delight and clasps her hands together at her thighs. “Ooooh. 'Cause, you know, I heard all about this Lady Fri'el that was responsible for having the Crimson Creeps trained up, you know? A friend of Vidius "Arsehat" Kahn? Something about that god of the undead...oh... “ She snaps her fingers as though attempting to think of a word. She looks to Dante for help.
He leans back and whispers helpfully. “Gukathul.”
Fri’el is looking at her more fully now, a kind of stone-cold calculation in her gaze as Karli merely beams and posturs in smarmy mockery. Her voice is neither angry nor self-incriminating, but matter-of-fact and almost… well regret isn’t the word but it was something close to it, hinted over with shades of martyrdom. “I trained the Righteous Swords, was Vidus' consort, and Gukathul's High Priestess. Yes.”
Vidius’s CONSORT? Dana, I apologize – THIS bitch is the most disgusting person I’ve ever met. Bad enough to be in that tyrant’s presence let alone to let him stick his… into her…
Ewwwwwww!
“Right! Right. Gukathul. That was it.” Another pristine, wide smile. “Ah, so that is you! Wow! Not exactly as, you know, impressive as I was expecting. Disappointing, really. So, like, is there any reason why we shouldn't just, like, totally paste you to a smear on the pavement for being a murdering whore?” Uncover a few cards of the hand, see what the other player does.
Fri’el, predictably, just smiles and becomes oh so sweet. “Actually, yes. You'd find yourself dead before you could. And you’d put me in a terrible mood.”
At some point, Fennigan had arrived in his usual quiet, unseen way. “Why is she being mean to Lady Fri’el?” he sighs, his voice half sincere, half playful.
Fri’el shrugs and looks to the Hin. “Probably has something to do with me being a ‘bad person,’” she sighs, her fingers making quotey-marks in the air and seeming, for all the world, to be the most tormented, burdened creature that ever lived.
Fennigan, walking the tight-rope center line as always, merely shrugs and murmurs as Fri’el waves a dismissive hand and turns away from Karli, looking back at Lucius. “Bad people aren’t all that bad.”
Karli grins at Fri’el from behind as the Wicked Witch of the South once more tries to resume her unending banter of words with Lucius. For his part, Lucky was babbling on about how people were always trying to give him advice and other such whining crap left over from his bad relationship with his father. Issues, issues, issues. Ah well. With a gentle inhale, Karli flicks her tongue over her teeth, aimed, and snapped the dagger of her words toward Fri’el’s back.
All or nothing. It’s the only way to play.
How could they not see? How could they all just stand around, pandering to her by even acknowledging her existence? How could they not care what she did?! People burned alive for the love of all that is holy which does NOT include THIS preening, scrawny-arsed whore!!
“Riiiight. The new Midoran philosophy! Might makes right; I forgot. Silly, stupid me.” Karli sighs and looks around, suddenly wrinkling her nose in distaste. “Gods , I –thought- there was a particularly nasty stink in Port today. Blech. I think I'm going to go vomit and get the taste of this conversation out of my mouth.” Sneering in disgust that was nothing but genuine, Karli pushes past the silent Lady and struts off, snubbing her as only befits the low, the socially debgrading and the putrid filth of the world. Karli sets her feet toward the Broken Mask. It's only appropriate.
In the silence of Karli’s wake, Fri’el stares after. They all do. After a few moments, Fri’el finds her voice again.
“I do believe I may kill her.” |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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Interludes: Song for a Paladin.
Posted: 26 Jul 2006 05:16 PM |
Very recently....
On the ox-cart ride to Port Royal, thoughts are bound to stray and coalesce, find hiding and refuge in day dreams or swirl into meaningless babble that synchopate the slow rhythm of the ox's hoove. For Karli, it was a time to reflect. Literally. The time it took to get from Buckshire to Port Royal was just the right amount of time to fix up her face.
Karli couldn't say she particularly liked Lucius. There was something about him that was somehow compelling, but Karli equated it to the sort of feeling one has for the growling, dirty dog one sees in an alley somewhere. One part pity mixed with three parts fear, glazed over with some thin veneer of respect and finally sprinkled with something approaching kindness. He just wasn't likable, that was the problem. Vilyave knes, Karli had done her best, but he was so pompous, so whiney and so sincere about his insincerity that the bard was at a loss to know quite how she felt about the wizard.
By himself, he was fine! In single company, conversations were known to happen that didn't end in traded insults and a search for the final upper hand on the morality stick. Sometimes, anyway. By himself, without anyone's elses opinions to bother into thing, Lucky was even vaguely adorable in a stingy, floppy kind of way one generally associates with particularly cute lizards. Like everyone, his personality and his behavior was justified to himself, because well, he knew himself best, didn't he? Sure, well, absolutely; no question. From his point of view, anyway.
But that was hardly the whole story to anyone, and Lucky wasn't any different. A person isn't just a the person they think they are to themselves, but any one person is also the person that someone else sees them to be. In the end, any one person might as well be a hundred people, or a thousand, depending on the strength and size of their networks of acquaintances.
Did Lucky care what anyone else thought of him? To Karli, it seemed that he did, but didn't want to. Or at least didn't want to admit it. It was stupid. What kind of strength was it to not care what anyone else thinks of you?
"Some people are just vain," Karli sighed to herself, checking her teeth for any remaining remnants of her recently devoured cinnamon roll. "Or just insecure."
Karly was neither, and for the simple reason that she really did care what other people thought of her. It was *necessary*. Her fabulousness was significant on her own, but magnified exponentially by each person who realized it and shared in her splendor by accepting her company. Vanity would be ignoring other people in favor for her own thoughts; and that ignored the entire point of things, didn't it? It was vital to understanding life and theater, how interpersonal relationship caused motivations for plot. For Karli's life, the plot was motivating people to relate to her, and her beauty - great as it was - only part of that. A big part, but some people failed to appreciate a good thing when they saw it. Poor bastards.
"He's definitely the second. A wizard that doesn't know what he wants except more... wizardliness. And who knows what that is?"
"He wants Dana."
"He *has* Dana."
Give some people the world, and they complain that the stars are out of reach. She'd written that one down, in her scrawling, childish, barely legible charcoal smush of writing. Karli was still spelling phonetically, for the most part, but it was better than nothing. Gif sum peep ul the wirld, and tha kumplane that the stars r owt uv reach. Her first sentence entry into her journal of self improvement.
"Probably didn't even appreciate her for a long while, either."
"Mmm... do you think this is really a good color match for this outfit? It seems a bit too orange in this light."
"You're right, of course, Karli."
"That's what I thought. Thank you, Karli."
"No problem!"
Karli wipes away the old experimental lip color, mixed from the remnants of her dwindling cosmetics supply. A new palette was definitely in order. Aramani would likely be the best source.
But back to Lucius. Lucius and his roaming interests, his patronizing attitude and his inner core of self-hating inadequacy. Pitiful, but Karli couldn't entirely blame him. Not after what Macha had done to him. Not after having -met- the psychotic elven bitch and realized what Lucky had done to himself when he’d allowied himself a moment of softness and vulnerability. Macha had seen it, known his mortal weakness, and done him the favor of using it because...
"She's psychotic."
"I can't believe he actually defends her, now!"
"Some people just need the self-abuse. Lucky's not your problem, Karli. He chose his side, and acts on it. He's just like those poor, mother-lovers in Midor that way."
"You're so right, Karli."
"I know. Oh, hey, there's Talion!"
The ox cart ride was over, and before her feet had become well settled on the ground, Talion had smiled - sort of - in her direction and called her by name.
Then things happened, and it became a very interesting day.
By the time she was standing with Talion, Ayntherian, Niddaren and Ulalume at the glass forges of Elbert Oinstoin's house, she'd already changed her clothes twice. They’d gone through Brandibuck woods, those old ruins of whatever it had once been (Karli never remembered she wanted to ask about them…) and then the desert. It had been hot and there was sand and that was all there was that was worth knowing about the Kobi as far as this beautiful bardess was concerned. Ula had needed sand for glass for bottles. Karli was familiar with the process from Wil’s endless descriptions of the pain his cheeks felt from blowing down a hot tube into a bubble of something that was liquid only in the technical sense. The topic of dicussion had, somehow, turned from secret bases and forts hidden away across bridges to Lucius (and wasn’t Karli going to find out more about –that- little nugget? Oh, you betcha!).
Talion had started it.
“Edmonds brought up a strange topic the other day.”
Karli, busy with fwapping sand from her outfit, didn’t notice the transition at first.
Ula, busy with melting sand, had not. “What was that?” she asked in casual distraction that was anything but.
“He mentioned you were asking him some odd questions.”
Ulaluma seemed simultaneously annoyed and unsurprised. “I asked him a single question, and he interpreted it to mean that I was in league with Xaranthir to rob him of everything he knew.”
Aynth – as Karli now called him – spoke up in his quiet, succinct elvish way. “- They are rivals?”
Talion grinned. ” Edmonds does have jealousy issues when it comes to Xaranthir.”
“They don't like each other much,” Ulaluma added, pouring sand into another hot crucible. “Xaranthir thinks Lucius a fool and Lucius thinks Xaranthir an arrogant meddler. Both are correct.”
Xanathir Karli sneered a bit and rolled her eyes. The epitome of wizardliness, in her opinion – uninformed and ignorant as most were wont to say it was. He was also the biggest jerk she’d ever met, and if you didn’t speak six languages and have a pet elemental hiding up your arse, you just weren’t worth the time it took to actively ignore. He’d called her a whore – or as close as – and anyone who judged people according to how they dressed were either too stupid or too unconscious of fashion trends to hold highly in regard. He was almost as bad as Lucky.
“Lucky's paranoid and insensitive. Does anyone else notice that he loves the people who treat him like crap but people who try to be nice to him, he's like, oh you silly inferiors...” Karli bent over her pack to return her folded, dust-free clothes to their place.
Talion had an insight of his own, which wasn’t surprising. The man had everything. “He doesn't love them. He's just jealous of them.”
“Then perhaps,” whispered Aynth in his musical-yet-monotone way, “he considers such gentleness weak in comparison to aggression.” Talion smiled. It made perfect sense to Karli.
“You know he’s an ogre mage in disguise?”
Aynth turned his angular, pale face to Karli as her little verbal bomb sizzled in their midst. “Excuse me?”
Talion laughed while Ulalume continued to work and pretended to ignore the conversation. “A fitting description perhaps.”
“No, I mean literally. Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Karli nodded to Aynth. “Like what you just said. And have you ever seen him fight? He gets all snarly and this eeeeeery look in his eyes, like, worse than Dana does, you know?”
Aynth quietly pondered this a few moments. “I have yet to see Dana in true combat, but I can imagine.”
And suddenly, quietly, Ulalume spoke again, her voice barely above the hissing of the melting sand. “It is only natural that one's mate exerts a considerable influence.”
Karli felt a sudden pang in her chest that was a sure sign that she’d done or said something again that she shouldn’t have. She tried desperately not to hurt people’s feelings, but that filter most people have between their brains and their lips didn’t exist in Karli, so words tumbled out and sometimes – a lot of times – people didn’t want to hear them. On occasion, Karli felt guilty about this. This was one of those times as Ulalume’s words revisited her. They’d been standing on the wooden platform on the bluff of Tanglewood Forest, overlooking the sea. Ulalume had been crying and asking Karli – almost begging and hadn’t then been weird? – to write her song. The song that would be the leech of pain from her heart and sing to the world why, just why, Ulalume a’Midori was hurting. It was a selfish indulgence Karli hadn’t expected to hear from a paladin of Ula’s reputation, but it was more than understandable. Everyone needs a catharsis.
”If only I hadn’t left…”
“If we were still together..”
“…he wouldn’t be like this…”
“…he’s slipping away, and I can only watch and feel myself sink with him…”
No, Karli decided she didn’t like Lucky at all. He’d have heard that and only puckered up his little selfish heart and argued how a paladin’s broken heart wasn’t his fault. There were circumstances. Reasons. Facts. And none of it would be the truth, but what was truth when you had facts, anyway?
She blames herself. Karli wished to all the gods she’d get over it, already. He was so not worth it.
“It's scary, let me tell you.” Karli assured him, then glanced at Ula and tried her best to be helpful. “I guess. I mean, everyone always tell me what a child I am and stuff, but I know men - boys, anyway. And everything I've seen? Girls will change before a guy will.”
On second thought that probably wasn’t very helpful.
“What makes him a "fool" as he was called here, though? Beyond what was mentioned?” Aynth gently inquired, not blaming or insulting but only asking.
Talion smiled in that way he had. It was both winning and somehow really creepy. “How long have you got? Edmonds does not consider his actions beyond what they gain him in the moment. Greed is the largest motivation in his life, and his acted on it many times which have brought disaster on others.”
Tell me about it. Karli looked up at Talion as she brought her guitar out and began to tune it. “You know, I used to think he was a nice guy. Did you know he was the first person I met when I came nor-.. when I got to the Four Winds?” Close, Karli… very close… “He was all friendly. Weird, but friendly.”
At that point, Niddles wandered up the group, looking tired and near to breaking beneath an Atlantian burden of bags and boxes.
Talion shrugged. “He is nice enough. He just has priorities I don't agree with.”
Ulalume was starting to look very tired, and sweat poured from her thin body in sheets. It was painful just to watch her. “Yeah, and they don't involve anyone else's feelings, that's for sure,” Karli grumbled, heading over toward the brick wall of the house as she turned the tuning toward a G.
Aynth seemed disturbed by all of this. “The thought of what satisfied the greed of a mage of his calibre,” he spoke quietly, “is unsettling.”
Karli laughed as her rear made contact with the grass. “You know, he doesn't even appreciate how good he is? Some people. Give them the world, and they just complain that the stars are out of reach, you know?” Realizing what she’d just said, Karli grinned, pleased with herself. “Hey, I ought to write that down.” And so, she did.
Talion had come down from the heights of his earlier opinions to find a perching place of consignment. “Anyway.. I rather not insult Edmonds when he is not here. I believe him to be a fool, but he has saved my life countless times.”
Aynth found his position at a comfortable place in the middle, above it all. He looked from Karli to the others in turn. “I assume most people what say the opposite, Sir Talion. Not many enjoy insulting such powerful Mages face to face.”
Karli shrugged as she struggled her charcoal over the page of her Journal of Self Improvement. Gif. Sumwun…the…wirld… “Why not? I do it all the time.” Which was true, but then again, consequences hadn’t ever been figured into it. “It doesn’t do any good when he is here, anyway. Some people can’t take constructive criticism. How do you spell ‘reached’?”
Ulalume was finished at last, and stumbled over to the cool brick of Elbert’s house to collapse. Karli shuffled over to make room for her, and her JoSI was tucked away and her guitar once again drawn toward Karli’s bosom and captured in her arms as dearly as a babe. Ula looked distantly toward her own feet, dim and numb and heat-burned over most of her face and hands. It was time.
Some people get high to feel good and accept the later crash as payment. Some people get down to feel better later. One guess which one of those is Ulalume a’Midori…
Karli began to play her song.
(I’m Ulalume a’Midori
Head this song, my sad history.
I gave my heart and it was simply tossed away…)
When I met Lucius I was innocent.
I thought that I knew what love truly meant.
But now days and nights are often spent in loss and shame.
Into the darkness we would both descend
To later rise into the light as friends.
And if I trusted it would never end, then who’s to blame?
Though it’s true that human hearts are flawed
I had my duty and my faith in God
But even Midoran became a fraud! His love denied…
The Sparrow’s siren song sang in your heart
Macha’s betrayal tore your soul apart!
She sacrificed your true love for her art. The music died.
Won’t it be dull when I rid myself
Of all these demons haunting me
To keep me company?
Then one day I met you on the road
To Ender’s silken desert abode
You were lost, and so I bestowed that damning kiss.
It seemed the right thing to do at the time!
Your heart was broken, so I gave you mine.
How stupid to think that I could handle this!
Won’t it be dull when I rid myself
Of all these demons haunting me
To keep me company?
Won’t it be odd to be happy
Like they always say I’m s’posed to feel?
But never seem to be?
The feelings that I felt stirring within
Were nothing like the forbidden sin
Of lust that I had feared had always been the hidden truth.
Your love became the measure of my worth!
In you, my faith was given rebirth.
And so I left so that I could search for further proof.
Forty days and forty nights I prayed!
And when I returned, I found I was betrayed!
Your love was gone, and your heart had strayed to Dana’s hearth.
Never before and never again!
Trust abused is too hard to defend.
It’s much more trouble than your faithless heart is worth!
Won’t it be dull when I rid myself
Of all these demons haunting me
To keep me company?
Won’t it be odd to be happy
Like they always say I’m s’posed to feel?
But never seem to be?
Once again, I’m with you as you slide
Into the dungeons of life’s darker side.
I guess my love for you has never died away.
Talion was silent and still. Aynth’s head was downcast, not willing yet to lift his eyes to meet any others. Ula’s eyes were closed, but small tears tracked down her cheeks. After a few moment, she simply reached out to lay her calloused, delicate hand on Karli’s thigh.
“Thank you.”
Karli rolled her head toward her friend and smiled in a strange, crooked way before laying her hand upon Ula’s. Gods, she needed a smoke. Thankfully, she’d pinched some of Wil’s stash the other day. The songstress pulled the twist of hemp from a pocket, and with a flick of her thumb on a sulfur-stick, Karli puffed the sweet smoke into her mouth. Relief. I’ll sing the songs, but that doesn’t mean I need to ride the ride…
“Musical catharsis.”
Whatever. Karli preferred the sort that burned and left her yearning for cookies. It was far less toxic. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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An Unexpected A Chord - Part 7
Posted: 31 Jul 2006 05:56 PM |
Back then…
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess. Well, not exactly a princess. Maybe, at one time in the long distant past, before she was born, someone in her family might have been a princess if certain people had died first, but nowadays, the family wasn’t much more than a memory of nobility and the dream of dead ambitions. But this princess was still beautiful, as had been her mother before her, though she was very lonely. Her father was a middle-man of society who, through constantly marrying a little bit higher up the social ladder, and become a slightly-more-than-middle man. High enough, anyway, so that he caught the attention of those higher upon the ladder, and if he made pleasant sounding noises, they would listen.
Climbing the ladder was the king’s entire business, and his daughter was pulled along with him, so that when the time came she could be bartered for a few more rungs, preferably three or four. The princess was, as a consequence, locked away in a tall tower with only her nanny and tutors to ignore, and that made for very long, dull days. She would dream of being rescued by her true love - some dashing knight in shining armor - but he never came. It was only processions of old men with money that her father would throw at her and she, being too beautiful for them, would chuck them out the tower window. It had gotten so bad that her father had ceased talking to her altogether, and only went about his way in the world, marrying and divorcing and becoming widowed and taking the money to court the next wife. The king forgot about the princess most of the time, and so she learned to forget him. Sometimes, when she was especially trying to forget him, the princess escaped her tower to go play with the thieves, musicians and actors who lived in the low places of the world, because they were interesting and thought she was useful.
“Hey, Princess!”
“What are you doin’ ou’ this time o’ night, eh?”
“Ye done missed th’ play.”
Princess was her name to them, something she supposed they considered sarcastic and hilarious in their cynical ways of being friendly. To Karlina, the moniker was a sign of affection and respect. She, born neither to the low nor the high, had found acceptance with people whom no one ever really accepted and they’d given her a name. It was how they worked. No one ever used their real names, here; it was considered rude, at best, and manipulative at worst. Names were powerful. They set you in a place and time, like a diamond in a ring, and made you into something more than just yourself. Karlina didn’t like her name.. Her name was her father’s dream and she had too many of her own to bother with anyone else’s.
“I did?” Karli sighed in weary disappointment, slumping down into the gathering of ropes and cushions that filled much of the space behind the stage. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I tried to make it out in time, but Nan wouldn’t shut up and it took her forever to fall asleep father’s here, you know…”
“Oh, that’s riiiight,” purred Tessle in his greasy way. He was lounging in the coil of the thick ropes that drew the curtain, and was smoking a long pipe stuffed with something foul smelling. He was all right, in his way, so long as your pockets were already empty. If they weren’t, he did you the favor of emptying them for you. He filled his time in between bouts of his brand of charity by painting sets for the troupe or playing the flute. “Number Eight was today, wasn’t it?” Five heads turned toward Karli with amusement and curiosity. “You don’t seem pleased,” he puffed, letting his understatement speak his meaning for him.
“Och,” coughed Freckles. Freckles played the lyre and sang well, so she usually filled in as the choruser or narrator, and sometimes she turned tricks. Not because she had to, she always said, but because she liked it. Karli wasn’t sure what to think about that, so she tried to avoid thinking about it at all. “Tha’s right, I fairgot! Sah how’d it go? Was he as oogly as th’ last’un?”
“JNo, he was actually rather good looking,” Karli conceded as she curled her arms around her knees. She’d changed into her secret trousers and poet’s shirt, but somehow, in the company of these good people, she always felt like she was wearing that dress. “But he’s old, and he has kids. Apparently his daughter is about my age, and that just creeps me out, I mean, what kind of man remarries someone who reminds him of his daughter? That’s just… “ Karli shudders dramatically and stuck out her tongue.
Tessle, Needles and Po-Po exchanged looks as boys will when the such subjects arise. “Well, you know-“ Po-Po started, but was quickly halted by a side-swipe of a backhand by the troupe’s lead actress, Darling Dellah. Dellah was the oldest of them, being almost 22. She’d been married once, but didn’t like to talk about it. She kept the scar hidden by too much make-up and unflattering hair styles.
“Ow! Whud’ja do dat for?” Po-Po rumbled, a meaty hand rubbing at his arm. There was orc in him, somewhere, though a few generations removed. It left him tall and out of proportion with himself. He moved like a jumbled bunch of clubs attached to one another by wire, and his face was rather like an oddly shaped squash with moss growing out of it. He filled in the role of monsters and bumbling guards and the occasional barnyard animal, and packed the stage at the end of the night. He played a mean snare drum and could beat a rhythm out of anything. Karli liked Po-Po (though of course hnot in that way) and Po-Po liked Karli (of course, in that way). He’d even given her a flower once, just a dandelion he’d found amid the cobblestones, but it was priceless to Karli. She’d thanked him, pressed the flower in a book and tucked it under the fireplace.
Dellah just glared at him, then rolled her eyes before settling them on Karli. “At least he’s good lookin’,” she offered, but Karli only sank lower into her seat, her sulk growing heavier.
“You know, Princess,” Needles started, “one of these days…”
“One of these days, I’m going to stop dealing with this pig-shite once and for all. Come on, please! I don’t want to talk about it. Tell me about the play! How did it go? Was there a big audience, tonight?”
Song of Winter was one of those small plays that circulated the world of actors much in the way that a nice tea set circulates through a family, passed around from aunts to sisters to daughters as a gift and set on a shelf in the kitchen, used when unexpected guests came to the door. AS a tragedy, it was formulaic. As a romance, it was predictable. Yet its simple sweetness and heart-wrenching poetry made it a perennial favorite for players, and something suitable for the young and old. In other words, it was the play you pulled out when no one was paying to see anything else.
“Not much of a crowd, no,” Tessle puffed, his long narrow eyes casting sideways to glance at Karli in accusation. Karli wriggled in apology. “It’s a red moon, anyway.”
“Makes people jittery.”
“We’ll make it up tomorrah night. Yeh’ll be there, right, Princess? Can’t draws us a decent crowd without yeh, yeh know!” Dellah grinned, giving Karli a wink. “’S’too pretty a face to be wastin’ on some pervert lord.”
Karli’s job was simple: she attracted attention. It came naturally, and between Dellah, Needles and Freckles she’d learned enough guitar and casual dance to keep onlookers interested with a simple show until Tessle could give them all the introductory speech about the show. It was a kind of magic, really; a pretty face and a song and a kicking of skirts (not too high, of course) worked amazing charms on people, and surely if the advertisement for a show was as lovely as Karli, then the show itself would be even better! At least, that’s what Karli led them to believe, and those nights when Karli could join up with the troupe and do her part, they made in one show what would otherwise take them a fortnight to earn.
“I’m sorry, I really wanted to come,” she began. “I can’t make it tomorrow night, either,” she began, which immediately drew glares of confused anger and slurred sounds of protest from the group. “I’m sorry! I can’t help it! We’re going to his estate in the morning, and everything’s already been arranged! I can’t even stay here long, now.” Karli sulked and tried to avoid their eyes.
Tessle sneered. Freckles looked disappointed and picked at her shoes. Po-Po looked quietly devastated and gave Karli a look that said she might do better to put a spear through his gut. Needles paused, then got up and left. Dellah, of the troupe, was the only one to look vaguely sympathetic. Not entirely, because the story had grown old around Suitor #4, but it was still a sore spot for the girl, and Dellah knew a thing or two about sore spots.
“Suh, whatcha goin’ the do aboot him?”
Karli shrugged and sighed, bouncing her toes together as the troupe settled into silence for a while. It was broken by the return of Needles and his Box.
Everyone got their name for a reason, and Needles got his name because that’s what he brought to the party: the needles. Also the stuff to put in the needles. As Needles settled down, a weather front seemed to settle over the crew. Dellah’s eyes went hard. Po-Po looked nervous, and excused himself, lifting his 7 feet of knobs-and-broomsticks body to his spade-like feet. Freckles grinned and moved in. Tessle stretched out his legs, tapped out his pipe of ash, and tucked it away.
“Needles, what the freckin’ balls o’ Syn ye think yeh’re doin’?!” Dellah whispered in a harsh rush, flickering her hazel eyes meaningfully toward Karli. Karli merely sat back and watched the troupe as her belly tickled with a sudden nervousness, as a cat’s hair may stand on end before a lightening storm. She’d seen the group of her friends in a lot of different moods, but this was something new. It was like that time they’d all snuck into the haunted house, the one on the hillside past the overgrown fence. You could feel the ghosts before you ever saw them, and sitting here at the backstage area of the sublet theatre, Karli could feel a ghost descending once again. A demon named Addiction. For the first time, despite being what they were, Karli was afraid of her friends.
“What am I doin’? I’m doin’ the girl a favor. S’about time she had a bit of cheer in her life, don’t you think? B’sides, she’s gotta go off with some pompous brass knob what’s got in his head to enjoy his later years up her skirts, I think she ought to have a pleasant trip!” Needles grinned and opened the box. A sigh of cold hushed over the group.
“What do you mean?”
No one answered her, though Dellah cast a look in her direction. Then, with a shrug, merely settled back to join the others in a strange little ritual. As one, they were all forming a circle and rolling up their sleeves. Tessle made a spot for Karli and patted the stone ground beside him, smiling.
“Don’t worry, Princess; you’ll love it.”
“Yeah! We’re your mates! Come on, Karli,” Freckles entreated, using a Real Name and thus invoking the powers that it brought. Karli felt herself pulled into the circle, and settled down.
Needles was setting up an odd collection of things. A velvety band unrolled to reveal a varied collection of anemone needles, filed and painted. There was some tubing, seemingly plundered from a gnomish alembic somewhere. Some ties, a collection of burned tin spoons and a tin cup; a bulbous sort of thing that reminded Karli of novelty bladders intended for hilarity via fart noises. Three vials of glittering green dust, a half-bottle of rum and then some unrecognizable pink crystal rocks that looked, to Karli, like lumps of sugar that had set in the sun for a bit.
“What is it?” the princess asked, no longer afraid as curiosity coated her mind and turned her wisdom numb.
“It’s the God’s Blood.”
“The what?”
“You’ll see. And more importantly, you’ll hear.”
Needles set a crystal into a spoon, and lit a sulfur stick to encourage a small collection of kindling to burn. As he did this, Freckles mixed the glittering dust and the rum in the cup until it was a shimmering solution. Needles put a small rock into a spoon and held it over the fire. Everyone stared hungrily as it melted.
“Let’s get you set up, Princess,” Tessle murmured gently, and smiled as he rolled up her sleeve. His eyes strayed on occasion to places where boys tend to look at girls, but they didn’t linger, and the small-time thief turned back toward the ritual of sin as soon as he’d finished tying a tight chord around Karli’s bicep. Karli watched in fascination as small blue veins surfaced to the thin skin on the inside of her left elbow.
“First one goes to the cooker, and second goes to the Princess,” Needles intoned, and all nodded quickly, because arguing would only mean it would be that much longer until they could have their turn. Everyone got a needle, painted a different color. They were short one for Karli, but Needles would be finished with his soon enough, so he just grinned at her.
“I promise you won’t catch nothin’,” he muttered as the melted pink bliss was mingled with the pixie dust solution, and sucked, via the plunger, into the hollow needle. There was a collective sigh as Needles stuck himself in the arm, squeezed the small bladder, and filled himself with the blood of gods. Karli watched in fascination, some odd tingling in her loins, as Needles’ eyes rolled back into their sockets and he fell back in a limp slump.
“Your turn,” Tessle announced, and pulled the needle from Needles, and the ritual began again. He slinked over toward the girl, looked her in the eyes, and gently took hold of her arm.
“It only hurts the first time,” he whispered in a loving tone of envy, and plunged the needle home. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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The Midoran Job
Posted: 10 Aug 2006 03:02 PM |
Part One
My name is Goodfellow. Karli Goodfellow. I’m an actress, and I have a destiny. That destiny? Greatness!
Well, okay, granted I’m already pretty great. I mean, seriously, do you know how fabulous I am? The rarity of my beauty, the expansive expansioniveness of my creative vision and the, you know, the rest of it, *all* of that in one approachably generous and friendly package is just… well, you see where I’m going with this. You may never know how privileged you are to have someone like me around, but don’t worry. I know, and I’ll remind you from time to time and no need to thank me.
The trouble with being this utterly talented and desirable in a town like Port Royale is that there’s just no infrastructure designed to really, you know, hold it all. Sure, there’s the Stagecrafters, I guess, but they haven’t done any meaningful work in ages. The palace is closed off to all but the noblest nobles and the royals, because Queen “I Can’t Get Over My Afterlife” Aquinas can’t seem to motivate herself to patronize the arts. Everyone else is too busy working their poor – and I mean poor – arses into the ground ‘cause Jessup controls all the prices and imports. And exports. And law enforcement. And basically everything, either directly or indirectly. He’s a total creep, but we’ll get to that later. The point is that there just isn’t much to do if your line of work is to be someone else for a while, so most of the time I end up using my incredible talents singing about other people’s problems or other people’s adventures or basically just other people. It gets kind of frustrating, you know, ‘cause it’s like, wow, you’re all going off and doing great things and that’s totally great ‘cause it’s helping you grow as people and get all famous and stuff but, you know, here I am, making you all famous and immortal and what do I get for it? Definitely not respect. Respect comes at a blade’s edge on this island, and a well turned verse or capturing the beauty of a poignant moment in song just doesn’t make for the awe inspiration.
Okay, sure, it pays well but honestly the highest paying job I’ve had so far was telling the world how a young woman got her heart stomped on by a selfish wizard who had, in his time, also gotten his feelings treated like so much trash floating in a gutter, and it’s one of those ‘goes around, comes around” things that no one really cares about so, hey, she feels better but it’s not like anyone things of *me* when I’m singing. Kind of seems wrong, you know?
So you’d think I’d be happy to have finally gotten the chance to put my acting skills to use and gain some recognition, right? Well… okay, I am. It was a lot of fun and sure, I almost died and yeah, I’m totally in even *more* debt to my eyeballs – actually, the way things go in my life it might cost me my eyeballs – but that’s life, right? You bet it all and win big or lose big, but after all is said and done, I did it my way.
I should make a song about that.
Anyway, like so many other things in life that start well and go wrong, it involved a gnome…
The omnipresent rain of Port Royal was taking a short break, allowing a misty fog to try its hand at an atmosphere of dreary hopelessness over the slums and market places. Karli looked over the brown and burned houses squatting amid the unpatched cobblestones with a sense of uncertain sadness. It had always been this way, to her knowing, but Port Royal was like an old woman that had once been beautiful. Beneath the wrinkles and cracks of age, under the hazy veneer of abuse and experience and disappointments one could see the way she had been, long ago, before reality had taken its toll. No, it hadn’t always been this way, but it seemed that it was accepted that it should be this way. The princess had become a queen and now, a dowager. That the palace behind Karli’s back was also showing its age was not lost on the bard, but it wasn’t her palace, so she didn’t think much about it.
Her mind was, in fact, on more pleasant things. Kaltar Woodwalker, once her suitor, was now comfortably settled in the “friend” department of her mind with a footnote of “stalker?” Their last confrontation hadn’t gone well. Even elven men, it seemed, were prone to the weaknesses of most every other male she’d ever met and, while this saddened and disappointed her, Karli knew better than to feel guilty about it. Kaltar was a fine elf – but an elf he would always be and Karli couldn’t take the idea of growing old while the one she’d sworn to love remained young, beautiful and healthy and, when she was gone, would go on with his life to find another. He was sincere, sweet, romantic and generous and he certainly said and did all the things proper of a man who truly understood the glory and greatness that Karli represented – that is, Vilyave’s – but…
But.
Perhaps it was vanity. Perhaps it was weakness, in a way, but it was a human sort that Karli knew she would never be rid of. She could no more change her humanity than Kaltar could change his elvendom, and she wouldn’t have even if she could. Besides, now there was Allan. And Allan was human. And Allan was beautiful. And Allan was even more virginal than she was, and he was loyal, sincere, generous, strong and courageous! The way his long, blond hair gently lifted when a breeze brushed over his broad shoulders brought a sigh to Karli’s lips. The gentle blue glimmer of his eyes hypnotized her. If there was no depth to his thoughts* there was infinite depths to his heart. There was no malice in him, and he would stammer and blush when she approached, and Karli would feel like an angel descending!
And if he would not kiss her, it was only because he didn’t want to taint her with his unworthy touch, surely! And, okay, he didn’t like to look at her for very long before he was off and muttering about needing to go kill something. And sure, he flinched and his spine stiffened whenever she graced him with a touch, because he deserved it, but… it was only because he was a gentleman! A gentleman, to the core and beyond to… almost ludicrous levels, really.
At least he had the shining armor part. His armor was definitely shiny.
Turned away from the ledge overlooking the docks, the gate began to open. She was just passing the fountain (which seemed a bit algae crusted, these days) and passing under the stone arch of the rusty portcullis when she encounter Frobozz. At least, he looked like Frobozz. Except he’d done the smart thing, at last, and traded in the turquoise loincloth for a sensible – even fashionable – robe befitting a wizard. His staff even had a glowy, knobby bit that swirled at the top and spun around and sparkled and ooooh, shiney….
“Excuse me,” the wizard murmured, his eyes flittering a look over Karli and her orchid-and-white outfit. She was, in fact, particularly splendid that day and in her favorite outfit Karli always felt another ten or fifteen percent more glamorous and desirable than usual. Not that she wanted to be a tease with her clothing, of course, but it was only right that a young woman with a beautiful body show the world that she knew how beautiful that body was, and that yes, you may look at it. She would no more veil a sunset on a pristine autumn day than wear too many clothes. There was, after all, a huge margin between “modest” and “socially acceptable.”
“Frobozz!” Karli excitedly chirped. Frobozz was fun. He had no sense of good fashion and biceps only a chicken might envy, but he was funny. Conversations with Frobozz were the verbal equivalent of watching a butterfly in a field of poppies. You never knew where he was going to land and you certainly weren’t going to catch him.
The wizard’s face instantly turned to a stony distaste, irritation flashing briefly in his eyes. To Karli, it was as though the temperature in the air between them had suddenly dropped several degrees. “I am not Frobozz.”
Oh. She’d heard something about this. Frobozz, everyone said, was insane and somehow was never the same person on any two consecutive days. Sometimes he was even himself but different version of himself, only one went through time backwards and the other thought he was a purple badger. Something like that. So Karli only smiled a bit nore and nodded, quickly retracting.
“Okay, sure, not Frobozz. So, um, who are you today, then? ‘Cause you look a lot like Frobozz.” A previous conversation with the mad wizard suddenly sparked into life and illuminated a revelatory snippet of their conversation. “You must be his brother! His twin brother! Hey, wow, it’s nice to meet you! I met Frobozz, you know, and gosh you do look so much alike but he mentioned he had a brother somewhere in between babbling on about a Red Bishop and turnips, right, but he’s a little, woo hoo! You know what I mean?” Karli giggles and offers her hand to shake, perking up to a bright snap of attention.
The wizard merely stared at her a few more moments. He had the expression one might have watching a drunken kobold dance and run around in flittery circles while singing lizard love songs to a particularly attractive pine tree.
“I’m not him either,” the wizard finally said, finally smiling. Karli relaxed as the wizard shifting himself a bit and looked Karli over, as was totally normal. She only hoped he wouldn’t start drooling and stammering. It was always so embarrassing when they did that. But he didn’t, and only seemed to reach some quiet, internal conclusions of his own. “Xaranthir.”
“Xaranthir! Okay, sure, whatever. I’m Karli Goodfellow, and yes, -the- Karli Goodfellow. I do give autographs normally, but I don’t have any paper or a quill or anything handy right now, so maybe next time? I hate disappointing a fan, but that’s how it goes sometimes.”
“…yes, I’m sure…”
“Wow, you know you do look so much like Frobozz, right? Have you met Frobozz? He’s totally hilarious and hah hah, but your robe is totally way better looking, I mean, seriously, you’ve got this purple streaking thing and all that gold working for you and, wow, totally fabulous staff thingy with the swirly, glowy bit. Do you ever just stare at that thing?”
There was other stuff we talked about but it doesn’t really matter to much, mostly because I can’t remember it and, anyway, Xaranthir turned out to be a totally acidic stream of uppity piss, if you know what I mean, so what’s *important* is that a gnome suddenly rushed up to us and started telling me how beautiful I was.
“You should be in paintings!”
Well, yes, I knew that already, but it’s still nice to hear. Just because I’m aware of my beauty doesn’t mean I don’t like being reminded that other people are also aware. I have –feelings- you know.
Karli beamed in affectionate sunrays of vanity, preening her hair as the gnome continued on about her artistic worthiness.
“Brodie Shakeyfingers,” he introduced himself, bowing with a splendid flourish that sent thrills of flattery shivering along Karli’s spine. “I’m an art dealer,” he qualified, while Xaranthir – despite being a wizard and probably having better things to do or dissect, stood there watching the interaction between the model/singer/actress/juvenile-delinquent and the gnome. “No, I mean I don’t do the actual painting, my dear, but I –do- know some very talented artists. I’m sure I could set you up with one of them, perhaps for some tasteful nude work, because such beauty –deserves- to be immortalized!”
Gnomes are terribly smart creatures, you know.
It seemed at that moment, however, as though a storm cloud of heavy malice and foreboding had moved over Port Royal. On instinct, the three fell into a moment of silence; it was the same way the small, furry creatures in the woods go suddenly still under the shadow of a hawk.
“Oh….” Came the soft, timid voice of despair from the gnome as Jessup enclosed upon the group. Venerable, some might say when in the same room with Jessup; the orc was white-haired and his face was a collection of scars and wrinkles inset with ruby eyes that glowed softly with determinate malice. Old, but he’d earned the right. He wore his pressed black coat and silk lapel suit with the presence of an ancient stone demon-god wearing a crown of jewels. He was menace. He was a promise of repercussions on his terms. Jessup ruled Port Royal, and the wake of his passing caused even Midor to tremble.
Karli twinkled and wiggled her fingers at Jessup, perking up with a smile. “Hi, boss!” she chirped.
Jessup gave her a brief but dismissive glance before turning his attention full on the gnome. Brodie was shaking, and his smile wavered between nervous hysteria and sobbing.
“I wuz wonderink when ya would gom back,” Jessup rumbled, his jaw full of aged tusks and canines yellow with age and meat. His eyes flared, a soft glow of embedded evil.
“Ahh, M-mister Jessup! H-how good to s-s-see you- EEP!”
Jessup grabbed the gnome by the side of his head, turned, and began dragging the gnome back toward lower port. Brodie flashed with panic. “Y-yes, let’s talk, it’s … been far too long, Mister Jessup! I’ll return in a bit, Oh Beauty!” he called back toward Karli as the two slipped around the corner at the bottom of the ramp and were swallowed by the shadows of the slums.
Karli watched them depart, and only then allowed her bright smile to wither instantly to a wince of fear. Inside, her belly crawled as though insects with far too many legs were tunneling through her intestines. “Poor, Brodie,” she murmured.
Xaranthir was less than symnpathetic, and seemed even to smile. “He was undressing you with his eyes, you know,” he informed Karli, breaking the spell of the bards distraction.
“No,” she quipped, turning a smirking glance toward the wizard. “That was you. He is an artist!”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure. And you’re a model.”
“I’ll have you know that I’ve had artist argue over me, wanting the privilege of capturing the vision of this on canvas. And sculpture!”
“Well, perhaps they only fought because they didn’t know your rates.”
Karli missed the volley, being too busy admiring herself. She did look particularly nice that day, and it had been so long since since an artist took notice! It was true about being fought over. She’d been five, and her mother had been holding her in her lap. The painter had wanted Karli at Issabeau’s feet…
“I’m sure it’ll all be settled, soon. Do you really think he’d want to paint me? I mean, nothing scandalous or indecent, of course!”
“In that outfit, I can’t imagine how.”
Karli looked at the wizard quizzically. “How do you mean?” The outfit was hardly indecent! Sure, the skirt was high and the corset was low, but between the sleeves and the boots and the cape, you couldn’t really –see- anything.
“You’re dressed to work for Madame Setine. Does she know you’re out or did you remember to get permission?”
I just want to take a moment from this to say one thing: I’ve heard it before, okay? I hear it all the time, people, and for those of you who are going to hear this little story, I want you to know that it doesn’t bother me anymore. You can go right on ahead with your tiny, ignorant minds and project your emotional constipation on me, but that’s not going to help the fact that you have a really tiny penis or maybe you can’t get a man to look twice at you without cringing. I am not a whore, I have never –been- a whore and the idea that JUST because I look good in small clothing and that I canwear small clothing doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole. Yes, I can understand that you’re jealous but your issues are soooo not my problem. Come up with something original, okay? At least try to make en effort to go beyond your stupid preconceptions that a woman who’s confident and comfortable with her body image must, therefore, be secretly hiding some self-loathing and want to be abused through sexual masochism
I love me, and my virginity is totally sacred. Get a clue, and try to grow the (*bleep*) up.
Karli’s fists curled at her sides and it seemed as though lightening flashed in her darkening eyes. A thick, black thunderhead of anger rolled over her heart as she stared at the smug, insipid face of the wizard. He’d been goading her. He’d been amused to try to hurt her feelings and set her wriggling on a little hook. He’d passed judgment, and found Karli worthy of humiliation, as though he was worthy to give it.
Karli stepped up until she was nearly face to face with Xaranthir, and her lips peeled back in a sneer of disgust. She looked down upon him, then, seeing him for the twerp he was. His type never appreciated anything good unless they could first get it to relate on his own terms, or else obey his world perspective. The epitome of wizardhood. Pathetic.
“You can go (*censored*) yourself at Madam Setine’s,” Karli growled, a distant warning rumble of thunder in her voice. The bardess turned and stormed away, descending into the slums. Street filth and mad, Bald Rick were better company than Xaranthir.
And that’s when I saw them: Jessup and Brodie. Jessup had these little scythe-like thingies in his hands, only they sort of glowed a bit, you know? Like they were filled with energy and ice and just really awful feelings poured out of them and poor Brodie was just cowering against a wall, his little cute gnomey face drawn in an expression of terror! Jessup, I mean, seriously, you know? Jessup. It’s so not fiar that, with all the monsters and demons and undead and vampires and stuff that there have to be people, real people with souls and, like, choices who just –have- to hop on the bandwagon to make life miserable for the rest of us just so they can pretend like they’re somebodies, you know? It’s sad, it really is.
Are you going to finish that cinnamon roll?
“One weeg, Brodie.” Jessup finally growled, and left the gnome to shiver in a puddle of fear and stammered, laughing words of confidence. Karli watched from around the corner. The anger at Xaranthir’s hurtful intentions was draining away quickly. As Brodie turned toward the wall with a whimpering sob and began to hit his head against the brick, she filled with pity. Karli knew what it was like to be under Jessup’s shadow, and she didn’t even owe the crime lord money. From what she’d overheard, Brodie was in fairly deep.
“I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead,” he despaired, each brief chant punctuated by another soft crack of gnomish forehead to crumbling masonry.
“Are you okay?” Karli called out softly, stepping forward as the sea-breeze caught hold of her cape and skirts and fluttered them like feathers about her skin. Brodie snapped his attention up, a moment of terrible fear in his eyes before, seeing Karli there in her lavender and white harmlessness, he settled into a smile of false bravado.
“Oh, yes of course, of course! Absolutely fine, dear, fine. Just a bit of misunderstanding, you know…”
“You owe him big money, don’t you?” Karli interrupted, offering a sympathetic twist of a smile as she approached the still trembling gnome. Her eyes were kind upon him, but there was a tingle in her blood. It was a rush of sorts – helping people. Defying the odds of rising evil and twisting fate toward the good, if only for a short time and if only for the sake of a few, spiteful laughs – it was almost as good as a Fix. It lasted longer, anyway.
The gnome only muttered and shrugged. Karli blossomed with a smile, tucked her hand behind her rear with a delicate twining of fingers, and beamed sympathetic magnanimity upon the gnome with all of her radiant, beauty glory.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
I haven’t decided if I regret having asked that question, yet. Time will tell, I suppose. |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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And These Days.
Posted: 25 Aug 2006 10:47 PM |
And These Days.
Haven was grey, small, claustrophobic and boring. When it wasn't raining, it felt it ought to be just for the sake of the mood. Haven was dreary, and the constant steam rising from the volcano clouded the distance until it couldn't be seen, and all the world seemed to comprise of rock, moss, and paladins. It was depressing.
Her first thought after disembarking, as the thrill of flight drained before the ominous sobriety of the "secret" home of the Aristi was: Okay, so not exactly what I imagined. Her second thought, tagging on the heels of the first was,<i>How is anyone supposed to inspire heroism or hope is a place like this?
Likely, that was why Byron finally decided to invite her. Sure, it was through Allan, who was beyond reproach for his loyalty and trustworthiness (Karli suspected thoughts like betrayal and dishonesty simple were impossible for Allan's brain). Allan had said that he had begged the boon of Byron for the sake of her safety; Karli's status as an outlaw of Midor worried him. It was sweet,r eally. Silly, but sweet. These days, Karli feared Midor as much as she feared the monsters under her bed. At least the bed-monsters were within striking distance. Midor was miles and miles and ten-degrees-of-psychological separation away.
Still, it worried Allan, as befitting a man of his intended bride, but Karli suspected that the real reason was that Byron understood the fundamental nature of soldiers preparing for an unknown war. The "men" would be frightened, not of death or maiming or anything else any -normal- person would fear, but they would be afraid of their own resolve. Things were starting to crack, and time was passing without any clear results. Midor seemed to grow no stronger, but more entrenched. The longer things stayed this way, the more people got used to it. Soon, "freedom fighting" would be "anarchist rebellion." A paladin can't do that, so hope starts to fester, and questions arise, and doubt settles in and ye GODS what is that THING?!
The stone golems were enormous and numerous. They sounded like small earthquakes as they bouldered (somehow, saying stone golems “lumber” seemed wrong…)about the encampment. One nearly collided with the bard as she, brightly garbed amidst the gloom, failed to see the rocks against the rocks.
This place is creepy.
Under the mountain, Karli briefly met up with Rosen and Cedrych - both of who were, as usual delighted to see their favorite starlet songstress (Cedrych scowled and muttered, “Ye gods, isn’t this place supposed to be a secret?!”)- and Ula, who looked like she hadn't slept in years. Byron was there, as well as a Hin who Karli later learned was the Claudia of “draco liche smiting” fame. Byron escorted Karli and Allan back to the surface while Karli rightly informed him that
“This whole underground cave thing? It’s totally gross. I mean, seriously, dank and gloomy? I’d imagined some kind of jungle theme, you know? With lots of hanging vines and stuff? And ferns. Lots of ferns. You guys totally need ferns. Ferns are good.”
Byron stopped on the mine tracks and turned on Karli. His lips twitched, struggling between a smile and a sneer while, deep in his throat, a laugh bubbled in an attempt to out-compete the scream of frustration. “Listen to me very carefully, Lady Karlina…”
GODS, when did everyone in the whole dang world find out? I *know* I never introduced myself as Karlina to anyone. I hate hate hate HATE being called Lady Karlina!
“You are here because Sir Longblade requested it of me, for your protection. This is not your opportunity to critique and alter the aesthetics of Haven!” he concluded, his voiced clipped short to prevent himself from snapping.
Oh, yeah, wouldn’t –that- be horrible! Wouldn’t want to get away from the Firey Death Camp of Naruth theme. It might distract the Men from the Mission.
“Wow, way to take it all personally, Byron,” Karli volleyed in return, looking at him with hurt and disappointment. “Gods forbid there maybe be a few signs of life around but hey! If you want to do this all –your- way, then I guess that’s how it has to be, right? I can do other stuff! Like entertain the troops or, you know, do stuff for morale. I’m good at the morale thing.”
These poor paladins. All work and no play. Well, now Karli Goodfellow’s here, sweeties, so don’t you worry. Things are going to be a little brighter and a whole lot lighter.
“Good. Yes,” Byron sighed, relaxing. “That was, in fact, just the job I had for you.”
Think you’re giving me orders now, Sir Blondie? Phht. Dream on. I know why you wear that armor day in and day out, even when you’re supposedly relaxing. Think you’re impressing me?
“Yeah, sure! Whenever. I’m all here for you guys! Rah rah! Yay for the cause or whatever, you know.”
“…. Yes. Well, if you’ll both come with me, I’ll show you to your tent.”
Allan and Karli shared a tent that night. Something happened but not a lot, and nothing makes for a bad night’s sleep like a spurned attempt at affection. Karli spent the night in squirmy dreams and woke up alone some time after dawn, cold and shivery and cramped from sleeping on the hard ground. As she stumbled into the foggy mountain morning, her breath adding to the steam of mist against the nearby lava flows, the chill morning brought two quick understandings as well as a case of steel-hard nips that attracted the requisite fleeting glances.
The first was a solidification of a hunch that had started the moment she arrived: Haven was a privy-hole of suck, boring and far too quiet.
The second was that Allan didn’t love her the way she loved him or wanted to be loved by him.
Not being thoughts conducive to a good morning, Karli stumbled from the line of tents toward the communal facilities. Where the hell was a girl supposed to get a cup of coffee around here? Against the cold grey of the misty mountain, Karli’s pink pajamas (with the little bunny sewn on the breast pocket) let her blend in as much as an orcish shaman at a Ferein council meeting. If the day was going to be off to a terrible start, that didn’t mean it had to end that way. Karli had plans, and Karli’d made a small career of turning hesitant duds into willing party-boys. If paladins were going to be a harder nut to crack, that only meant the treat inside would be that much sweeter.
The hills would be alive with the sound of music! The party was about to begin.
As soon as she could find the (*bleep*)ing coffee! |
"I've got a sword and it's a good one, but all the bleedin' thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep someone immortal!" - Cohen the Barbarian |
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