RP:A Mad Sort of Meeting
Remains of a Castle in Cenril
The shattered remains of what once might have been a hulking castle cling to the jagged rocks overlooking the wild, foam-filled waters of the straits of Rynvale. A pair of heavily-weathered grey stone walls are the only structure remaining. Around their bases lie a great number of equally damaged stone bricks, mostly obscured by grass and moss. The occasional brick appears to show black burn marks which suggest this old castle was once torched to the ground, perhaps during a siege. There are now no signs of the former inhabitants.
Jolie was strolling along the beach, dressed in haute couture red leather with feline-skin trim, her stylish steel-heeled boots making her trek along the sand a tad more difficult than it could be, but one must look one's best..
Jolie 's chill gaze was set upon the ocean, one hand raised over her brow as she squinted across that briny expanse. "Some day..." she muttered, "... he won't come back up again."
Muraski moved along the beach in his typical dress, suit, tie, dress pants and shoes along with a fedora. Eyes set upon the woman from before, "Ahh, the distastefully dressed one."
Jolie snapped her gaze around, "No need to announce yourself," she quipped. "I can see quite plainly how dreadful you look."
Valentin had been drawn to the area by the whisper of shadows, until he saw the presence of his two least favourite, if most useful, lunatics. By now, Valentin figured, the guildmistress would have probably recognised his presence, so the butcher makes little effort to disguise his approach, tipping his bowler hat with a courteous "Guildmistress". With much less fanfare, he nods to Muraski. "Guv."
Muraski shrugged his shoulders lightly at her retort, "I may not have the best of facial features but at least I pick a real attire to wear."
Valentin wisely keeps impassively silent as the two argue fashion, recalling well the guildmistress' horrendous floral robe. There are some arguments no sane man gets involved in. Not if he wants to live.
Jolie lifted her chin to Valentin in greeting, "Novus." Her attention shifted between the two men, and her reply to Muraski was sweet, if a bit sickly so, "I wasn't, of course, referring to your features."
Muraski nodded towards Valentin before he shifted to look at Jolie once more. "It's sad, how outmatched in appearance you feel. Enough to make petty remarks about another’s looks."
Jolie cast another look out to sea, frowning. "Novus.. you've not seen a large sort of.. rubbery. winged thing with no face flapping about, have you?"
Jolie muttered, "I seem to have misplaced mine."
Jolie said to Muraski, then, rather flippantly, "Sorry? What?" Her hand cupped her ear. "I can't hear you over that tie you're wearing."
Standing in comfortable silence as Valentin is, one may not notice the shadow of the man's bowler hat transform into a two-headed caricature, one bedecked in fedora, the other in a turban, each head glaring at the other. When addressed again, he responds simply "No, guildmistress. Where did you last leave it?"
Muraski blinked several times, then several more times.. And then a few more.. Completely caught off guard by the rather childish way of rebuttal. "That's fine, it's amazing you can hear anything with an arse that large.." Yep, his childish retort was made!
Jolie said, "Oh!" What a brute! she thought. "How rude. And do stop staring at my nethers."
Muraski said, "Well if they didn't block all fields of visions upon the horizon I would gladly do so!"
Jolie knew, with absolute certainty, as a result, that Muraski was insane.
“Novus!" Jolie gladly returned to the butcher. "He went out to sea about.. two days ago. Bit worried, really."
Jolie whispered, loudly, to Valentin, "And that badly dressed man is insulting my backside."
With Jolie's attention on him, Valentin's shadow would attempt to slap Muraski's shadow on the back of the head, success of which would result in the sensation of a light slap to the man himself. Valentin, in the meanwhile, responds to Jolie's concerns with characteristic sympathy "He likes t'swim, then, I take it mam'selle."
Jolie said to Valentin "Yes, though in those clodhoppers he's got on his feet, he'd likely go straight to Davy Jones."
Muraski felt a smack upon the back of his head, a shadow game once again. He hated how he happened to forget about those. "That woman must pay her tailors an arm and a leg, as I don't think any normal clothes could fit such a thing.." After losing the battle of fashionable dress, the obvious choice was to go after all women's concerns.. Weight.
Valentin comments dryly "I didn't realise size were an insult. People call me a huge arse all the time, mam'selle" The butcher avoids Cenrilli rhyming slang for once to avoid confusing his superior.
Jolie gave them both a look that shrivelled the average man as might a very cold shower in winter. "You're just jealous."
Valentin would then cast a warning glance in Muraski's direction. If the phrase 'guildmistress' and Valentin's obvious subservience to the woman hadn't been oversubtle clues, he had hoped the slap might have brought the man to his senses.
Valentin agrees dutifully with his Guildmistress' accusation of jealousy "Envious as the grass is green, mam'selle."
Muraski nodded in confirmation to Jolie, "Aye, I wish I could use my weight as a weapon to crush my foes as I'm most certain you can do."
Jolie 's teeth ground audibly over the waves as she took several, stalking steps toward the much-taller man. "How 'bout we test your little theory, you overstuffed glad-bag?"
Muraski raised a brow at the female, "I see, you want to test sitting upon me? Can you not get another male to allow such a 'greatly' dressed female like yourself to sit upon theirs?"
Valentin looks at Muraski in something approaching mild exasperation "You're an idiot guv. What part o' "shut up an' show respect" did my kick t'your groin not get across?"
Muraski turned to the man, "I am respecting those who deserve it as you have had no comments to you."
Jolie hurtled herself into a flat run that took her so low to the ground that she'd have to push off on the sand on her fingertips, a near-lycanthropine lope that turned to her to a scarlet-and-black blur, and drove her close enough to Muraski to make the crouch into a feasible leap, whereon her arm lashed, fingernails slashing, in a decisively bitchy sort of slap.
Muraski having turned to face the vampire had missed the female as she went to bitch slap him, resulting in a clear smack across his face and several claw marks left upon his cheek. An audible silence would remain as the thief stopped speaking, if only for now.
Valentin grinds his teeth himself. Some people just don't learn. "You bloody banker! The woman you're callin' fat could tear -me- to pieces and turn me into animated giblets to serve 'er necromantic nibs tea." He then waits to see if the idiot survives his less-merciful superior's lesson in manners.
Jolie 's momentum took her for a swift tumble on the sand, the motion ceasing when bunched thighs pushed her up again, "Damn heels.." she'd glower at them, wasting a precious moment with her back turned to Muraski.
Muraski removed his glove from his hand and stalked behind the woman until she turned towards him. If she turned around, he'd move to smack her with the glove in hopes she'd get hit upon the cheek. "I challenge you to a fight! Winner is the one with the better apparel and loser must wear the others clothes for a week."
Gazhi makes his way painstakingly down the rock and debris strewn coastline, his arrival easily observed. The man's stride is slackened and easy and the cadence of his footfalls is in time, but his fingers and hands writhe and dance before him uncontrollably. The figure that proceeds into towards the ruined castle is tall and lean, long of both torso and limb and capable of supporting a venerable amount of muscle but for his emaciated state. His hair is twisted and knotted into a mat of tangled black wool dreadlocks, pervaded by small sticks, leaves, and unidentified debris. His weathered complexion, gaunt state, and travel worn clothes denote that he is a man of faraway lands. His hands and fingers dance and contort violently above his waist, as if weaving invisible threads in intricate ways. Perhaps out of nervousness one might first observe, but it is soon apparent as a handicap, for as the dark-toned man proceeds towards the small enclave of strangers he continues to trace symbols in the air before him. His face spasms and his eyes roll back just prior to speaking, but his voice seems unhampered by the nervous affliction of his body. It cuts through the background noise of the surf not through its volume, but by edge of tone. It almost hisses out, in an ethereal octave like a puppeteer that strains in a high voice. Additionally startling is the formula of the words, which seems backwards and riddle-like. "When the water's calm and the fog's just drifting in, that's when I show up now and then." The madman's dark eyes shift about erratically, seeming to reflect more than they actually take in, glazed over in a strange manner as they are. "When I show up all those seething waters cast their men up from below." A gull dives and assails the folks below with its ardent cry for foodstuffs, and Gazhi retorts with a powerful 'Arf!' so quickly that it was almost simultaneous with the bird.
Valentin promises Muraski death via his glare if the Cenrilli gangster dare escalate the conflict further "Apologise, y'git!"
Valentin was too late.
Jolie turned around. The glove landed. Smack. Less than a blink later, she'd snatched the garment from his grasp, driven her knee up hard to greet his inner leg, shoved him with her open palm to cause him to fall, and whether any of that was even marginally successful, Joliette Thorne would proceed to do her damned best to stuff that glove.. cheaply stitched.. down his size XXL gob.
Valentin tires of the antics of toffs, and turns to the newcomer of long and twitching limbs "Well, if'n the night weren't already filled t'the brim with bleedin' loonies." The mutton-chopped butcher touches hand to the brim of his bowler hat in mock salute to the gibbering stranger "Wotcher, guv."
Jolie is engaged in too much tomfoolery to note the madman's arrival, though her nape shivered uncontrollably for a brief span, and she would spare Muraski a second of her attempt to feed him his own hand-wear in order to wonder what caused it.
Muraski had his glove ripped away from him, blocked the knee from coming to further in by moving his leg up, was pushed over and then fell upon the ground. As she moved to stuff the glove in his mouth, one would find clench teeth locked tightly to help prevent the woman from forcing anything into him.
Jolie was bitten! "You cad!" she cried, and her slight weight bounced when her knees descended both into his stomach. Then the wailing-on commenced in earnest, hard little fists jabbing and drubbing at all visible features and a few that were not. She'd keep on in a such a tantrum, until forcibly stopped.
Valentin figures Muraski's getting what his mouth earned him.
Muraski gave a loud oomph as she fell back down upon his stomach, his mouth to open for a brief moment as the sound was made. As fists began to barrel down towards him, arms would move to block his face whilst his body would work to roll his weight, from the left shoulder, and force her off him.
Gazhi continues to finger the air listlessly as his distant and none-together gaze meets Valentin. His etiquette, be it feigned or not, appears lost on the lunatic. "I keep dreaming that I'm dead, keep feeling like I'm home." With a spastic nod -was it an acknowledgement of the man?- and Gazhi shifts his quite divided attention upon the other two.
Valentin nods to the fingerdancing man "Well, guv, you're in the right company for it."
Valentin then ponders walking up and kicking Muraski. The temptation was there, but who knows how the guildmistress would take such interference. She did seem to be having fun. He comments to Ghazi "What do you say about the man gettin' beat on, eh guv?"
Jolie was flipped like the proverbial bird, landing with a damp, sandy thud on her back, where she'd lie, stewing in rancour. The tiny female, clad in her ruined scarlet, hair flagged out around her head like a mermaid's halo in the slight beach-wash that then rolled in to ruin the leather further, began to emit a rather strange sort of mist from her gasping mouth. Dark, wafting, it poured from her, from eyes, nose, her pores. The miasma hovered like some wispy jellyfish of doom above the little necromancer. "I don't like you." she rasped, her head turning aside to stare at Muraski, her gaze sodden with ink-black in its entirety. The swarming roil of darkness would slither aerially toward her dapper foe, pulsing and bobbing, emanating a distinct feeling of sphincter-tightening terror. And then the Thanatos Domina rose to her feet.
Gazhi mumbles out of the side of his mouth, hands twisting all the while, "Keep your dress up! It's a bumble bee; I'll get it!"
Valentin is quick then to dash over "Ah, Guildmistress, how about I slap him around some to avoid you wasting any more time on 'im? We have company, after all"
Muraski grinned at first feelingly overconfident that the woman had been thrown from him. The problem became that darkness that she allowed to flow, which came towards him. A terror that he hadn't felt before suddenly washed over him and the man refused to budge from his spot on the ground, minus minor groveling and his hands would slowly begin to reach behind him and drag away... Away from this ghastly terror in which he had no understanding.
Jolie turned to Valentin slowly, her gaze twin pools of reflective obsidian. "Company?"
Valentin jerks a thumb at Gazhi while aiming a boot at the gangster's ribs
Muraski was kicked in the side of his rib, perhaps not hard enough to break the bone but definitely enough to bruise it. A groan would escape him as he flipped onto his stomach and continued his slow crawl away from Jolie.
Jolie turned that awful gaze toward the madman, her lips curving into a slice of a smile. Almost floating over the sand, despite her ridiculous heels, she stalked toward Gazhi, a pale hand extending, wetly gracious. Brine dripped from her, and seaweed clung.
Jolie 's darknesses, meanwhile, withered into thready echoes of themselves, wending their way to their shapely source and vanishing once they touched upon her sun-deprived shoulders.
Gazhi closes his eyes violently hard, and his lips knot up before loosing another enigmatic collection of words. Jolie's sodden hand drips alone in front of his writhing pair. "I dreamt about you last night. You were walking on the pebbles of the beach." The woman seems to have enraptured the lunatic's attention, which at least thus far seems a change of events. "I don't have any place to come up through. Throw him in the river, let him float down. Drink it with a straw!"
Valentin tromps after Muraski, and would fetch a powerful kick to the flesh of his rump "You just don't blimmin' learn. D'you know how close y'were to dyin'? No. Not just dyin', neither. Dyin', then havin' your bones used for furniture."
Jolie kept her gaze fixed upon Gazhi, even as blackness melted away to a glimmer of peridot in it, and she whispered, "Dreamed of... I too was on a pebbled shore. There were ships.." her glance to the sea's horizon was brief, ".. bearing ghosts."
Muraski felt a sudden sense of relief as the woman's darkness removed itself. As the vampire went to kick, the thief rolled ever so nimbly to avoid a second kick to him. Even though the attack may have missed, the rogue squirmed in pain, hand clenched to chest, from the bruised rib. The human would make an attempt to slowly stand once more upon his two feet.
Gazhi looses a truly grating laugh, high pitched and falling like the nighttime serenade of a screech owl. "Yes yes! Now you see all those funny things! I see them like people moving and bending, they come up just like people. I see strange things under the water, too, many strange things under the sea." Two tics bring Gazhi's chin to his shoulder, but his eyes remain fixated upon Jolie. The shadows within them coalesce like a child sick with fever, and one with the ability to see might recognize their seperation from this world.
Valentin is a little bit irked. Annoyed perhaps. Pissed off in the extreme might even be accurate. Certainly, his slow and implacable approach towards Murasaki is accompanied by an almost malevolent hiss "You'd better thank me for savin' your life, rat, or I'll take your silence as a suicide note."
Jolie 's damp and sand-smirched hand came to rest upon the madman's cheek, barely felt if he so much as allowed it, and she nodded. "My familiar sees them, too. He's probably out there, now, in the waters..." Her smile became a little less razorish. "Have you eaten, stranger, lately? You seem .. well-travelled."
Muraski stared at Valentin for a moment, he'd grown rather sick of this man's demands. A hand would reach inside his coat pocket, a small flask removed. The top uncorcked slowly and the stench of blood able to be smelled within, "I grow weary of your threats.. Can you smell what creature's blood this might be?" The thief was bent over in pain, agonizing pain as he spoke yet the flask was still waved about in front of him in warning. "Perhaps, you should leave me be this time as I never once asked for your help."
Gazhi had not felt the closeness of flesh by any hand for many lifetimes it would seem, by the way he leans weight against the outstretched appendage. "Eat some food, hey! body gets a little stronger. Come dance with us, no sleep for twelve days."
Jolie turned toward the quarrelling men, then, "Come, Novus. Bring your.. little friend. Let's fetch some supper at the Whaler's and perhaps a tankard. We've business to discuss, and this.. unfortunate man to be made.. less unfortunate."
Valentin grins at the smell of dragon's blood "If y'think a little dragon's blood is enough to keep me away, boyo, you're in error." A surge of vampiric speed and a summoning of the black tides has both Valentin's leather boot targeting the vial and his shadow striking at the elbow of the arm which holds it.
Jolie said to Gazhi, "If you'd not mind escorting me, that is?" The elbow she offered him was more for the man's support than any care for chivalry, but the 'dreamer' had the look in his eye of a tale to tell, and a dark one, and never did a hungry madman ever make much sense. "It isn't far.""
Valentin calls back to Jolie, not taking his eyes off Muraski for a moment "In a moment, Guildmistress"
Jolie called to Valentin, "Just so, Novus."
Muraski sighed as the man approached, disappointed with his choice in actions. Instead of bothering to pour the blood upon the vampire as he charged he took a quick swig then watched as it was knocked clean from his grasp. The portion left in his mouth was spit forward, sprayed more like, at the man who had just rushed him.
Gazhi cackles out in his eerily pitched tone, "Come on, move them bones! Move your leg bones back and forth. Power calls and power sings, like this. Puh-puh! Puh-puh!" One incessantly contorting hand accepts the proffered support. "Whatever makes these things now, just as I am, I have enough. Thank you." A smile, a faint glimpse of serenity, flitters in a short-lived way over Gazhi's restless features before his whining call breaks forth again as if to hasten the bickering pair. "Puh! Puh!"
Jolie tugged him toward the piers. "I once dreamed of a bone whistle that came from the finger of a sleeping god and played every song in the world all at once, when one blew it," she said, "And it all came out as little wasps."
Valentin uses the time it takes for Muraski to swallow it to throw a punch straight down the line of that spit, at full strength, towards the man's nose. Sure, the dragon's blood would start burning his fingers with the mild acidic tendencies the blood held for vampires, but the inevitable feeling of that impact of face on fist would make the pain worthwhile even as his fingers start to blister.
Muraski watched as the fist barreled toward him with little he could to, minus change the spray of where the blood was directed as he turned his cheek. A solid hit slammed directly into his cheek bone and caused him to fly backwards a short ways. When Muraski's feeting was gathered once again he scowled, "Apology for not, isn't me who lacks respect here, guv'." A stare would begin but no real action taken as the thief awaited the next move.
Gazhi follows without any resistance or much ado. To Jolie's likely relief, the hand that now clutches her arm has calmed its nervous spasms. "It sounds like howling wolves from here but it's everybody just beginning to get drunk. Wasps whistle wonderfully when you're far from their nest!"
Jolie shivered when he spoke of wolves, and perhaps Gazhi would feel it through his clasp on her elbow. "Do you like fish pie? The pub here has some lovely meals. I didn't catch your name..."
Valentin walks towards the sea, dissonant syllables oozing over his lips as his shadow rises behind him, a solid manifestation of the black tides, and giving off a dread chill. As the vampire plunges his hand into the sea and uses sand to scour the dragon's blood from it, his shadow approaches Muraski with a hideous grin, a cleaver of black ice in its hand.
Muraski watched the man as he approached the sea, his shadow it seemed however would move this time. Muraski finally noticed it for the first time it'd seem since he'd been looking directly at the man when it first began to move. Backing up several steps from the thing the thief had little idea of how he should deal with it this time.
Gazhi had felt the shiver -forsooth, it was that very anticipation that prompted the words which in turn brought it about, in a mad sort of way- but he revealed nothing through his muddled speech and jerky facial expressions. "Fish swims soon in our stomachs. Not anything from land, but a gift from sea. And a nice soup...My name: dare I say it out loud? Everyone says that you're a good bird, Gazhi, good bird Gazhi."
A Little Later
Jolie didn't say much more as they meandered thier way through the Cenril streets, content to listen to the madman's chatter, or just the bustle of the city against the soft roar of the sea behind them. Once they gained the Whaler's door, she reclaimed her elbow, and pushed it open a little. "Here we are, then." Gone was the maddened necromancer of the beach, the woman all manners and charm now. "Do allow me to purchase lunch. It'd be my honour, Mister Goodbird."
Gazhi is ushered into the establishment proper, and properly, by the seemingly charming woman's gesture. "Funny thing, honor. Not like power. Power is real. We want what is real, and it is coming. If all of me is still there then I'll make it for you." The dishevelled man makes his way to an empty table and claims a seat, all a-twitch and knotted hair a-swaying. "So I make it," he agrees to none but himself.
Jolie paused by the bar to speak the order for the meal, glancing aside to Gazhi to ensure he had not simply wandered off meantime. She was soon to join him at the table, leather dress squelching a little as she slipped into the seat. "You speak of power often, Mister Goodbird," or so she assumed his words as surname, "I've always thought it a rather fleeting thing. Honour too.." here, her gentle smile hardened. ".. for the most part."
Gazhi nods in circles. "Power is fleet, yes it is," he chirrups in confused agreement. "Power balances the scales and stars, paints the visions we see. Gazhi met Power once, and it spoke to him through the black drink. Now Power is with him always. When it commands, Gazhi listens. What Power speaks, he repeats." As if in praise of this strange relationship with the abstract Power, the madman repeats something he uttered earlier: "Whatever makes these things now, just as I am, I have enough."
Jolie had her mouth open... perhaps to reply, when the bow-legged waiter rolled up with a tray and began unloading its contents on the table. "Over there," she gestured, Gazhi-ward, when shown the lone bowl of fish stew. "On my tab. Yes, Jolie. Joliette Thorne." She looked again to the wanderer then. "Oh. How rude of me. That's my name, I quite forgot to give it. You can call me Jolie. Never 'Jo'." Her head dipped then, and she nodded to the stew. "Go on. Eat up. There's plenty more, if you're hungry after."
Valentin tromps into the bar, sans Muraski. His hand is reddened and blistering, but quick action had removed the abrasive dragon's blood before it could do any real lasting harm. "Guildmistress. Muraski declined your invitation at the present time. As you are busy, I shall take m'leave"
Jolie said to Valentin, "Very well, Novus. But I do need a couple of stout lads on the morrow. Little job to do." She smiled graciously. "You may even get to use that cleaver of yours."
Valentin tips his hat to the guildmistress "But o'course, mam'selle. On the morrow, then."
Gazhi cants his head towards the approaching server, his eyes pooling with hunger as they follow the food. "Things in the water, that move like they are alive, they told me what to call you in the dream. Which dream? Says to I, you bound for somewhere honey. Says, no fooling." After reiterating the 'No fooling' bit once more, both fidgety hands still themselves to clutch around the bowl of soup, and do well to lift its edge to Gazhi's lips. Without utensils, the vision-besotten man drains the entire contents of the stew.
Jolie watched on with no little satisfaction as the half-starved wastrel had his fill of the meal, the necromancer herself picking idlly at the platter of crumbed squid rings. "The black drink... " she said, after a time spent trying to process his latest words, ".. Mister Goodbird, you mentioned that Power gave you something to drink." Those words had stuck in her mind as burrs stick to socks, troubling her faintly. "Can you tell about that?"
Gazhi gulps down some vagrant morsels and fish chunks since loosed from his teeth. One eye winks, but was it purposeful? Hard to tell with all of his spams. "No, the drink gave me Power. No," he corrects again, as if arguing with himself or an unheard voice, "The black drink introduced Gazhi to Power. Says, hell no you won't go mad from looking at me. Don't be so scared of me. I've got something here beside you, you betcha. Not black, something made of rainbows. Flower garlands. Red hot serpents too. Say! I'll teach you how to commune with Power."
Jolie 's features had paled by the time he finished speaking, her own gaze green and intent upon him. "It made you promises?" That was almost a whisper. "Where.. did you find this.. black drink, Gazhi?" Formality dropped, she propped her elbows to the timber, leaning forward. "I'd like to see it. Or.." Her intensity ebbed, and she smiled again, "You must be tired, though. Time for these things later. Do you know any songs, Mister Goodbird?"
Gazhi smiles, his features alighting and still for its passing. "It comes up from the ground!" He insists. "Says, from in the earth is where I'm from. Maybe Power will permit Gazhi to introduce you. Power dresses in different flowers, you know." Drinking from a glass of rum as if it were springwater, the dark and weathered man cocks his head as he stares into Jolie's forehead. Not -at- it, but -into- it, as if there were a vortex to gaze into in its center. "Why sleep? Dreaming is just fine. Walking and dreaming, dancing, no sleep for twelve days. Songs? Yesyes, I madly sing!" At this he becomes quite excited, and his usually strained and high-pitched voice adopts a softer tone, deep and strong as a man's should be in lieu of the falsetto he normally carries. "I'm the lush! The madman! Maddest man there is! That is why they call me Maddest-Man-There-Is!"
Jolie grinned, because.. well. It wasn't the finest song ever, but his voice carried well. And it was a true song, and those are always the best ones. She'd applaud softly at the end, and push the rum bottle his way. "Bravo. Perhaps I'll sing you one, some time. But.. twelve days, did you say?" Her forehead was warm, as though he'd touched it and her skin carried the impression of it. "Everyone must sleep. Even those like me.. or the dead. Sometimes they don't to need to. But I think you do, pet. I dream best when I am sleep. Maybe you will dream somethng.. wonderful?"
Gazhi is happy to conclude his little shanty to the soft pattering of applause. It was generous, to say the least. Likewise, he was quite happy to accept the bottle of rum. Deftly he pours another glass, spilling nary a drop with his normally dramatically unsteady hands. "Yes, a wonder of a dream, isn't it? All these heads, these ears, these eyes around me: how long will the ears hear me? And those eyes, how long will they look at me? Dreaming is looking through the glass. You don't see colors and shapes, you look far off through the glass and see everything. Look down into the water with the glass, yes? Sleep comes only with closed eyes, and my eyes aren't sorry yet."
Jolie reached out and patted one of Gazhi's hands, once he'd managed to pour that drink. It was not a conscious gesture, like all the others she'd offered him it was pure impulse, almost instinctual, like taking a breath. Oddly. It was most unlike her to seek touch, unless it was with a swung fist or an act of passion. Strange too, the kindness in her gaze. "I wish I could see as you do,' she said, mostly meaning it. "Sometimes, I think I do.. but only when I sleep." Something occurred to her then, "I went mad once, you know. I thought bats were plotting against me. And flowers.. " Her hand drew back, slowly. "You're an odd one, Mister Goodbird. But I like you. You must come by my tavern some time. It's in the Dark Lands, if you don't mind the occasional fright."
Gazhi parrots, "Goodbird oddbird. Friends with flowers! Not sure about bats." His head jerks several times without reason as Jolie's hand retires. "Frights? All fright. Another stop along the line. Portents everywhere, those dark reminders of the road they walk. Better sleep before they walk!" He chuckles crazily. "So drunk he falls down fainting on the road and dreams and snores. His snoring echoes very far, and when he wakes he finds silence. An empty town." Gazhi seems to be weighing these words as if they had not been thought, let alone considered, before being spoken. "Then he calls it the City of the Sleepers."
Jolie knew from experience never to discount the ramblings of the mad as mere ramblings, though they very often were. But sometimes.. just sometimes, truth was reflected in them like a carnival mirror. Distorted, but a true reflection nevertheless. "City of the Sleepers,' she repeated, "Tell me about it?"
Gazhi does not falter, and Jolie's prompt proves fruitful. But it serves up a strange fruit indeed. "This time, the City of the Sleepers. You said, I dreamed. Says, you bound for somewhere honey. The City of Sleepers -know it? Expect to land there. Probe a little wisdom maybe, no fooling. Further out, the hill of many colors. How is it all gonna turn out? People on crow's land going up to wolf's town. I don't have any bad feelings about crow, never said anything bad about the wolf's children. If they come by I'd shake all their hands." A much needed breath interrupts his seemingly channeled jargon before a bit more of a madman's humor ensues. "I think about it. Where is it that we were going to die? I know how people get treated when they die; I'm gonna have a good time, lot to drink." And he does like he says, imbibing more rum.
Jolie caught a word, a phrase here and there, which could have meant something to her. Wolf. Crows. "Indeed, Mister Goodbird," she said, finally. "Lot to drink." She poured herself a glass, then, having swiped the mostly-drained bottle. "Best idea yet. What's your favourite thing to do, besides.. dream?" The sineater added, quickly, with a grin, "And drink."
Gazhi wipes the side of his face with the back of his hand, and in the process brushes away a thick dreadlock that hung proudly down his brow. "I favor Order under Power. Used to hunt for the people, now I search for Order. Power seeks balance. Dancing brings balance, but so does living backward." There was a definite gravity to the phrase 'living backward'. The way his eyes shifted when he uttered it, as if his souls or others' raised a shout to it that demanded his attention.
Jolie looked somewhat concerned at this admission, though she did not really understand it. “Order… little enough of that in my life, I’m afraid you’ll find none of it in my company. I do like to dance,” she brightened as she spoke it, “But I’ve never heard of anybody living.. backward. How does one do that?”
Gazhi twitches something powerful again, his face contorting and his writhing fingers clasping shut for a time. "Power seeks Order. Sometimes Power is red, sometimes white. Always seeking balance. Sometimes balance needs be backward. Dying is only living backward. Dreaming is only seeing backward. Lots of things can be done backward. Your shadow," he indicates with a vague motion of his hand, "Your shadow is backward. They tell me it is part of your Power."
Jolie .. sort of understood. "It is, indeed. A large part. Moreso when I drink..." She wasn't in the habit, either, of releasing such off-putting information as what it was she in fact drank to gain her shadows, and chose to change the subject, "..Not all of it, though. Not all. Do you dance?"
Gazhi sighs as his first response. "Always dancing, can't help but dance. Power pulls the strings, says come dance with us. Fog people dance with me. They say, where the fog is a wall they came out. Come to dance with me they say. Sometimes they are feathered, but always soft. They long to teach their dances."
There was another long silence, a period of mental digestion - or indigestion, though Joliette found herself intuitively understanding this last part of his strangeling and piecemeal story, perhaps better than any of the rest. "Is there a way...." her words were soft when they came, "... that I could .. see? Dance. Like you? I want to understand, Mister Goodbird. I want to make sure.. well, that we aren't on opposite sides of the balance, as it were. Makes things tricky, at times."
Gazhi allows this question to percolate in his muddled mind, or maybe he was merely allowing the others to answer for him. After a brief lapse of unresponsiveness, be it from thinking or from listening, he nods. Jolie might well observe that the alcohol has had a positive impact on his conversation skills. "We understand. I can show you how to see the dances, in time. This is the way. Else souls can spill out." Head cocked as if listening to otherworldly counsel, the madman continues. "What they tell me, what they told me, you must do this thing without a break in the dance because that is how the good warriors do it. They say, just a swallow. They say, you won't be back. And then you are climbing, everywhere is coming up. The dances do not stop. Power dictates balance and we know our place."
Jolie, as Gazhi 'explained', was feeling very lost but feeling, also and somehow, that the fault was rather her than his. "I'd be very pleased if you did show me. As for my place..." she stole a sip from the bottle, no glass, and smiled again. "I think it must be behind my own bar, for the time being. Seek me out there, Mister Goodbird. Tell the one-eyed man to let you drink on my tab, all you want. Food, too. And..." she blinked. ".. perhaps a bath wouldn't hurt. You're more than welcome. Or I can come to see you, where we met, if you go there very often. My familiar haunts the place. I dare say you'll know him if you see him. You'll never have seen anything quite like him before."
Gazhi said to Jolie, "Thanks be for all that you are." His eyes search the space around Jolie's head. "I only followed the directions they gave me; I know this town only by what they tell me. Is this the City of Sleepers? In any case, they will show me your way again, or you to I if they can turn your head around."
Jolie rose from her chair, and took the two steps between herself and the madman. Flipping that errant dreadlock out of the path of one eye, the necromancer leaned in - hardly needing, with her scant stature to lean down - and peered into the man's fathomless eyes, her own green as a corpse-fire and each oddly shot in the middle with a jagged, black star. "Here's to living backward, Mister Goodbird. We'll cross paths again, I am very sure of that."
Jolie shoved her hand in her pockets and drew out a few coins, with a small, white bone mixed in. These, she placed on the table.
Gazhi 's own eyes were dark and swirling, wide and glazed. They sought something within Jolie's, or maybe they sought to place something in there. For a split second, brief and fleeting, one might swear that the black of his pupils seemed to bubble and undulate, almost like a chalice of the aforementioned mysterious black drink. "And who's face was it that was seen before, wrinkled and worn of age and weather? Wasn't it me, and isn't it me now when I look at you?" A smile slowly spreads across his dry cracked lips. "Wonderful sounds! Wonderful backward! We shall live again." This, apparently, is the madman's farewell, for no sooner than it is said, he looks away from the peculiarly powerful woman and back to the alcohol and foodstuff that remains.
Jolie left quietly, not a look back given until she was beyond the tavern door, and peering at him through the window as she passed. A shiver ran across her nape. The wind, she thought, hurrying on toward the road to Vailkrin. Just the wind. Probably.
Gazhi manages to pick up the gold coins without his dexterity being compromised by his tremors and spasms. The small white bone is received with even more care, being brought level with his stare and, apparently, being spoken to. Inaudible musings pour out of the madman's mouth to the inanimate bone. Bits of food spray out amidst wordings and chewings.