RP:An Unexpected Duet

Headmaster's Chambers

Ignatius had been standing before that great stained glass window for some time now, staring out into the training yard below. He did not know how much time had passed as he stood there with arms crossed behind his back and face contorted into a thoughtful expression. Likely it had been several hours but when he let his mind wander, time had a funny way of getting away from him. There was so much that needed to be done and he could not settle on where to start - students needed to be recruited, teachers needed to be recruited, and training methods needed to be dreamed up. This lofty goal of starting a school was becoming even loftier the closer that it grew towards its completion, it seemed, and Ignatius found himself more and more perplexed by the intricacies of creating and maintaining an academy of militant arts.

Madigan approached from behind, skin darker than it had been before, white hair changed to a slight pinkish hue, and her tongue split down the middle. She strode up beside him, her arm brushing against him. The dryad was certainly much shorter than the knight, the sight of the two likely striking most peculiarly to anyone who saw the two standing so close to each other. Not only was she so small and he so tall, but she represented life in the eyes of the outside world, a guardian of Life, Nature, and all things good and Harmonious while he represented Death and the Unnatural, having refused to die when death came knocking on his door. He walked and rotted; she stood and flourished. But how the eyes of the world beyond the stained glass looked upon them held little of the truth and reality that was their existences, both separate and united. Madigan silently stared out the window with him for a moment before upturning her face to watch him with those lively, moss green eyes of hers.

Ignatius seemed content to remain there in silence even when Madigan had taken the spot next to him, the red orbs that were his eyes within empty sockets staring with nigh unwavering focus down towards the snow-covered faux battlefield that his chamber overlooked. More time passed and those many passing moments only served to make it all the more sudden when Ignatius turned towards the girl and leaned down to scoop her up in the tightest of hugs. He did not know what had driven him to do it but he could not resist an overwhelming urge to squeeze the girl tight in his arms, the scaled fingers of his draconic hand tangling about in her hair as he held the dryad close for a bit. But soon enough, he was letting her go and clearing his throat - trying desperately not to dwell too long on her warmth or the scent of her form. "wh... what I meant to say is," He quickly said with nervousness clinging to his tone, "E 'molto bello vedere di nuovo, bell'albero."

Madigan reciprocated the embrace instantaneously, her face burrowing against the folds of his clothes. She inhaled softly and his own scent - whatever that entailed - filled her lungs, and she sighed loudly, happily. It'd been a while since they'd seen each other, or at least it felt that way. The dryad wasn't of a race that tracked time. She tilted her chin up to look into his face, those empty sockets somehow warming her. Even without eyes and just red lights to serve as his orbs, she could feel and see into the life that embodied his corpse and animated his bones. It was refreshing to her to look up at him, to see him, and to hear the voice that she had come to miss. "Patron," she intoned gently, eyes dancing. Without the nervousness and hesitation he seemed to have, she embraced him again, holding on slightly longer than he had the first time. When she pulled away, she looked up at him and said, "Look," stuck her tongue out, and pointed to the slit, running her finger through it to show him. She seemed happy about the mutilation, though.

Ignatius could not resist the smile that had formed across his face when Madigan spoke, a happiness shooting through him that managed to clear away all the fog of doubt and worry that had otherwise nestled itself firmly within him. He tried not to think too much about her tongue when she showed it to him though, forcing memories to the back of his head as he looked upon that now bisected muscle. His glowing orbs dimmed and flared as he examined the bodily modification, his head tilted to one side. "Interesting. May I assume that this has some purpose or meaning among your people?" He asked with a tinge of curiosity in his voice, looking for any way that might refocus thoughts to something that was not... well, those memories.

Madigan wrapped her fingers around his forearms all of a sudden, jumping up and down by using him as her leverage. She bounced like a child, her face lit up with a grin happily as tears rolled from the sides of her eyes down to her chin. "Yes!" She cheered, "You're the first to know so!" She stopped her bouncing then, her chest heaving from the excitement. "There's this saying in Common, 'two heads are better than one' because with two heads, you have twice the wisdom to solve an issue or to complete a task. My people have a similar saying but with tongues. Tongues are used to speak, to pass on knowledge, wisdom, history, emotions... to have two tongues means to be blessed twice with the skill. A serpent gave it to me," she informed him elatedly. "It embraced me and blessed me with my tongue. And I met the mother of serpents. She's beautiful," she said, her face growing serious, eyes staring at him, wide and intense. Then her face grew sad, worried. "She lost an arm. And there are these two bizarre creatures roaming my home now. One is big and gaunt, doesn't have a face but it has wings, and does this." Her hands moved around to demonstrate all the things she described and even wibbled her fingers in the way she'd seen the night gaunt do. "The other..." her voice trailed off as her body grew visibly tense and uncomfortable. When she spoke, her voice was filled with the kind of repulsion a zealot might have toward a heretic. "It's tall and clothed, kind of human-like, but it doesn't have a face either. Just a really big mouth and very sharp, ugly teeth. I don't like it. It doesn't feel natural... and I'm one of the thinking that all things existing are natural because otherwise, Nature wouldn't manifest it, right? But this thing is something else. I saw it be born and it's not natural." She glared at the floor, trying to come up with a way to eradicate the world of that thing. "You must come and help fight it. But you can't tell anyone where my home is," her eyes grew dark as she looked up at him, the gravity of her words hanging thickly in the air. "You betray me and my people if you tell anyone." Yes, she was serious.

Ignatius listened intently as Madigan spoke, leaning in closely as if the two were sharing in some deep dark conspiracy - and with the way that the girl wanted him to keep her secret, it may as well have been a conspiracy. Her explanation of the symbolism of the splitting of her tongue made sense as symbol though he chose not to mention that the actual logic behind it seemed non-existent, content to also understand that symbolism is not overly intended to be logical. The old knight took her hand in his own and grinned his best rendition of a charming smile as he brought her knuckles to his lips. The idea of an adventure had cleared away all the nervousness that he felt around Madigan, replacing it with that calm and cool demeanor that the people of Frostmaw knew him for. "Why, Madigan..." He laughed, "Sarebbe la mia più sincera onore per aiutarvi nella vostra ricerca ... e mantenere il vostro segreto per te."

Madigan grinned then when he replied, pleased to see him smile. And then she did something unexpected and leaned into him and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. "The office is beautiful. And so is the window," she remarked, her eyes looking toward the mutli-colored pieces of glass. She held onto his hand, not wanting to lose the physical connection she had to him and leaned into him to rest her temple against him as she studied the story depicted by the pieces of colored glass. "What do you call that? It's really pretty."

Ignatius seemed almost as if he did not know how to react to her kissing him, his body twitching ever so slightly at the soft contact of her lips against his. This girl filled him with so many strange feelings that left him confused and utterly unaware of what he really wanted. The question provided a distraction from those thoughts and emotions, an opportunity to think about something else for at least a few moments while he regained his composure. He slipped an arm about her waist as he turned his gaze up towards that window, his eyes dimming as he remembered those days. "La guerra non cambia, solo le persone che stanno combattendo in essa." He said pensively. "It is a memory and a glance at the future both, battles that have happened and battles that will eventually happen. This art, it is lovely to look at objectively but..." He paused and waved his hand circularly in the air as he searched for the words that he wanted to say. "La cosa reale è infernale. I ragazzi che a malapena sanno come tenere un combattimento con la spada per gli uomini che non avrà mai a portare uno."

Madigan listened quietly, relaxing against the vibrations of his voice that ran through his body and clothes. She sighed inwardly, suddenly confused by the idea of war. "Why do people fight in wars? I have this friend who's a dragon and she's a young knight, very naive and unwise. It looks to me like she's looking for someone to swear herself to and something to hate in the process. It seems to me that when you look for something to love and dedicate yourself to, you're also looking to hate other things that you want to destroy."

Ignatius found that this one question was surprisingly easy for him to answer. It was a question that he had to ask himself so very long ago and had spent much of his existence learning the answer to. He looked down at Madigan and offered her a sorrowful smile as he squeezed her close to him. "Because men will rally around the man that has power for little more reason than that. And the man with power wants all of the power so he will fight with other men who have power." Iggy explained and with each passing moment, that smile of his dropped and his eyes slowly dimmed to mere pinpricks in his head. "But men with power will not fight for themselves when they have others who might do it for them. Ed è più facile odiare qualcosa che è stato detto di odiare quello che è di cercare di capire qualcosa che si sa poco."

Madigan frowned at him, lacking words to respond with. She sighed then. "My people protected each other but the first most thing was to ensure your own survival. If you could protect yourself and others, then you must. But no one was obligated to blindly defend anyone else. That's the way of the animal kingdom and that's the way of my people."

Ignatius could only shrug. There was no changing that and such was something that a long life had taught Ignatius all too well. He did not mean to be so resigned to the idea that there would always be war but neither was he blind to the world that had passed around him in his years on it. He looked down at Madigan and smiled at her though this time, it was more of a cheerful smile as his red orbs flared back up. "Thus is the folly of man, il mio amore. But do not hold it against us for as much as we destroy, we can also create and as much as we hate we can also love." He did not know why he leaned down to kiss her just then but he did, pressing his lips passionately against hers. All other things were forgotten in that moment and to him, there was only them...

Madigan sunk happily into the kiss, her arms holding tightly onto him as she grabbed fistfuls of clothes. Sure, she didn't feel attraction the way most other races might, but she certainly could feel affection and companionship, unlike the likes of anything many other races could feel. As a dryad, she had a unique perspective on interconnectedness and companionship, being more aware of her blatant need for the things around her that ensured her survival in some way or another, something other races might be farther removed from. She inhaled deeply mid-kiss and her senses grew clouded. There wasn't much more intoxicating to her than his scent. But even with her mind so clouded from the kiss, she couldn't help but wonder what exactly he was implying with his last words.

Ignatius finally pulled himself away from her after losing himself utterly in that kiss, his head still swimming with the mindless delights of their little entanglement. And then the entire world came rushing back to him all at once. "I'm sorry... I should not have done that. It is hardly honorable..." He said nervously, shifting this way and that as if he were uncomfortable within his own body. "Un uomo non dovrebbe solo baciare una ragazza senza che lei esprime la mancanza." He was an old dog and everything about Madigan seemed to always be such a new trick.

Madigan smiled, "Why do you worry about those things? That's beyond us now, isn't it?" She shook her head playfully and released him to explore the room more thoroughly. With curious eyes, she scanned the trophies and weapons that decorated one wall, all encased in glass. "My people wear their individual histories around their necks, but other races seem to not like to wear such things so proudly." Other races seemed to have memorabilia from certain points in their history. She imagined he could recount every story that each object was associated with, but she didn't ask for those stories. Oftentimes, she would spot him silent and pensive, staring off into his past. She found it strange how one man would become so hardened by his past and another would become more gentle with time because of a similar one. Her eyes briefly glanced over to Ignatius, her head downturned.

Ignatius knew that he did not need to feel so nervous around her but he could not help himself. She was the oddly kindred spirit in his life, someone who understood him in this world that he often felt an outsider of and he wanted nothing more than to not ruin that. For a time, the old knight watched in silence as Madigan made her treck about his chambers and observed quietly as she looked upon his relics of wars and his maps and his books. But eventually he would step towards her and walk beside her, looking into each case at the trophies. So many memories, all of them - good and bad. "These all have an interesting tale behind them but... my, how you say... greatest treasure is the sword sitting upon my desk." He would finally say.

Madigan glanced up at him for a flicker of a moment before she glanced over at the sword at his desk. Walking to it, she studied it closely, tempted to touch it. "Why is it your greatest treasure?" she finally asked, looking up at him with curious eyes. Her eyes glanced to the distance between them and she frowned, nibbling on her lip. The distance she'd unintentionally put between them seemed to bother her; she wanted to be beside him. Her people were an affectionate group of people, almost always making physical contact. It'd been a while since she'd seen Ignatius and had the opportunity to touch him, and now that they were together, she didn't want that gap to be between them. If he didn't come to her first, she would go to him to lean herself into him.

Ignatius stepped up to the desk as he watched Madigan look upon that sword from across the wooden surface. A slight grin tugged at the edges of his mouth as he leaned forward and gave the sword a nudge in her direction, intentionally forcing her to catch it when it would wobble towards the dryad. "This sword was my first sword. Ha ucciso molti nemici but that is not why it is important to me." The knight-captain explained. "My father was not a rich man, he could afford little other than ensuring my needs were met. And when he died, there was nothing for him to pass down to me except that sword." His face seemed to sink somewhat, falling into something that resembled sadness. "Everyday of his life he worked himself to the bone and saved just a little bit of coin from each day's work in modo che questo aspirante cavaliere di un figlio potrebbe ereditare una spada corretta."

Madigan caught it as Ignatius had expected and looked up at him in anticipation when her hands touched it, her heart hammering in her chest. She knew the notions of property men had, not liking others to touch their things, and even though Ignatius had intentionally pushed the sword to her, touching it still made her heart catch. When he made no negative reaction, she was reassured and became more bold; wrapping her fingers around the hilt, Madigan lifted the sword, the edge of it dragging along the desk as she backed up. The thing weighed weirdly in her hands, the weight of it distributed awkwardly. Absolutely unprepared to balance the weapon, the blade slipped toward the floor but she caught herself before it could hit the ground, her eyes spread wide open in surprise and shame. She blinked once. A slow exhalation before she hoisted the thing up higher, managing the weight much more easily once she got a physical understanding of how to balance it in her hands. "I don't know what it feels like to have a father. It's a concept entirely inconceivable to me," she said as she glanced from the blade's tip that extended over her head to Ignatius. "I only know what having a mother is like, and even that is not the same as having a mother from a couple. Some of us aren't so much a mix of two parents as we might be a direct copy of our mother." She shrugged awkwardly, arms preoccupied with keeping the sword erect. "It's very complicated - how dryads come to be - because they're born in so many ways." She smiled at him but then it wavered and softened to a subtle frown. "Did you ever want children?"

Ignatius leaned down onto the desk, propping himself up with his elbows as he watched Madigan become accustomed to the sword. He quietly listened as she talked, saying nothing until he had heard every little word that she had said. Everything that Madigan ever uttered seemed to interest the old knight, her perspective so alien and yet so similar to his own in so many ways. "Ci sono un po 'simili in questo modo." He finally said when he was sure that the dryad had nothing else to add, standing himself back up to his full height. "My own mother died birthing me. I did not know her, so where you grew only with a mother... I grew only with a father." He smiled at her despite an old twinge of sadness. His father had told him wonderful stories about her. But that memory was overcast by the thought that had been nagging at his mind all night. He did not know what made him say it but none of him could regret that sudden utterance of "Madigan, I think I am in love with you."

Madigan utterly froze, her eyes that had been trained on the tip of the sword staring dumbfoundedly at Ignatius then. There was a long moment that she stood like that, her face expressionless and the look in her green eyes unreadable. And then she smiled gently and bowed her head as she leaned the sword against her forehead. "Let me know when you're sure of it," she joked, and then she lifted her head off the sword and placed it gently back onto the desk, not bothering to position it in the aesthetic manner it had been found in. "How does someone *think* they are in love but not know?" she wondered out loud. Muttering to herself, she added, "Such a strange manner of speaking..."

Ignatius walked around the desk to make his way towards Madigan, shaking his head and trying as hard as he could manage to not laugh at her commentary in regards to the situation. He wanted to grab her and to kiss her but these things needed to wait until after he was done with giving his heartfelt confession to this little dryad. "Oh, per l'amor di ..." He groaned when Madigan had added more to her observation. "Saggio abbastanza piccolo albero e ancora così ingenuo. Fine. I know that I am in love with you. I know that in me, I feel such happiness at the sight of your face and the sound of your voice and the smell of your body." For the first time, he felt bold when talking of these things towards Madigan. For the first time he felt like a knight courting the maiden fair rather than some bumbling old fool. "Così fa questo lavoro? E 'adatto al meglio per me dire che quando dico che ti amo, vuol dire che ti amo e tutto ciò che si è." And then he just stood there, staring down at her, waiting for her to react to what he had said. He could only hope for something positive.

Madigan seemed to visibly melt as he rounded the table and confessed his love to her. Even as he approached her, her eyes seemed to widen at his words and her body melted away from the heat of their meaning. She stood there, too, for a long time without speaking a word or blinking an eye, her eyes piercing right through him as if she was staring directly into his soul. And then her lips parted slightly as if she was about to respond, but then they sealed up again as the words failed to form. She blinked and glanced off to the side toward the stained glass window, her expression not changing very much as she did, but then her eyes were back on him, and her lips trembled as they parted to make another attempt at words. "So that is love?" Her voice was soft, child-like, and almost inaudible. Her eyes didn't waver from his face as she said, "Then I'm in love with you too, Patron, and there has hardly ever been a moment when I wasn't in love with you." She glanced to the ground between them briefly before looking back up at him and swallowed. "I've always had such a fondness for you. Sometimes," she glanced from side to side as she swallowed again, her hands lifting so that she may nervously twiddle with her fingers as she thought hard on her words, but every time she spoke, she was looking him in the eyes. "-Sometimes, my heart will squeeze when you speak, and it'll hurt so much, but there's never anything I want more in that moment than to keep listening to you. I forget everything I was thinking when I feel you touching me, and I swell with happiness whenever I smell you, or when I'm reminded of your smell." She stared off at the floor again, thinking again. "If that's love, then I love you; I do."

Ignatius could feel his hands shaking as she spoke and his whole body felt off-balance as if he were wobbling this way and that. It felt like there was a ball in his throat, choking him and blocking off his every effort to utter a response as she gave out her own confession of her own feelings - so very alike the ones that he was feeling for her. His feet carried him forward and driven only by instinct, the old knight moved towards Madigan. He needed to hug her and hold her. He wanted so badly to breath her in and feel her against his chest. His arms reached forward, grabbing the dryad by the shoulders and pulling her into him so that he could encompass her in a tightly squeezed hug. Part of him felt so foolish, as if he were some blind man unable to see what this girl was to him - had always been to him. "Mi dispiace tanto ... per tutto, per non vedere questo." He whispered against the top of her head as he buried his face into her hair.

Madigan easily moved into his embrace, having wanting to close that distance she created between them only moments ago. She let herself slump completely against his body, giving up any effort to hold her own weight. Her chest seemed to swell with warmth as breathing became harder and her throat tightened with the inability to express what she was feeling then, when he pressed himself into her hair and inhaled her scent. The hot swelling in her chest was so much that her ears started to ring. She couldn't hear anything he whispered as she squeezed her eyes tightly closed and clung to him. Her head was swimming; she wouldn't be able to stand on her feet if she tried. Looking at anything and trying to make sense of it didn't work for her either, so she simply closed her eyes and reveled in the sensations that were swamping her mind. Her breathing had grown labored from the constriction she was feeling in her chest. It'd be a long time before they released each other.