RP:Bird Down

From HollowWiki

Part of the Agitation Arc


Summary: Ansel and Josleen meet in secret in the valley. Their tryst is darkened by a noiseless tempest, and strange bird behavior. A skylark is unable to open its beak and smacks itself against the boulder behind which the pair hide, then flies away unsteadily. Though unnerved by the behavior, Ansel and Josleen carry on in an effort to ignore the obvious troubles around them and enjoy eachother's company. But soon Ansel discovers that the moss on the boulder behind Josleen is dying and melting into a black ink. Behind Ansel, Josleen finds the grass littered with dead birds, beaks fused shut, and parts of their body collapsed into black inky blots just like that which drips on the moss.


Valley of Trees

Josleen paces slowly by the boulder where they agreed to meet after the lunch hour, when they are less likely to be discovered. She wears a floral dress trim and flattering to her figure, sensible flats, a light sweater (both in color and pile). A touch of rose stains her lips and cheeks, but that isn’t the secret to her glow. She’s finally home. Frostmaw is a hospitable city to Josleen, for the most part, but her heart and soul belong to Xalious. She wears the wind-blown autumnal sun of Xalious like a second skin. She looks up at the cloudless blue sky, so beautiful in its hue and superior to the steel-colored sky of the City of War. Fingertips play with the moss on the boulder as she paces impatiently, stealing looks to the north to search for him. Each step crunches on freshly fallen leaves. The southbound wind shakes loose from the surrounding branches yellow, red, orange and brown leaves. Their drying siblings cling to the branches, the last hold outs against fall’s first frost. The bard is sure there is no place in Hollow quite like Xalious. It’s been the inspiration of many of her songs: a village she leaves only to return to like a boomerang, or like the songbirds that twitter in the trees their final songs before they migrate south for the winter — and who will inevitably return in the spring.


Ansel had been anxious to meet the woman again. The first time being in Xalious with the woman, and he could not even be with the woman. The man was wearing fitted pants again with a green pull-over. No thick coat. His hair was messy, slightly swooped up in the front. His face is not clean shaven, there was a small shadow on his face – the stubbles. This was just out of pure laziness, however, this did make him look a little gruff, but eyes were gentle. The man is a distance away from her when he appears, he is watching her at the rock. The man taking his sweet time to brush his eyes over her. He now comes into her view and slowly slinks over to where she is, his hands in pockets idly until he officially is a step or two away. A grin appears on his face. “Hello,” simple, no rush. “Long time, no see,” he raises his brows.


Josleen stops her pacing when she finally sees him. A slow smile spreads across her lips as he approaches. Finally. At long last. She isn’t shy about admiring his face and body. “Hello yourself.” She glances up and down the path behind him, then quickly takes his hand and leads him behind the boulder out of sight of any travellers on the road. With her back to the boulder she embraces him tightly. Her nose nestles against his neck and stays there until she’s had her fill of his supernatural heat and scent — what little of it she can make out with her half-elf nose. His wolfish nose, on the other hand, could detect a new smell beneath her perfume. It’s masculine, but very faint because Josleen wasn’t lying when she said she and her husband never touch anymore. But still, they share a closet and furniture and a home. She trails a few kisses on Ansel’s jaw, cheek, and lips as she pulls away to look up at him. She’s too wrapped up in him to notice that the wind stops blowing, the birds no longer sing. The once cloudless, blue sky sinks low, heavy, and light gray. “How are Shia and Dana?”


Ansel is easily pulled along and wraps his arms around her petite frame, the first moment was tight, though as the scent of someone else… someone being the husband, Ansel slightly loosens his grip. His grin is also turning into a forced smile, eyes are slightly tightened – she would not know, but she would notice the change in physical touch. However, as her lips brush against his skin, he is easily persuaded to respond back with his own. Taking the moment to push out the real situation and just enjoy her being wrapped up in his embrace. He then breathes out. “They’re well. I’ve been spending a lot of time with the two again. Shia is becoming very smart, going out on his own from time to time now. Dana, on the other hand, is becoming quite the… handful,” meaning that he was turning into a little brat, but of course, Ansel is a little more mature than that. “Something I went through with Shia at a time. Dana is just becoming a little stubborn,” he shrugged. "But they're both glad to actually be back home for good. I think they were going crazy up in Frostmaw."


Josleen doesn’t know why Ansel wavers, but it’s become par for the course. The affair hasn’t been easy for either of them, but it’s been especially difficult on him. Bumps in the road are expected and swiftly ignored. “I’m with them. I’ve been so happy to be back — seeing my old friends, playing as the Destrier again, Mom’s cooking.” Less happy in her apartment, but she doesn’t bring up Ezekiel. That’s key to ensuring happy trysts. “I want to meet them. Properly meet them. I just don’t know…I need to be sure that--” She shakes her head ruefully and changes the subject. “I found a job, at the clinic in the village center.” A place where Ansel, a healer of greater talent and experience than Josleen, may have applied for work only to be told all positions were filled. “The head doctor is in the Guild.” No doubt daddy or hubby, or both, put in a good word for Josleen. Ansel and Josleen’s poverty in Frostmaw seemed similar by the illusion of wartime sacrifice. Back in Xalious, the differences in their situations are brought harshly to the surface. His is a poverty of opportunity, of class; hers a poverty of circumstance — short-lived, never dangerous. Overhead the clouds grow darker and Josleen finally gives them due respect by frowning up at the brewing tempest that threatens to pull them apart too soon. A skylark perches atop the boulder behind Josleen and starts furiously banging its beak against the stone as if trying to crack a nut, though no nut is visible. After several violent strikes of its beak it flies away on unsteady wings that dip left and right as it struggles to stay aloft.


Ansel lofts a brow as she cuts off about ‘properly meeting’ his boys. She was so hesitant. Perhaps she did not want to let Ansel down, which he felt uneasy about. The man slightly smiles. “Atta girl,” then again, there was nothing but jealous rage that she got a job, and he did not. Then again, he was just some outcast citizen that was living in poverty. He was not high class, and he was not sure he ever would be. As she talks about the guild, the man is growing slightly annoyed, but he is trying to hide his irritation. They were just two different people. Obviously… They were hiding behind a boulder. Shake this off… Don’t start anything. Though, the bird helps, as he begins to crack his beak against the rock. “What the…” He then notices the darkness in the clouds. “You think it might storm us out?”


Josleen senses Ansel’s mounting irritation and takes a moment to play back their conversation and suss out where it went wrong. It takes the socially-adroit bard less than a second to realize her mistake. Of course Ansel applied for a job at the clinic. Even though he doesn’t say anything, wisely and kindly to avoid yet another argument, she does. “I’m sure they just couldn’t afford someone with your talents. I’m entry-level.” While the first statement is probably a lie but could plausibly be true, the second statement is all truth. Josleen isn’t making the big bucks, but she’s likely earning more than Ansel in his wood-cutting and similarly labor-intensive gigs. The crazed bird ends the awkward conversation, but replaces it with sense of foreboding. Suddenly she’s a little scared. Perhaps it’s only natural to be scared when nature upsets its own rhythm without explanation, but her fear feels preternatural. Instinctively she pulls herself closer to Ansel and cowers against his torso. “Maybe his wife left him,”she jokes to dispel the tension she feels. Poorly chosen joke, however, given the reality of their affair. An image of Ezekiel tearing out his hair flashes in her mind. She forces it out by peppering a spate of kisses to Ansel’s shoulder and filling her mind with him again. Talking about the weather never seemed so great a mercy. Will the rain storm them out? “I hope not. But…” Her hands rub up the length of his spine, under his sweater, and draw him closer as she leans back on the boulder’s dewy moss. When their lips are inches apart she whispers, “Just in case…” She kisses him deeply. The type of kiss whose seduction invites you to lose yourself in your lover and forget storms and beak-breaking birds and well-connected husbands; and whose heat leaves little room for doubt that you are loved and wanted. If his hands wander to her backside or cup the back of her head, he’ll touch the moss and will at first feel what must be dew. But soon the liquid will be too thick and voluminous to reconcile with the wetness of moss. If he looks at his hand, it’ll be coated in black ink. Josleen, for her part, is oblivious to the ink that stains her hair and clothes.


Ansel is squinting as she says her statement of how they could not afford someone with his own talents. Would this not be the opposite? He is frowning in disapproval of her words. She really was goofing up, or Ansel was just becoming easily sensitive and picking out the negativity in each sentence she spoke. As she hides within the man, he keeps his gaze on the bird, which was not frightening him as much as making him wonder what was wrong with the critter and as Josleen jokes, Ansel cringes. “Maybe—“ he cuts off as she begins to rest gentle kisses on his shoulder. Thank goodness that halted his comment and cleared his mind, otherwise he was going to say… Maybe he is stir crazy because the wife won’t leave her husband. Good, Ansel. Nice, Ansel. Her hands are slightly more chilled than his backside, which is a relief, a turn-on in a way. As the kiss turns deep, one hand is slipping around towards her backside, while the other hand is pressing against the mossy rock for balance. There is an oozing thick liquid creeping between his fingers. Hazel eyes open momentarily, “Hmm,” he hums against her lips as if to stop her, and pulls away and his callused palms that are now covered in black. “What the hell? Is… what… what is this?” He would then try to nudge her to the side to spectate.


Josleen‘s head rolls gently against the inky moss a little this way and that under the influence of his lips and touch. The ink mats in her hair and works deeper into her dress, with the bard herself none the wiser. Until he pulls away. She opens her eyes to a slick blackness on his hands and gasps sharply, inward. Quickly she combs her tangled mess of inky and golden hair over a shoulder. It drips down her chest wetly. She looks up to Ansel; he’s looking at the moss. It’s dead or dying, the tiny leaves losing their elasticity and sagging like melting wax at the first lick of the flame. “Ans-” His name catches in her throat. Her eyes widen as she takes in a sight over his shoulder. “Ansel.” She gasps out his name. Her gaze leads his behind his back. Three birds litter the ground, their tiny bodies deathly still. The one nearest them is just a few inches behind Ansel’s boot: a skylark. The lower half of its body is squashed flat and inky, feathers spreading into black pools like a Rorschach inkblot. The upper half of its body retains its round shapes and downy brown feathers. Its eyes bleed ink like that on Ansel’s fingers. Its beak is a singular cone with no seam for where it should part to sing or eat. Two more song birds litter the grass just beyond the skylark. As the couple observes the bird, two more fall out of the tree branches overhead. A third collapses mid-flight. Some fallen birds have turned completely into an inkblot, others suffer the affliction piecemeal: a wing here, a foot there, a crushed inky head or concave hole where the belly should be. The most unusual lightning crackles silently overhead, black and serpentine instead of white and jagged. Not a sound, not from the dying birds or the tempest above. Josleen trembles with fear. Already she starts backing towards the road, taking Ansel with her, though the spectacle of it all makes her flight from harm a weak one. It’s hard to look away when tragedy unfolds.


Ansel is flicking his wrists, trying to whip off his inked-covered palms. Josleen is also covered in ink – he takes this into observation. The man is staring at the melted moss, he had never seen such a thing, and eyes flicker to Josleen’s expression. “What…?” Eyes are gazing over her with a concerned look. “What, Jos?” The man glances back over his shoulder at the dead birds on the ground. He is stunned for a split second before following along with Josleen’s steps. They were covered in ink too, why? The man looks up, but cannot quite spot anything. He then returns his gaze back to the woman before him. She looked horrified – not a big surprise, considering there were dead birds… The man then grasps her shoulder gently with his inked hand and tries to twist her around, so she was facing forward in the direction she was tugging him to, urging her to move a little faster than usual.


The grass begins to rot beneath the fallen birds, and the branches overhead darken and sag like spindly cobwebs. More birds fall out of the sky at a faster rate. Josleen speeds up at Ansel's behest. The ink squishes between their palms as she grips his hand tighter. They don't put more than twenty feet between themselves and the boulder before suddenly they're clear of the storm. The sky is blue again. The birds here sing. Josleen looks over her shoulder behind them. From this distance they can see the small storm, bearing down on a small patch of the valley. "We need to tell The Guild... My father. He'll know what to do." Brown eyes turn up to Ansel with that mixed spark of fear and courage, the same way she dealt with the ghosts in Frostmaw and skeletal whales in the deep, that survival instinct and can-do spirit that keeps her legs going even when they threaten to turn to jelly. Their brisk pace beelines for the Tower, but the bard stops short. "I... I should go alone. If they see us... the ink..." She frowns sympathetically as she has to spell out for him yet again that they cannot be public.


Ansel is trying to hold in his panic. There was no explanation from this storm of ink-covered and dying birds. The man is now right beside her, hand in her own. The man slowly comes to a halt as they come into the clear. He looks at the storm behind them and then looks down to Josleen, mostly out of confusion. “Right, let’s go…” They then continue, but she stops and as she frowns, he automatically lets her go. “What? You can’t lie?” He then stops himself and shakes his head. His black palms face outward to almost stop her from responding, if she was going to. “Just.. go.” He shakes his head. This hurt him. Like she took a knife and twisted it in his gut.


Josleen's weight shifts between both feet, between the tower and Ansel. She needs to go now. Time runs and waits for no one, not even for the saga of Ansel and Josleen. Could she lie? She takes a step towards him but her stare turns north over her shoulder towards the tower and the town. Her mind quickly calculates the risks, both short term and long term for both of them. If they ever do go public, could this be a moment the town turns to as proof of an affair? "It's too risky, babe." She takes a second to try and comfort him, but a second is all she can spare. Her speech and behavior hurries under the stress of the moment. "Please, trust me. Be patient. I know," Her hand reaches for his, if he'll allow it. "I'm asking a lot." She glances at the tower. "I need to go. I'm so sorry. I'll be in touch before the day is through." If he let her take his hand, she squeezes it as she pulls away and races north without him. Just before she clears a hill she looks over her shoulder at him. His pain is mirrored in her expression.


Ansel waits for her response, and is almost sickened. “Too risky? It looks like I’m just a random citizen?” He is mostly talking to himself out loud. The woman tries to reach for his hand, but he pulls it back and up through his hair to scratch the back of his head. He was silent, very silent. As she glances towards the tower, and explains how she will be in touch, he just shrugs. He would believe her, but his patience was running thin. “Good luck,” his voice is monotone, there is no enthusiasm and her wish comes true – more patience. The man looks at the pain on her face which makes him a little angry rather than sympathetic. He then pivots and moves the opposite direction, making his way towards the mountains.