RP:Strange Fruit

Part of the Through A Glass, Darkly Arc

Summary: After returning from Lithrydel and Lana’s birthday party, homesickness has settled into Valrae’s bones. Uma struggles with her life as mayor and working with Cenril’s crime world. When the witches sleep, an unknown power connects them in a dark dream. In dreaming they’re both shown something of what the future might hold.

“Here is fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop”

- Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday

Mayor's Mansion

Hudson | Uma Abelin, Mayor of Cenril, lies on her back in her king-sized feather bed. She is gazing at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the mansion around her. There's a rhythmic clank by one of the windows, she thinks a gutter that's come loose. It's been noisy for a few months now but she's not gotten around to telling one of the groundsmen. The clanging has been muted by the walls and bearable, so she's put it off. A theme with many things in her life. Uma slides her hand along the sheets, feeling the cool underside of the pillow beside her, one that should have been occupied by her husband, Fitz Johnson. He should have been mayor. He's the one whom Hudson Landon, real estate magnate by day, mob boss of Cenril by night, had picked for the job. She was supposed to stand beside Fitz and smile, once in awhile publish her cookie recipes in the magazine. He's dead now, and the job fell to her. She thinks, sometimes, like now, when she can't sleep, that surely she's doing better than her late husband would have. Surely it's about more than the prestige of the office, it's about doing the right thing for the people. But Sven. Uneasy, Uma rolls onto her side, thinking back to the seedy club where she'd met Hudson earlier that night. For the mayor to be summoned to a strip club by a gangster was one thing. It was corrupt. She was corrupt. For the reason to be the suppression of free speech was another still. That would be... The gutter is clanging again. Is freedom of speech suppressed if the speech suppressed would be destabilizing, could result in war? ... Would an exposé about Hudson Landon's funding of pro-witch resistance efforts in Larket, his affair with Valrae, be destabilizing? Uma looks at the slivers of moonlight bleeding through the edges of the curtain over the window. She thinks about Alvina and Valrae, both of whom are her friends. She thinks about how she hopes that Hudson finds the journalist and kills him. She thinks about how easy it's become for her to compartmentalize horrible things as 'necessary.'

Valrae || Across the sea, another witch has found sleep much easier. She worried nothing of politics, nothing of her own past and the part she currently played in what kept Uma from resting easily. Her head was filled only with tiny socks, nursery blankets, morning chores and lists for tomorrow’s run to the market. When she finally made it to the room she now called home, Valrae had simply fallen into her bed after a long day of standing on her aching feet, struggled a moment to find comfort around the sheer size of her belly, and slipped into the black. The dream started innocently enough. She’d been sweeping the faded, chipped oak floors of her aunt Belinda’s Inn. Golden afternoon sunlight slanted down through the wide window that faced south and toward the busy market of Uaigni’s Cross. The scent of bread and stew and dust hung in the air. The witch could hear the voices of the Inn’s patrons as they crossed halls or lounged in the dining area. She could feel the movement of her unborn child in her belly, a comfort to her heart as much as a discomfort to her bladder and swollen feet. But the dream changed, turned on her. Suddenly, Valrae’s hands were empty and the world around her was dark. Gone were the homey scents of bread and stew, replaced with the coppery tang of blood and the reek of death. There was power, she’d remember when she woke, in the dream. Not her own. Silver patches of moons light dappled the area around her, the winter-bare forest familiar enough to send pains of longing spearing through her heart. Her hands moved to her swollen belly, only weeks away from delivery now, as fear raised the hairs on the back of her neck. In the distance, a scream tore through the night. “Hello?” Her own voice fell strangely from her lips. The bare, skeletal trees seemed to echo the sound back to her. “Hello? Is anyone here?” In the distance she might have seen the glow of a light. Long shadows, unfamiliar in shape, hung from the trees just beyond her. She couldn’t understand what she was seeing but felt a tremor of sickness still. “Anyone?”

Hudson | Uma remembers the way Hudson had coolly brushed off the possibility of an investigation into his businesses. She wonders what it must feel like to wake up in the morning knowing that you can buy or intimidate most people you meet. She wonders what sort of husband he is to her friend. And whether he would kill her, if she ceased to become useful to him. What did Alvina know, of the things her husband did? Did she lose sleep ever? Did her life feel like Uma's life sometimes - a gilded cage? Uma looks at the outlines of the furnishings in her room. She should work on her talking points in case the press comes calling about Hudson's relationship with the Larket resistance. She can't sleep anyway. She lights the lantern on the night stand and pushes herself upright, crossing the short distance to her desk. She lights more candles, illuminating a work space, and eases herself into the big arm chair. The clanging gutter has ceased. Uma pushes aside the curtain and gazes out that window, seeing darkness and the cobblestoned streets of Cenril, slick from an earlier rain. A flash of light abruptly fills the glass pane, chased by the telltale crack of thunder. It's raining again, then. Uma looks for her fountain pen and paper. Lightning fills the window again, and Uma is ready to ignore the storm outside but for what she sees: limp forms suspended from the lamp posts. The lightning had made them visible for a moment, the darkness returns and conceals them. Uma is out of her chair, the hair rising on the back of her neck. She can taste blood in her mouth, but doesn't remember the cause of it. She rushes to the door to her bedroom, opening it in the hopes of alerting the security detail usually posted outside of it. "Outside--" she says, but there is no one. "Marco," she breathes and runs to her child's room, throwing open the door. His bed is empty, that much she can see, even in darkness. The air in the room has an acrid taste to it: power. "No," whimpers Uma. She runs down the hall, but finds herself unable to descend the stairs. There is a limp form hanging from the chandelier in the foyer. She sinks against the banister, trembling, a low moan issuing from her mouth, crushed beneath the booming sound of thunder.

Valrae started toward the distant light. She struggled to place her surroundings, though they struck some chord of recognition within her. It would be Lithrydel, of that she was certain. The yawning homesickness she felt told her as much, as familiar to her now as the movement of her unborn child. Returning for Lanara’s birthday had only served to pour salt in that particular wound. It was cold. Deeply cold. Not the chilled, coastal air of Uireasa that she’d grown familiar too but something much different. Moonlight and shadows played across her figure as she walked, spotted the tangled path before her in deep shadow. The more she moved, the colder the air became and the farther the lights, the strange shapes that hung in threes, moved from her. Helplessness rose like bile in her throat. She’d feel foolish for not recognizing this as a dream when she woke, but caught as she was in the grips of the nightmare, she’d felt only confusion and fear and cold. High above her, the sound of thunder rumbles and has her tilting her face toward the sky. Through the slender branches of the trees she can still see moons, starlight, when lightning shakes the forest. The white light stings her eyes, reveals the scene before her with painful clarity. From the trees, the long shapes have been given form. They were women, people… They were bulging eyes and twisted mouths. Valrae screamed and she ran, slowed by the heavy awkwardness of her pregnancy. She wove through trees and bodies, slowly, much too slowly and feared she might fall and hurt herself or her child. Her feet stumbled on roots, what she hoped were just roots, and suddenly she was pitched forward in the dark. She landed on a knee, and found herself in the mayor’s home. In the dimness, she thought she heard a moan.

Hudson | Uma struggles to her feet, clambering down the stairs and away from what hangs from the chandelier. It swings ever so slightly like a pendulum. She knows with a certainty that it is a body, and when she looks upward to see the face, she recognizes a woman she knows. A witch. "Help! Please!" Uma decorously shouts in the quiet that follows the thunder. There's no security detail here. No household staff. The door is open and rain and cold are leaking into the mansion. Uma stumbles outside in her bare feet and nightgown. The lamp posts have bodies hanging from them. She knows them all by name, even if she doesn't see their faces, she knows innately who they are, all witches, those who were murdered here. "Marco!" she screams, all sense of executive presence cast aside in favor of maternal panic. She races back into the mansion and calls for him again. Her son, her sweet boy, her only love .. he would know to hide, she would find him and protect him with her life. "Marco," she calls, as she rips curtains off the walls. She trips over carpets, end tables. "Marco," she whimpers, and as if in answer, she hears the sound of movement in the foyer. "Marco, my baby," she runs to him, this moving figure in the darkness. Instead of her son, however, she finds Valrae. Uma releases a jagged cry, falling backward into a table. "What is happening?" she breathes. "Have you seen my son?"

Valrae || Uma was a welcome sight. A sound caught between a sob and a sigh escaped her as she struggled to stand and move to the other witch. She was too frightened, too bone weary to question how she’d gotten here from the forest. She was too caught in the dream, or nightmare, to question the strangeness of it all. “Uma!” Valrae calls the other witch’s name on another sob, nearly waddling as she moves to cross the room. “Uma, what is happening?” Did she know? No, she’d only just asked her that same question. “Your son? No I-” Uma’s panic had her own rising, beating franticly at the cage of her chest. Thunder shook the mansion around them. The air was charged, with the storm, with the foreign power, and it was cold as the grave. Her ragged breath was shown in thin, pale clouds as she breathed. “Uma, I don’t understand.” No sooner did the words leave her lips when another boom of lightning cracked the sky, illuminated the room around them. Cramer stood near, Marco pulled close to his side. His laughter was dark and oily. The sound of it rolled down Valrae’s spine. “He’s here, woman,” Cramer addressed Uma. “He’s not joined the rest of them yet, but he will,” The promise was dark yet said in casual, almost friendly tones. “As will the both of you, even if I have to rip that abomination out of your belly myself,” Fear made Valrae’s knees jelly beneath her. She was paralyzed by it. Why wasn’t Marco struggling? How had Cramer come here? Where were Uma’s men? Valrae’s hands move to her stomach, to hold her unborn child, and they find nothing. Hysterics bubble to her throat. Where? Where had her child gone? She looked down and found only herself, her small frame no longer round with the life she’d carried. A cry escapes her and rage bites back at the fear. When she looks up to Cramer again though, he’s gone. The room is filled again with light. There are no bodies, the sky is blue and the air was chilled only by the limited winter that visited Cenril each year. Where Cramer once stood, there was a woman instead. She was old, impossibly old. Her face was lined deeply, the skin thin and liver spotted. Still, underneath the age was beauty. Her hair was as silver as starlight and long, braided back carefully. On her head rested a diadem of gold, the symbol of the three moons fashioned from opal on her brow. Her cloak was made of the night sky itself, glittering with stars. At her feet were black hounds, on her shoulder a raven. Her eyes were wise and filled with love but her smile was filled with sorrow. “That is what your world is to become,” Her voice was the voice of many, soft and commanding. Valrae fell to her knees.

Hudson | Uma likewise has failed to recognize the dream narrative for what it is. "My son," she repeats. She moves quickly to Valrae, however, the other witch can be trusted in a crisis. And that's what this is. Uma's face is wet with tears but she takes Valrae by the arms, appraising the other witch in a mother's manner. Valrae is very pregnant. "Oh gods," breathes Uma. She suddenly thinks of Hudson. Could Valrae appearing mean he and his men were coming to help - perhaps he had Marco. That seemed plausible. He and Alvina are parents themselves. "Hudson?" Uma says to Valrae, just as Valrae says she doesn't understand. Uma doesn't get a chance to clarify, because suddenly they aren't alone in the room. The man Cramer is there, his poisonous arms around her son. His evil words permeate Uma, freezing her somehow in place. "Don't you touch them!" she screams. "Marco!" She will kill him with her bare hands. Except they are pinned, she cannot raise them in a wandless attempt to make the shapes that might cast a spell of protection. "No!" she screams, hoarsely, and suddenly the resistance is gone; she barrels forward, tripping over a stool and spilling out onto her knees. Cramer and her son are gone. A crone is there, saying words over which Uma is weeping but whose meaning she knows without hearing. Valrae is on her knees too. "No, please," whimpers Uma. "It's too much." The words become a whispered refrain, one that allows her to realize the fragile truth of this world: it's a dream. She wakes in a violent shudder. The sheets are damp with sweat. She does not cry out.

Valrae || With Uma taking hold of her, a comfort struggled to surface under all the fear. She can feel the other woman’s anger and her own rises to meet it. It’s useless though, as they would both be without power to move. The other witch’s screams seem to bounce painfully in her head, in her heart. When the crone appears, a calmness takes Valrae, even as her heart raced and her mind struggled to keep up with the twists and turns of the nightmare. Something about the woman before them commanded respect, spoke to the power that was bone deep within her. Still on her knees, Valrae tilted her face upward to the familiar stranger. She saw Uma before her, kneeling as well. Tears slipped from her tired eyes and tumbled down her cheeks. “Is there nothing to be done then? Nothing to be done for the witches of Lithrydel?” The woman shook her head, her silver hair shining with impossible beauty. “You misunderstand child,” She answered. “This death, this plague will spread across the sea. To the place you now call home and ready for your child, to places and worlds beyond.” Fear found her again, the fear of a mother and the fear not even this spirit could ease. Uma whimpers and Valrae cannot find the words to echo her, though she felt them deep into her soul. When the dream fades, the witch wakes in her bed, alone but for the life that grew within her, and she wept.