RP:Sympathy for the Elderly

Synopsis: Penelope is now visible again and is working as an herbalist in Kelay. She is gathering seaweed when Eleanor comes to start playing a game of twenty questions. Although Penelope does not answer appropriately, Eleanor lets the girl return to her duties at ease. A simple acquaintance.

Cenril Beach

Penelope’s frizzy hair blows in the coastal wind. The woman wears what looks to be like cotton joggers that are rolled up to her calves and an overly large sweater to fight the breeze. Bare feet soak in the chilled sea as she swipes her hand through the waves while the other holds a tin bucket. The freckled human had been on the down low for quite some time, but found her new calling as an herbalist in Kelay, as well as working at Kelay’s healer as a part time nurse. A small hand soars down and pulls out slimy green seaweed. The girl shakes her hand to slide the sticky gunk off before stuffing her hand down for more. At times, she pauses and bounces up and down for warmth – this was a hard job for a petite woman fighting off the cold. The lengths that she went for that shop.

Eleanor arrived from the north, heeled boots sinking into the damp sand as the waves licked at her feet, that same wind that assaulted Penelope causing her cloak to snap and flick about around her legs, revealing bits of cerulean fabric and azure-inked tattoos in the folds. Although her mind was often moving a mile a minute, forming some strategy or another, restless steps had carried her out into the beach, some kind of reverie holding her hostage. She passed an herbal cigarette from one hand to the other, only occasionally bothering to take a drag from it. As she came into sight of the other woman, El blinked out of her musing and arched both brows, lips twitching in a bated smile. Pausing a handful of feet from the stranger in a mixture of wariness and respect for her personal space, El lofted the cigarette and took a generous inhale, on the exhale her husky voice coming out in a lighthearted, “It is a wee bit braw fur 'at sort ay wark, is it nae?” Even as she mentioned the cold, she found herself tugging her cloak about her shoulders with one hand, the other hovering near her side with that still-lit stick of burning plant matter, its heady scent pulled away from them by the drifting winds.

Penelope did not jump at the sound of another’s voice. Cenril was too skeptical. The human had to be alert at all times if she wanted to get her work done here. She stops as she puts a scoop of sea weed in her pail. “Ay,” she says shortly after. Her thick sweater blows with the wind. “The boss needs me out here. I don't know why he could not have sent someone besides me, but this’ll be good for the elderly. That way they can care for their bodies. Help their gut health. We ran out of our stock in Kelay.” She then sloshes through the water to the sand. Her toes wiggle and pebbles get stuck to her toes. “I should be saying the same that you should be not out here. A bit whippy tonight.” She smiles half-heartedly. “Though, beach is also rather peaceful for folks.”

Eleanor regarded the other woman with an even stare, her head listing to one side as she considered what Penelope revealed about herself so boldly - what sort of work she did, -where- she typically did it, all things that were categorically stored away in the rogue leader’s mind palace. Someone in her line of work could never be too careful, nor could she have too many healers in her mental Rolodex. “Och aye.” Beat. “It can be peaceful alrecht, when it's nae bein' invaded by otherplanar monsters an' th' loch.” Her lips twitched again, the smirk now taking hold of the full tiers before a crooked half-grin took its place. “Sae ye pure force auld fowk tae eat seaweed?” she continued with a chuckle, giving her head a slight shake; with the wind, it was enough to send the cowl from her thick blonde waves, the gem in her diadem glinting for a half-second in some kind of reflected light. “Seems ye coods jist lit them die.” It was not said heartlessly, but rather as a means to determine the cut of Penelope’s jib, her wicked humor taking form as she preoccupied herself during the other’s reply with a smooth drag of her herb.

Penelope blinked at the blonde woman. “Well, they come to us, so they must want to eat it to stay healthy,” her doe eyes stay steady as if she is innocent as a deer. The girl, although, was not so naïve. Cenril folk were risky, and unpredictable. The woman had traveled back and forth for years when she worked for Mrs. Mallard at the bakery when it was still standing. Now, there was a new building there. New memories. Those thoughts were long gone for the freckled girl who thrived at that point in time. Penelope flattened her smile at the blonde at the mention of death. “Could,” pause. The girl was a people person, normally, and this woman was on the opposite spectrum of the human it seemed. “Then again, most of them live for their family. Selfish loved ones who want the old to live as long as they can, so they can take advantage of them until their last dying breath,” the girl finishes. She was dark and twisted as well. “I take it you don’t have remorse for the elderly. The people who surround them and take hits from them and get what they want. Though, their family just leaves them in the dust anyway. We have to take care of them. Watch them suffer. Watch them die.” Her voice was monotone as if it did not take any toll on her. Penelope had been through a lot of hell to be able to be so cool and collected.

Eleanor kept the smoke curling around her opened mouth as she assessed Penelope’s reply - and apparently deemed it acceptable, at last releasing the smoke from her mouth by punching little holes in it with her tongue, the rings wafting between the two women before being carried away by the winds that pushed up from the sea. “Ah hae nae opinion oan th’ elderly as a whole.” It was a statement of fact, lacking sentiment in the heavily-accented words. However her next words were heavier, carrying with them careful thought and purpose. “Ah dornt caur fur fowk takin’ advantage ay other fowk fa cannae defend themselves thocht, nae unless it was deservin’.” Contrary to what people whispered in the shadows about Eleanor, or the Fox, or any manner of name by which she called herself, she wasn’t some heartless wench, and her actions were often driven by emotions; even if she struggled with putting names to what she felt, and kept all those things locked up tight inside, deep inside of her. It was entirely possible the spell-rogue had some sort of moral inclination to stealing from those richer than herself, but she’d never confess to such a thing; perhaps a part of El preferred being misunderstood as it enabled her to work a situation in her favor if no one really suspected her of being capable of what she was. The herbal stick was down to the roach, nothing more than a few bits of half-burnt plant matter remaining as it fell to the sand, a nudge of her boot burying it with the slightest of hisses. “There’s a lot ay selfish fowk it thaur, but Ah suspect yoo’re nae a body ay them, at leest nae whaur it matters.” With her hand now free, it and its partner were tucked against her sides, back to the sea as her head listed to the other side, always thinking, always contemplating. At length, she pulled celadon twins from Penelope to regard the sea along a shoulder, lips pursed a moment, before she spoke again, “Whit dae ye suppose ye woods dae if given th' power tae make their families pay fur their selfishness?” Her smirk of moments prior had faded into nothing more than a ghost along her full lips, the ends twisted downward to match the shrewd narrowing of her gaze as it swiveled toward the woman as punctuation for her question. “Woods ye make them pay fur whit they did tae yer fowk?”

Penelope listened carefully to the thick accented blonde. The chestnut haired woman adjusts her bucket to the other hand idly. The human did not have much to say about Eleanor’s feelings on folks taking advantage of others. Maybe the girl was slightly more at ease at that statement, but it does not show. Penelope was also driven by emotions, but she did not let them show as much as people would like her to. At the stranger’s last statement, Penelope is silent for a long time. Moss eyes stare blankly for moments before parting her lips. “You’ve must’ve never been selfish towards a loved one,” the odd girl says this simply and lets the silence fall between them. “I wouldn’t do a thing,” she finally answers. “Most of them suffer from the guilt. They recognize what they did once the elder is gone. They get what they deserve in the end,” she shrugs. “It’s a natural consequence.” The girl wipes the seaweed goop hand on her pants with a quirk of her brow. “Would you make them pay?”

Eleanor could count on one hand the amount of loved ones she has had over the years; with no family to speak of, a child long-since dead, and a lover who at one point she would have done anything for but now whose memory was like a bitter taste on her tongue, she was a bit lacking in touchy-feely impressions towards people as a whole. A bit disappointed by Penelope’s response this time, she masked it by rummaging through the folds of her cloak, pulling out a much more normal cigarette and sparking it up with a summoned blue flame in the palm of her hand, the fire out in the next heartbeat and the cigarette taken to lip a few times as she mulled over the woman’s returned question. A flash of recollection lit up her mind, the sight of a toddler deathly still in their bed, the aftermath of wrathful bloodshed ... “Ah have.” A beat passed before she chose to elaborate, studying Penelope carefully as she lowered the cigarette and passed it from one hand to another, her feet equally fitful in the sand as she moved her weight from one jutted-out hip to the other. “Whaur yer job micht be tae heal fowk, it's in mah nature tae hurt them.” It was as close to admitting what she might do for a living as Eleanor was going to risk with this stranger. The next beat had her crooked smirk returning, a bit of wryness entering her glassgreen gaze. “When they deserve it, at leest.” Feeling as though she had said enough in this particular topic of conversation, El tore her stare away from Penelope and squinted at the horizon, or what little she could make out of it in this light. “Ye fin' ye ur ay a different opinion regardin' th' metin' it ay appropriate punishments,” she concluded, sliding a sidelong gaze toward Penny again, “ye can lae wuid at th' Whaler's.” They’d know her by description if not by name - at least not the name Eleanor, but she was disinclined to give away any nom de plumes either. She used her latter statement as a parting remark, weight shifting until she was clearly ready to head on her way southward, but lingering just long enough that the brunette might offer up any last comments.

Penelope might have mistaken the blonde. The woman had rough edges while Penelope had smoothen hers out a while back. The herbalist, however, always had a softness to her, yet a non-judgmental aura. The girl with the chestnut hair blurts out without holding her tongue. “A hitman,” she defines for herself. Something cold runs up her back. The woman recalls an old memory that makes her nauseous. Her conscience was lighter than the average person. “I’ll know who to find,” she mutters in a dead response. Her eyes were lazy as if she was not affected by this kind of occupation. “You ever need someone to assist your wounds or just need an extra supply of herbs. You can ask for Miss Halifax in Kelay,” she gives her surname to remain more professional. “You have safe travels,” her voice may or may not have been hesitant as the blonde steps away from her. Penelope then hauls the bucket in the opposite direction to journey back to Kelay.

Eleanor rolled her shoulders in a casually dismissive shrug. “That's an unpleasant title.” Not to mention it barely scratched the surface of what she was capable of. With that smirk turning sly, she added, “Ah can dae mah job withit hittin' anyain.” She didn’t need a name to track down Penelope, but she nodded in acknowledgment nevertheless. “Braw tae meit ye, Miss Halifax. ye be safe noo, too.” Occupying herself with a drag of her cigarette with one hand, and securing the folds of her cloak with the other, El’s chin lowered in a deep nod before the two parted ways at last, the spell-rogue’s boots crunching through the gritty sand once more.