taxonomites | oo3 → my heart heard it and all to pieces fell [ accidental visual / location: castello petrana ]

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oo3 → my heart heard it and all to pieces fell [ accidental visual / location: castello petrana ]

All Hallows Eve doesn't mean much to Petra, hailing as she does from Elenia and Deira and no place that celebrates this holiday; the festivities pass her by and she spends her evening in front of one of the library's fireplaces, not really reading and, by a certain point, almost dozing. The insulation of a sprawling castle's thick stone leaves her mostly unaware of what's going on outside her walls, and thus wholly unprepared for the footsteps that don't belong.

...it is moments later that the tablet is knocked on by her scrambling hands, wineglass shattered and spilled across the floor as she retreats from the fireplace and hits the table behind her with her back. Whatever she's reacting to is obscured by her skirts and the poor angle, but the high, harsh note of fear in her voice is unmistakable.

"-no, I don't understand, he wrote to me-" she flinches and the tablet is jolted again, and her voice is quieter when she continues moments later, lying, "No, I didn't, of course I didn't, why should I?"

What Petrana sees is this:

He is tall - above six foot but perhaps a shade less so than her own husband - and his cloak is folded over his arm. His hair is long and prematurely white, catching the firelight like a blasphemous halo and he smiles at her, with a distance in his eyes (almost black when he is lit from behind) that followed her for years after their parting. In her mind's eye he's still the poised madman of the downfall in his youth, not yet thirty and so cold, and to see him stroll into her library as though he owns it, as though he owns her and is merely returning to see to her health and loyalty, she's too thrown to see the discrepancy with even the time that passed before his death.

He speaks to her quietly, with narrow focus, and it might be puzzling to anyone observing how she could be jerked forward when it becomes clear, as she no longer blocks the view, that there isn't anyone in front of her - and yet the jet locket that she wears is broken and the snap of it has marked her neck. She hears his footsteps fading toward the door, and kneels in her pooled skirts to try, with shaking hands, to collect the beads that fell.

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Petrana has some talent for art, but Doul is not about to interrupt her work or his to comment on the matter. He seems perfectly content to sit still and only interrupt his reading with each turn of the page.

If she needs to speak, then so be it. Otherwise, they can stay there until a meal comes around or until he offers her the bed for the evening.

"He was too young," she says, eventually, holding her picture at a distance from herself and examining it. "Too young and much too alive for a dead man - I'd almost think I imagined it all, but I couldn't have."

The snap of her locket's clasp is too telling, with the beads in a hidden pocket of her skirts and the pendant itself still in her lap. Petra puts the paper down, frustrated, and picks up her tea.

"I am no expert on the subject, but I would suggest that either he has been brought here like we were -- in which case this we would have seen him in that first entrance room -- or his appearance is related to whatever cause the weather change." Doul tucks a bit of paper into his book before closing it and turning to address the Lady a little better. "If it's the first, then the problem could be on-going, if the second, he may be as insubstantial as the creatures in the fog."

"God knows I'd prefer the latter." Petra presses her thumb against the band of her wedding ring, her eyes on the emeralds and her mind somewhere else. "It was- someone I knew once in my homeland. He died perhaps ten years ago in the fall of Zemoch. ...damn him, I don't know where I'll find a jeweller in this place."

...yes, well.

"That's not a skill I possess." Unsure just how many people (or Extras) live in Taxon, Doul couldn't reasonably guess if she'll have any luck.

Unaware that it was created here much the same way she was, Petra could never think of replacing such an item of peculiarly twisted sentimental value. She shakes her head, briefly, and will worry about having it fixed some other day.

"I never thought of myself as superstitious," she says, instead. "A strange attitude for a sorcerer's wife, I think."

"I wouldn't say so. From what I've seen, sorcery is as much a matter of science as faith." More so, in his opinion, but that's just his opinion. "Although, our worlds may mean different things by those terms."

"I suppose they may. I couldn't tell you myself with any degree of certainty - men and their secrets." She's worn out but not tired, and after the long period of silence she seems unable or unwilling to stop talking. Maybe it's comforting, or maybe it's just diverting.

"We are a strange and sorry lot." Acknowledging that she needs to talk, he stands to put the book away and stoke the fire. "Tell me about your world? I have long held the belief that there must be others out there, but never could prove it."

If he's quick, he might catch the flash of gratitude in her eyes that goes unspoken; now that she's regaining her composure she won't speak of herself in terms of needing anything, but ... she does. And she's grateful.

"Well. I'm from Elenia originally - one of four principle Elene nations - and I've spent the years since I married in Deira. I do sound a little more Arcian than I should to someone who knows for what they're listening...Vardenais is a port city near Arcium, near enough that there's quite a bit of crossover between the two lands. I've only had fleeting visits to the country itself, but the Arcian influence when I was younger - I suppose I affected it a little, to endear myself to them, and found it took root. Elenia has come so far in the past twenty years, since the reign I grew up under - our Queen is a magnificent young woman, I'm only sorry I can't visit her court more than I do."

"I've a fondness for port cities," he says with the tone implying that he knows just how dangerous and strange they can be, but that it's part of their allure. "The option to travel, even if it's not used, is a pleasant thought."

"I traveled a great deal more when I was so young," she recalls, remembering hours spent in carriages with Lord Romiar and Lady Veleda, where Martel would insist on riding alongside if he accompanied them. Only a few times did she ever have her way doing the same, and usually on Martel's own horse. "By land, mostly, but that was the way. My dear friend Ekatera married a Thalesian sea captain, and they spend rather a lot of their time off away. Asabel is another port city - Deiran, where they live at least in name."

"And the land itself? What is it like?" He might not be able to related to the people and place names she lists, but a discussion of geography or art are a little easier to get involved in.

Therein lies the problem of explaining one's homeland to someone else; how do you encapsulate a culture you've grown up in, that acts as context for all of your actions? How do you explain what you take for granted? She falters, then, trying to find some way of putting it, somewhere to start.

'What is it like' is altogether too broad a question, she thinks, but she'll try.

"Where I grew up," she says, at length, "we were outside of Demos, the city where the Pandions keep their motherhouse. There was a convent there that's since been burned down, but our estate was further away. Our nearest neighbours were another Pandion family, and Lord Romiar bred wolfhounds there. It was a very insulated place in a time of severe political conflict within our own country, and all things considered I believe I had one of the most pleasant upbringings possible. There were forests that bordered our lands, both of them, and I would spend time in the trees there until someone-" Martel, "-came to fetch me down and tell me I wasn't meant to be up there. Lady Veleda introduced my family to the man who'd be my mentor in portraiture through my youth, an Arcian artist that I always suspected of some grand secret scandal. I think I had an overactive imagination."

The picture she paints is a little rosy with the distance of memory, but she hasn't forgotten how hard Elenia was under King Aldreas, only separated the good from the bad and decided which to focus on.

The question was meant to be so broad that she'd have to focus on the topic and not on whatever or whoever came visiting.

"It sounds like a good life. One I would be ill-suited to, but that's not a valid measure of worth." Doul knows that in comparison to most of his countrymen his upbringing was relatively sheltered.

Clever, although Petra won't think of it - so clever as to be very distracting from its purpose. (The unfortunate thing is that Martel is fairly thoroughly entwined with much of what she remembers. Ordinarily she'd be far past letting those recollections hurt - sometimes she even thinks fondly of better days - but tonight has stirred up what she never thought to have disturbed.)

"It certainly had its moments. It was a very...difficult time to be a Pandion, or to be connected to them - I could be sheltered from that in the countryside, but Cimmura was another story entirely. I've heard it said that we were in a state of silent civil war, and I suppose it's true. Have you heard the saying that one doesn't speak ill of the dead? We don't speak of King Aldreas at all any more, not truly. People mention in passing how far we've come without talking about what we came from."

There's no way she wouldn't be thinking of Martel tonight and this conversation should, at least in theory, put some of it in context.

"I've heard the saying but know too many that are dead or ab-dead to really care for it." When others know that you're from High Cromlech, they tend to pay closer attention to your relationship with the non-living. "What is a 'Pandion'?"

"Oh, I'm sorry - the Pandion Order is one of the four knighthoods. They're militant clergymen, essentially, though there's no vow of chastity." Making the four Preceptors the only Patriarchs of the church permitted to marry. Petra's always wondered if that bothers the rest of them (but it's far from the sort of thing appropriate to ask one's priest). "Pandions represent Elenia, Alciones are Deiran, the Cyrinics are Arcian, and Thalesians have the Genidian Order. My father was a Pandion, and my first suitor, too. Lord Romiar would have been, if not for his injury."

She pauses, thoughtfully. "The Pandions have always been rather the black sheep of the family, almost ostracized for their attitudes and methods. They are the best, though, the very best of warriors and utterly devoted. I adopted some of their moral beliefs for my own, and I do think I've been the better for it."

"I am always amazed at the manifold ways sentient beings have created to arrange themselves. So much variety among humans and even more when you take the xenians into account." He's read enough pamphlets and treatises on the 'ideal' government to find the concept entertaining if not always practical.

"I don't think I know this word," Petra says, pausing, "'xenians'. Is it another race or some broader term?"

Well, she may not know it, but she's quick enough to follow and thoughtful enough to ask. "I don't know how many nonhuman races we have in our own world, come to think of it. I've heard tell of the Shining Ones, and anyone who's spoken to a Thalesian knows of the trolls, albeit not very well...ogres, as well. We do seem to be the primary intelligent species, but perhaps we're simply not as observant as we like to think."

"Xenians are all the obviously non-human races. There are peoples that fall somewhere between the two extremes -- the thanati, Teshi navigators, fRemade, I suppose even the ab-dead." Although to say them in the same sentence as the true walking dead is a sacrilege. "I'm not used to being among humans."

"This city must be as strange to you as it is to me," she observes, "if not far moreso."

"The city I gave my allegiance to for the last decade, they press-ganged me into service. It is strange, but I know this particular flavour of disorientation and how to adjust it to my taste." Still, he misses the sea like an ache.

It must be the sea he's missing. What else could call him back?

What, indeed.

"Does it help you?" she asks, genuinely - she tries not to push people but her interest and limitless curiosity is honest.

Perhaps he left the gas on in the Grand Easterly.

"Enough." Which is to say, not even close to enough, and he's had a difficult time not losing his temper in frustration and generally despising this thrice-fucked city. Ahem.

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