4th Ashan 719
An empty house was as much a corpse as a body whose soul had already passed on to whatever awaited it in that space beyond time and form. Where rot might have set into a corpse, dust settled on sills and pottery. Where flesh might have fallen away to reveal ivory white bones beneath, wear and tear of disrepair crept into corners and crossbeams.
But both shared the silence, thick and heavy and unending.
Until the unobtrusive tap of a pair of boots scuffed at the dust that had gathered upon the floor of the sparsely decorated upstairs bedroom. The air was stale, like what one might expect to find within a tomb or coffin, and as Mathias drew his first breath of the waking world in some time, he found it tasted oddly unfamiliar. In fact, as he gazed around the room, attentions trailing over what had once been his bed and desk and worn dresser, it felt very much as though he was standing in any other abandoned place - an intruder unbeckoned and unwelcomed.
Without hands to care for it, the house had withered into a husk, a shelter from the elements but certainly a home to no one, save the spiders and small, creeping things he’d heard scurry off into the shadows upon his near silent arrival. There had been no one there the last time he’d returned, and, as he quietly made his way to the door, fingers brushing off the brass knob with a few, rustling passes, he reminded himself that there had been no reason to expect to find Graciana returned this time either.
Fiona, the ever pragmatic, sharp tongued creature that she was, believed her dead. All signs had suggested her assumption correct - and several even hinted that Fiona knew more about it than a simple guess and passing, condescending comment. He, however, found it difficult to entertain. It was not a matter of emotion - or so he believed - but of a far deeper comprehension of the woman and both her sensibilities and capabilities. With or without him, she could handle herself without issue. She had never had need of him in the traditional sense, and, though he had been away for some time before he’d had the time to return, at no point had he ever found it even remotely plausible that she might meet her end without him.
It was, however much he doubted it, still a possibility, and one that Fiona seemed intent upon impressing upon him in hopes, he assumed, he might respond with with something more than passing doubt. Unfortunately - for both of them - that was all he had to offer on the matter.
The door sung open with a creak, hinges clogged with grime, a sound he’d never heard that particular door make before, yet another of the many things that piled upon the realization that what had been his home for so long was no more. He’d read about such things in novels Graciana had collected over the years, the yearn of nostalgia for gentler, past times. It was a thought that came to the forefront of his mind as he made his way down the dusty staircase, the prints of his boots clearly displaying his path behind him. He wondered if he should have been feeling it - the nostalgia - as he paused at the bottom of the stairwell to stare into the fogged mirror that hung upon the wall opposite him. Bright grey-green eyes stared back from behind the foggy veil of the reflection, void of anything but curious thought.
He supposed not.
A familiar voice sounded from the kitchen, but one he had become so accustomed to over the past handful of seasons, there was no chance that he might mistake it for anyone else. Not that any man or woman who knew Graciana could confuse the gentle and musical tone of his mentor with the clear, bell-tone of the brusque young woman from Eztos.
“Where’s the meat larder and will i see anything obscene there? No skinned infant buttocks, I’m hoping. “ And there it was: her once-a-break allusion to what she perceived to be his consumption of human flesh. Haughty talk from a woman who ate dinner plates and would never go hungry on the road.
She had spoken of Etzos in little snippets across the seasons and none of what she said painted a picture any rosier than Quacia; a plague goddess breathing down their necks, a jungle with every brand of poison and venom and oversized insect known and unknown to Idalos, and a incursion of rabid Becomer-created beasts roaming the streets... Yet it seemed beyond her comprehension that a body was merely meat.
“I expect a warning if there’s anything that would lower my opinion of this-” Her voice grew distant, muffled. She had clearly poked her head into one of the cupboards. “-backwater armpit of civilization in that larder.”
“I was under the impression there was nothing else you held in lower contempt,” he calmly replied, voice raised enough to comfortably reach her - though they were a room apart - without shouting or straining. “But if it is a warning you would like, I suggest avoiding the small door at the eastern edge of the back room.” There was a very good chance she’d find something she’d rather not, though he was wholly uncertain whether such a discovery would result in passing pleasure due to the verification of her suspicions or disgust due to the very same.
Not that either scenario really bothered him all that much.
He never got to find out. She appeared in the kitchen’s doorway, all short hair and hard eyes and too-neat blouse and long pants. She wore her appearance like a uniform; perpetual, consistent, unchanging throughout the seasons he knew her, with the exception of her brief, accidental sojourn into the very house they were both standing in right now.
The first time they had met in the flesh.
Graciana had thought her a Rupturer then when they had shown up, battered and beaten, but there was no Traveller’s spark to her. He had not thought to inform her of the truth - not that she had ever asked - before-
“Your house now.” she said, her eyes staring hard into his, intent. As expected. “Your home, your property, your domain, your cave of wonders, your cage - am I wrong? Or do the eldritch laws that govern Quacia demand that you may only possess property after slaying and consuming 87 elders in single combat or some such?”
He was starting to suspect that at one point in her life, her facial sneer had budded off into a bunch of smaller sneers which had, in turn, escaped to claim territory in her tone. It was the most relevant explanation for her near-pathological condescension, given the many, many strange domains they had been travelling through for the past seasons.
He blinked once. “It is, as far as I know, ‘my house’.”
The truth of the matter was mildly more complicated, but he’d found that she wasn’t especially keen when it came to unbidden explanations - not to be confused with an expression of opinion. Both were things he was still struggling to categorize, though her erratic sense of what was and wasn’t an acceptable response was as wont to shift as the trills of a day.
“As far as you know.”
Or… perhaps she did want an unbidden explanation? His eyes flickered, thoughts clearly whirling behind what was otherwise a blank stare that settled on her expectant expression. “There is a chance the property has been reclaimed by the crown, but it seems unlikely given the interior’s current state of disuse.” Unlikely but not impossible, he supposed. There were plenty of empty, ruined buildings throughout the city that, technically, were property of the king, but were little more than rotting corpses along an empty byway. All signs pointed to the house they stood in now to be on a path to a similar fate. “It should still serve its intended purpose, regardless.”
An empty house was as much a corpse as a body whose soul had already passed on to whatever awaited it in that space beyond time and form. Where rot might have set into a corpse, dust settled on sills and pottery. Where flesh might have fallen away to reveal ivory white bones beneath, wear and tear of disrepair crept into corners and crossbeams.
But both shared the silence, thick and heavy and unending.
Until the unobtrusive tap of a pair of boots scuffed at the dust that had gathered upon the floor of the sparsely decorated upstairs bedroom. The air was stale, like what one might expect to find within a tomb or coffin, and as Mathias drew his first breath of the waking world in some time, he found it tasted oddly unfamiliar. In fact, as he gazed around the room, attentions trailing over what had once been his bed and desk and worn dresser, it felt very much as though he was standing in any other abandoned place - an intruder unbeckoned and unwelcomed.
Without hands to care for it, the house had withered into a husk, a shelter from the elements but certainly a home to no one, save the spiders and small, creeping things he’d heard scurry off into the shadows upon his near silent arrival. There had been no one there the last time he’d returned, and, as he quietly made his way to the door, fingers brushing off the brass knob with a few, rustling passes, he reminded himself that there had been no reason to expect to find Graciana returned this time either.
Fiona, the ever pragmatic, sharp tongued creature that she was, believed her dead. All signs had suggested her assumption correct - and several even hinted that Fiona knew more about it than a simple guess and passing, condescending comment. He, however, found it difficult to entertain. It was not a matter of emotion - or so he believed - but of a far deeper comprehension of the woman and both her sensibilities and capabilities. With or without him, she could handle herself without issue. She had never had need of him in the traditional sense, and, though he had been away for some time before he’d had the time to return, at no point had he ever found it even remotely plausible that she might meet her end without him.
It was, however much he doubted it, still a possibility, and one that Fiona seemed intent upon impressing upon him in hopes, he assumed, he might respond with with something more than passing doubt. Unfortunately - for both of them - that was all he had to offer on the matter.
The door sung open with a creak, hinges clogged with grime, a sound he’d never heard that particular door make before, yet another of the many things that piled upon the realization that what had been his home for so long was no more. He’d read about such things in novels Graciana had collected over the years, the yearn of nostalgia for gentler, past times. It was a thought that came to the forefront of his mind as he made his way down the dusty staircase, the prints of his boots clearly displaying his path behind him. He wondered if he should have been feeling it - the nostalgia - as he paused at the bottom of the stairwell to stare into the fogged mirror that hung upon the wall opposite him. Bright grey-green eyes stared back from behind the foggy veil of the reflection, void of anything but curious thought.
He supposed not.
A familiar voice sounded from the kitchen, but one he had become so accustomed to over the past handful of seasons, there was no chance that he might mistake it for anyone else. Not that any man or woman who knew Graciana could confuse the gentle and musical tone of his mentor with the clear, bell-tone of the brusque young woman from Eztos.
“Where’s the meat larder and will i see anything obscene there? No skinned infant buttocks, I’m hoping. “ And there it was: her once-a-break allusion to what she perceived to be his consumption of human flesh. Haughty talk from a woman who ate dinner plates and would never go hungry on the road.
She had spoken of Etzos in little snippets across the seasons and none of what she said painted a picture any rosier than Quacia; a plague goddess breathing down their necks, a jungle with every brand of poison and venom and oversized insect known and unknown to Idalos, and a incursion of rabid Becomer-created beasts roaming the streets... Yet it seemed beyond her comprehension that a body was merely meat.
“I expect a warning if there’s anything that would lower my opinion of this-” Her voice grew distant, muffled. She had clearly poked her head into one of the cupboards. “-backwater armpit of civilization in that larder.”
“I was under the impression there was nothing else you held in lower contempt,” he calmly replied, voice raised enough to comfortably reach her - though they were a room apart - without shouting or straining. “But if it is a warning you would like, I suggest avoiding the small door at the eastern edge of the back room.” There was a very good chance she’d find something she’d rather not, though he was wholly uncertain whether such a discovery would result in passing pleasure due to the verification of her suspicions or disgust due to the very same.
Not that either scenario really bothered him all that much.
He never got to find out. She appeared in the kitchen’s doorway, all short hair and hard eyes and too-neat blouse and long pants. She wore her appearance like a uniform; perpetual, consistent, unchanging throughout the seasons he knew her, with the exception of her brief, accidental sojourn into the very house they were both standing in right now.
The first time they had met in the flesh.
Graciana had thought her a Rupturer then when they had shown up, battered and beaten, but there was no Traveller’s spark to her. He had not thought to inform her of the truth - not that she had ever asked - before-
“Your house now.” she said, her eyes staring hard into his, intent. As expected. “Your home, your property, your domain, your cave of wonders, your cage - am I wrong? Or do the eldritch laws that govern Quacia demand that you may only possess property after slaying and consuming 87 elders in single combat or some such?”
He was starting to suspect that at one point in her life, her facial sneer had budded off into a bunch of smaller sneers which had, in turn, escaped to claim territory in her tone. It was the most relevant explanation for her near-pathological condescension, given the many, many strange domains they had been travelling through for the past seasons.
He blinked once. “It is, as far as I know, ‘my house’.”
The truth of the matter was mildly more complicated, but he’d found that she wasn’t especially keen when it came to unbidden explanations - not to be confused with an expression of opinion. Both were things he was still struggling to categorize, though her erratic sense of what was and wasn’t an acceptable response was as wont to shift as the trills of a day.
“As far as you know.”
Or… perhaps she did want an unbidden explanation? His eyes flickered, thoughts clearly whirling behind what was otherwise a blank stare that settled on her expectant expression. “There is a chance the property has been reclaimed by the crown, but it seems unlikely given the interior’s current state of disuse.” Unlikely but not impossible, he supposed. There were plenty of empty, ruined buildings throughout the city that, technically, were property of the king, but were little more than rotting corpses along an empty byway. All signs pointed to the house they stood in now to be on a path to a similar fate. “It should still serve its intended purpose, regardless.”
