(OPEN) Out for a Walk

[Mouse]

46th of Vhalar, Arc 719

Mouse walked through the market streets. It felt warm, dry, and still it had not rained in Ne'haer. She didn't understand why the council had decided to close the markets or why foods were rationed. It didn't make that much difference to her lifestyle, but Mouse could see the bay waters from the street she walked and wondered why they couldn't just take out some of the ocean water and use that for the crops. Not that she talked to anyone about her confusion. She was alright with just a slight wonder and then moving on. As long as she had water to drink and wash with at her home, it wasn't as urgent as it was for some of the other people in the city who had larger households and stables of animals and the like.

At her side, her white dog companion kept nearby. She held onto a thin rope, as she was still in the midst of training the older pup - nearly full grown to an adult. Mouse'd had Sugar for nearly an arc now, but it was safer to have the dog leashed rather than not. She clicked her tongue, then pulled slightly to encourage the dog to keep up with her pace instead of getting distracted by a trio of people arguing at the side of the street.

"Heel, Sugar," she said as the previous owner had taught her in how to keep the pup at her stride. She continued down the sloped path, not certain where exactly she wanted to go, but out to walk Sugar so that the pup wouldn't run about their small home and ruin what little furniture she had.

[Bettie Bandy]

Living things were so much messier than things that never lived at all. She knew that. It was a fundamental fact of life: the more living something did, invariably, the more complicated and prone to erraticism it became. It was why Bettie liked things like socks or small stones or fingernail clippings. Those were all things with unchanging, invariable ways of existence. They were or they weren't.

Not like people.

Bettie loathed people. They were loud and pushy and had thoughts of their own that could never actually, really, personally be known, not by anyone but themselves. Even then, did they even know their own thoughts or just assumed to? She had a difficult enough time navigating her own twisting, wandering labyrinth of consciousness, wherein the stream that supposedly carried what was, more or less, the very nature of her self was more turbid and uncertain than any river's bank whose waters clung persistently even while they wasted away into nothing beneath the blazing heat of the sun. She didn't know herself as well as she'd have liked, and she knew she cared more than most.

What then did any passing person think? Not much. Not enough to warrant anything but caution. Anything but fear, perhaps. Anything but a firm understanding, spoken or not, that people were, by far, the single most dangerous things to exist within the waking world. The waking world, because she knew what was hidden behind that thin and shimmering veil. True nightmares with just as much will and even less purpose. Or so they seemed. How could she know?

And that was the gist of it, really: she couldn't know.

Her eyes had been opened. Her sense expanded. Suddenly the world wasn't just an endless barrage of questions; it was a realm were any question, given time, could be answered, because every question stemmed from its answer. Every question asked that wasn't rooted in a person.

Or an animal.

But animals were different. They didn't think, not like the thoughts Bettie thought to think, at least, and it made them that much more interesting. They could be, to some extent, understood. There was a simplicity about their minds that, even though their bodies while still beating heart and warm, soft flesh, denied her any probing inquiry, made them less of an unknowable danger and something more of a curious set of reactions. Animals responded, and most responded to expectation. Those that didn't usually had a findable reason, a discovery waiting, not hidden. Not concealed, like people were so wont to fashion.

So, in a roundabout, not really way, Bettie liked animals. Or she liked the idea of them. It was, functionally, about the same in practice either way.

"Dog," a soft voice but loud enough to be heard by both the object of her focus and the creature it was attached to. "Are you walking her or being walked, I wonder."

Slender fingers ran gently through dark tousled locks before Bettie shook her head and sighed. Living alone, living without anything but the pressing purpose to know, wasn't just lonely. It was exhausting.

"There's a-" What was it again. "There's a chance? A possibility? You know the word, dog, I'm sure, because- no. You wouldn't, would you."

Slowly, dark eyes raised to appraised, guarded out of a fear that, quite blatantly, hardly seemed rational given the shared, diminutive height and utter lack of presented danger.

"But you... you would, wouldn't you? I mean- that is, what I said. What I'm saying. Where did you- no... where were you? Where are you going? And why?" Another shake of her head. "No... not why. Just where. And why with her? ...with him?"

Or was it "it"?

There was something people always said, a passcode of a kind. A way of stating "I am a person, yes, and here is an empty statement to verify it as such.'

"The weather is- is weathery today, don't you think?"

[Mouse]

A simple woman, black of hair and soft of voice, made herself known. Now, Mouse had dealt with beggars before. She'd dealt with madmen and the drunkards. Living in the city, she got used to ignoring most people. Everyone wanted something, that seemed to be the main defining factor that threaded a commonality between each and every individual. Mouse found that people only really ever thought of one thing and that was their own selves. It made sense to her. Ever since she'd plotted her escape from her master, her thoughts had increasingly orbited around her own desires, her own needs, her own ambitions.

For seasons, it provided a sort of mental release but when the physical followed... and she arrived in Ne'haer, truly free for what felt like so long, she almost didn't know what to do with all those things that'd been in her mind. Was the woman she thought needed this or wanted that actually her? Did she actually exist? Or had she propped her up as some kind of figure of who she wished she could be? Mouse couldn't say, if for some reason she'd ever have to speak on it - not that she ever would - but it made her keenly aware that almost all other free men and women thought in these ways too. Though they seemed to actually believe that the idealism in their heads were actually them. There was no separation between their wants and desires and their identity or perception.

Mouse felt far from the little delusions she'd entertained while caring for her master and his house. Delusions of a woman she could have been... if she weren't a mouse.

She noticed the approach as soon as the attention moved onto her. Mouse tried to ignore it all the same. Like the rest of the cityfolk, this other woman would want something from her. Whether something cheap and mundane, or elaborate and consuming, it didn't matter. Mouse turned slightly and averted her gaze as quick as she could.

The woman's gibbered ramblings sharpened her awareness even more. Mouse didn't trust ramblers. Even if they came in a seemingly weak and easily subjugated form so similar to her own. She'd already seen a few altercations in the evening time around taverns, of ramblers and thieves and blood shed on the cobblestones. It wasn't evening, but that didn't mean blood couldn't be shed all the same.

Sugar took notice for the both of them though. The white short-hair dog eyed the human who kept saying the name of its species and then barked in a low, rumbled echo of a noise.

Mouse stumbled in her walk when Sugar tugged her in the direction. She gritted her teeth, wrapped the rope around her palm though it cut raw into her skin. She tugged in the opposite direction and hissed, "Sugar, no. Heel."

Then she made the mistake of accidental eye contact with the other person. Mouse nearly rolled her eyes in exasperation at her mistake. Sugar kept barking, loud enough that someone shouted out from a nearby window for the canine to shut up. The brunette glanced away in the direction, eager to use it as a reason to walk away from the whispery muttery waif.

"The weather is- is weathery today, don't you think?"

Mouse grimaced. Was this odd woman trying to... converse with her? She yanked hard on Sugar's leash. The dog yelped in a choked sound, but then settled down after the rough treatment. Mouse looked down at the dog, patted Sugar's side, then said, "Yes."

Then she started to walk again. Polite enough, she figured... though she started to feel a bit guilty after a step or two. She glanced over her shoulder, then reluctantly added, "Very... weathery."

She nodded, and continued to walk along the street with Sugar. That had been sufficiently good, believed Mouse. She hadn't acted rude and Sugar hadn't bitten anyone.

[Bettie Bandy]

Aggression. Bettie didn't like that. It startled and surprised. When the dog let forth its first, rumbling warning, Bettie's eyes widened and her fingers combed through her hair all the faster. "Upset or worried?" she mumbled to herself, twisting a strand of her hair round and round between thumb and forefinger. "A threat? M-me?"

Hardly.

The barking continued loud and incessant. A reaction, as animals did, to her. There was a how. There was a what. There was a why, only that "why" was something waiting, something not yet quite all there. Dogs were loyal to a fault. They'd sooner die than betray, but betrayal twisted into something darker along lines all different from the other. Protection, most likely, from the strange. From the foreign and unknown. It wasn't so unlike herself, only she didn't raise her voice and gnash her teeth and strain against her own unseen tethers to subdue through intimidation. She wasn't a beast. Not usually.

A wrenching tug, a spluttered gag, the briefest shadow of pain and, perhaps, confusion... then silence. Obedience. The two were more or less inseparable in that given moment. That beat of her own heart had, slowly, returned to its steady rhythm. The other woman, the smaller woman who seemed as small as she in a way that was vastly different from her own, had forced her will, had forced obeisance, and the the reaction shifted. Protection exchanged for deference. A common change and one so often mislabeled as affection.

They felt, those beasts made into little living, breathing toys, but they didn't feel. That was what was so wonderful about them.

No answers, just farewells in empty words empty of meaning. Or... they would have been if she'd acquiesced as the dog had. She, Bettie, was a person, though, and that left her with the choice to refuse. Any choice at all, really, but refusal was immediate. Irreverent. Questions upon questions, a hunger never truly sated, but made all the more torturous once the palate was whet.

"Yes, yes it's- the weather, I mean- it's very much like that. Weathery." Repetition. Reiteration. Reflection. Common habits of wagging tongues to fill the space between the meat of things, the grain to fill up an empty stomach, lacking flavor but serving its purpose. A hook, digging into the fish's puckered lips. Discourtesy could such a hook so easily dislodge, but discourtesy was not drawn. Not yet.

Soft footfalls behind, then beside, then just barely in front.

"And on a weathery trial- a weathery morning? Evening? A weathery time- such as this is- a pleasant backdrop for a moment with your... son?"

Dark eyes blinked, full lashes almost fluttering. Almost.

"Or is it the female son? The- you know. The other one."

The daughter.

"That's right," she nodded, a murmur to herself, before she glanced down, again, at the pale cream beast beside her, still chained to the small hands of the other woman, the slave master to whom dedication had been pledged at some unknown, unknowable time. "He is very pretty. Or is she handsome? Would it know the- the difference, you wonder?"

[Mouse]

Mouse knew she shouldn't have said a word. She should have just kept walking, without engaging the odd little rambler. The eye contact had been accidental, but the greeting in turn had been a mistake that couldn't be attributed to mere accident. That hadn't been a slip of an angle in dimensions around them. No, that'd been her own damn tongue wagging when it shouldn't have.

She bit that wagging tongue of her's, when she heard the other woman continue on with more of the... she wouldn't call it conversation. If she would have called it anything other than an interruption to her walk that would either be dangerous or simply tiresome. But then, she thought of what the bartender down at The Stormy Flea tavern had told her several trials ago. It hadn't made much sense to her then, and still confused her now. Something about if she let people in, that she could make real connections.

Mouse didn't know where she was supposed to let them in. Into her home? Not a chance! But where else could people go in that she had say over? Besides what did real connections even mean? It was just a whole mess of words that didn't mean anything at all other than the tavern keep wanted her to stop insulting sailors by refusing to talk with them, if she were going to drink at the counter. Mouse hadn't gone back to that tavern though. There were plenty of others. She didn't need to rely on just a one and she didn't need to talk about the weather with worrisome strangers.

...but the woman followed. Mouse glanced over, at the feet slightly beside her.

A low exhale, exasperation but not rudeness... not yet. She bit her tongue, gently between her teeth so that it couldn't move without her awareness. This was how she kept from saying things better left unsaid. The simple practice had saved her from beatings before, and it would keep her from accidentally causing aggression in a stranger now.

Mouse glanced around. Was it morning? She realized she didn't quite know herself. It wasn't evening, she knew that much. The sun was bright and the torches hadn't been lit along the buildings yet. In the city, on her own, she only ever told time by whether it was light out or dark out. Which didn't help matters when Saun rolled around with its seemingly endless light. Cylus would be much the same when it's persistent night arrived. She supposed she could invest in one of those things that flipped around to track time by specks of sand.

Sugar's dark eyes tracked the dark-haired woman. The canine growled lowly, but didn't bark.

"She," gave in Mouse finally. She turned her walk to round a corner of a street. Sugar came close to the other woman, close enough that the dog leaned her head to brush her muzzle against the stranger's hand, then bark once more.

"I wouldn't know," she answered finally, engaging despite everything. "...if dogs know how they look, that is. Her name is Sugar. I'm Mouse. What's your name?" The last question spoken with a spiked upward pitch as if she weren't sure whether she should say it or whether she said it correctly.

"Did you..." Mouse tried to figure out a way to word it that wouldn't be considered rude. "...Are you lost? Do you have someone who needs to know where you are?"

[Bettie Bandy]

Too close for comfort. A potential danger. Another growl, lower, softer, still enough to startle. Bettie pulled her hand away with a quiet, "Oh!" Her fault. Her action to cause so unsavory a reaction. Such a touchy, hairy thing it was. She was, so the other woman said, if her words could be trusted. There was no one else to say otherwise, and an examination of the best to prove the fact fiction or not was far too daring for her. "I won't, don't fret- don't... un..du... late?"

But a question for a question was only fair, not that she needed to pay it. She could have left, the single mystery adequately solved. Goodbye, farewell, and pleasant trial. Could have but didn't.

"Sweet and sticky," muttered Bettie, nodding at the woman's name. "I'm sh- sure the ants have a grand time- a wonderful carnival, you know- with something like that all- like how it is. Sugar. A misnomer, yes? A silly... a misdirection? For humor?" Delayed and distant, her voice wavered in breathy chuckle, void of mirth. "Sugar."

The dog, she Sugar, was white. The sickly sweet little grains, it sugar, was brown. The dog was hardly something savored on the tongue but still named after it. Perhaps there was something hidden, a nature unknown because she, herself, her Bettie-ness, was a foreign influence, skewing the sweet with sour until all the tasty little granules were all used up. A shame, really. Unavoidable, but a shame.

"And Mouse."

Rat. Rodent. Burrowing, gnawing, filthy thing. What a name. What a title. A person with the name of a beast. A beast person. Did it fit?

"Mouse..."

Dark eyes narrowed but suspicion held no place among so blatant an appraisal. Mouse: wavy hair of no striking color and eyes just as much the same, only their wave was subtler, something within not as without; small in most senses of the word, as threatening as her namesake, maybe; clean enough; alone enough; clearly wishing to be anywhere else than trapped in a conversation with Bettie Bandy, dear little Bettie Bandy, and yet lingering still. Mouse? Or mouse?

Why not both?

"I see it," Bettie nodded, slender fingers once more twirling through her own dark hair. "Mouse." Another nod. Lips pursed then... popped. Eyes settled on the dog again. On she. On Sugar. "My name isn't really mine. I think- I suppose I stole it- nicked it, maybe, from a- a story? A woman who was- was like a story?"

No, that wasn't right. It was a man, wasn't it. That tall man with the face and legs. He only-

"-reminded me of it, that's right," she nodded again and folded her hands neatly in front of her, pushed just enough against her dark skirts to bunch the fabric. "It's Bettie. There's another one, but I- it's always just on the- the tip of it. Of things. Sandy? Mandy?" One shake of the head. Two. Three. Fo- "Bandy. Bettie Bandy. No r-rodents or saccharine s-sand here. Just Bettie."

Did it matter there was no "y"?

"No."

There had been another question, though. A probe... or a suggestion? It was too difficult to tell. People. Mouse. What was she, anyway?

"Isn't everyone a little bit- not too much- lost?" Slight shoulders shrugged. Her footsteps diverged just enough to allow she Sugar some space. "I'm always lost, Mouse. Not here or- or there, but off and on like- like the weather." A thumb gestured upward, hands still clasped. "But no one needs to- maybe wants to? I want to all the- the time. What was it... again? The- oh. No. They don't. There isn't. That's the answer you didn't want- expected, maybe but- if there was, I would have- I'd have escaped, you know."

It wasn't because she was good at escaping, though.

"Are you lost, Mouse? Wandering with your d- daughter in the streets- down the lanes- through the alleys of this... place. Alone? Together with- along with Sugar-" Dark eyes flitted downwards, lips curved in a smile that was worn with all the presentation of one who knew full well one's audience would take no notice of it, not in any way that mattered. "-but aimless? Purposeless?"

What was it...

"Because it's accept- exceptional. Strong. Isn't it? How..."

Freeing?

"Yes."

[Mouse]

Mouse winced somewhat, when she tried to make sense of what the weird other woman said. Already, she could feel an ache between her temples and the thrum of blood through the veins of her neck. Twitches of... annoyance, no, she was just trying to keep quiet and patient. Every trial seemed to be a new challenge in that regard. She felt no growing appreciation or endearing fondness though. What sort of woman spoke like this? She'd heard similar before, she identified now while she listened to the vague associations made about her dog's name. She'd heard it from an airy-headed seer who'd tried to con her master once. Such a scheme had ended with the seer's head on a plate.

Mouse glared at Bettie when the woman repeated her name, twice, with narrowed dark eyes...

"What?" she asked shortly. She squirmed in posture despite the sharpness of her question. Her shoulders slouched and she turned in an aversion from the other person. Her hand wrapped around the rope that leashed her dog. She guided sugar to block the space between her and the other woman. It almost looked as if she'd started to tremble, her fingers clenched so tight that the knuckles turned white.

She gritted her teeth and tried to hold the shivers inside of herself so they wouldn't be easily seen. Her breath thickened. Did this woman know the name? Was she a bounty hunter? Did she know who Mouse used to be? Where she had come from? Would she try to drag her back there? What better than to lower Mouse's guard than a girl the very opposite of the Lotharren horde, an attempt to ease her guard?

For a third time, the woman repeated the slave's name. Mouse winced again, looking far colder than it actually was around them now.

Sugar panted, oblivious to the human ways as only a dog could be. Instead, the dog looked about with the eagerness of looking for a mere snack. So simple, true animals had so little to worry about.

Finally, after a long stammered lead-up, did the woman give her name. Bettie. Bettie Bandy.

The given name eased Mouse somewhat. Maybe she was being overly anxious again. The brunette softly exhaled, and some of the tension in her plain features faded. She nodded slowly and took a small step away, as if to head on her way.

But she'd asked another question, and so another answer came - as they often did. Mouse forced the most insincere smile. It fell from her lips the next trill.

"Oh," she said in response. She felt the shiver return. The way this woman talked - escaped, lost, alone, she started to feel like the next moment would be followed with a knife aimed for the heart. She didn't like it. She patted Sugar's head to remind the dog why she was allowed at Mouse's side.

"I am not lost." Mouse said it with a frown, defensiveness obvious in her tone as much as if she'd lifted a verbal shield to block any further assault toward her. "I have a purpose."

She turned away, clicked her tongue to get Sugar to start walking, and headed toward one of the taverns she was familiar with. While she normally would have gone home at this point, she didn't want the unusual woman to follow her and know where she lived.

[Bettie Bandy]

"Do you?"

Did she? Did Bettie Bandy have more of a reason than any other to do, or was Mouse her better in that regard? A beast person of confidence, false or not, inspired by that simple but so difficult to obtain and even slipperier to maintain sense of personal design. She wasn't certain if she did, but neither could she say with confidence she didn't. She was somewhere in between, sat astride the proverbial fence between what was on the left and what was... not on the left.

"Mouse and Sugar- Sugar and Mouse... two w-women on the brink- on the edge- the precipice of greatness." An exaggeration, maybe? Maybe not. Who was she to tell. "And it leads you- it brings you here?"

Sweat and song and watered down poisons fit for debilitating embarrassments and foolish forays into realms that might otherwise go unexplored with only the barest hints of curiosity in temptation. Bettie Bandy loathed people. She wasn't set on whether or not Mouse qualified, though the lean was getting quite uncomfortable given how greatly the little thing seemed, at least, to want to throw her lot in with flesh and bone knit together with hubris and that all-consuming, ever rotting writhing mess that was self-awareness. A shame. A shame's shame, really.

"Or, maybe, it's not here but away- an escape. An excuse?" A distraction, a diversion, a tactic like all the others, but this one more successful by far. Or it was merely a dry throat and a convenient location. Who was to know.

Clasped hands unclasped only to be clapped together in a soft but emphatic gesture.

"Then I, Bettie Bandy, take my leave- depart posthaste- allow you to be not-lost with your have-purpose and d-daughter."

Dark eyes caught those of the she Sugar's and Bettie bowed respectfully. "It's been a pleasant- a nice time. A gentle time?" Just a tick of hesitation. "An enlightening time, yes. Thank you, Sugar, for sh-sharing your wife- your mother?" A shake of the head. A self-admonishing smile. "Your mouse with Bettie Bandy this wond- weathery trial."

There would be no crowded spaces in her immediate future. Not in any she had any hand in crafting, and her hands were so very often stained and sullied from such meddling as that.

"And why not?"

A hitch in step and soon she trailed away, a gentle hum drifting behind her as she gazed up towards the sky.

[Pig Boy]

Bettie Bandy

Points

15/15 no magic

Knowledge

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Loot/losses

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Injuries/Conditions

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Wealth

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Renown

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Mouse

Points

15/15 no magic

Knowledge

---

Loot/losses

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Injuries/Conditions

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Wealth

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Renown

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Comments: This was, an awkward little encounter? The writing, characterization, and expressions of Mouse were so very well written. Showing how she feels instead of telling. She's so skittish, but it's understandable given her past. Hopefully, Sugar will learn in the future to nom on the crazies.

Bettie, I enjoyed your character, as quirky as they were. The way she treated mundane subjects and small talk, was strange but compelling. But alas, I don't know if Mouse wants Bettie in her party, at least not until she learns her usefulness.

Great writing, you two!