[PM to Join] Crystalizing Clear as Day

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Early Evening, 29 Ophus, 2719
The Home of Violetta Ballington, King's Court

Niccolette has not let go of her side. Her right hand stays there, curled into the dress - not holding on tight, but settled against it. It is the left which lifted to push her hair back, with the gleaming ring on the fourth finger; a few strands catch on the gold, but shudder themselves loose.

She looks at Anatole when he speaks. Her own words did not undo her, but these threaten to; her lips tremble, and there is the faintest sheen in her eyes. Niccolette takes a deep, steady breath, and closes them for a long moment. Anatole scarcely knew him, she knows; she does not know what they discussed, before the time Uzoji told her he wasn’t sure what to make of the man. But she thinks of the little library in Dzum, and of seeing Anatole sitting in Uzoji’s chair, studying a book of poetry, with the light shining in through the window.

Niccolette takes another breath, careful and steady. She does not count the rhythm of these, but they settle her all the same. She finds herself in the brush of her fingers against velvet, in the soft cushion of the seat beneath her, in the glowing warmth of the fire, and the rich smell of the Rossiolo. When she opens her eyes they are clear enough; not a single tear escapes to disturb the black kohl carefully traced around her eyes. She smiles, and takes another sip of the wine. Hearing the words, Anatole has said; Niccolette hopes it is so.

“Very nicely said,” Violetta says. “There are many poems which are meant to be read aloud, I think; they have such lovely rhythms. I find that often true of Bastian poetry, especially, although of course there are those who are subsumed by the patterns, rather than understanding how to use it on their own behalf.” She looks at Niccolette with a fond little smile.

Niccolette shrugs. “Bastian poetry, I think, I still do not care for.” Her gaze flicks up to Anatole, and she smiles rather differently. She thinks of a slanting sunset through curved windows, of bright gold light darkening and spilling over a well-upholstered room; she thinks, too, of the same room, left to decant a little while longer. “Perhaps it is that they seem to illuminate only the places where the shadows are not.”

Terrence shifts, hesitant, in his chair; he glances at Niccolette, and then over at the Incumbent. He licks his lips. “There’s – ah – some decent work coming out of Tiv, I think?” He offers. “That is – uh,” he waits; Violetta favors him with a smile, and he comes forward a little on the seat, and pushes through. “Not so much traditional publishing these days, of course, the clearing agents won’t have them, so they put their work out in literary magazines. There’s one chap, publishes under the name Junia, of all things.”

“The numbing plant?” Niccolette raises her eyebrows.

“Yes,” Terrence grins. “Exactly. Several of the poems deal with the search for numbness and the consequences thereof, or so I read them. It feels much like a response to the general rigidity of the more classical Archevne poetry, I think; they might’ve gone too far the other way, on the whole, with less structure even than Mugrobi poetry, but I enjoy it, anyway.”

Violetta has waited, careful and patient, sipping at her wine. For a few moments, she does not interrupt, other than with her smiles. She has given it a few moments; she has judged her time, very carefully. Niccolette does not have the skill, herself, but she can recognize and admire it all the same; she has, she thinks, learned something, at least, all these last years.

Violetta glances over to Norton, then, slipping into the conversation effortlessly. “Which poem was it you and Uzoji had that terrible argument about?” She asks, smiling. “Something Mugrobi, wasn’t it?”

[Tom Cooke]

Violetta Ballington's House • King's Court

Late Afternoon on the 29th of Ophus, 2719

H
e doesn’t know if anyone ever said very nicely said to Thomas Cooke; he smiles a little, knowing – and not particularly caring – he looks like a sheepish lad, and takes his little plate again as Mrs. Ballington goes on. Collingwood’s nodding, now at least, looking like he’s about to bite his tongue for all he’s got to say on the matter of Bastian poetry-for-poetry’s sake.

He’s already thinking of a certain Archevne, of slanting sunset light in a captain’s study. He is spreading cheese on another slice of bread and then taking a bite, delicate-like, when Niccolette speaks.

He meets her eye; his mouth is full of benny bread and cheese. He blinks his eyes a couple more times than he ought, smiles his thin smile, and arcs one eyebrow.

In seriousness, he hasn’t read much Bastian poetry. He knows Anatole had a fondness for it, and once, that was enough to ensure he didn’t go within a kilometer of touching it. He’s more comfortable with his discomfort, now; he can toe the waters, feel the strangeness shiver through him, brace himself against it and step deeper. So when Farthington is on the edge of speaking, looking tentative in only the way a man who’s got something to say proper looks, Anatole is looking at him, grey eyes curious and absorbed.

The numbing plant?

The crumbs are scratchy-dry in his throat, suddenly. He clears it and reaches for his glass, a little too quick. If there’s a prickling at the edges of his eyes, it’s gone in no time at all.

“Tiv,” grunts Collie. He looks more comfortable now, setting back in his seat and crossing his arms. He seems to be done with his yats; two little pomegranate seeds are sitting in the bottom of his bowl, and there is a small smear of cheese at the edge of his platter, but otherwise, he’s cleaned up.

“If that’s the case, I should like to read this Junia,” murmurs Anatole, still with his thin, pleasant smile, his even deep voice, his straight back. “I must admit, I… struggle with Archevne verse, even if some Tivian poets skew toward the experimental.”

Collie’s smiling his dry smile. “Another balance, isn’t it, Mr. Farthington?” he says, taking his still mostly-full glass of wine. “Thesis and antithesis, as Mr. Chauvin writes. I don’t know much of poetry, but you’ve usually got to throw something at its opposite to yield something truly fine. Perhaps they’ll all be writing like Mr. Junia, in a few years.”

It’s not lost on him, either, Mrs. Ballington’s careful guiding hand; her smiles, her gentle praise, her directing. He can picture Ava, almost, sitting in that seat, if not in the present company – guiding a cultured conversation about poetry, guiding each voice delicately round the thorny awkward ground of grief. Finding these men their common ground with a smile here, a pleasant word there, always such that it seems they’ve found it themselves. But with whom?

Not one thing or another, he thinks. Junia, oes. He feels suddenly, strangely, terribly alone.

As he does when he thinks what he might’ve asked Uzoji, if only he’d had the words then. And if he had? What does a human do with them? He wants, too, to ask Farthington more about this Junia – but he’s afraid what his tongue will betray, so he finishes his glass instead.

“Ah, yes. Dzih pez Utiqa.” There’s warmth in his voice, and something else, and hesitation, too. The name sticks; there’s a pause.

Mrs. Ballington smiles, tilts her head just a little, so the light from the hearth sings warm in her white curls.

Still, Collie hesitates. Anatole doesn’t so much as glance at Niccolette, but he’s pricklingly conscious of her hand at her side. He's not sure where this is going, not really, but he thinks Ballington must know best. “Dzih pez Utiqa,” he repeats, not quite correcting Collie on the q, knowing full well he’s more than a hair off himself. “I’m afraid I’ve never heard of the poet.”

Collie nods. “Very obscure,” he goes on, and – comes unstuck. Suddenly, he smiles, grim but warm. “I can’t even… I don’t even remember why we fought,” he sighs. “No, I think I do. ‘Everything Between’, that was the name of it. The refining process as a metaphor for love. It was perhaps two years ago; he was trying to explain something to me, and I didn’t understand…”

“I never knew how much he liked poetry,” he says suddenly, for all the tightness in his throat. The empty glass is in his lap – it’s his sixth tonight; he can’t pretend he doesn’t know how many he’s had, because he’s been counting, and he’s made the choice anyway – and for a moment, his fingernails whiten on the rim of it.

“By heavens and hells, liked isn’t the word. He was a man who knew how to be transported, I’ll say that.” Collie looks toward Farthington, now, raising his brows, then looks away. “It was a Mugrobi word – iwoun – heat, and some Anaxi had translated it as passion, but it wasn’t quite right.”

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Early Evening, 29 Ophus, 2719
The Home of Violetta Ballington, King's Court

It is an odd shock to hear Violetta say his name. A good one, Niccolette thinks; painful and prickling, racing through her, but not so bad as the lack. She says it; she says his name, and thinks it far more often. It did not die with you, she wants to promise him, sometimes.

Sometimes - sometimes - she can nearly understand the edges of the Mugrobi custom. You left it behind, she would tell him; she thinks he knows. You left it with me, and with all of us. Violetta has said it casually, easily, just as one would say the name of someone in the other room who cannot hear you, whose attention you do not expect to prick. Uzoji, casual and easy; not as if you are expecting him to return any moment, but as if there is nothing strange in the saying.

Neither of them have the dz right, or the q. Niccolette does not bother with a correction.

“Like a blacksmith, my love, melting metal into flame,” Niccolette says, quietly but just loud enough. “A hammer crashes and sparks fly, and we never are the same.”

She takes her wine glass; she swirls it, gently, and sets it back down. “Or else red coals and rising steam, and someone’s laid out pipes, wrenches twist and tighten me, and so reveal the way. Am I bits of rock, or the crystal shining through? What is left when I am undone? What can I bring to you?”

“Not the beginning, nor the end, but the places in between. Heat,” Niccolette says, raising her eyebrows at Norton with a smile, “all consuming; plunging cold. A whistle like a scream.”

It is hard to continue the words stick in her throat. But Niccolette is no stranger to speaking through discomfort; she continues, careful and precise, enunciating every syllable in her curling Bastian accent, through the lingering thickness of the wine on her tongue and the ache which ripples slowly through her chest.

“To be made whole is first to shatter,” Niccolette says. She goes on, “And I am shattered through.”

There are tears welling up in her eyes now; she blinks them away, and one slides slowly down her cheek, a bit of darkness trailing along at the outermost. She recites through the hitching of her breath, until she can curl the poem properly. “What I will be I do not know, but you will be there too.”

It leaves her shaking; her hands are together in her lap now, twisted so, fingers white with the force of her grasp. She shudders; her breath hitches, and more tears spill down her cheeks.

Terrence shifts in his seat; he swallows. He rises, carefully; he comes across the room, stopping just at the edge of the seat. With a neat bow, he extends a handkerchief.

Niccolette looks at the white linen; she lifts her tear-stained gaze to his, and arches an eyebrow.

There are bright red blotches across Terrence’s cheeks, and one which has crept up the back of his neck. He holds very still, field doetoed beneath hers.

Niccolette sniffled, and takes the handkerchief with a weak, watery smile. “Thank you,” she says, patting at her cheeks. The last few tears which spill over are cleansing; they do not do much for her kohl, but she sighs them out and lets them go. She dabs lightly at her eyes, and wipes her cheeks clean. She caprises him, with a light, almost delicate touch; there is nothing forceful about it, and she does not linger in it.

Terrence nods and retreats carefully back to his seat, his eyes slightly wide; the blotchy blush is fading. He takes another slice of bread, this one with a bit of hard cheese, although he holds it in his lap more than actually eating it.

“I can see,” Violetta says, thoughtful, “how one might be tempted to mistake heat for passion,” there is a bright gleam in her blue eyes, a contrast to her soft smile; her neat white hair glints in the firelight. She smiles a little more at Niccolette, and takes another sip of wine.

[Tom Cooke]

Violetta Ballington's House • King's Court

Late Afternoon on the 29th of Ophus, 2719

S
ome time ago, now, he’s set his glass aside, and he’s listened. He’s sitting still in his seat, watching Niccolette’s profile, unsmeared kohl and proud chin. It’s as if he knew this would happen from the start, from the moment Collingwood said the name of the poem in Estuan. He’s not sure how, or why he knows, or what part of his mind has stirred this up. It should seem bizarre to hear poetry drop from Niccolette’s lips, easy as if she had read the poem every day for a decade. It’s not; it’s natural.

Perhaps she has, he thinks. He can’t seem to account for it, otherwise, though he knows of himself that he has plenty enough verse stored at the back of his tongue.

Collie’s gone still again, and quiet. For all wine and warmth has loosened his tongue – for all he’s seemed, this last hour, to creep out of himself, and now he’s a ready opinion on every subject – he looks speechless. His mouth is slightly open before he shuts it.

He thinks until he can’t anymore. He’s gone still, too. Collie’s looking away; he’s still looking at Niccolette, and the cheery-warm parlor has narrowed down to the single tear-track on her cheek, the flicker of dark against her pale firelit skin.

When she moves through the final verse, Tom is looking down at the hands in his lap. He’s folded them together over his uncrossed knees; he can feel one underneath the other, the knuckles and the flickering bones.

He hears her voice shake, and the turn of Vita seems to hinge on whether or not she can climb over that hitch. He presses his hand; he closes his eyes. She doesn’t brail, and he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Then, in the quiet, he counts the seconds on the next inhale – one, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

Against the backs of his eyelids, he sees the ghost of the library on Isla Dzum, the long ruffling linen drapes, her vivid island dress. He remembers the way she broke and left. He felt it, then, though he didn’t see it through. It’s been a long time since he’s wept, shaking and hitching. She didn’t break, that night in Roalis – that night in Roalis! – maybe a tear, or a shuddering breath, but she never broke, that he saw. That he can remember.

He wonders what they mean to her, all those Mugrobi sayings about the soul moving on. He meant it, earlier, his prayer to Roa – he did. All the same, he thinks, he doesn’t know which is worse. Either way, there’s a parting.

The brush of another field pulls him up out of it. He opens his eyes to find Farthington, blotchy-faced and red round the collar, taking out a kerchief. He feels the caprise curl gently through Niccolette’s field, and he smiles, just a flicker, at her and then the lad.

Thank you, he hears.

Her kohl has smeared more since the last time he saw her, and she’s dabbing a few more tears off her cheeks. Mrs. Ballington’s voice slides through the silence not like a knife, but like an offering.

Tom clears his throat and finds the sound rough. Damned embarrassing. He looks at Mrs. Ballington, sharp blue eyes and soft smile, and finds the tightness in his throat welling up again.

Farthington’s holding another slice of bread. Tom glances again at the lemon water and its little puddle on the coaster. The brittle line of his lips twitches before it smooths out, and he looks away.

Collie is looking toward the fire, his arms still crossed. He’s frowning, but he looks at Mrs. Ballington when she speaks; he has a grim, crooked smile on his face, then. He looks at Niccolette, blinks, and Tom watches him take a deep breath.

“I –” he starts, and Anatole’s deep voice won’t serve him. He breaks off. Measured breaths. He won’t brail now; Niccolette didn’t, and he won’t, either. There’s no embarrassment worse than giving up. “Heat, all consuming,” he repeats, slowly. “Some words – most words, perhaps – have no meaning, without the rest of the verse.”

Collie makes a noise that isn’t quite a laugh and shakes his head. “I was hardly the man for that discussion. I know enough of heat, but less of passion.” He looks up, then, and finally at Niccolette. “What he must’ve thought of me.”

The room is warm, in a way that’s blurred at the edges. There’s no more wine for him, but the last glass is settling in, steady, and the crisp chill of the carriage-ride has melted away. He waits a while, holding the upkeep with a promise he made to himself when he swallowed the lump in his throat. He lets the conversation wind on, smiling his pleasant smile and nodding, though he’s mostly quiet, and nobody, thankfully, asks any more of him.

He’s not sure how long it’s been until he finds the proper lull. It’s the Rose’s doyenne he looks to first, her blanket still draped majestic, sparking silver thread, round her shoulders.

“Mrs. Ballington, I must thank you for your hospitality,” he begins, and Anatole’s voice is quite smooth. “Mr. Farthington, Mr. Collingwood – Niccolette,” he smiles at her, “thank you all for the fine company, but I’m afraid it’s my time to go.”

The book is in his hand. As he pushes himself up on the arm of the chair, he tucks it under his arm, scanning the shelf on the far wall for the gap he left – then, he hesitates.

Tom looks again at Mrs. Ballington. “Might I borrow your copy of Fairer Voices, madam?” His smile’s crooked. “You’ll have it back within the week.”

He knows full well what he’s asking. Not just the book. He holds on a little longer; there’ll be time aplenty tonight to have it out with all his tears, and to say the names – all of them – over and over, so he won’t forget them. He can hold them a little longer.

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Early Evening, 29 Ophus, 2719
The Home of Violetta Ballington, King's Court

Niccolette is watching Norton, already, when he looks at her, and so she meets his gaze with ease. She smiles, faintly; it is easy to do, and genuinely, and the act of it warms something inside her that she had thought doused by the tears. “He was,” she says, quiet, but as uncompromising and unyielding as ever, “thoroughly fond of you.”

The smile widens, then; there is something private and a little amused in it, some joke once shared which is now private. “Before and after your argument,” Niccolette adds, delicately, and this smile, now, too, is shared.

Something which was once brittle has shattered; she thought that it held her together, but she finds, now, that it only held her in. There is conversation then; Niccolette finds that she laughs, once, and then again, and it tastes stranger than the wine on her tongue.

Anatole leaves first, with a warm smile and a borrowed book from Violetta. Norton leaves next, and at the last minute, as he is rising, Terrence stands as well, and says he, too, should go, and perhaps they might share a cab? He bows over Violetta’s hand and kisses it, and then to Niccolette’s surprise, he does the same to her, and his field nudges, friendly, at the edges of hers. She returns the caprise, and bows to both of them as they go.

Niccolette does not quite sit down; she takes her wine glass, and Violetta’s too, and carries them over to the side table. The Rossiolo is not quite finished; she does not call for Baker, but pours the last of her the winer herself, carefully splitting it between the two glasses. She brings them back to Violetta, and hands the other woman hers, settling back down into her chair.

“To the blessing of time,” Violetta says, gently, and extends her glass.

Niccolette smiles, and clinks her glass softly against the older woman’s.

Violetta takes a sip; her eyebrows lift. “It is better for the decanting,” she says with a smile. “Out in the open.”

Niccolette laughs, again, unexpectedly, and Violetta’s smile warms. She takes a sip of the wine herself, a deep draught, and sets the glass gently aside. “How is your hip?”

“A good sort of pain,” Violetta says. “One well worth bearing.” Her sharp blue gaze tracks Niccolette, and she does not let her escape unspoken. A beringed hand reaches out, commandingly; Niccolette takes it with a smile, and lets Violetta give her a tight squeeze. “An your heart?” The older woman asks, softly.

Niccolette shakes her head. She is quiet, breathing in and out; she thinks the question over. She glances up at Violetta; she swallows, and thinks a little more. “A good sort of pain,” she says, instead. They are not the first words which came to mind, but she has taken her time in the choosing, and she is glad of them; she is glad, most of all, that they ring true.

Violetta gives Niccolette’s hand another tight squeeze, her own hand shaking through it. She settles back, and they sit comfortably before the slowly dying fire, basking in the warmth.

“Thank you,” Violetta says, quietly. “I am very grateful you agreed to accompany me; you made the evening infinitely more bearable.”

Niccolette smiles at her; she sits back, and takes her wine glass, and swirls it, gently, in her hand. She takes another sip of wine, tasting the fruit and the spice; the long airing out has softened it further, and it is all richness, now, with only the sort of bitterness which heightens the flavors by contrast. Niccolette breathes in deep the wine and the smokey smell of the room, and she is smiling, still, when she looks up to meet Violetta’s gaze.

Here she is; here, Niccolette thinks, she will stay. She can look forward to tomorrow, and the Clock’s Eve party in two weeks' time, and she is glad of it. She does not try for more; she has made do, for a long time, with less. She breathes in the scent of the wine once more, and takes another sip, and sets the glass down to savor it, to let it stretch just a little longer.

“I am grateful too,” Niccolette says.