[Closed] Expecting the Worst

[Tom Cooke]

Bonhomme Park • Brunnhold Campus

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

My Most Impressively Articulate –

Cerise of the Plentiful Hair –

Sish (sp?) –

Cerise, Owing Nothing to My Corporeality, and Less to My Soul –

T
he sun wasn’t yet down, though it’d covered its head up behind the clouds; it was dark enough to be night. Fitting, he’d thought, for the last three days to be blazing with the winter sun, the sky a crisp and vivid blue. The brook of clouds had rolled in just after breakfast, and he’d heard the first hammering of thunder over his second cup of watery Pendulum kofi.

By the time he’d wandered to the balcony doors and drawn aside the heavy drapes, the rain had been slanting sideways, and all he’d seen in the grey glass was the ghost of Anatole, mussy-haired and wrapped in a robe. He’d scowled at it, finished the dregs in his mug, and gone for a third cup.

She’d timed it well enough he didn’t know if she’d get a letter, by the time he had it stamped and sent, at least not by the time of meeting her. Getting it late seemed something like shouting the last word of an argument at a kov’s back. And he wasn’t sure he could do much better than generative force, though it’d made him feel rather like washing his hands a few times.

The benches weren’t much to sit on; the rain was driving steadily, and anywhere you liked to step or sit was drenched. The hem of Anatole’s long dark coat was a shade darker than the rest, and his shoes were dewy-glistening.

The ducks, at least, were having a caoja. There were a handful waddling through the grass, honking and preening at slick tousled feathers. Somebody had left a bit of bread and cheese and meat and greasy newspaper by the side of the path, now drenched to slush, and a tawny-feathered creature was nudging at it with a greedy bill.

There was a gazebo, at least, nearby the pond; a few young redhead ladies with puffed white sleeves were sitting at a wrought-iron table, umbrellas leaned up against the railing and drying under the generous wooden roof.

Save for the odd professional-coated golly walking briskly by in the rain, he was just about the only kov over the age of twenty-one in the quadrangle. As he creaked up the wooden steps and shook out his umbrella, the lasses watched him, two pairs of gold eyes and one bluish-green. Tucking his umbrella under his arms, he wandered over to lean on the edge of the railing, looking out over the criss-cross walkways for a familiar-unfamiliar face.

“Incumbent?”

He half-turned. “Oh,” he said, blinking; he fit a politician’s smile to his damp face posthaste. “Miss – er – Batteux.” He felt a curious caprise of perceptive mona. One of them stood and bowed deeply; the eldest stifled a laugh. He bowed back. “What a dreadful day to see you ladies out.”

“We’d been planning a picnic, before the rain started.” Batteux smiled sheepishly, indicating a wet-looking bag sitting near the umbrellas. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance it will stop soon.”

“I’m not a static conversationalist, but it seems rather steady to me, unfortunately,” he drawled. He started to turn back.

“She was telling us about shadowing you on the seven,” said one, gold-eyed and freckled.

“A pleasant experience, I hope.” He glanced between the girls, then over his shoulder at the park. Several ducks were investigating the dissolved sandwich.

He tried to ease back, tried to loosen some of the tension in his back. “Oh, very.” Miss Batteux had sat back down; he’d hoped the ladies would return to their chattering, but she was still smiling at him. “I had a – well, a question –”

“Oh?” He half-turned, scanning the rainy tableau. A silhouette was headed up the path, an umbrella over its shoulder; there were more silhouettes scattered about, all of them walking quickly. If Cerise with the Hair stood him up today, he thought – well, he reckoned Anatole would’ve deserved as much.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Bonhomme Park, Brunnhold Campus
Bethas 14, 2720 - Around 21:45

For the last few days the weather had been crisp and beautiful, if cold. Cerise couldn't help but feel that it was a sign of something that the day she had suggested she meet her father the rain was coming down so hard she had very little confidence that carrying an umbrella even had purpose. In the morning it had been a slow drizzle that did nothing but ensure her hair was as large as possible, even from within the confines of the veritable army of pins and clips she had used to hold it down. But by the time her first class had let out, it was a heavy wall of wind and water that made Cerise shudder to look at it.

She had dutifully attended the last class of the afternoon, oddly chastened by the reference made to it in her father's last letter. There was one in the middle of the day she had skipped; for the first part of what should have been class time, she had defended herself on the basis that attendance was not part of the grade. And that professor was particularly dull. Somehow even worse than Pre-Modern Galdori History, which Cerise would argue was something of an achievement. Instead she had spent the time slowly reading through the books her father sent. It was slow going, because she had to pause every so often and mull over the reading she had just done. She didn't quite know how that made her feel, the reading or the mulling.

Somehow the history class had run long; divine punishment, perhaps, for even jokingly suggesting that she should be given a note to skip it. So long, in fact, that Cerise had considered going to meet her father in her uniform. There was an anxiety that if she waited too long there would be nobody waiting for her in Bonhomme Park at all. When she identified it she scowled; she would change after all. A sensible walking skirt in dark red wool, two seasons behind but perfectly serviceable and somehow unmangled by Sish's claws, a fairly unadorned pale grey blousewaist, and a darker grey jacket replaced the uniform. Her hair had escaped every carefully placed pin; after a short hesitation, Cerise had given up and taken it it down, leaving it to do what it would. Either it would bother her father to be seen with her in such a state, which was satisfying in a way, or it wouldn't, which was another thing entirely.

Sish had stayed at home today. Her linens would simply have to do their best; she didn't think Sish would have enjoyed the weather in the slightest, not even from underneath the shelter of Cerise's hair and hood. Perhaps her father would do the same. She had considered it herself, less because of the weather than she would have liked. Then she thought that maybe this was her last chance for a long time, and somehow her feet had found the path to Bonhomme Park after all.

If he stood her up, she promised herself, she was done. She wouldn't care any more. She wouldn't tell him about tryouts, or her match, and she would keep all of his books for the whole rest of her life if only to spite him. Perhaps she would sell them. And the copy of Mircalla she had carefully and neatly wrapped in two layers of waxed paper to protect it from the rain would stay in her possession for always. Then she could be smug and know that she had been right, and had always been right--anything he had said was only out of some bizarre ploy at respectability, likely somehow tied back to his career.

The gazebo was where he would be if he had the common sense given to a kenser. It was just about the only place in the entire park that provided any shelter from the rain at all. Proximity to Ameter meant that the park was popular more with her age set than his, and yet still she was surprised to see a trio of young women her own age under the roof of it. Cerise tried to see if she knew any of them as she approached, but the rain was simply too much and the effort was wasted.

The last figure was almost assuredly her father; her step grew swift and purposeful and her expression fixed into a scowl as she got closer. That she felt something much like relief that the dark shape next to the trio of young women was her father indeed only made the scowl deepen.

Her steps were loud, deliberately so, as she trotted up under the gazebo. Cerise paused a moment to shake out her loud red umbrella, then whirled around. She did know one of the girls, although more by sight than by association. Marcelline? Margueritte? Definitely something that began with an M, at least. Her sharp grey eyes looked over them all, flat and disdainful.

"Father, you came after all," she said, her voice airy and unconcerned. As if she had expected nothing else, even in this weather, even though he had not, actually, told her he would meet her here and she very well could have waited in the rain for nothing. If she interrupted anything the young women had been about to say, she didn't think about it enough to care. After a brief pause she turned to them as well and inclined her head in what could barely be called a bow.

[Tom Cooke]

Bonhomme Park • Brunnhold Campus

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

H
e might’ve known it’d be the cherry-red umbrella. He knew her more still by the loud clap of her heels on the wood as she came up the steps. When she swam out of the rain-shroud and shadow, a deep scowl on her narrow face, he blinked and raised both eyebrows – then a brief, messy grin spilled across his face.

It was brief. He wondered at it; he could ask nothing of it. Another feeling shivered through him at the sight of the face, when all of it had caught up, the faint line that tugged the thin lips sideways, the familiar – though faint – line between her dark brows.

It wasn’t the face he’d been picturing, somehow, reading the letters. He wasn’t sure what had swum into his head to replace it, or if there’d been anything at all behind the glistening red ink; he couldn’t remember, now. He could only remember a little of the drunk-bastly glow of the reading and the writing, the flipping crackling dictionary pages for a better word, the warm kindling of a fight it didn’t matter if he won.

She’d turned to shake out her umbrella. Her hair was down, and somehow more impressive than it’d been on the last four. Stray dark curls escaped everywhere over the shoulders of her jacket, over the light grey of her blousewaist. As she turned, he searched for the flicker of concord-gold, the curl of a tail like a necklace round her throat, and found it absent. Instead, he found himself looking into her flat grey eyes.

“Pleasant to see you, too,” he said dryly, adjusting his umbrella under his arm.

Whatever question Battier – Batteux? – had been about to ask, she’d paused mid-word; her lips formed an ‘o’ before she composed herself, and the smile she offered Cerise was flanked with dimples.

Cerise inclined her head and shoulders nonchalantly. He fought the wriggling of another smile to his face, pressing his lips deeper into a scowl. Batteux was rising up from a deep bow of her own, and one of the other ladies, gold-eyes-freckles, was stifling another giggle. There was something like a flash of recognition on her face as she looked at Cerise; it wasn’t kind.

Battier had looked again on the edge of saying something, and it’d petered out on her lips.

Thank the entire Circle, he thought. If the thought of spending the evening with Anatole’s daughter had sent moths to fluttering in his belly – he still half wondered why he’d gotten himself into this – it was preferable by far to whatever in hell the alternative would’ve been. “I’m terribly sorry, Miss Battier,” he began, enunciating carefully in his politician’s drawl, “but I’ve plans for the evening – if you send a note by the Liaison Wing of Long Hall…”

Battier’s mouth closed abruptly; he supposed it was Batteux after all. “Of course, sir,” she said after a moment, smiling at Cerise.

“This is – ah – my daughter” – he tasted the bitter tang of it, and pushed it down – “Cerise,” he said, gesturing, taking a step away from the railing.

He met the heavy physical ramscott with a little less surprise than before, but there was still something curious in his caprise.

Gold-eyes cleared her throat. He felt a brush of something very close to anger; a little of it shivered out into his field before he could stop it.

“Magnificent weather,” he said brightly and evenly, smiling at Cerise. “Shall we?” He gestured at the stairs, shifting his umbrella out from under his arm and unbuttoning the tie.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Bonhomme Park, Brunnhold Campus
Bethas 14, 2720 - Early Evening

The shaking out of her umbrella proved convenient; as it was, she wouldn't have known what to do with that brief grin she'd though she had seen when she approached. It hadn't been like him at all.

The dry greeting was more solid ground. So too was the way M-something had looked at her after her bow. If Cerise had wanted to smile at any of them, she resisted. She wouldn't want the target of it to be confused. The one she didn't recognize seemed as if she had been asking a question that died at Cerise's approach. She couldn't say she was sorry for it. If it were important, the other girl should have asked anyway and not been put off the asking by something so petty. Her smile at least had been rather nice--but it was too late to do anything about that.

He'd gotten her name wrong, Dimples Girl. Cerise could have laughed, but that would have been a bit much even for her. She did snort when he stumbled over "daughter" before she could help herself. Really, how perfectly absurd. As if there was any doubt of their relation, looking at them together. Cerise resisted the urge to say so; besides, at least one of these girls already knew who she was. He'd introduced her, so now she supposed she would have to follow such a lead and continue.

"Sorry to interrupt," she said cheerfully, no trace of apology in her voice. "Lovely to meet you, Miss...?" Cerise trailed off to allow the ones she did not know to fill in their names, though she would forget them as soon as she walked away. She raised her eyebrows and did not smile at the last.

"And good to see you again, Magnolia." The name had only come to her at the end. She couldn't summon a last name to go with it, or a context for their familiarity. A class, perhaps? Or was it a fight? Either way, she supposed, it didn't really matter.

Cerise let her field touch lightly against everyone's in the little space, a gesture that could have been considered polite if she had bothered to dampen it even a little. She saw no point; they wouldn't be here long. She couldn't resist a less delicate caprise against her father's; strangely airy and dasher, it made something in her twist. She had forgotten the oddness of it, even though she had thought on it off and on since the last four. Why clairvoyant, she wanted to say, and not perceptive anymore? Cerise wondered if she'd have liked the answer.

"Well, if you'll excuse us then." Magnolia cleared her throat. As if Cerise was the interruption, and not that the other girls had simply been here at the same time as her father and that they did, in fact, have plans. How incredibly irritating. That the plans were loose and had no particular timeframe attached mattered not at all. It was the principle of the thing. Cerise looked down at Magnolia, her glance angled just a little over her shoulder. Daring the others to say anything else.

"Oh yes, simply marvelous weather. So delightful I had to leave Sish at home--it's a shame she's missing out on such a stimulating environment." There was a brief hesitation and then she turned and smiled back, more genuine than she had meant it to be. It was the letters, she thought; she was still pleased with what felt like a victory. Even that spike of anger hadn't wiped it out. Cerise opened her umbrella against and continued, studiously ignoring the eyes of the other students as she always did.

"You'll have to lead the way, since I haven't the faintest idea of where we're headed this time." Despite saying this, once her umbrella was opened again she started down the path, only pausing to turn back when she had gotten a few steps away. Her hood remained down, and the instant she was out of the modest shelter of the gazebo, the wind picked up her hair to spread it around her head in a wild thicket.

[Tom Cooke]

Bonhomme Park • Brunnhold Campus

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

E
lizabeth,” said blue-eyes, rising for a cursory bow to both of them; “Elizabeth Downington. A pleasure to meet you, Incumbent, Miss Vauquelin.” Her caprise was a dasher that’d begun to tilt toward perception.

Gold-eyes-freckles stayed seated for a moment, her head propped up, one red-painted nail tapping at her cheek. There was still something at the edge of her smile, he thought, looking up at Cerise. At the sound of her name, she inclined her head gracefully; after a moment, she rose and bowed. “Cerise,” she said with a disaffected air, her lip twitching again.

Battier-Batteux had nothing more to say. She went to join the other girls, sitting half-hesitant as if she meant to rise to her feet again, but wasn’t sure when – or how. She blinked and smiled the smile with dimples again, folding restless hands in her lap. The lass Cerise’d called Magnolia had sat back down.

The snort after he’d said daughter hadn’t escaped him. He felt all his springs were coiled tighter; he’d felt, for a moment – a flooding ridiculous moment – as if she were onto him.

The curious press of her caprise wasn’t helping. She was undampened, her ramscott heavy against his; she wasn’t pushing him, not like he’d seen other gollies do for intimidation, but she wasn’t bothering to doetoe. As the ladies excused themselves and they turned away toward the rain, he’d the sense of something searching in it, and wondered – for the first time – what she made of it.

“What a shame,” he began in the same dry, disaffected tone for which she’d set the precedence; “however will your linens...”

She half-turned, tossing a smile over her shoulder he wasn’t sure what to make of. It didn’t look out of place, exactly; her lips still had their faint curl, that ever-present edge of a sneer. But he thought – he didn’t know. He smiled back, not really thinking what his own face was doing. “Fare,” he finished a little belatedly as she turned away.

Her umbrella came open and the rain went tap tap tap, and he wrestled to get his own umbrella open, fingers slipping on the damp button. His came up belatedly, just in time for him to get another splat of water streaming off the edge of the gazebo. You’ll have to lead the way, she said, leading the way heel-to-toe and sharp-footed; he paused on the step, watching her get ahead, her hair a mad billow underneath the umbrella.

When she finally turned back, he was grinning. “This way,” he said lightly, gesturing the other way down the path.

They wound back down, where the ducks at one side were tearing up the soiled newspaper. He thought to ask what in hells was Magnolia’s problem, but a sideways glance at a tangle of dark hair and a sharp, narrow profile stopped him. He looked ahead, where the path curled out the park gates and into the rainslick streets of Deventry, where a carriage rolled by.

Their caprise was still a little deeper than strangers’; this, too, he thought to comment on. But what could he say? He’d already told her just how much he’d changed – and perhaps the caprise itself was a question, and one that couldn’t be answered in words. Easy-like, he let his clairvoyant mona creep deeper into her physical, mingling unafraid – and almost challenging – for all their light, airy softness.

“How went,” he asked instead, “pre-modern Galdori history?”

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Bonhomme Park, Brunnhold Campus
Bethas 14, 2720 - Early Evening

The rain beat loud and steady against her bright red umbrella, an aggressive bloom in a drab garden of dark neutral colors. All of that water made it hard to quite see her father's face, but she thought she had seen him smile back as if he hadn't expected to do so. That made two of them, she supposed.

Cerise's sharp steps had taken her the wrong way down the path. Which was the danger of charging ahead without much thought--it so often resulted in ending up having gone quite far in the wrong direction before you realized. Cerise turned just as briskly on her heels as she had before and caught up with her father quickly enough. She didn't answer his grin, but something of it touched her eyes as she set off as if she had gone this way from the start.

Ah--she remembered, quite suddenly, how she knew Magnolia. They had shared a class together, it was true, but she would likely have forgotten the girl entirely if she hadn't slapped the young woman's paramour quite soundly across the face. Cerise tried to remember what the offense had been. She could barely remember his name or face, even as she made the effort. He had, she thought, said something rather untoward to her on the basis of her so-called reputation, and she had taken exception. Something she had rather thought Magnolia would have been furious at him for as well, and yet it was Cerise she had been angry with in the end. As if she had driven the idiot to it. What an absolute fool Magnolia was; she deserved him.

There were actually ducks in the park, even in this weather. Industriously picking at some garbage; Cerise watched them from the corner of her eye for a moment. Now that they had left the gazebo behind, some of the tension drained out of her shoulders. Cerise hadn't quite realized it was there until it left her. Seeing Magnolia hadn't bothered her, not really, it was just unexpected. Somehow. Maybe it felt a little too close to having worlds collide. The way the other girl had looked at her--Cerise felt like she hadn't wanted her father to see it. Ridiculous. Her reputation was certainly no mystery to anyone, she thought. Surely not even to him. A lot, she remembered, and scowled.

"Hmm? Oh." As they approached the park gates, it felt like he had been letting that strange field of his mingle with hers more and more. Like a dare. It was uncomfortable in a way she couldn't define, but she didn't say anything or pull away. Thinking about it had distracted her enough she had almost not heard the question.

"You will be relieved to hear that I did attend after all, and it was perfectly dreadful. Everything in the lecture was in the text, which I have already read. So thank you for that. Hours of my young life, wasted, all at your behest." Cerise wrinkled her pointed nose and glanced down at him. They were further apart than they had been the other week, walking to the Golden Rose. The circle of their umbrellas maintained a respectable distance between them. Cerise couldn't decide if she was grateful or a little sad.

Why clairvoyant? Her mind kept circling back to the question. The rather dasher quality was less surprising--she hadn't heard much, but she had heard a little. But why the change there? What did it mean? Anything? Perhaps nothing at all. Maybe it was coincidence, or... Cerise didn't know.

"And you? Creating the next generation of incumbents then?" Not being able to ask made her feel like a coward. Nothing about this made any sense. Not the airy lightness of her father's field; not the grin that had felt like it belonged to someone else, especially directed at her; not her own cowardice.

[Tom Cooke]

Deventry • Brunnhold Campus

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

A
lways happy to waste time,” he replied with cheer.

They passed the light caprise of another flock of fields. Under an awning just outside the park gates, a handful of ladies stood shaking out their umbrellas, gawking and trilling laughs at the rain; a couple of purses sat on one of the dryer, backmost of the wrought-iron tables set out for sunnier days. The ladies, a little too old to be Brunnhold undergraduates, inclined their heads as he and Cerise passed, and he inclined his head and shoulders.

He thought for a moment. Something tickled at an old irritation.

He wanted to ask, And how in hell would you have known that, if you hadn’t gone to the flooding lecture? He’d been to lectures enough himself, since he’d become – this; as many as he could during his brief visits to Brunnhold, as many as his reputation would allow him to. Mostly clairvoyance, but other things, too: history, arts, literature.

He wondered what it would’ve been like to be sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen in a place like this. At nineteen, he’d met hama, though only just; he was still living with Meggie and Clark in their half of the flat, though he’d spent most of his nights piss-drunk in taverns, or on the King’s business. He hadn’t even known what a class was, then. He tried to imagine what he would’ve been like if he had, and his mind came up empty.

He shrugged his shoulders. “You get marks just for showing up, don’t you?” he asked. “That doesn’t seem like wasted time to me. Then, I’d’ve rather spent the time drinking, when I was your age; but I’d’ve never ended up on the travel team, either.”

He glanced sideways at her question, but he couldn’t see her expression past a gust of frizzy dark curls. He looked back toward the slick sidewalk, then snorted a laugh, to his surprise.

“I hope to hell not. Incumbents, in my experience,” he said, twitching back down into a frown, “are created by money and nepotism. And other incumbents dying.” And crime, he thought, and murder, and blackmail. Just like everything else is made, happily.

Her caprise hadn’t backed off from his. These ley lines of his were sensitive – he knew that well enough – but he couldn’t read much in her field, except that she hadn’t pressed any deeper; she held her ground steady just this side of the threshold, but no further.

He paused, keeping his eyes ahead. A carriage rattled by, filling up the space between them with noise; it took him so long to pull his thoughts together. “The time’s passed well enough, though.” He tilted his umbrella slightly so he could see a sliver of the darkening grey sky. The facades of the buildings were blending together; the blue phosphor lamps, which had sat still and dark all the day, had begun to glow, just visible in the gloaming.

“I got the chance to sit in on a class myself,” he added, as if casually. “With Mme. Arcadia. She recommended a few professors at Thul’amat.” His caprise didn’t back off from hers, either. “Except halfway through the lecture on warding meditation techniques, when I stepped out to do what one must, I got attacked by a ninth-year politics student taking the course for an arcane requirement. One of your incumbents-in-the-making.”

He wrinkled his pointed nose and glanced up at her.

“So maybe I did create some. Never doubt my generative force,” he said, and failed spectacularly to stifle a grin. He didn’t dare a pulse or even a bump of his umbrella against hers; he wasn’t sure why he wanted to, or why he felt it’d help.

Funny how it’d rained both of these two times. It was harder to see the way ahead than it was to see the end of the street.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Deventry, Brunnhold Campus
Bethas 14, 2720 - Early Evening

You clearly didn't have to take Pre-Modern Galdori History then, or it was taught by someone else." Cerise rolled her eyes at his shrug and his insistence that the attendance grade was worth the time. That was what exams were for, she thought. And she didn't need to sit through another droning lecture on the early steel industry to do well on the exam. Cerise cast him a sidelong glance. It was hard to see him through all of her hair, but she thought he looked annoyed with her. She looked back. That, at least, was not unfamiliar.

That was a different picture of his student days than she'd had before. They didn't really talk about how he spent his Brunnhold years, she supposed, but she wouldn't have imagined--she frowned. How could he remember that, and not their last fight? Was it just the recent things? Then why did he keep looking at her like everything she said or did was new?

He laughed at her question, which pleased her. Easy to put aside the question of the field when her not-quite-a-joke got that kind of response. The rest was a puzzle. Cerise agreed, broadly speaking--and that was the puzzle of it. So which created you? Not nepotism, she knew. At least not that he'd ever admitted to. That point he'd always been quite clear about. She didn't remember much of the early years of his political career; she had been so young and at Brunnhold by then besides. All Cerise really remembered was feeling suddenly and totally alone. She rather wondered when that would stop.

The sun was beginning to set. The days were still so short this time of year, though they were getting longer every day. Blue lights came on through the rain, hazy and cool. They did very little to illuminate the storefronts around them, so Cerise hoped her father remembered the way to this bookstore. She couldn't quite tell where they were.

A bit late for higher education, isn't it? The thought died in her mouth. Is it permanent, then? Leaving Anaxas? He had not responded to the not-quite-a-question about when he would return home in her letter. That told her a great deal about the answer. She should be grateful. She was grateful--it meant less of his meddling her business. Soon she would be graduated and it wouldn't matter anymore, any of it. Cerise held onto this thought like a talisman, as if it could protect her from the little prickle of unease.

She looked at him and opened her mouth to protest--they certainly weren't her "incumbents-in-the-making". The protest turned into a laugh, loud and sharp. A little more of her tension eased, though she did reach to touch a golden tail that wasn't there. Her hand stopped halfway when she remembered she had left the miraan behind.

"Never for a moment." She turned to look ahead of them, stepping broadly to avoid a pool of water of indeterminate depth. The wet hem of her skirt bunched soddenly together. "It is a fair vile phrase, isn't it?" she added cheerfully as she shook her skirt a little to unstick it.

"I have the copy of Mama's book, by the way," she added, like she hadn't thought of it yet that day. She patted her cloak where her bag was, and the wax-wrapped book inside of that. "I can give it to you when we're inside. I don't want it to get damaged."

[Tom Cooke]

Deventry • Brunnhold Campus

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

H
e got a loud stab of a laugh out of her. For all he should’ve found it awful, it was like an updraft under the wings of his; he found himself snorting his messy snort again. He was still laughing when he realized Cerise had stepped sideways toward the curb, and that he could feel a growing wet cold in his sock.

He gave a little tch through his teeth as he stepped out of the puddle. The hem of his trouser-leg was soiled, or at any rate wetter than it’d been before. Beside him, the lass was shaking out her skirt, unsticking a couple of folds. He was still kicking some mud off his shoe on the stones, half-laughing, when she said, It’s a fair vile phrase, isn’t it?

Generative flooding force. As if he’d ever generated a godsdamn thing with all the force he’d had. It was almost as bad as Tomcat, for all he’d come to love the sound of the nickname. She must’ve known how it sounded, for all she’d stuck with it even when she’d gone from being a lass to a young lady; another of their jokes. “Laoso,” he agreed, just as cheerfully.

He glanced up, caught the flash of a pale thin face in a haze of dark hair.

His smile went sideways; some of his laughter petered out, and he cleared his throat, staring down at the sidewalk. His mind scrambled and tripped over itself.

The book. He looked sidelong again at Cerise’s cloak, where she’d patted; he thought he could make out something weighing down the folds, though it was half-indistinguishable in the bulk. He swallowed, holding silent for a moment. His mouth was dry.

The word Mama skipped across the water like a stone. It sounded nothing like he’d expected it to, seeing it in the shape of a swirl of red ink. It had been easier to set aside, then. Folk – especially galdori – did not speak of such things in letters. Galdori mostly did not speak of such things at all, he reminded himself. Leastways, if he’d ever heard the word Maria on Diana’s tongue, he couldn’t recall.

He found a smile for his face, though it wasn’t the one he’d had before. He inclined his head. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I’d half a mind to bring it with me to Serkaih, but – I don’t want it to get hurt or lost on the journey through the desert.”

They’d long since turned the corner, onto one of the broader thoroughfares of Deventry. He hadn’t spent so much time in this place it wasn’t still funny to him, all the gollies and not a natt to be seen; but they weren’t in the crescent of the Stacks, and every gaggle of kov or chip they passed was a polite, if brief, caprise through the pouring rain.

It was still a few streets from the book shop. This road had broader walks, with room for maybe three or four umbrellas abreast, flanked on either side by houses and townhouses; some of them had yards or gardens framed in hedgerows or wrought-iron fences, and some pressed their faces up against the street, with stairs leading up through archways to shaded niches with pretty-painted doors and mailboxes.

He’d never shaken the feeling of getting caught out in places like this.

“Are you looking forward to it?” he added quickly, those two strange words still hanging in the rain, and dared a glance over. Through all of it, he’d kept his field mingling with hers; he hadn’t backed off. “Going abroad.”

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Deventry, Brunnhold Campus
Bethas 14, 2720 - Early Evening

Laoso, he'd said, and Cerise almost froze in place right there on the sidewalk. The cover of the puddle helped, and her easy statement about the book came swiftly thereafter.

She knew what it meant, of course she knew what it meant. He'd said it often enough, talking about himself. Part of the list of reasons why they wouldn't work. Maybe he was right, in the end. The word fell too naturally from her father's mouth. Cerise felt a little dizzy. He couldn't have said it, because... because. That didn't make any sense--no more than anything had made since last week. Nevermind that she'd slipped and a "fair" had made it in there.

Baffling and hard, that's what all of this was. So Cerise had mentioned Mama's book, and her father's smile had changed. That had been the risk in bringing her up. Last time she had gotten no reaction at all; she pushed against that nothingness now. She didn't know what the shape was of what she'd found. Not sad, not angry, not pleased--at least not in any way she could recognize. Just that stranger's smile fixed to her father's face, because she had mentioned Mama.

The street widened out as they turned the corner. There was more than enough room to walk abreast now, even accounting for the umbrellas. Every polite and brief caprise gave her a little more time to try to seize on the storm of her thoughts.

"It had better not," she warned sternly, choosing the easier topic to address. If Mama's book didn't come back to her, she didn't think she could ever forgive him. Of all the many things that lay between him, that would be one of the worst. She was only giving it to him because--well. Of all people, surely he would take good care of it. She hadn't known quite what to make of the box she had found it in. Cerise had never even mentioned it, just taken the book and a few other trinkets from it and said nothing to anyone. She just had to believe--why would he have had it at all, if it didn't matter?

Why Serkaih? What was there? She had never heard of it; she had never heard of anywhere that wasn't Thul Ka really. Was it political, or personal? How could it be political, in a town she'd never heard of? How could it be personal, in a country she didn't even know he'd spent that much time in? That question, too, died unborn behind her teeth. She didn't know that the answer would be any more illuminating than the asking.

Was she looking forward to it? Cerise looked at him, her brow furrowed. Not upset, but curious. She pondered the question as they walked. A carriage went by them, splashing through a pool of water that had gathered so closely to where they walked that it splashed them both. It caught her arm and she flinched, then scowled after the offending vehicle.

"I don't know," she growled, then came back to herself. "I mean--yes. I think so. I don't know. How can you look forward to going somewhere you've never been?" Cerise shrugged, then paused.

"But I want to see--something different. We haven't traveled much." That he was included in the "we" was unspoken; she didn't think she needed to clarify. She meant all of them, together--herself, Diana, Eleanor, her father. A family vacation--as if. The picture conjured up that same prickling she had felt before, when he had mentioned Thul'Amat.

"Of course it's all old hat to you, but yes--I am looking forward to it, I think." Cerise shook herself, trying to hold on to some semblance of her dignity. To lay it over herself like a shield. He had not pulled that stranger's field away from her the whole time they had walked, and she hadn't either. She hadn't pushed any deeper, either, but couldn't resist doing so just a little bit now. Against that feeling of talking to someone she had never really known, even as she looked over to a face she had seen all her life.