[Memory] Burned Clean Through

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Lenore Croqelle
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Thu Dec 27, 2018 3:42 pm

The 32nd of Bethas, 2713
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Lenore pressed the taut thread against the blade with pad of her thumb. It was the last of the tenday’s minor mending; a kitchen towel burned clean through. Without a second thought the rag folded between her cracked hands and joined the stack to be returned. She was rarely trusted to repair anything more complex than a shirt or bed sheet. Discordant thoughts clashed at her temples; did she actually want to be more trusted or ...? There had been years enough that she could tap out the correct dance by now, but she could never decide if that was who she would allow herself to be.

She pushed the bone needle through the fabric of her bodice, in case any small rips or tears turned up on her first pick ups of the morning. A tiny spindle of thread nestled into her apron pocket.

There was some small time for a delivery during the breakfast hour, before the maids had pulled the new washing from the dormitories. Taking the rags, she added them atop a larger stack of neatly folded kitchen aprons. With steady arms layered high with fabric, she left the laundries.

The first blush of dawn spread across the floor as she reached the primary corridors. She kept to the side to avoid the uncomfortable fields of those few galdori that already strode about importantly. Their numbers would soon increase and Lenore would much prefer to be in the kitchens before then.

The hallways warmed as she got nearer to the kitchens, and the pleasant scents of fresh bread and currants met passersby. Slipping into the buzzing kitchen as unobtrusively as she could, the laundress headed straight for their clean linens to add her stack. Before she could make an exit however she was pulled into helping with breakfast preparation.

On her own, she had never in her life prepared an entire meal. To add, she was rarely assigned to the kitchens though it did happen. There wasn’t a single complete recipe she could name from memory but she was proficient enough at assisting the more skilled in their craft. This particular morning, she’d only been pulled to fill in jars of cream, sugar, preserves, and the like. There was time enough still; it was the slow hours for the laundry, not until the tenth hour did their busy hours begin. Either way, brief task or not, an order was an order and she would see it through.

As she levied a mashed berry glob into a small serving jar, her eyes landed on a rag. A rag of striking similarity; a towel with a hole burned directly through it. Even with well disciplined and diligent servants, the dry heat and raucous nature of the kitchen made her head spin. The laundry could be fast paced as well but it lacked the urgency and deadline of the kitchens on most occasions. Still as she filled more jars with breakfast garnishes, her eyes tried to track down the culprit who was adding to her mending.

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Fionn
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Sun Dec 30, 2018 6:46 pm

Bethas 32, 2713 | Brunnhold Kitchens
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Something reckless had begun to take root in Fionn over the last few weeks. It had begun before his birthday, after Ayden had left and moved onto greener pastures as some galdor's personal assistant. For the first time in a few years, the new teenager found himself alone. There were no allies to be found, no one to watch his back. None of the other passives wanted anything to do with him. It had been true when he'd had Ayden, the older passive his island in an ocean of misery, which was why he'd always come crawling back to the boy in spite of what he did and in spite of what he was. He'd needed Ayden so that he wouldn't be alone and now he'd lost him.

The blond had probably been something of a brat to begin with - he'd stolen from his parents even before coming to Brunnhold after all - but now he was becoming that little more bold. Stealing at home had been easy because nobody could be bothered to take notice of him. He was meant to be low in status here but that didn't mean that he was unseen. In fact, there was a great deal of attention paid to him but that made it more fun when he succeeded. Besides, there were blind spots and oversights to utilise.

Oh he'd already gotten caught a few times being up to no good and been punished but it was endurable. Sure, being smacked about the head hurt as did being kicked and punched but that pain was temporary, something that would pass. He just had to put up with it for a little while but the truth was that these days, he didn't have anything to lose. What was more, he'd found that it was difficult to care about others when they didn't care about you so Fionn was perfectly all right making others suffer along with him or suffer in his place.

Take the tea towels. Someone obviously had to look after them, mend them, as he'd discovered when he'd found that damaged towels came back. However, that didn't stop him in his acts of wanton destruction. The first time, it had been an accident, the cloth left too close to flame. It had only been burned that time, scorched black but he'd caught it, the fibres fused because it had caught on fire. He'd put it out, the cloth obviously beyond salvaging and he'd discovered a gleeful joy in having done it, even by mistake.

It wasn't something that belonged to him and destroying it gave him a similar thrill to when he stole. It was a small act of rebellion but a gratifying one. After that, Fionn had experimented to see how well he could burn through tea towels without setting them on fire; that sort of thing was pretty noticeable. His destruction was carefully planned, the tea towels the best target because they were fun to burn but weren't as valuable as the napkins. If he even stained a napkin, it was noticed and it got him in a lot of trouble as if the bloody things couldn't be washed but when it was going to be seen by gollies...

It took great care to burn through a tea towel and the boy did have actual duties to take care of so it was a matter of setting up a slow burn and trying to keep an eye on it while he ran around working like a good boy. He'd been set to chop things and to throw an eye over some pots of porridge. So he set up his little burning project and waited, going back to check on it, splashing water around the edges of the burn area so that the rest of the cloth wouldn't catch fire.

The young man found himself gazing around casually, supposedly nonchalant and largely unconcerned as he made sure that nobody was watching him before setting it back above the flame. He didn't think that anyone was paying attention to him.
Last edited by Fionn on Tue Jan 22, 2019 3:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Lenore Croqelle
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Dec 24, 2018 12:19 pm
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Sat Jan 05, 2019 8:21 am

Time Stamp
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Surveying the room proved difficult. There were too many servants attending too many chores to keep track of. Lenore halted her steadily sharpening features and trained them back into careful acquiescence.

It was while she dribbled honey into the last delicate sauce jar that she spotted a towel in danger. She released the spoon into the viscous gold with a plunk.

Lenore paid some thought to the idea that it may be an accident. However, when she followed the towel up to its possessor and saw his young face the prospect vanished. She had been among the Brunnhold passives long enough to know it was hardest on the young. Even as she had been first thrust into de facto servitude she had been unable to constrain her anger. Small rebellions were all the passives could have. It took time to change one’s image from a glorious sorcerer brimming with potential to a dangerous defective servant. It was a though transformation, more so when accompanied with adolescence. Though empathetic to her assumption of his situation, Lenore could think of no kinder mercy than disabusing the notion all together.

She had gone through a period of rebellion with lasting consequences. Early in her time as a servant, Lenore had taken to altering the vestments of the most pompous or cruel galdori. She had taken pieces in a stitch or two too far, or hemmed their cuffs a finger too short. It had lasted several seasons, she had been as discrete as she could manage. In the end, her misguided mendings were discovered and since then she had not been trusted with anything other than minor repairs.

It had been another passive that led to the downfall of Lenore’s defiance. Contrarily though she would not turn this perpetrator in as she had been. That had been the cruelty of the whole affair, her punishment had been the result of another passive vying for better station. Lenore would not resort to such treachery and perhaps it would make her warnings to the boy ultimately ineffective.

With halting progress the laundress made her way through the bustling gallery. She gave a deft pat against her apron to remove any lingering condiments. Her back straighten, twice confirming proper carriage and her hair would not dare be a strand out of place. If she intended to scold at all it would be with our own person beyond reproach. Children could be tricky in that manner, also finding a way wiggle out through formality.

Before coming to stand beside the cherub-faced boy, she had retrieved the rag she had mended just this morning to place upon the counter beside him. Lenore reached out to grab the towel or the offending wrist. Through hardly parted lips she chided, “Careful child, you wouldn’t want to burn yourself.”
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Fionn
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Tue Jan 22, 2019 1:22 pm

Bethas 32, 2713 | Brunnhold Kitchens
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No one was meant to be paying attention to him. Fionn was nothing, nobody important, a mere shadow. He had been in the habit of doing particular jobs for Ayden, those that required discretion because he had been able to slip into areas largely unnoticed, too small and innocent in appearance to be worth more than a glance and even then it was like he was being forgotten while he was being looked at. At times that had bothered him, the young teenager taking it quite personally as his loneliness and isolation felt like it was being added to with each unseeing look. He had become resigned in that little bubble of anonymity, only leaving it when he was in his roommate's presence, paying for his attention and protection in ways that the child hadn't always been comfortable with but Ayden had cared for him, was the only one who had and he was older so obviously he knew better.

Gone now and so Fionn had thought he was alone, safe in his solitary existence and so when a young woman appeared seemingly from nowhere to intervene in his mischief, the boy resented it deeply.

He had a moment's warning, the newly mended towel dropped on one side of him that made his head swivel towards it and then she was at the other side, fingers closing around his wrist with soft words of warning. Brown eyes darted sideways, face crumpling in quite an ugly scowl as he caught sight of Lenore.

Some stupid older passive bitch who thought she was going to be his mother or something, stupid clocking bitch should just leave him alone and mind her own clocking business.

The blond teenager gave his wrist a tug, intending to wrench himself unceremoniously from her grasp and if that didn't work... well, he had a knife in that hand from the fruit he was chopping, didn't he? It was an easy matter to transfer it to his other hand and prod its point into the flesh at the back of her hand. But only if she didn't let him go; his measures didn't have to be desperate ones.

"I'm not gonna clocking burn myself unless you go distracting me, you bitch. Why don't you shut your head and get on with your own business? You aren't my clocking mother!" he snarled. Rather brazenly, he moved the pot that had been keeping his burning project in place, tugged the cloth free and whipped it against the side of the counter. The flame that threatened to spread was lashed back into the portions of wet cloth, the burning material smacked and smothered against the counter. With the material extinguished, he held it up, squinting at the blackened mess in the middle and finding himself peering at the laundress through a small hole.

"Oh would you look at that? Oops!" the boy remarked, voice dripping with insincerity. Fionn had a feeling that she wouldn't appreciate an act of wanton destruction, bearing the look of one of those 'goodies'. Bunch of stupid bloody suck-ups who wouldn't put a toe out of line. As if there was anything to be gained from life by staying on the straight and narrow. Perhaps his parse roommate had filled his mind with particular ideas, namely criminal ones. Ayden had admitted certain things about his past, his childhood, his tutelage under his father in the Bad Brothers before the parse had been carted off to Brunnhold. He was more inclined to listen to Ayden and his notions of flexible morality rather than the ones that had been drummed into him when he was younger about goodness, the same ideals that they tried to drum into the school's servants.

Honestly, Fionn didn't see the point of it all. Hence the last thing he wanted to deal with was some goodie telling him how he should behave, especially a female one. What did a woman know after all? His former roommate had always been quick to ask that one. They were known for their silly talk, weren't they? So of course, what else could this be? He just wanted Lenore to go away.

"I'm not gonna burn myself, you daft lugger, so why don't you go stick your nose somewhere else it isn't wanted," he threw out acidly, moving back to the task of cutting up his fruit, knife cutting through soft flesh with a menacing thwack!.
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