Hands Grasping Tight [Memory]

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Anaxas' main trade port; it is also the nation's criminal headquarters, home to the Bad Brothers and Silas Hawke, King of the Underworld. The small town of Plugit is nearby.

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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Mon Jul 15, 2019 8:44 pm

Late Night, 27 Ophus, 2715
An Old Warehouse, The Waterfront
No no no no no no –

Niccolette stood, frozen, wide-eyed, her scream echoing in the air, and then she was running, one gloved small hand grasping her fashionable gray dress to lift it out of the way, boots clattering against the warehouse floor. Utterly heedless of it all, she dropped to her knees next to Uzoji, wide-eyed and shaking. She ignored Tom as fully as if he hadn’t spoken, as if he wasn’t even there, as if nothing else existed in all the world but Niccolette and Uzoji.

“Uzoji?” Niccolette whispered, fumbling her gloves off and cupping his cheek with her bare hand. “Darling,” her gaze dropped to his sweater, then lifted back up to his face, and Tom could see her struggling to hide her terror – and failing, tears tumbling rapidly down her cheeks.

Uzoji turned his head to kiss her palm, blood smearing against her pale skin, staining red the delicate gold of her wedding ring. He coughed, more bright red blood spluttering up over his lips, odd bubbles of air in it.

Niccolette pressed her lips together, looking down at his chest. She swallowed, hard, and brought her hands to the wounds, ripping the thick, warm sweater open to see them. One – small – a little slit in his side, oozing steady blood. Uzoji’s blood pumped out against her hands, warm and sticky. Niccolette fumbled, ripping the sweater open again higher up, where the blood was flowing faster, arms aching with the force of it. She grimaced at the sight of the wound there, tears flowing faster, his life flowing away before her eyes with every pump of his strong heart. Nicolette wiped her face on her arm, bloody hand held away from it, and took a deep breath.

“If you die on me, Uzoji Ibutatu,” Niccolette whispered. “I will never forgive you, you godsdamned, clockstopping bastard.” She took his hand in hers, smearing his blood all over the glove.

Uzoji laughed, a strained, painful sort of sound. “I certainly don’t – intend to,” there was an odd wet gurgle to his words.

Bad, Niccolette thought. It was bad. It was his lung; it had to be. Just one – perhaps – if she could stabilize him, stop him from bleeding so badly, the other could keep him alive. She needed to stabilize him, she needed desperately to stabilize him, to just – to just stop the bleeding, so her beloved wouldn’t die choking on his own blood, before her very eyes -

The redheaded galdor was still laughing, the sound echoing softly through the warehouse, over and over – almost like a song, if one listened long enough, the repetition slowly becoming familiar.

Niccolette closed her eyes, focusing for a moment, and shook her head, glancing back over her shoulder at the red-headed galdor with a grimace. The mona were there – her field still hummed faintly – but the other galdor’s backlash was too recent and too powerful. Whatever spell she had intended to cast had been – had been strong. If only Niccolette had found another way to stop her – if only she had realized before that Uzoji was injured, what that grunt of his had meant, if only she had killed the filthy wick right off, not just broken his leg and left him down.

“Beloved?” Uzoji’s voice was a little fainter now.

“Yes,” Niccolette said, quietly, examining the wound, her fingers hovering over it again. His lung – could she heal it without a quantitative cast? She could feel the cumulative effort of all the spells she’d cast that night, like an ache deep in her bones. Niccolette grimaced again. “Always, Uzoji,” Niccolette took a deep breath, her hand cupping his cheek again. “You will take my heart with you if you go,” Niccolette whispered. “I will not allow it.”

Uzoji’s face twitched at a smile, faintly, his eyes closing.

“I cannot cast in here,” Niccolette said after a moment, looking up at Tom, as if seeing him for the first time. She wiped her hair off her forehead, leaving a smear of blood behind against her pale skin. “You need to carry him outside – now, away from,” she glanced back over her shoulder at the red-haired golly.

If Tom hesitated, even a fraction of a second, Niccolette would glare at him, and jerk her chin towards the door. “Now, Tom Cooke!” She said, voice hot and tense. “She has brailed – the mona will not listen to me here. Now, if I am to have any chance of,” she took a deep breath. “Carry him outside. There will not be time to get another healer. Now!”

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Tom Cooke
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Mon Jul 15, 2019 9:53 pm

An Old Warehouse The Waterfront
during the night of the 27th of ophus, 2715
If Niccolette was trying to put on a brave face, she wasn’t doing too well at it. Given the circumstances, Tom couldn’t blame her. When she laid her hand on Uzoji’s cheek, it looked pale as paper; when he kissed it, he left it smeared with blood like crimson ink. Tom was silent, but something inside him lurched and flipped, and he kept staring at that wedding-band where it glittered on her finger. Even when she tore open his sweater, laying bare that tsuter, weeping wound, he stared at the gold band. Some tucked-away fragment of his mind registered that the thing must be worth more than everything in his and Ish’s house.

Worth more than everything but hama, that was. His eyes moved to Uzoji’s face. She called him a stopclocker, and bloody laughter bubbled up from his lips. You will take my heart with you if you go. Uzoji’s eyes fluttered shut, and Tom’s mouth set in a grimace. He wiped more blood away from his lips.

When she spoke again, Tom hesitated. ’Course, he didn’t know shit about any of this, and he didn’t even spare a glance at the moony, scattered galdor behind them; he didn’t know what the chip had to do with Niccolette casting or not casting, and he didn’t care. That wasn’t why he hesitated. Whatever sympathy he may’ve had for the golly lovebirds, another part of his mind’d taken off after Breda’s man. He was sitting there, thinking of all the places the kov could’ve got to, where he might’ve taken refuge; Tom knew these streets like he knew the back of his hand, and it still might not be too late to track him down. The job was more important than any of them.

Then he met Niccolette’s eye evenly, nodded once. “Aye,” was all he said.

Sliding one big hand underneath Uzoji’s back, he lifted the galdor up, frown deepening. He’d already lost consciousness, looked like; his head lolled back. He’d be no help, but, being honest, Tom didn’t need any. When he’d got him into a sitting position, he slid his other arm underneath his legs and, with a wince and a grunt of effort, hauled him off the floor. He rose to his feet, staggering a little, Uzoji in his arms. All the while, he was careful in his handling of the smaller galdor – delicate, almost, despite his size, despite his scars and his scowls and his cursing.

“Right, then,” he muttered, turning.

The redhead golly’s laughter was sputtering in and out, laced with something like a song. If they listened close, they might be able to make out words, lilting and slurred, breathless:

“Oh, hush, now, little starfly,
Go to sleep –
The day has faded fast,
The stars are out at last…”


Fucking ghoulish, Tom thought, laoso tsuter. With Uzoji in his arms, hoping he had Niccolette in tow, he started toward the door. With his nose all busted-up, he was breathing heavy through his mouth, and he could taste coppery blood in it; he could feel it pattering down his chin, onto his coat. He was just grateful that was all the bleeding he’d done tonight. He reckoned he could’ve just as easily been in Uzoji’s position, and he didn’t know whether the galdor was going to make it through the night. Poetry could do a lot of shit, but Uzoji was feeling fair limp in his arms, and he didn’t think it could bring back the dead.

Outside, the snow’d started to whirl down. The wind was carrying handfuls of flakes inside, and as he neared the doorway, he felt it scatter across his face, saw snowflakes settle and disappear in the dying man’s sweater, melted by his warm blood.

“And I will keep you near,” sang the galdor, voice trembling, “you’ll never have to fear…”

She burst into a cascade of giggles.

Tom brought Uzoji outside, sidling carefully down the rickety few steps to the street. With the same care he’d used when he picked him up and carried him, he knelt and lowered him to the ground, laying him on the frosty stones. The snow was settling, now, the street white with it in patches.

Waddling back a few steps on his haunches, Tom looked at Niccolette expectantly, foreboding in his dark eyes.
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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Mon Jul 15, 2019 10:35 pm

Late Night, 27 Ophus, 2715
An Old Warehouse, The Waterfront
Niccolette didn’t know what thoughts were in Tom’s mind. She didn’t know why he was hesitating – but he was, clearly hesitating, and all Niccolette could think was that if he didn’t pick Uzoji up right this moment and carry him outside, outside where maybe – maybe – she stood a chance of healing him – maybe – that Niccolette would break every bone in his body, all the tendons beside, and she would enjoy it. She would conquer him – she would ruin him – and none of it would bring her beloved back.

Tears spilled over out of Niccolette’s eyes, down her cheeks, and she shuddered, looking down at Uzoji, then back at Tom, face drawn and white, with no idea whether it was her desperation, her fury, neither, or both that showed on her face. She couldn’t tell either; the emotions were like a firestorm in her heart, burning her from the inside up, and it was all she could do to hold on.

Niccolette followed Tom from the room, stepping past Breda without even looking down at the human – but she marked him. Oh, godsbedamned, did she ever mark him. Him too, Niccolette promised herself. Breda, the golly girl sputtering her crazy laughter on the warehouse floor, and the man that had fled in fear. All of them; even if Uzoji survived, they would pay with their lives for this. That thought didn’t seem to help either.

Tom lay Uzoji down in the snow and looked at her.

Niccolette looked back at him, really looked. Her lips were trembling, and tears were spilling down her cheeks, faster and faster, catching in dark lashes. “If you interrupt me,” she said, quietly, in that thick bastian accent of hers, “we will likely all die.” She thought he probably knew, but she could not bear to take the chance.

Niccolette knelt in the snow next to her husband. She rested her hand on his chest, quietly, feeling the slow, steady beat of Uzoji’s heartbeat draining away, each pump spilling a little more of his blood into the thick fabric of his sweater, rolling down his sides to pool in his coat. Only half of his chest rose and fell now, less and less with each increasingly shaky, shallow breath. Soon, Niccolette thought, feeling like she couldn’t think of anything else – soon it would drip down the coat, maybe soak through the thick wool. She thought she could picture it spreading out around him like a halo, like a spell circle.

Niccolette shuddered, bowed her head, and took a deep breath. She could not come to the mona with thoughts like these; she could not come to the mona with her desperate pleading love. It was nothing to them; this man, Uzoji Ibutatu, who was everything in the world to her – he was nothing to the mona. They owed him nothing; they had no heartstrings that she could pluck and pull. They demanded her respect, and in return – if she had the will – they could give her what she asked for.

Niccolette started with what should have been the easier of the spells, a gentle quantitative request to tell her the extent of the injury. The mona heard her, and they answered – his lung was punctured. That was it. There was no warm gentle flood of information, no deeper insight, nothing that would help in any way, nothing that she couldn’t tell just from looking at him, no guidance – just - nothing. Niccolette shuddered, doubling forward, hands gripping her gray skirt tightly, smearing it with Uzoji’s blood. If the healing went that poorly –

Niccolette reached down and took Uzoji’s hand in hers. She pulled his glove off; his hand was cold already, too cold, and Niccolette chafed it gently between her palms, tears spilling down her cheeks. If she delayed any longer, Niccolette thought, numbly, it wouldn’t be a healing spell that she needed to cast. She pressed Uzoji’s hand to her chest, to her heart, her hands and his smearing the gray dress with wet blood.

Niccolette took a deep breath, and began to cast, chanting a spell memorized long ago, during her school days, for what to do with bleeding out and with a collapsed lung, tempering it for this situation, this knife, this handsome, strong body lying on the ground beneath her, this cold.

The temperature around them was warming, rapidly. The snow on the ground beneath Uzoji melted, then steamed away into the cold night air, turning wet again as it left the radius of the spell; Tom would be able to watch the steam float away, then hiss and collapse into water and freeze again by the time it hit the ground, creating an odd ring around the three of them.

Niccolette’s throat was tight, so tight it was hard to force the words out; her head ached, her ears rang. She forced the spell onwards, the monite flowing from her mouth with perfect enunciation; she dared not do less. A giggle rose up in her chest, threatening to burst free from her lips, and she couldn’t even break the spell to swallow it, forcing it down between the words. Her hands were going numb – not the cold, it wasn’t cold, Niccolette was sweating beneath her heavy dress and her cloak, but she was losing feeling in them, and she lost her grip on Uzoji’s hand.

It slid down her body and Niccolette caught it, never pausing in her slow and steady chanting of the words, her prayer to the mona, somewhere between a request and a plea, hoping against hope for Uzoji to heal. She didn’t have any strength in her arms, any energy to bring her hands back up, and so she kept his hand against her side, her hands and arms holding it firmly in place.

The air grew hotter.

Uzoji’s hand began to heat as well, pressed against Niccolette’s side – as if the mona were warning her to let the spell go – to let him go. Niccolette refused, continuing her slow and steady recitation, every word neat and perfect. Her dress glowed red hot beneath his hand, and the sickening smell of burning flesh rose up into the air, and still Niccolette never stopped.

She finished the spell, finally – Niccolette couldn’t have said how long it took. It might have been minutes, it might have been an hour, but she finished it. Uzoji’s hand fell to the ground, blistered and burnt; her side was raw through the dress where it had rested, a perfect handprint left on her skin. Niccolette shuddered, doubled over him, watching him. The bleeding in his chest slowed – slowed – slowed – stopped. But his breath continued; his chest rose and fell, and – both sides too, not quite evenly, but working all the same.

“Uzoji,” Niccolette whispered. She tried to reach for him, fluttered, and collapsed on the wet ground next to him.

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Healing rolls
Niccolette, quantitative spell: @moralhazard :game_die: Result: 1d6 (1) Total: 1
Niccolette, stopping blood loss and lung repair spell: @moralhazard :game_die: Result: 1d6 (2) Total: 2
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Tom Cooke
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Tue Jul 16, 2019 3:19 pm

An Old Warehouse The Waterfront
during the night of the 27th of ophus, 2715
He didn’t look away. Studying her face for a long moment, he could see that the tears were coming freely now, spilling out over her thick, black lashes, trailing down her cheeks. Despite his broken nose – it was bruising up good now, still trickling blood, and swollen almost unrecognizably – he managed to keep a straight, stony face when she spoke again. Managed to look like he understood the gravity of the situation.

After everything that’d happened that night, he fought down the urge to splutter with laughter. Now that things’d died down, now that they were out in the snowy silence, he kept hearing that wick’s leg-bone crunching and twisting in his head. Tom didn’t understand shit, clearly; he was just along for the ride, and if this Bastian sorceress was telling him to stay back and keep his mouth shut, then he’d godsdamn well do it. Quiet as a churchmouse on drugstore cotton.

The only thing easier than that would be running away, and he knew better than that. Didn’t want to, anyway. This vroo’s poetry might’ve scared him, but he was Hawke’s man, and he was no Breda. He’d stay put, and if something went wrong, he’d deal with the aftermath, gods willing.

Thinking he could sit through it was one thing; sitting through it was another. He couldn’t keep his grimace from deepening as the air around them stirred with that familiar, lightheaded feeling. Niccolette took Uzoji’s hand in hers and put it against her chest, unconcerned about the blood that’d stain that macha, expensive grey dress of hers.

He felt the heat before he saw the steam, felt it and winced, ’cause the cold had numbed his face, and now the pain was seeping right back into it. Sweat was beading on his forehead, but he didn’t dare wipe it away, didn’t dare move; and anyway, there was sweat underneath his heavy coat, sweat clamming up his hands under his thick gloves. It was surreal, that heat, with the snow whirling down around them. Surreal how the snow melted on the stones and rose up and then pattered back down. Surreal and wrong.

That was it. Tom felt like he was witnessing something horribly wrong, like this chip was breaking laws that’d been written down at the start of Vita. Even though he was tired to his bones, all his muscles’d tensed up, like his whole body wanted to run away without his brain’s permission.

But he didn’t dare move. Not when he heard a suppressed giggle in-between those Monite words that dripped off her tongue, well-enunciated despite the panic of the situation. Not when Uzoji’s hand slid down her dress, not when that smell rose on the air –

His breath grew tight in his chest. He’d smelled that plenty of times before, and he knew what it was: burnt flesh. Nauseating, it was, always a bit too much like cooking meat for comfort. There was steam rising from her dress where his hand’d burned right through. Tears welled up in Tom’s eyes, from the heat and the pain and the panic, but he couldn’t wipe them away, not now. For the first time that night, there was genuine, unmasked fear in his expression. His face was ashen, starkly white against his dark beard.

Eventually – how long’d it been? Tom’d lost track – the words petered out on Niccolette’s tongue. Uzoji’s hand fell, and Tom finally winced: it’d left a mark on her side, still-steaming, as surely as if she’d been seared with a brand. You don’t often see those on gollies, he thought absently, in a part of his brain that was still thinking in words. Niccolette bent over him, shuddering, then went limp.

For what felt like a long time, Tom kept crouching there. He couldn’t bring himself to move, even as the air around them grew chill again, even as the snow began to settle around the two gollies without melting. Neither of them were moving, now, but he could see it, plain as day, like a fucking miracle, horrifying and holy all at once. For maybe the first time, he could understand why the gollies thought they were favored by the gods. The wound on Uzoji’s chest had stopped bleeding, and he was breathing steadily.

Couldn’t sit there forever, though. The snow’d started coming down hard enough. That kov of Breda’s that’d got away was gods knew where by now, and Tom didn’t reckon there was much chance of tracking him. Even if there was, somebody needed to get the gollies inside before they froze to death; he didn’t think Hawke’d much like it if he let the Ibutatu duo die on his watch, after all that trouble. Besides, somebody needed to sit with Breda, too, make sure he stayed put. Make sure he couldn’t go nowhere when he woke up. Tom had a few ideas on how to do that.

With a deep breath, he kicked himself into motion.

He winced as he rose to his feet, dusting snow off his coat, wiping more blood away from his face. He stared at the two gollies, breathing but unconscious, all tangled up in each other, for a few moments more – still with that look of horror on his face. Then he swallowed, thickly and painfully, and knelt by Niccolette’s side.

After a moment’s hesitation, he slid his arms underneath her, lifting her up off the ground awkwardly and getting back to his feet. He could still feel that field of hers, a little dimmer but still bright, still full of the same life that’d both warped the wick’s bones and mended whatever’d torn inside Uzoji. Despite all that, she was even lighter than him; carrying her back inside would be surprisingly easy.

“Hell,” he muttered as he was shuffling up the stairs again. “Floodin’ hell.”

Might take awhile, but once he’d got the Ibutatus back inside, he’d get a fire going. Warm the place up, then sit out till somebody woke up. He could still hear the golly muttering, laughing to herself; he braced himself against the broken strangeness of the air inside the warehouse, still faintly palpable. He’d deal with her later, if he had to at all: he didn’t reckon she was much of a threat anymore, but a gag wouldn’t hurt nothing. He’d deal with that when he dealt with Breda.

Setting Niccolette down by the broken crates, he grumbled, “Mujo ma, Tom Cooke, for cleanin’ all this shit up,” and then stood up. He paused, cracking his back and swearing, then headed back outside to collect Uzoji.

It’d be a long fucking night.
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Tue Jul 16, 2019 10:40 pm

The last phrases of Nicollette's Monite would be spoken with effort, the air thick as though the mona itself was gathering to object to her casting with its very presence. It stuck to her tongue, it filled her nostrils, the heavy sensation crawling down her throat and squeezing her lungs. It became hard to breathe, and she would find herself gasping for breath as though she was the one whose lung had been punctured, as though fluids were filling her chest cavity.

But nothing was.

She was empty, spent, and exhausted. It would be with some wet gurgle that she'd loose consciousness, Uzoji's wounds not healed but stabilized, flesh not put back together again but held fast for the moment. For several moments. For enough moments that he needed to find proper care, but it could not be with Niccolette, conscious or unconscious, at all in the vicinity. As she would lose consciousness there by his side, felling suffocated while still breathing, the mona would leave her presence. A void was made where her Mugrobi husband had been healed and that very mangible lack of monic interaction would follow the pair of galdor all the way home, lingering around Nicco for the entire day. Her consciousness was tenuous for that day and a few more, wheezing and sputtering for breath, before her body seemed to slowly right itself again.

Just as Uzoji's recovery would take time, so, too, would his wife's. Relationship with the mona broken and physical consequences of her deeply involved healing causing her to struggle with shortness of breath, blackouts, and dizziness for days, weeks, afterward, Niccolette would have to eventually make purposeful efforts to repair her once-close relationship with the invisible particles with long memories.

Nothing impossible, perhaps, but certainly just as arduous.
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