[M] Don't Throw Stones in Glass Houses

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A large forest in Central Anaxas, the once-thriving mostly human town of Dorhaven is recovering from a bombing in 2719 at its edge.

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Drezda Ecks
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Tue Oct 08, 2019 12:02 pm

Loshis 30, 2719 | Morning
Drez's Home
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There was a flicker of surprise and wonder on her features when he responded in kind, pointing out that his own intentions hadn't been good either. Remembering the trembling, twitchy man she'd encountered in the Dives, she couldn't imagine what ill intent he could have had. Hell, she couldn't imagine what he could have done to her. Although now that she thought about it, there had been some little threats at Toibin's party, secrets about that night that could be spilled. She'd assumed that he had been trying to cover his hide as any decent politician did, the way that she had at one time or another before her sense of self-preservation had bled away.

Perhaps it was arrogance but she couldn't imagine what sort of threat this man could pose. He couldn't use magic still if the porven nature of his field was anything to go by and while he looked more coordinated than when she'd met him all those months ago in the Dives, she couldn't envision him in a physical altercation. Supporting her had damn near been the death of him - oops! - and she was half surprised that he hadn't lain down or passed out on the bed when he got up here from the exhaustion of it all. Anatole - well, the body - was getting on in years and she imagined that that wouldn't help matters. Although that made her wonder what age Tom was, or rather what his age had been before. This was his actual age now, as Ezre had pointed out, but if he had been younger before then this might be a bit unfortunate for him.

They shared a smile, Drezda's fleeting as she let her lips slacken into a more neutral position before puckering them slightly and letting them part. She was still listening to him of course but she was also keeping herself centred, one side of the flat brush lightly rubbed against the lip stain so that it was coated, the bristles scraped lightly against the container's edge so that it was slicked with the dark red excess. She started in the centre of her top lip, a slow careful stroke that followed the curve of the cupid's bow, turning the brush slightly as her lip thinned so that she wouldn't be using the whole surface and spreading it further than intended. She took a moment to fill in any gaps, trying to keep her strokes smooth and even and taking her time with the corner, trying not to frown in irritation as she struggled.

A year. He'd been dead a year but he couldn't remember the how of it. Obviously it wasn't very fresh then in spite of how recent it was. His humour was gone now and she allowed herself a furtive glance in his direction as the silence between them stretched before moving to paint the other side of her lip.

When he did continue, she did some minor calculations, considering the gap in time, how long he had been dead and yet displaced rather than part of the Cycle. Remembered when "Anatole" had taken ill. She paused in her application to use the edge of her thumb to cautiously wipe away some of the stain that had bled over the top of her lip towards the corner.

It was a good thing that she'd paused because her lip twisted on the topic of taste. It was an odd thing to view in reflection, the whitened face, the bold red of one lip and the muted coral of the other bottom lip.

"I can't think of a better person; no one would miss him, not even his wife, I'd wager," the Hoxian commented, contempt dripping from her tongue like venom and for a moment she looked at Tom but saw Anatole, her gaze carrying hatred for a man that was dead and gone. The moment she realised what she was doing, her eyelashes fluttered in alarm and she turned her attention back to her reflection. Spots of colour were beginning to show up on her cheeks, light but still visible under the powder.

She went back to painting her lips, daubing a bit more of the stain onto the brush so that she could properly coat the slightly fuller bottom lip. One long stroke to cover the lower half, mouth opening a little wider as another stroke coated its top. Once that was done, the diplomat pressed her poppy red lips together and rolled them against each other, spreading what coated them, hopefully evening them out. She stretched them in a smile, showing her teeth and discovered that yes, she had gotten some on the white. Again. She was always doing that. Her mouth closed again, tongue running over her teeth behind her lips, giving her an irritated pout as she concentrated. When she bared them again, there was just pearly white framed by bloodied lips. The smile widened, became more genuine and she set about cleaning her brushes before turning to the raen, an elbow resting on the chair back, legs swung around and crossed at the ankles.

"The poetry? How I knew? What do you mean?" she asked, tilting her head quizzically. How she had known what? What could she possibly have known about him that would involve her mother's-

"Oh! No. No, I... I didn't know then. I... I might have suspected that you hadn't backlashed b-but I didn't know," the Hoxian explained, surprise and recognition crossing her face before guilt crept into her features. She barely managed to stop herself from biting her lip and smearing lipstick on her teeth again. The onyx gaze dropped to his lap, darted to the bedspread, her own lap, her vanity before finding their way back to his face.

"I'd... I'd been considering asking my mother about... supernatural things. I'd remembered some stories but I thought if anyone would know..." she trailed off with a shrug, eyes dropping again so that she was speaking to his chest rather than his face. "I happened to meet another Hexxos, knew him by the ink and I... I didn't mention you by name but I didn't need to. He... probably wouldn't have told me if he didn't know my connection to the Order or that I already suspected... something. Not this though. I didn't... I couldn't have imagined this."

A whispered admittance, something like shame in her voice. She remembered her conversation with Ezre and how he had seemed to worry about Tom. Genuinely worry. What was more, she thought she remembered him slipping and saying something that sounded like the beginning of his name, his true name.

"He didn't want you hurt, he made that clear. He wanted you protected as well, our... mutual friend," Drezda added, a ghost of a smile on her red lips, humourless. He'd know it was Ezre. It was unlikely he'd been talking about his raenness to any other teenage boys from the Hexxos.

"I would have found out sooner or later though. I would have asked my mother and obviously she does have special insight in these things. I should... possibly examine Web of Souls myself. I imagine that I'll see it in a new light now," she added hastily, taking the blame from Ezre. And it wasn't a lie. The pull had been so strong that if she hadn't encountered the teenager, she would surely have contacted Ksjta.

"Tom... I was wondering.... I actually thought of something to ask you and maybe it's... too painful for you, I don't know but... what were you like before you... died? Were you from Vienda or somewhere else? Are you Anaxi? I don't know how far raen can wander when they haven't got a body. Were you younger than Anatole? Older? Were you- Based on what you said before and- I don't want to assume or offend but... were you interested in... men?"

The last garnered a blush, blazing across her skin, the woman not willing to meet his eye. "I'm sure you've guessed with me or... or heard. So many rumours got around over the winter that you probably- I'm sure you. There isn't anything wrong with it, not legally. You can marry who you like but socially- I know some people think it's wrong t-t-to favour those of y-y-your own sex."

Her hands had found their way into her lap, fingers balled so tightly that her knuckle bones were very prominent. She'd never discussed this properly. Had never expected- When she'd spoken to Khymarah, she'd acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world, as if she hadn't had her doubts. As if she hadn't panicked when she was in school when the attraction popped up, convinced that the decadency of Brunnhold had tainted her.

This time, she didn't stop herself from biting her lip. In fact, it was taking everything in her power not to start crying again.
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Tom Cooke
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Wed Oct 09, 2019 7:45 pm

Drezda’s House Uptown Vienda
Morning on the 30th of Loshis, 2719
Tom sat, quiet-like, watching her paint her lips in the mirror. It was funny, he thought, how unfamiliar she’d looked when the servants’d brought her in from her bath, and how now, it was like – he thought for a moment, watching the bristles move to her lower lip, painting on more glistening red. Like the face he knew was taking shape, he thought, out of somebody else’s. He saw her pause, and her lip twitched and twisted. She looked at him – Anatole, must’ve been – and he saw loathing in her dark eyes; then she looked away, and her cheeks colored, muffled pink underneath the powder.

He smiled a little, looking down at his hands again. Couldn’t blame her, could he? Now, he halfway-wanted to say, imagine looking in the mirror and seeing that. The other half of him wanted to say, you’d be surprised how many people miss him, but he reckoned she thought about as much of those people as he did. She had a point, anyway.

It was a few moments before he looked up, his eyes narrowing. Another Hexxos; knew him by the ink, had she? Tom sucked at a tooth. Ezre clocking Vks, he thought, looking away, irritation twitching across his face – written clear in the lines of his brow, the sharp quirk of one eyebrow. One of his fists knotted in his lap.

It was true, he reckoned, she’d’ve found out anyway, her ma being Hexxos and all. That wasn’t the flooding point. Tom was surprised how much anger he felt, then, the kind of anger that was mixed with fear, tightening in his stomach. Wound like wire ready to snap. He didn’t give a flooding fuck if she’d conferred with Ksjta, learned about raen from her fami, figured it out on her own – would’ve been her right to do it – but Ezre’d outed him. That was his secret. His to tell.

He didn’t have much time to focus on his anger. When Drezda spoke again, he looked up, the sour twist of his face giving way to surprise. “Me? I, ah…”

He hadn’t thought, ’course, about what he’d tell her, if she asked. Now the questions were spilling out of her, he couldn’t help it. What had he been like? A prickling started up at the back of his neck, threatening him with a chill.

In the back of his head, he heard her voice, slurred with drink, up from a dark, snowy night in Ophus: a joke she’d told about humans and wicks. He glanced down.

There was a human, he thought bitterly, sitting in Drezda’s boudoir, on her bed. She’d asked honesty of him, so let her have honesty, hey? Next thing he knew, she was asking him if he liked men; he had to double his efforts to keep the anger out of it. So let her have the honesty she wanted, caution be damned –

I know some people think it's wrong t-t-to favour those of y-y-your own sex.

He looked up at her, blinking. She’d turned round on her stool, watching him intently. His glance flicked down to her hands in her lap, white-knuckled, then back up to her face. She was biting her lip. Tom felt a pang of sympathy, despite himself – in the shape of a dozen bruises, in the shape of thrown bottles and spat slurs. He couldn’t seem to hold onto his anger, just then, with her looking at him like that. “You’re right,” he replied after a moment. “Being honest, I think men were among my interests.”

He raised an eyebrow, then laughed softly.

“Let me – let me start with…” With the delicate wave of a hand, he shifted in his seat. Not now, he told himself, not here. So what could he say? “I’m not older than Anatole, no. I’ll be thirty in Hamis.” Hastily, embarrassed, he continued, “I’m about as Anaxi as they come, to answer your first question. I was born and raised in the Rose. I, uh – I didn’t look anything like I look now. I had dark hair, dark as yours, and I wore it long, my whole life. I was a fighting man,” he added, careful-like, “and I had the scars to show for it. And I loved a man. I loved a lot of men” – a flicker of a wry smile – “but I loved one man in particular, yes.”

He looked at her for a long moment, face gone somber and thoughtful. He had a dozen questions, himself: wasn’t it easy for galdori? You wouldn’t get beaten, leastways, and they talked about it fair openly. It was natt, on the whole, who didn’t much care for men who liked men and women who liked women. He didn’t think it was worse in Hox than it was in Anaxas, either. And yet here Drezda was, looking like she was about to cry, just ’cause she’d told him she preferred the fairer sex.

“I don’t tell just anyone that about me,” he went on, brow knitting. “So you know, uh, I’d never tell anyone about you, rumors or not. I don’t care if it’s legal. People can be – damnably cruel.” He looked down at her hands in her lap again, then down at his own in his, then back up. “It’s hard, huh?”
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Drezda Ecks
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Thu Oct 10, 2019 8:32 am

Loshis 30, 2719 | Morning
Drez's Home
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Judging by the sourness of his expression, her attempts to diminish Ezre's part in this, to soften the impact of it, hadn't worked out very well. It hadn't really been the boy's place, she could understand that. It was painful to have control ripped away from you like that, to lose the ability to do or reveal something on your own terms. But he wasn't solely to blame, she'd had some idea how to probe the teenager for answers although some of it had worked better than intended.

The Hoxian wanted to point out that for all his serious composure and maturity, he was still a boy. He was far from home, far from those things that were familiar to him and yet strange even within their native kingdom. He'd been presented with someone who had a connection to all of those far away things, someone who could potentially understand and she had also dropped her relation to his poetic idol into his lap.

Drezda didn't think that he was in the mindset to listen to well-reasoned arguments though; he was in an emotional rather than a cerebral state right now. Her questions got through because of that, she suspected, linked to things that would obviously produce feelings; she didn't think that the loss of your life and a new existence in an unhappy one could hardly be looked upon in a practical sense.

There was a pause between them, the galdor all too aware of the bitter taste in her mouth and the scratchiness in her throat. Couldn't escape that pulsing in her skull, especially now that she was on the verge of crying; the strain of holding back tears seemed seemed to increase the pressure inside her head. How long had they been sitting here? How long had Cora been gone and what had she been doing all this time? Surely, it didn't take that long to fix some tea and something to eat. The Hoxian had had time to put on her face, for Hurte's sake!

With no Cora to consider, she kept her focus on Tom, waiting for him to provide the distraction that she so desperately needed.

His comment about being interested in men did bring a strange relief. It was a commonality between them she supposed, this same-sex attraction, but it was more the fact that she'd been correct; she would have hated to have made a fool of herself and him by being wrong.

"Can't say I've ever gotten the appeal," she breathed, laughter whispering from between ruby lips, fragile and ready to crack apart like glass. The humour of it wasn't really felt, but it tinkled out all the same, anxiously rattling her own nerves in a way that didn't agree with her hangover. The strangeness of it all, the actual answers to questions she now wanted to ask was actually quite unsettling. She was curious, she had the chance to find out and yet... she wasn't certain that she actually wanted the answers. There was always the chance that he'd reveal something that Drezda might not like. So she tried to dredge up humour, attempted to see this in a lighter way than she felt inclined to because then maybe if he did say something unsavoury...

"You're still older than me, not by much but... I'm sorry to say that you're not in good shape for your age, grandfather," she teased, corners of her mouth barely lifting although the wan mirth didn't touch anywhere near her eyes. It didn't help when he continued, the suspicions and worries that had been coiled in her belly since her conversation with Ezre unfurling again, writhing.

The Rose...

There were galdori in Old Rose, it wasn't really their domain but they existed there. You had to be a hard sort of galdor to reside there so you'd need to fight, you would but... It wasn't out of the question that he had been galdor, that he had gone to school with her, ahead of her, although she couldn't recall any men with long hair but she'd never paid attention to men, she'd never-

The diplomat tried to remember to breathe, tried to reason that he coudn't be lower in the racial order because then he wouldn't have taken Anatole. He wouldn't have dared. But he was so friendly with the servants, almost more comfortable with them than his own... than his own-

She could just ask. He might be offended but it wasn't the worst outcome. At worst, he'd say that he wasn't- that he hadn't been-

"I-I-I appreciate you trusting me," she stuttered out, avoiding his gaze in an effort to hide the turmoil within although she could feel it churning in her field, could feel the little downward twitches of her lips even as she tried to fight it. She tried to unfurl her fingers but they wouldn't open all the way, becoming claws that bit painfully into the flesh of her thighs until she was almost ready to scream.

"It doesn't matter about legal. Some people think that m-m-morally- Everyone assumes you'll follow the pattern. Marry, have children, carry on the family line. My parents asked me if I had to be- If I could just be- My mother tried to compromise. Said I could have women on the side if I had a h-h-husband," she choked on the word, breath hitching more now. She felt like she might throw up again.

"I spent so long h-h-hiding it because men go so st-stupid when they think a beautiful woman might b-b-be interested. I couldn't let anyone kn-kn-know, not when-"

The door clicked open and she jumped, head whipping in that direction. Too fast, too much. A groan escaped her lips, eyes squeezing shut, fingers loosening at last as she brought a trembling hand to her head as she tried to still that awful nauseating whirl.

"Urgh, Lady..."

"No Lady, Mistress, just me. Cora," the human housekeeper retorted, her voice gentle and soothing while her face was filled with amusement that the Hoxian obviously couldn't see. "You're looking a bit more yourself, not too healthy mind but that's what this is for."

As she spoke, the woman carried a tray to the vanity, using its edges to make space for it, careful not to knock anything off. "Nice pot of tea, plenty of water for after and some warm honeyed bread and bacon. I've been letting the bread soak it up so it should be nice and soft."

The smell of it made the Hoxian groan anew, recoiling slightly. "Eat it slowly and you should keep it down. Drink some water first," Cora told her, just enough authority in her voice to make it sound like an order but not enough that it could be said to be above her station. She was concerned obviously, that was all.

Some of the contents of a water jug were poured into a tumbler and placed before the galdor before Cora busied herself filling out a teacup and heaping cane sugar into it, gaze flicking to Tom as she did so. Her eyes weren't wholly approving but she moved a second teacup an inch in his direction, still empty, still on the tray. It was simply to indicate that it was there.

While the servant worked with quick efficiency, Drezda grasped her glass of water in both hands, its surface vibrating as she trembled. She took the tiniest sip, hardly more than would moisten her tongue but there was still the soft imprint of lipstick on its rim when she moved it away.

"You're... from Old Rose, Cora, aren't you? Originally," she croaked out. Drezda blinked. Clocking Circle, why had she asked that? Why did she care about that? Just because Tom had said-

Wanted to see if they knew each other? her mind whispered snidely.

She shuddered and took a more substantial sip of her water.

"I... am. Yes, Mistress," the human replied slowly, the words dragged out uncertainly. Warily. She set down the teapot with incredible care, trying to read Drezda's face in the vanity's mirror. There was a glance darted in Tom's direction, the human's eyes zipping sideways in their sockets, head hardly moving so that she could only really have gotten a peripheral view.

The glass was moved away from Drezda's lips again, a soft exhale issuing after it but no words. A reason for the question didn't seem to be forthcoming.

"W-Why, Mistress?" the other woman asked, the question so soft that it was surprising that the words reached the Hoxian's ears at all. Again, the quick blink of the diplomat, something flaring in her onyx eyes before they grew hooded, weary. She shook her head.

"Just... something that occurred to me. You can go - thank you," she murmured. The human nodded gingerly as if she expected her head to fall off if she wasn't too careful before she slipped out, feet padding oh so softly across the floor before the door opened and shut behind her with a resolute click.

The diplomat gazed into her water for a moment before she drank a little more, setting it down and eyeing the food dubiously. There was cutlery but also some napkins, including a wet one that could be used to wipe her fingers clean if she chose to tackle any of it by hand.

A piece of crisped bacon was plucked up and gradually shredded in her pale hands; she didn't really have any desire to eat it, pulling it apart clearly just something to do.

"Tom... is there anything else you'd like to tell me?" she asked softly, not taking her dark gaze off the bacon, which had been more or less crumbled messily onto its little plate. A little piece, an inch long was pulled out of the mess and twisted this way and that, fibres parting,

"Is there anything you'd like to tell me... or do I... have to ask? Or did it not seem important... to mention... other things about what you were bef- what you were like before?" she asked impassively, bringing the salty meat to her mouth as it refused to break and her stomach gave a little churn.

She couldn't say the words. She couldn't ask what he'd been born as. She didn't want to ask in case. Being friendly with a stranger, with a dead man was easier to come to terms with than the idea that- He had to be her kind. Only someone of her own kind could understand her, could share her experiences.

Never mind that she hadn't found galdori like that...
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Tom Cooke
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Thu Oct 10, 2019 6:12 pm

Drezda’s House Uptown Vienda
Morning on the 30th of Loshis, 2719
Couldn’t think of a worse time for Cora to come in, being honest.

Tom couldn’t say he wasn’t still tense, but he was relaxing. Maybe it was the whirl of the last hour; he could scarce believe it’d only been an hour – maybe less than an hour – for all that’d happened. Maybe it was the little jokes, the way they’d lightened the air in the boudoir, even if they hadn’t lightened either of their headaches. So when Drezda’d gone on, stuttering and digging her nails into her leg, Tom’d given her his full attention, holding her gaze and listening like there wasn’t another thing in the world. Ignoring, or trying to ignore, the dread that was creeping its way up from the bottom of his belly.

He just about jumped when the door clicked open. Cora bustled in with the tray and the teapot, with the smells of buttered toast and bacon and black tea; Tom sighed, letting out a frayed laugh, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead. Massaging his temple. When he looked up, Cora met his eye, still with that tinge of disapproval. Still, there were two teacups, he noticed, and she nudged one of them toward him, and he smiled gratefully as he glanced away.

The way she’d said spent so long hiding ith-h-hiding, choked out like it’d got stuck in her throat – had settled heavy over his heart. He was thinking on it, thinking what he could say, when Drezda asked Cora if she was from the Rose. He stopped short, his eyes wandering slowly back to the nattle and her mistress.

Something that occurred to her.

Tom’s eyes sharpened. His lip twitched. But he looked away again, absent-like.

He heard the door click shut behind Cora; they were alone again, and this time, Tom didn’t know he was glad of it. He was quiet as he watched Drezda take a sliver of bacon. He tried not to stare at her hands, the way her shaky fingers wrung and twisted and tore at it. Waited for her to speak again.

The question sent a subtle wince rippling across his face. For a moment, Anatole’s thin, delicate features were pinched with it. Then it smoothed out.

He didn’t respond to that question, not rightaway. “That’s a cruel compromise to expect you to make,” he started, softer than he’d spoken before. He still didn’t look at her, knitting his fingers in his lap and staring down at them. “I understand – hiding.” Now, he did dart a glance up at her. “It wasn’t safe, where I grew up, if people knew. If people even suspected. I wasn’t expected to marry, but, uh – I was expected to be a man. So I learned, fairly quickly, how to be the kind of man that – that’d leave no question. A real clocking man’s man. But now, it’s just who I am, and sometimes, I think…”

Tom trailed off. The thin line of his lips trembled, just once. Clearing his throat, he stood up from the bed, careful-like, and ambled over to the teapot. He started pouring tea into the cup Cora’d left for him. In the whirl of steam, he thought how to answer her question. He thought what to say. His brow furrowed; he set the teapot back down and took the cup gingerly, walking it back over to the bed.

He sat back down, careful with the hot porcelain.

“I respect you too much,” he said, after a long moment, “to lie to you. Whatever question you want to ask me, I’ll answer honestly.” Settling back on the bed, he held his teacup in his lap, warming his cold hands in the steam. He looked at her, frowning deeply. “But I think you already know, and I don’t think you want me to say it. I can say it now, or I can say it later, or we can politely ignore it. Or you can ask me to leave, if it matters so much to you. But I’m not ashamed of what I used to be, and if you want to know me, then you have to know that.”

He lifted his teacup to his lips, blowing on it. He took a little sip.
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Drezda Ecks
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Fri Oct 11, 2019 6:43 pm

Loshis 30, 2719 | Morning
Drez's Home
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For a moment, the tension in the woman's field wavered, confusion flooding in instead because his words sounded so out of place given the question she'd asked. The charred meat froze on her lips, black eyes swivelling sideways before she realised that he was responding to what she'd said before Cora came in. He'd actually avoided answering her most recent question.

Compromise. Yes, that's what her mother had thought it was. It wasn't an acceptable one for her father of course. No, he wasn't the sort of man who liked to give an inch to anyone although he was definitely the sort to take a mile and expect to be able to do so. Getting what he wanted - in all outward appearances - wasn't good enough when it was compromised. In his case, compromise wasn't a mutual agreement achieved through negotiation but something tainted and impure. For him, compromise could only be a dirty word. Drezda Ecks couldn't be gay, it was as simple as that. Apparently.

But no, no, no, no!

Why was he making her think about that? Why was Tom making it clear how much he could sympathise? How much he could empathise? The galdor was trying to come to terms with the horrible, horrible possibility that he was some half-breed or plowfoot bastard and he was hammering home that commonality again. If he wasn't her kind then she didn't want to hear it. They had nothing in common, nothing. Galdori were superior and they could share anything with their inferiors, if there could be anything the same between her and them then-

But you're already inferior. You know that," her mind whispered, the acid it poured across her brain somehow worse than that terrible headache pulsing in her clocking head. Her left hand had dropped into her lap once she decided to try eating the bacon instead of ripping it and now it twitched over her abdomen. There was just a thin layer of fabric between her fingertips and the skin of her abdomen, little more than a whisper that could be easily parted to leave the scarred flesh bare.

Because she was weak and tainted.

She was pathetic and defective.

Drezda knew it with undeniable certainty, having carved the agony of that truth into her own hide time and time again. Now, as psychological pain ripped through her, she felt the itch to do it again.

Not in front of him. Not in front of anyone ever again, not after Rhys had seen her do it all those years ago after their mess of a duel.

Trying not to think about it, she focused her attention to the bacon, still hovering by her lips. Mechanically, she opened her mouth and placed it between her teeth and crunched into it softly. Cora had cremated the meat, unsurprisingly given that she knew that her mistress hated to go near the fat of it when it was chewy or anything other than crisped. She'd done a very good job this time; the Hoxian might as well have been eating charcoal. It broke apart, dispersing across her tastebuds, filling her mouth with the taste of smoke and ash.

Even as Tom explained how much he respected her, she was all too aware that she'd been right. She knew it by the way he'd avoided answering straight away, could feel it in the tension between them. Any bonds of friendship between them had gone up in flames and now all they were left with was smoke and ash.

Clock the Circle, the last thing she could do was ignore it - politely or otherwise. Fuck it! How could she be polite about it? Was he completely delusional? Did he not realise what they were to her? What people like him-

Except that he might now be quite different to the inferior races, not because of death but rather due to the mona. If he'd been wick then he'd had access before but... this was a galdor's field, porven though it may be and Ezre had said that it actually was reparable. However, if he'd been human- The things he had access to now! The powers- Gosh, of all the bodies, he'd managed to grab a politician!

"Ignore it? How do you expect me to ignore that you weren't- That you aren't really... born to this!" the diplomat hissed out, waving an hand in his direction, staring at him as if she'd never seen him before. In truth, she hadn't, not like this. And there were so many little things that she was remembering now, so many little things that had pointed to what he really was, who he really was. The man who hadn't had time for poetry, the man who had reacted with such terror when she encountered him in the Dives, flexing her field in all its glory.

The Hoxian found herself rising on unsteady legs, unsure when she'd come to the decision to rise to her feet. But she couldn't stay still, it was true, couldn't sit by and placidly look at this... this...this creature sitting on her bed. It was easier to come to terms with him being a dead man walking in a stolen skin than this.

"So you aren't galdor. You were never galdor and no, I won't fucking ignore it. You had no right! No right! It doesn't matter what he was, even then you didn't-" she spluttered out indignantly, her dark gaze full of rage and disgust but still managing to glitter with tears as she stared at him. This time she tried to catch his eye, tried to drive her loathing down to his soul; this time, it was aimed at Tom himself and not the face that he wore, the man who had once resided within.

The mona thrashed around her, the young woman the eye at the centre of a storm that was becoming progressively more agitated by her emotions. She wasn't well enough to be standing and staring him down but she was doing it anyway, utterly heedless.

"Anatole w-wasn't your first choice? Just luck that you nabbed a galdor? An Incumbent? Clawed your way into a position of power. You had no right! You bastard!"

Her field flexed, the monic aura a powerful reminder of what she was, even if she was weakened right now, even though it had been recently agitated against her. It would crash into his own porven mess, splashing over him, a reminder of the difference between them.

"Y-y-you respect me! What ch-ch-chroveshit! I treated you like... like my equal and you're just some... some... plowfoot bastard or - or - Oh how high you've come and made a real f-f-fucking fool of me!"

Her knees gave out and she didn't even try to catch herself on the chair. Instead, Drezda just allowed the limbs to fold so that she was crumpled on the floor, a barely upright heap, burying her head in her hands, black hair curtaining her. There was some incoherent muttering from her, something that sounded suspiciously like a sob but her field gave nothing away - it gave away everything. The chaos was so great that it was damn near impossible to work out what on Vita the Hoxian was thinking.

"What were you, Tom? I n-n-need to know. And then you can go. Go and get out of my fucking sight because I don't want to s-s-see you right now. I don't want you n-n-near me," she whispered out, the curtain moving enough to reveal the rubied lips, hardly moving as she laid down her terms.

She couldn't have him here. She couldn't stand it. He'd lied. He'd made her think- She'd thought that they could be friends. Even merely dead, he still could have been but not like this.It had been so... unexpected. A man she had treated like any other belonging to her kind and their generation.
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Tom Cooke
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Fri Oct 11, 2019 11:22 pm

Drezda’s House Uptown Vienda
Morning on the 30th of Loshis, 2719
Drezda was getting to her feet, and Tom knew she’d not be able to stand. He was holding his teacup in his lap, watching her steadily; it’d’ve been hard to read his face, but there was something like concern in the pinched lines of his face, concern and disappointment and sadness, all at once. His head was still aching like the hatchers – godsdamn, but he needed something to drink, he kept thinking; he itched for it – his head was raging.

When she opened her mouth again, the muscles round his left eye tweaked, sending a twitch fluttering across his face. He licked his lips, glance flicking from one dark eye to the other. His brow furrowed deeper.

No right, she was saying. The words settled over him, one by one. It was hard to focus on them; he felt like he might’ve been in the bottom of a barrel of Low Tide. Right? Right to what? His lips tugged down. Right to scrape Drezda Ecks out of her parlor chair, covered in her own sick? Right to sit in this flooding spray of abuse?

It was one thing to be angry at him for lying. Tom thought he’d’ve been, too, if he’d found out some kov he’d known back in the Rose’d been some kind of monster wearing a dead man’s skin. He’d’ve been mad as the hatchers, and scared, too. Fair scared. He’d felt like a laoso for lying to Drezda, even if he’d been protecting himself; he’d liked lying about as much as she’d liked being lied to. But this?

The word finally came out of Drezda’s mouth, and Tom’s eyes flickered shut. He frowned fair deep, and he sat with his eyes closed for a handful of seconds, soaking it in.

Drezda’s field was a clocking mess, Tom thought, even if it was a powerful one. He could feel her flexing it, splashing it against his porven, caprising him aggressively; it was ramscott enough, but unsteady. It wasn’t a red shift, or blue, or yellow. It reminded him of one of those orchestras he got dragged to every once in awhile – if everybody’d just decided to play their instruments at once, music be damned.

There was a cluttered thump, and Tom opened his eyes. Drezda was in a heap on the floor, her thin shoulders shaking, her hands and face buried in a sheaf of black hair.

There was a long pause. “I am, indeed, a plowfoot bastard.” His lip twitched, wry. He watched her, then looked down at his tea. He could see the hazy reflection of a face there, peering up at him; he looked away, at the floor.

“I don’t know a damn thing about politics,” he went on in a low voice. “I’m lucky, am I? Separated from everything I know, from the man I love. I sleep in Anatole’s study, on the couch, because otherwise, I’d have to share a bed with his wife.” He still didn’t raise his voice; it was hushed, and fast, and he bit off the words. “You think I asked to slip the Cycle, to have to murder some poor sod to live in a body I hate? And then do it again, and again, and again, until whatever’s caused this has decided I’ve suffered enough?”

Fuck this, Tom thought, all of it; clock the whole Circle. The tea was rippling, jumping to the lip of the teacup, and Tom realized his hands were shaking. He tried to stay himself, pushing a hand through his hair. Taking a deep, shuddering breath through his teeth.

He stood up off the bed, his teeth still grit, and carried the teacup back to the table. It was a task for a magister, just keeping the clocking stuff from splattering on her benny carpet, and he didn’t know why he cared. He didn’t know why he cared, either, standing there by the teapot and its steam, by the tray with its buttered toast, by all the benny shit her nattle servant’d brought in. Standing there, looking at Drezda, trembling on the floor.

He pursed his lips. “You’ve backlashed once today,” he said, his voice thick and shaking. “I don’t care to see you do it again, you hear me? The mona know you’re in distress.” His fingertips lingered, trembling, on the table. “Do you need me to get Cora? You fell – are you hurt?”
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Drezda Ecks
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Sun Oct 13, 2019 12:39 pm

Loshis 30, 2719 | Morning
Drez's Home
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The diplomat felt as if she was going to explode. Her head had already been pulsing awfully but it was worse now. It wasn't just her head - the hangover - but every fibre of her being screaming to come apart. Her field was an outward manifestation of that and her distress was so great that she felt as if that would shatter at any moment as well to be as porven as the one surrounding the man in front of her.

The human in a galdor skin.

Her fingers knotted in her hair, leaving her unbelievably dishevelled as she almost ripped the strands from her scalp. Why did he have to be- How could he be that? How could he have been around her so much and managed to fool her? It should have been obvious that he was human or at least obvious that he wasn't galdor but she'd been utterly taken in. She had felt for him, had felt that tether between them and that was why it was easier to come to terms with the fact that he was a dead man than that they had been born into totally different lives, different races.

They were meant to be different. They were meant to be so different. She wasn't supposed to be able to see commonality between them and yet with Tom she had seen it time and again and it wasn't fair, it wasn't fucking fair!

Was it any wonder that the tears had started flowing again? Hair was sticking messily to her face, skin slick with brine as she failed to hold herself together.

And yet he sounded so calm, Well, he wasn't screaming and roaring and breaking things. He hadn't descended into something animalistic, what one expected of his kind. She'd done that earlier though, hadn't she? Hadn't she flung things at the wall in temper, including people? How was she meant to be better than him?

How was she meant to be superior? She knew that she was lacking as a galdor, she knew that she was a sorry specimen of her own race but if she couldn't even guarantee that she was better than a human...

When she heard the shift of weight from the bed as he stood, she thought that might be it. Except that he drew closer and she wondered if he'd take some sort of revenge for the abuse she'd hurled at him. Would he spit? Would he pour the pot of tea over her? Shove her over? Oh Drezda would deserve all of it. She was such a sorry excuse for a person, so pathetic and useless and alone. Why couldn't he just leave her alone to her misery and her loneliness and her hangover? Why hadn't he just walked out when she covered herself in sick? It would have been so much better if he'd done that.

When he spoke again, voice thick with some unidentified emotion - he couldn't be upset, he wasn't hurting, he couldn't be worried - his words were surprising and frankly stupid. She turned her face up to him, somehow finding an opening through the disorder of sticky black strands so she could gaze up at him. She was ready to scream at him that she wasn't casting. She wasn't going to brail or backlash if she wasn't using the mona and she had no intention of doing so. But all such abuse died on her lips, the ability to hurl more venom at him impossible given his concern as he kept talking.

The diplomat shrank from him, shaking her head, trying to hide her face again, voice muffled.

"St-st-stop it! Stop being so fucking decent to me when none of my own kind ever-" she cut herself off with a wail but the damage was done, she'd already admitted it. He'd been kinder than the galdori who'd dealt with her? She was pitiful but to such an extreme that you wanted to turn from her in disgust instead of helping her. Or add to the cruelty. She'd been the butt of jokes often enough, insult to injury.

Why did he have to be so fucking decent after everything she'd just hurled at him? After all the nasty opinions she'd voiced.

"...you were good to me"

His words from earlier came back to haunt her and she was ready to scream. He was a better person than her and she really, really didn't fucking deserve it.

"J-j-just go, Tom. I... I don't want anyone. J-just leave me alone. Leave m-m-me alone!" a wailing sob, the Hoxian continued to try to shrink from him, still shaking her head, still desperate to avoid his kindness. Such unwarranted kindness.

"I'm b-better on my own," she added, meant to be a quiet addition but still audible courtesy to the way her voice cracked, the pitch shrill.

She needed him gone so that she could keel over, curl into a ball on the floor and sob. If he left then she'd be checked on sooner or later but she didn't care. Just let her be alone for a little while as she splintered apart over a human. A human who she had almost called friend.

A human who she hadn't known... was human.
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Tom Cooke
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Thu Oct 17, 2019 8:35 am

Drezda’s House Uptown Vienda
Morning on the 30th of Loshis, 2719
Tom didn’t know what he expected. He reckoned he should’ve just left. He didn’t know why he didn’t; it was something about the sight of her there, oes, crumpled in the floor, hiding her swollen face behind a sheaf of hair. Something about that was hard to slam a door on. Would it’ve been, once? He didn’t know; he reckoned he was getting soft, always getting softer. That, or it was something else, some kind of thread between them – that was what scared him the most – gossamer-thin, made of something that wasn’t quite friendship, the kind of thread you couldn’t see. And he could feel it fraying and breaking, and he didn’t want it to.

He’d been expecting more slurs, being honest. If she’d called him a plowfoot again, he didn’t know what he’d’ve done. He wasn’t thinking straight. When he heard her voice again, thick and shaky, he stood very still by the table, and he swallowed a lump.

“I’m not –” It came out strangled, and he clamped his jaw shut on it. Drawing in a sharp breath through his nose, he looked away. His fingertips trembled on the tabletop, lingering by all the tea things; he couldn’t bring himself to leave. In the corner of his eye, he saw her shrink into herself, and he couldn’t help the awful twisting in his gut. He wanted to go to her, and he knew it wouldn’t help a damn thing.

Stop being decent? Like hell’d anybody ever said that to Tom Cooke. Stop twisting my flooding arm, maybe. Make it stop. Stop drinking so much. He didn’t know what to say to it, and he didn’t think there was anything he could. Call me a plowfoot, he thought, then call me decent.

’Course, he wasn’t mung enough to think this was about him. He knew well enough the sorts of things kov said when they were drunk and mean; he’d said them often enough himself, and it seemed to him they still stuck sour in the back of his throat, even the ones he only half remembered. It was never just the drink made you mean, and kov didn’t drink for no reason. And generally speaking, the more you cared, the meaner you got.

Decent plowfoot, he thought, and felt another surge of anger. There was heat in his face, and he knew he’d got all blotchy. Wasn’t flooding fair. So what if it wasn’t about him? She’d still spat slurs at him, and that was always the way of it. The fine clothes and the red hair and the golly face didn’t matter – a natt was somebody to take it all out on, plain and simple. A natt took it, quiet-like; a natt cleaned up the mess.

Tom forced himself to breathe, in and out. “You’re not,” he started, then swallowed it again, shutting his eyes. In, out. In, out. This didn’t mean anything, he told himself. There’d never been a thread. “Boemo,” he said after a moment, rough and broad, with a bitter twist of a smile. He rubbed his eyes, and his fingertips came away wet. “I’ll be goin’, then, ma’am.”

The word ma’am was barely a hiss. Tom took a deep breath, tapping his fingertips on the table and then turning away. As he moved for the door, he didn’t turn to look at Drezda.

He paused, hand hovering over the doorknob.

“You know where to find me,” he grated under his breath, then fumbled the door open and slid through.

He shut it a little hard behind him, then let out a stream of curses. His head was spinning, and everything that’d just happened, with all its implications, was settling over him. He couldn’t just stand there in it; his hands were shaking, and his heart was just about bloodying its wings against his ribcage, and he was running out of breath. The short hall to the stairwell felt like it was closing in on him, and so he had to move: fumbling his way down the stairs, then, his hand shaking on the banister. He couldn’t stop to catch his breath; he didn’t look round him to see if any of the servants’d seen.

He just barely remembered to collect his coat from the wreckage of the sitting-room. The fire was low in the hearth, now, just a jumble of glowing coals and ashes. It glinted on the empty handle of Rodriguez, lying askew beside the armchair, still spotted dark with sick.

Tom stared at the bottle, holding the back of the chair white-knuckled. Decent plowfoot, he kept thinking. Decent fucking plowfoot. He shut his eyes; he had to swallow it. Throwing on his jacket, he left, feeling like a man in a dream.

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