Under the Sky

99

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

PLAYED BY Clockwork

personal text goes here

Aegle Vitus

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 15, 2019 21:26:40 GMT

Quote

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 15, 2019 21:26:40 GMT

"What are they?"
The backyard stretched out before them. It rolled, a white blanket of fresh fallen snow, all the way from the sharp cut stone of the porch to the very base of the black ring wall that surrounded the whole village. Vulcan, seated with his back to the wall, lowered the small collection of wires and dust circuits, which he was ostensibly examining while he was actually keeping an eye on her.
"What're what?"
She was staring out at the sky. It sprang forth from the shadow of the ringwall, deep as the sea and dotted with lights, hauntingly clear as only fresh snow and bitter cold could make it.
"The stars."
Vulcan's eyes narrowed slightly, and he followed her gaze up to the sable sky and the hundreds of thousands of lights that pricked it.
"They're stars." He ventured after a moment, giving the obvious answer out of habit, in spite of Aegle's known tendency to greatly over-complicate simple questions. Sure enough, his little sister looked away from the sky she'd been scrutinizing and lanced Vulcan with a piercing stare.
"What are stars though?" She asked him pointedly. Vulcan blew out a sigh, and set aside the little device he'd been fiddling with. He came forward on his chair, arms braced across his knees, and craned his head all the way back, till all he could see was the dotted expanse of the heavens over head.
"Well," Affecting the a knowing air, full of worldliness inherited from their father but which he, a boy on the cusp of manhood, had yet to wholly grow into, "no one knows for sure..."
After a few moments, his gaze slid slyly down, to catch Aegle frowning impatiently at him. Some of the world-weariness on his face slipped, revealing a tight little grin beneath.
"Buuut," Repressing a chuckle, Vulcan dragged out the word, to Aegle's apparent approval, "We think they might be suns."
"Suns?" Aegle echoed, her expectant impatience melting away, to be replaced by open surprise. She flung her gaze skyward again, eyes darting among the stars, "All of 'em?"
"S'what we think." Vulcan agreed sagely, following his sister's gaze back up to the night sky.
"Woah..."
The sat like that for a few moments, Aegle wondering at the enormity of such information, and trying to reframe the biggest thing she knew of to fit the thousand tiny bright dots overhead. Vulcan, meanwhile, reflected on facts long ago committed to memory but which he'd never quite considered in anything more than a purely academic context.

When he finally judged his introspection to have been sufficiently reverent, Vulcan turned his attention back to his set-aside gadget.
"Hang on..." Aegle said, just as he was about to take it up again. She turned slightly at the edge of the porch, red lines of the blanket flashing warmly in answer of the small adjustment. She looked at him, mouth partways open, eyes thoughtfully narrowed, as she tried to find the right way to articulate the thought that had just popped into her head. Vulcan let his hand settle back down and waited with expectant calm for her to continue.
"If they're all suns, yeah," Aegle ventured finally, her eyes refocusing from the middle-distance they'd been staring into, to seek out Vulcan's own mossy gaze, "Why's the night so dark?"
She looked past him, up to the hundreds of tiny pinpricks that lit the heavens above his head.
"S'so many of 'em, Why isn't it bright all the time?"
Vulcan stared back at her, watching as she went back to scouring the heavens, practically able to hear the gears grinding in her head as she tried to work out the little conundrum she'd just made for herself. Blinking, he looked up again, back to the stars.
"Well," He said, with almost the same indulgently bored tone as before, "Y'know how when y'shine a torch on a wall, from real close up, how it makes that nice, bright circle?"
Her attention snatched back from the heavens, Aegle took a moment to imagine what Vulcan was describing, then gave a hesitant nod.
"And y'know how that circle gets bigger and dimmer as you move back?"
Another pause, followed by another hesitant nod.
"Now imagine it's not a wall, but something small, yeah? Like a marble..."
"Or a bunny!"
Vulcan paused, some shadow of his grin sneaking into his studiously academic expression, "If y'like... Well, that bunny isn't getting all the light y'shining at it. A lot of the light is shining past it, lighting up the things around the bunny, but not the bunny itself."
Aegle's brow furrowed and she imagined a little brown rabbit in a pool of expanding and dimming light, and tried to connect that idea to what Vulcan was attempting to explain. If she thought of the light as being like being made of snow flakes, with them drifting further and further apart the further away she moved, it made a little more sense...
Vulcan continued, "The Sun is so close to us that we get a lot of light from it. So much that it makes the sky blue and the ground warm. The stars are a lot further away, yeah? So we don't get as much light from them. Just a tiny bit from each one."
Aegle was nodding slowly. She had drawn back so far by this point, that only one or two snowflakes were settling on her imaginary bunny's back, where before it had been enough to bury the little creature.
She looked up at the sky again, imagining all those stars, as those snow flakes, falling on the back of their fuzzy little world.
"How far away?" She asked after a moment. Vulcan pulled his hand back in, once more aborted on its course to resume his homework.
"Hard t'say," He said, before indicating a bigger, redder star that hung just over the ring wall's edge, "That's the Huntsman's Star, and we reckon it's the closest. If you could move as fast as light does, it'd take y'four years or more to reach it."
Goosebumps and an uncomprehending shudder rushed through Aegle. She'd known for some time that light wasn't actually immediate, just really really fast, and she could not imagine it taking light four years to do anything.
Even trying to imagine how big a distance that would require made her head spin. Raising her hand from out of the protective cocoon of the dust treated blanket, Aegle folded a trembling thumb over the Huntsman's Star, and watched it wink in and out of sight with the trembling of her hand. With an effort of will, she steadied her hand and eased her thumb down, till it was just beneath the red dot, catching that single crimson snowflake on the very tip.

She blinked hard, feeling dizzy, and swayed where she sat, the prickle of gooseflesh on her arms bursting into a cold tingling all across her body. The trembling returned and her hand sagged, dragged down by some unseen weight. The tremors grew worse, and she hastily coiled her fingers into a fist, tucking her hand out of sight before Vulcan could notice, but notice he did.
"Y'alright?" He asked, his pretense of calm curiosity belying a brittle glass edge. It was a tone she'd heard more and more from her family in recent months.
"M'fine," Aegle said, "S'just cold, y'know?"

Aegle stared at her scroll, and the three missed calls its flashing display described; It barely had the chance to vibrate before her poised thumb came down on the crimson 'x' that formed beneath it. After a moment, the caller ID faded, and the screen returned to flashing its sedate alert, now reading four missed calls. There was no fifth call.
When the screen went dark, she let her eyes slide away from it and up to the window at her bed side. Behind the sterile glare of the infirmary lights, above the glow of the City of Vale, she could just barely make out the sky and the many stars which populated it.

24

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

personal text goes here

Roland Dallas

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 16, 2019 2:02:31 GMT

Quote

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 16, 2019 2:02:31 GMT

The door to the infirmary gave a subtle click, followed by a long creaky whine that rendered vane any attempt at subtlety and grace. Once it was open a crack, there came a short rapping on the wood, as if whoever had opened it thought that there was some point in announcing their arrival despite the door having already done so for them. A faint scent of tobacco smoke heralded the visitor as a gentle draft flowed in, and a moment later the door swung open fully to reveal a tall slender man, bedecked in an anachronistic rustler's hat and a poncho that reached past his knees. Dense stubble coated his chin, though the rest of his face lingered in the shade of his hat's broad brim. Sidling in, some metal fixtures of his boot chiming gentle with each step, he took up beside the window, and with an elaborate following of the bedridden girl's gaze he stared outwards and up towards the night sky.

"The huntsman's light is shining bright tonight." He observed in a cracked voice that probably couldn't do much better than gruff, before turning to regard Aegle with a warm smile that seemed to light up his face enough to see his cool blue eyes beneath the brim of his hat, "You know, that stories say that the Huntsman was put in the sky by the gods, long before any of the kingdoms even existed. They say it was the first star, and that men and faunus learned to find their way by it. They followed that star their entire lives, and when they passed from this world to the next, they followed it still, and went up into the heavens to live beside it."

His expression became a little sad at that, and he looked away for a moment, forcing his smile to remain in place before returning his sight to fall upon Aegle.

"Aegle Vitus, I presume?" He said, his gruff voice pronouncing her surname fondly with apparent familiarity, "They are telling a few stories about you too. About the little girl who faced down a dragon."

Again his expression seemed to dim somewhat, and he cleared his throat as he made his way to a seat nearby her bed, and lifted his poncho to take a seat upon it, exposing the great magnitude of dirt and travel soot that covered everything below his waist, as if he had walked here from Menagerie itself. He stretched stiffly on the seat, and reclined back into the padded wood, slouching and allowing the brim of his hat to fall over his eyes once more. For a moment it seemed he meant to sleep right then and there, until he spoke once more.

"How are you feeling? The nurse seemed a bit concerned about you."

99

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

PLAYED BY Clockwork

personal text goes here

Aegle Vitus

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 16, 2019 4:58:48 GMT

Quote

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 16, 2019 4:58:48 GMT

She was still searching her way across a half-shaded sky when there was a quiet click from the end of the room, the sound Aegle had come to recognize, after long association, with someone trying to quietly check up on her. She let her gaze slide down from the dark places between the stars, and wondered if they were the sort of person to see her awake and leave her be, or the type who would think she wanted company.
It had been awful lonely, she had to admit, since Lily had left, and she still wasn't sure she actually wanted company. Looking down at her scroll, its face dark, she decided she really didn't. Fingers slowly flexing, she rolled the little device over, and turned her eyes back to the sky. Then came a quiet knock from the door.
Aegle drew in a slow breath through her nose, just like she had been taught, and closed her eyes, hoping they would just leave. She didn't want another nurse, asking her how she was feeling. She didn't want another classmate whose name she didn't know, come to drop off the day's notes and homework assignments. She didn't want another councilor, come to ask if she was really sure Beacon Academy was the right place for her.

Her silence must not have gotten the message across, because the door swung open in spite of it. She watched in the reflection in the window as a long, lean figured man crossed the room towards her bed, jingle-jangling ever step of the way. Dressed in a broad hat and a pancho, he looked like no one Aegle knew. He definitely wasn't a nurse. She was supposed to look at him, acknowledge his approach or, at the very least, his breach of her privacy, but Aegle's mood was indifferent. What did it matter what she did?
"The Huntsman's Light is shining bright tonight." The stranger said, taking up position before the window, just inside of Aegle's peripheral vision and smiling a smile that Aegle pretended not to notice. There was an expectation of curiosity, of inquiring after his identity, his purpose, but Aegle gave him neither. She merely kept doing what she had been doing before he'd interrupted her.

"You know," he said after a few moments, filling the silence born of her refusal to cooperate, "the stories say that the Huntsman was put in the sky by the gods, long before any of the kingdoms even existed. They say it was the first star, and that men and faunus learned to find their way by it."
It was a common enough story, one which Aegle had been hearing since she was very young. It rated up there among similar myths, like the Breaking of the Moon, in sheer pervasiveness. Her gaze dropped, and she wondered if he would tell her the rest of it, the rest of what they said about the Huntsman.
"They followed that star their entire lives," He continued, and Aegle's fingers tightened weakly around her blankets, "And when they passed from this world to the next, they followed it still, and went up to the heavens to live beside it."
She'd asked Aaron once if anyone had ever tried to get to the stars, and he'd told her that story. Then he'd gotten very quiet.

"Aegle Vitus, I presume?"
Aegle looked up, finding the stranger was still there. Now he was looking right at her and wearing a glass smile. He seemed pleased that he'd finally gotten her attention, though he didn't look happy, for all he might be smiling.
"They are telling a few stories about you too." He told her, telling his own story, "About the little girl who faced down a dragon."
She only stared at him, one eye still too swollen for her to do much looking out of, forcing the other pick up the slack. Lily had told her a similar story, how some of the first years were talking about how they had been there, how they'd seen her challenge the Commander to a fight to the death. She hadn't said so, that there were a lot more people on campus who thought Aegle utterly mad now, but she hadn't needed to.
The stranger shifted uncomfortably beneath her silent scrutiny. The nurses did the same thing if she looked at them too long, like they weren't used to seeing banged up faces. Finally, clearing his throat, the stranger sidled forth beneath the weight of her gaze, to slouch down in the chair beside her bed. The one where Lily had been sitting a short while earlier.
"How are you feeling?" He asked, eyes hidden beneath the brim of his hat. Aegle wanted to reach over and knock it off his head, just to see what he might do. She wanted to do something unexpected, something to break up the oppressive sameness of this interaction. Instead she remained silent, hands tightening their feather light hold on her bedding.
When she still didn't answer, he prodded her, offering, "The nurse seemed a bit concerned about you."

That got a small laugh out of her. More of a chuckle really, barely more than a giggle. "Never met one which weren't." She said, the spell of silence broken. It still hurt to speak, giving the usually flowing slur of her Highland Mantlelian a more sporadic cadence, like she needed to taste each syllable before she said it. That wasn't so far from the truth really. Her mouth was still so clumsy that she needed to be careful just to keep from biting her tongue.
"Who'a'ya then? Whadda'ya want?" she asked, keeping her words short and to the point, extremely uncharacteristic. He was vaguely familiar, so she guessed she'd seen him somewhere on campus. She guessed he was a councilor after all, or maybes another academy official come to get her side of the story.

24

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

personal text goes here

Roland Dallas

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 16, 2019 6:02:13 GMT

Quote

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 16, 2019 6:02:13 GMT

He seemed to flinch somewhat as Aegle spoke as if he had been anticipating and dreading the fact that she might. Her words sounded drunken and slurred, less spoken as they were crafted clumsily and allowed to ooze out of her mouth. A faint, nearly imperceptible tremor traveled through the stranger and he reached up to pinch the brim of his hat, pulling it down further to hide his eyes. He sighed, absorbing the content of her speech as if it were a biting wind that he was facing into.

"I'm Roland, I know your brothers. I like to believe I am a friend to them." He said after a long and deliberate silence. He spoke slowly, and briefly, and were it not for the Mantelian accent, it would have been perfectly natural to assume that he did not speak the common tongue as a first language. Like Aegle, speaking seemed almost painful for him, though for much different reasons, as if he considered it something unpleasant, or difficult that he did anyway. It gave the impression that his attempt at breaking the ice was something rehearsed, rather than organic.

He briefly raised his head to gaze out from beneath the shade of his hat, and on his face was written such a deliberate blankness that it was all but utterly certain that he was doing his best to manage some emotion. A hint of that emotion could be seen in his brilliant blue eyes, which blazed furiously for the instant before he bowed his head again and grind out a few more syllables.

"I also know the man who put you in that bed." He said, and he sounded strangely shameful, or perhaps even disappointed with the confession.

Silence swooped in again, though this time it was broken intermittently by a muffled creaking, and judging by the working of Roland's cracked lips and bestubbled jaw, the only part of his face visible, it seemed he was grinding his teeth. He seemed to notice what he was doing after a moment or two, and willed himself to stop, only to seemingly find the resultant and utter silence too intolerable. His lips parted, half formed some syllable, as he drew in breath, only for the expression to dissolve shortly after into another deep and long suffering sigh. He slumped in his chair, resting his chin right against his chest and blowing out air through his nose.

Finding the position understandably uncomfortable, he slouched forward again, resting his elbows on his knees beneath his poncho and showing Aegle the top of his head as he drew another deep breath in anticipation of speech.

"I've known him since he was about your age." He said, confessing as another tremor gripped him, causing his stern and dry voice to shake somewhat, "If you had told me back then, what kind of man he'd grow up to be, I'd never have believed it."

99

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

PLAYED BY Clockwork

personal text goes here

Aegle Vitus

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 17, 2019 17:59:46 GMT

Quote

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 17, 2019 17:59:46 GMT

"I'm Roland," said the gunslinger, without looking out from the dusty brim of his wide, dark hat, "I know your brothers. I like to believe I am a friend to them."
That puzzled Aegle. She didn't know anyone named Roland, and the weathered man seated beside her bed looked much too old to be an old academy friend of teammate to any one of her brothers. Even Aaron, the eldest, had to be a whole decade the grizzled veteran's junior. At least. She frowned a little and made a more determined effort to place him, now in the context of Atlas rather than Vale. That branch seemed a promising one, but it still didn't bear much fruit. Try as she might, she couldn't bring Roland out of the realm of vaguely familiar and into the space of someone she might actually know.
As though he might have felt her staring, Roland tipped his head back and eyed her from under the brim of his hat. His eyes were hauntingly sharp, clear as a cool mountain stream and blue as the bluebird sky in the highlands of Solitas. Aegle didn't like those eyes. They were fixed points of burning light in the hollows of his dark face, two deep wells of fiery brilliance set in pits of utter blackness. They looked the way Aaron's eyes had looked, the very first time he came home after getting his commission and taking up his first real command. They were guarded and determined, but that armor and focus were not for her, but for some darker thing he seemed to see looming over her shoulder. They were like the Commander's eye, staring fixedly on some black point just a few strides away, waiting for it to draw in for the attack. As much as the rest of him, his posture and his affectation mainly, might suggest an onerous obligation, an awkward attempt at conversation, his eyes told a different story.
No wonder he had been keeping them hidden.
"I also know the man," He ventured carefully, "Who put you in that bed."
Roland handled that confession like it was a live grenade or a punctured power cell, likely to detonate without provocation. He waited after saying it, waiting to see if Aegle might explode in his face. She sighed softly, finally able to guess the direction this conversation would be running in, to guess the real reason Roland was sitting beside her bed when she'd given every indication that she wanted to be left alone.

Aegle refused to play along. She'd had this exact conversation three times already, and she'd owed something to the people she'd had it with. She didn't know this man, despite his apparent connection to her family, and she was not interested in having it a fourth time with a stranger.
Something in his posture shifted as she stared back at him, with no apparent intention of answering. Her silence weighed on him, an unexpected hurdle in what he'd probably expected to be a pretty straight forward discussion. His jaw worked with increasing impatience and, once, he even opened his mouth to say more. Maybe he realized it would be pointless, because he didn't, and instead slumped back in his chair with his head bowed and his haunted eyes hidden once more.

If that could have been the end of it, Aegle would have been happy. It would have been an unexpected courtesy for someone, most of all this stranger, to actually respect her boundaries, as few as she had.
She was hoping for too much it seemed.
"I've known him since he was about your age." Roland muttered, voice creaking under the weight of that confession, "If you had told me back then, what kind of man he'd grow up to be, I'd never have believed it."
Like a white hot knife, an edge of fury sliced through Aegle. Her fingers coiled into loose fists, scarred and deformed knuckles going as white as the heated anger filling her. Her jaw tightened a moment, and the pain that caused fed the furnace heat like fire dust on an open flame. Her father had always said you should take a moment when you're feeling angry. Take a moment, and consider how what you said in anger could not be taken back once things cooled down; A word said or a punch thrown can not be called back.
She probably wouldn't have actually punched him, even if she'd been able to lift her arms high enough to do it, but there was a moment when she imagined the feel of her knuckles on his jaw. A quiet ping from her heart monitor called her back from the brink, it's warning chime letting her know her heart rate had become dangerously elevated.
Aegle made her fingers loosen, breathed out the breath she'd been holding, and willed herself into relaxed repose on her inclined bed.

"D'ya not talk with one another?" She asked quietly, toned edged in something she didn't quite allow to be anger, "How many times I gotta tell ya?"
Though the rest of her lay back into enforced relaxation, Aegle's eyes smoldered burning green in her pale, bruised face. Swallowing and wetting her tongue, mapping the dimensions of her clumsy mouth in the process, she heaved in as deep a breath as her aching chest could manage.
Very slowly, very deliberately, enunciating each word, "I made 'im do it."
Though quiet and controlled, there was an edge beneath her words, a trembling anger that seemed ill-suited to the minute frame bearing it.
She was so tired of this. Of this gentle regret that everyone she spoke to seemed to have, of how they wrung their hands and bemoaned what Commander Moon had done, like she hadn't been there. Like she hadn't actively urged him on, hadn't specifically gouged at his stated beliefs, how she hadn't made it all but impossible for him to turn her down.

The fire behind her eyes sparked brighter, and a bit of strength came into her voice as the numbers on her monitor started to climb once more, "Go away."
She was done playing this game. She'd had enough. Some part of her writhed to be so openly rude, so openly hostile, but she ignored that part, a part who still thought she was sick and helpless, a slave to the random cruelty of the universe. She'd let that part dictate her actions for too long, and her patience was finally at its end.
"Don't care who y'are, who y'know," Her heart monitor chimed again, shriller this time, letting her know it was one stage short of automatically calling the nurse.
She ignored it, "Y'might know my brothers, but I dinnae you and y'dinnae me." Pits of burning cinder trickled off her cheeks, wafted up from her limp orange hair, and smoldered sedately on her exposed arms and shoulders. The pain had receded to a gentle coldness at the back of her perception, the background radiation of her actions and her decisions.
"Now Get Out. Leave Me Alone."

24

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

personal text goes here

Roland Dallas

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 18, 2019 2:27:28 GMT

Quote

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 18, 2019 2:27:28 GMT

Roland had been expecting a lot of reactions to his words, dreading them the way one dreaded to peel off a soiled bandage, dreading the pain but also what might be uncovered. Was the wound healing, or had it turned septic, would the limb need to come off? However, the specific brand of Aegle's anger was a surprise to him. The shrill reply, full of frustration and anger seemed totally out of character, totally unfitting of the infirm creature that populated the infirmary cot. Roland regretted that he had not been paying her better attention, taking refuge in the shade of his hat as he was, and regretted the missed opportunity to truly gauge her expression as she delivered a retort.

"I made 'im do it." She snapped, furiously, each word deliberate and seperate, as if any might be the last one. Again he had the sensation of being struck by her words, but this time it was as if she were making a firm finger out of them and jabbing him in the chest with each syllable. The content too was surprising, it was not the accusation that most anyone would have rightfully expected, instead it was a confession, a defense delivered with righteous indignation. Had her voice been much louder it would have felt like she was boxing his ears.

Curiosity overcoming the frustration and uncertainty of earlier, Roland cocked his head to one side and peered at the girl sidelong from beneath the awning of his hat, as if he were standing on a porch and trying to get a good look at a far off storm, but not willing to venture out and risk getting wet. His jaw worked some more, as if he were literally chewing over what she had said. "Made him do it"? And that made her responsible for what Solomon had done to her? Perhaps it did, if Solomon truly was the mad dog many thought he was, and Aegle had decided to tease him, but to fully accept such a narrative would deny the young man any agency in the whole debacle, and that was a slight step too far. In any case, while Aegle was within her rights to be frustrated by the long line of mourners who had come to call, she had, through no fault of her own, misunderstood Roland and his meaning.

He waited patient as a man tending cattle as Aegle grew more and more wroth, to the point that the numerous machines that crowded around the cot like a perverse court of attendants, were emitting beeps and blarps in alarm at the elevated emotional state of the girl. She'd had very little resemblance to her brothers, being frail and bedridden, when Roland had arrived, but as Aegle demanded that he leave in a voice that gave her words enough edge to draw blood, and as her green eyes blazed with defiance and motes of what appeared to be burning aura cascaded back from her mouth, the resemblance became positively uncanny. Such force of will was to be respected, but all the same, Roland made no indication that he intended to leave, and instead slouched back into his seat, casting once more, all but his mouth in gloom. He gave a momentary and deeply sardonic chuckle, that came out like a harsh scoff.

"You think I meant you?" Roland answered bloodlessly, even though it was perfectly reasonable that she would take his words that way, "Brutalizing a pair of innocent girls is a high water mark in the black-mire that is Solomon Moon's career. Would, that it was the worst he was guilty of. In fact, I am here in part precisely because it might be the best he has done in a long time."

Roland allowed a moment for the hook to bite, hoping that having her expectations subverted might soften the injured teen's attitude enough to allow him to continue. One hand sprouted from beneath his poncho, and held in between fore and middle finger was a large caliber cartridge, that he began to walk back and forth in the gaps between his fingers. It had a rolling, soothing rhythm to it, fore to middle, to ring, to pinky, before vanishing for a moment and reappearing between index finger and thumb to start the journey again. He resisted the urge to check up on Aegle's countenance and assess her reaction to his little theater. Roland was used to firing blind anyway, so he fired another round instead.

"Solomon is a hard and brutal man. There is no shortage of victims that he has put in the hospital, or worse." He said, gruff words seeming to uncannily match the walking of the cartridge through his fingers, "If I were to make it my duty to visit every one, I would have little time for anything else, but that is not why I came to see you."

The shell came to a halt between finger and thumb and Roland pointed at Aegle with it, an exclamation point made of metal and gunpowder.

"I said, "the man who put you in that bed.", and I think you misunderstood my meaning. I do not mean he inflicted those injuries upon you." Roland said, as he cocked his head again and the line of her sight bridged the gap between Aegle's own emerald green eye, past the bullet, and met Roland's blue-bomber, as if he were now offering the live round to her instead of just pointing with it "I mean that a man known by all for cruelty, violence, and mercilessness, carried you in his arms like a baby, and placed you right there on that mattress, as gentle as you please."

Roland allowed a moment of silence for his companion to digest the gravity of that statement, and perhaps he hoped that she would draw some broader conclusions as to the nature of this visit. Then he tipped his hat forward again, and stole away the cartridge in his hand, concealing his hand and what it contained once more beneath his poncho. With a grunt of effort and the creaking of joints that had spent a long while on the road to bring them here, he rose out of his chair and sidled towards the door.

"But if you still want me to leave..."

Last Edit: Mar 18, 2019 2:30:19 GMT by Roland Dallas

99

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

PLAYED BY Clockwork

personal text goes here

Aegle Vitus

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 19, 2019 0:28:32 GMT

Quote

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 19, 2019 0:28:32 GMT

Roland did not get up however. He did not leave. He instead slouched back once more, hiding his eyes beneath his hat brim, hiding her from his sight. Then he laughed.
"You think I meant you?" asked the gunslinger, a joyless quirk to his lips that only technically qualified for a smile.
"Brutalizing a pair of innocent girls," He explained mildly, "Is a high water mark in the black-mire that is Solomon Moon's career."
Almost airily, though with no shortage of weariness for the subject, Roland added, "Would, that it was the worst he was guilty of. In fact, I am here in part precisely because it might be the best he has done in a long time."

Aegle's jaw tightened around the obvious response, that she didn't especially care what evils the Commander had perpetrated, that she had seen the good in him and that she had done her best to coax it out and show it to him. She didn't want nor need to explain herself to this grizzled old gunslinger who was too nerveless to look her in the eyes. She stared daggers into his darkened face, hating that he wouldn't look at her, hating that he seemed unable to bear the sight of her, that he didn't even try to hide it.
"Solomon is a hard and brutal man." Said the gunslinger, shooting into the void of her failure to engage, her stubborn refusal to be a part of this conversation. He seemed unbothered, happy to keep himself entertained with a large cartridge he plucked out from his coat, which he walked idly back and forth across his knuckles.
"There is no shortage of victims that he has put in the hospital, or worse. If I were to make it my duty to visit every one, I would have little time for anything else, but that is not why I came to see you."
Then why, Aegle wondered, was he here bothering her? As if sensing the question, Roland caught his walking shell and held it out to her, a teacher telling her to be quiet while they found there point. The monitor trilled a short invective, reminder her just how close it was to calling medical assistance.

"I said, "the man who put you in that bed."," Roland reminded her, belaboring his point with a lack of urgency that bespoke someone used to speaking to a captive audience, for all his apparent dislike for speaking, "and I think you misunderstood my meaning. I do not mean he inflicted those injuries upon you." "I mean that a man known by all for cruelty, violence, and mercilessness, carried you in his arms like a baby, and placed you right there on that mattress, as gentle as you please."
Aegle's jaw ached harder still, tightening around any reply she might have given that, for all it set her mind to racing. She hadn't been told that part of the story. In fact, most of the adults she'd spoken to had refused to say exactly how she made it from the training hall and to the infirmary.
Not that this new information did anything to challenge what she already knew of Lord-Commander Solomon Moon. His concern for her, his attempt to help her following their fight, only went further towards confirming her conception of the man.
"But if you still want me to leave..."
Aegle hadn't even realized her gaze at started to drift, but Roland's muttered words, his calling of her bluff, snatched her attention back. Anger flared once more as she, once again, found him eschewing her gaze, avoiding the sight of her like some hideous and deformed thing. Like some pitiable thing. She didn't say anything. She just watched him creak to his feet and stroll past her bed in silence. She watched him all the way to the door, sagging back in her bed as the light about her eyes, the motes of fire about her cheeks, gradually faded.

He was just reaching for the door when she called out to him, though perhaps 'called out' was being generous.
"Must be hard t'be better," She said, in a voice barely above a whisper, "When the world's always tellin' ya how awful y'are."
With her head turned towards him, once more rested back on her pillow, Aegle looked impassively across the intervening space, her face showing naught but the bone deep weariness that suffused her, just as it always did after using her semblance.
"I dinnae what y'want," She told Roland, "Comin' in here, actin' like I owe ya my time. Comin' in like I got any reason t'care what you think."
People often did things Aegle didn't understand, and she was usually content to leave that fact as granted, but not this time.
This time, she let her confusion spill out, "Am I s'posed t'care? Just cause y'dark and mysterious and y'say y'know my brothers? Y'say y'know the Commander? Am I s'posed to give ya my time, cause I got so very much of that t'spare."
It wasn't malicious, it wasn't angry, the way she said it. It was plain and matter of fact, without bite or venom. The truth was that, without her semblance, she hadn't the energy to put much bite into it.
"S'like I'm just a prop, yeah? Like what I want and what I think 'bout all this don't matter, y'know? Like all I'm good for is bein' told what y'all think."
She shook her head weakly, utterly baffled by it.
"S'that what I am t'ya? Some punchin' bag for ya t'bounce your opinions off'a?"
Her jaw tightened, and she looked again for some bile to spit at him, but her heart wasn't in it. There was no venom in her, only a bone deep weariness and hurt, indefinable in its abstract complexity, impossible for her to actually express.
She rolled her head, cast her eyes back to the night sky, to the Hunter's Star.
"I s'pose not," Aegle muttered quietly, more to herself than the old gunslinger, "Y'gotta 'least look at the bag when y'punch it."

24

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

personal text goes here

Roland Dallas

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 22, 2019 2:32:45 GMT

Quote

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 22, 2019 2:32:45 GMT

It took longer than Roland expected for Aegle to take his bait. Moving slowly, though doing his best not to seem purposeful about it, he made it all the way to the door, and had his right hand on the doorknob before he sensed the girl stirring in her bed and heard the dry rasp of her voice. For a moment there he had worried she would call the bluff of him calling her bluff.

"Must be hard t'be better, When the world's always tellin' ya how awful y'are." It sounded almost sullen, sulky even. Aegle didn't strike Roland as the type who would sulk, as it was a kind of surrender, and if she had shown anything to be a fact by now, it was that Aegle Vitus did not surrender. But perhaps she was talking about an older battle than that most recent.
Roland took his hand from the polished brass knob, and raised one finger, his index, straight up, as if pointing at the ceiling. He half turned to face back across the infirmary at Aegle laying laterally upon her cot, though he kept his head slightly bowed, face still cast in deep shadow from the fluorescent lights overhead. In his poncho, he looked like an unlikely scarecrow, planted in her room to ward off the buzzards that seemed to circle over head.

"Am I s'posed t'care? Just cause y'dark and mysterious and y'say y'know my brothers? Y'say y'know the Commander? Am I s'posed to give ya my time, cause I got so very much of that t'spare. S'like I'm just a prop, yeah? Like what I want and what I think 'bout all this don't matter, y'know? Like all I'm good for is bein' told what y'all think." She continued, wearing away at him like a petulant breeze. Roland wondered if she would have yelled it if she had the strength, and he half imagined she did anyway. It chewed at his patience, and he took a step closer. He did not intend to be threatening, or to intimidate the girl, but as he stuck out his middle finger beside the first, keeping some sort of count, it did seem a little ominous. But Aegle had still more to say, even as Roland came right up beside her bed, so that if she wished she might look up into the deep shadow of his face and see the brilliant luminosity of his gunslinger's eyes.

"S'that what I am t'ya? Some punchin' bag for ya t'bounce your opinions off'a? I s'pose not, Y'gotta 'least look at the bag when y'punch it." His jaw creaked as Aegle delivered this last barb, and the fury in his eyes, that had not abated in the slightest since last he looked at her, seemed to blaze even more brightly. The accusation stung, oddly because of how wide of the mark it struck, and Roland offered a long moment of simply glaring downward at Aegle, testing her to add anything else for he said his piece. He drew in a deep breath, and stuck out his thumb, making three with his right hand.

"I haven't told you what I think, yet." He said, his gruff voice like fine sandpaper working a bedpost, as he curled up his middle finger and returned it to his fist, leaving behind two, "All I have told you are the facts, but since you got it so wrong, I guess I'll tell you."

The way he ground his teeth as he spoke made it seem like he was grinding up his words before he said them, and the sounds that trickled out were the atomized remains.

"You sure act a lot like a punching bag." He added as he tucked his thumb back into his fist, leaving behind just his forefinger pointed skyward like an exclamation mark, "Is your life so terrible that you would throw it away for that man? After you mother, father, brothers, have been through so much already, watched you suffer so much already. I have to wonder why, and I'm not the only one."

He dropped his hand, arm swinging downward at the elbow, and aiming that extended finger like the barrel of a gun, like an accusation, right between Aegle's eyes. It became all too clear that the barely restrained anger he'd shown up to this point had not been entirely for Sol. Aegle had said it herself, Sol had not done it alone, for she was to blame as well.

"But I think I know now." He hissed, as he crooked that last finger, and his knuckle popped like the pulling of a trigger, and it too joined the rest of his hand, curled up tight against his palm, knuckles white.

""Must be hard t'be better, When the world's always tellin' ya how awful y'are."" He delivered the words in as close an approximation of her Highland Mantle accent as he could manage, "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you? Is that what this all was? Is that why you would make yourself a martyr? I think the question is not what you owe me, but what the hell do you owe Solomon Moon?"

99

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

PLAYED BY Clockwork

personal text goes here

Aegle Vitus

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 22, 2019 3:47:39 GMT

Quote

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 22, 2019 3:47:39 GMT

Aegle had known it was a mistake to talk back to him before the words had even left her mouth, had known it would only keep him from leaving, that it would inevitably result in him unloading more of his opinion on her, and acting like it were some sort of gift. She heard him crossing the room back to her bed, felt him loom over her bed as though being taller than her was something worth being proud of. She could practically smell the road on him, the scent of dust and leather and hard travel that he wore like a comfortable old coat. She didn't look at him.
"I haven't told you what I think, yet."
Maybe not, but he was sure gonna, she didn't doubt.
"All I have told you are the facts,"
Facts as he saw them.
"but since you got it so wrong, I guess I'll tell you."
From where Aegle was laying, she hadn't missed a single mark. He was doing exactly what she expected, exactly what all the men like him did. He was so full of his need to tell her about the world that he was berating her when he'd said he would leave. The sound of his teeth grinding bore into the side of her head like a carpenter's screw, turning and turning and turning, wearing her down.
"You sure act a lot like a punching bag,"
Turn...
"Is your life so terrible that you would throw it away for that man?"
Turn...
"After you mother,"
Turn...
"Father,"
Turn...
"Brothers,"
Turn...
"Have been through so much already, watched you suffer so much already. I have to wonder why, and I'm not the only one."

His hand came down like a guillotine, one accusatory finger pointed down at her, cocked back like a loaded gun.
Aegle turned her head slowly away from the window, turned her eyes up to meet his. Looking right past his finger tip, her eyes bore into his, unrepentant, unashamed and, most of all, unimpressed. She endured him because she knew she hadn't the power to stop him, but she did not pretend to care one bit about what he'd just said. His words glanced off, as surely as if they had struck solid stone, passed through, as moths into a flame.

"But I think I know now. "Must be hard t'be better, When the world's always tellin' ya how awful y'are."" He repeated back to her, in unflattering imitation of her accent, "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you? Is that what this all was? Is that why you would make yourself a martyr?"

"I think the question is not what you owe me, but what the hell do you owe Solomon Moon?"

The world turned around them, silent as the night, turned loud and presumptuous by Rolands blather. It turned, and it turned, and it turned out that, try though did to stop it, Aegle's mood took a sharp and sudden turn. The ends turned up at the corners of her mouth, and her begrudging tolerance turned into a faded smile, poorly concealed. She chuckled quietly, and it hurt, but she couldn't stop. Then she turned away from him, from this man she didn't know, who had turned up invited and, in turn, tried to tell her how to live her life. She turned herself over as far as she could, and tried to stifle down the giggles turning her chest and her jaw to broken glass. She turned a loose a few breathless laughs, each shriller and quieter than the one before, the last of which left her silently shaking where she lay. Then, wheezing in a steadying breath, she flopped over onto her back with black dots dancing across her vision and a warm fuzziness flushing her face.

Her eyes crawled over to Rolands, a few tiny aftershocks making her shudder in her bed, as she breathed rapid shallow breaths, calming herself down. When the tremors had all but abated, when she had sunk back into the mattress like a hare in the snow, she showed Roland another crooked grin.
"So," She cooed, trying hard and failing spectacularly to keep a straight face, "We takin' turns, are we?"
Aegle erupted into a peel of volcanic laughter. It oozed and burst out by turns, molten hot, and turned her face red as fire in the process.
"Y'don't listen," She creaked out, clutching her chest and her stomach, barely audible beneath the renewed trilling of her heart monitor, "Y'don't, y'know?"
She wheezed and puffed and spluttered, unable to stop, and looked, as her face went from red to plum, like she might even laugh herself unconscious. Her eyes squeezed closed, shutting out the dizzying array of dancing black dots, and quaked and shivered, without any breath to go on.

At last, the paroxysm abated enough for her to haul in a quavering breath, and crack open one eye. She didn't have it in her to move her head anymore, but her smile continued to flex, almost like she was still laughing.
"S'what? M'I s'posed to..." She drew a breath, shuddered out a silent giggle, "M'I supposed say y'wrong?"
Her eye rolled back, and she quaked out a few more silent chuckles, fingers flexing where they'd fallen by her side.
"M'I s'posed t'agree with ya?"
Her eye rolled back, and her grin hitched up a little wider, "Y'got me all figured, yeah? Y'couldn't be anymore wrong, y'know?"
Her monitor had dwindled back to a quiet pinging and, no longer needing to talk over it, Aegle lowered her voice to something barely audible.
"Y'don't even know me. How would y'even know... Even know if I were tellin' ya the truth?"
She flicked at him with one hand, flapping her fingers weakly in his direction without lifting her arm from the bed.
"But y'gonna tell me all about me, innit ya? Cause y'got me allll figured, don'tcha?"
She put on a pained expression. It wasn't hard, it just meant letting her smile down a little bit.
"Oh, it hurts." She cooed, "Every day is pain. It's so hard. I just wanna die." She creaked out another shuddering laugh.
"S'gotta be that, y'know? M'just so sad of what I am, just gotta... gotta end it, yeah?"
Aegle eyed the gunslinger with that one hooded eye, "Yeah," She murmured, as if answering her own rhetorical question, "Yeah. That's gotta be it. 'Cause that's why I've hung on as long as I have."
Then, with shocking volume beside the softness of her voice, Aegle blew a spittle flinging raspberry, right at Roland's face.

24

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

personal text goes here

Roland Dallas

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 22, 2019 4:21:24 GMT

Quote

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 22, 2019 4:21:24 GMT

Roland was struck mute by the sudden gale of laughter that erupted from the bedridden girl, and simply stood there shaking his head in disbelief and disappointment as Aegle brought herself to the precipice of harm with the violence of her mirth. The utter lack of respect should not have surprised him, but he'd spent far too long behind a desk to remember what it was like to have to earn obedience in others. It damped down his anger at her, his frustration at being unable to find the right words to bridge the gap between them, but it seemed that Aegle had already decided that she wanted nothing to do with him long before he'd introduced himself, and he was past the point of giving enough of a damn to keep trying.

"This is all a great big joke to you? Isn't it?" He asked, shaking his head still as he turned back towards the door, determined to actually leave this time, "But you know who's not laughing. The ones who love you."

His spurs jingled as he strode to the door, poncho pulled tight and hat tugged low, until he seemed to cocoon himself in leathers. He paused on the threshold and glanced back into the room as he pulled the door open.

"Who do you think asked me to come check on you?" He asked as he stepped back into the light of the hallway, talking back into the room as he shut the door, "Check your scroll. I think you missed a few calls."

99

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

PLAYED BY Clockwork

personal text goes here

Aegle Vitus

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 22, 2019 4:55:15 GMT

Quote

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 22, 2019 4:55:15 GMT

Roland was shaking his head, his anger tamped down to a disbelieving simmer.
"This is all a great big joke to you? Isn't it?" He asked, but he didn't wait for her reply. Just turned on his heels and marched for the door, "But you know who's not laughing. The ones who love you."

She watched him leave and didn't say a thing, but her eye followed him all the way out. He caught hold of the door, no momentary pause this time, not baiting hesitation for her to call after him. This time, he was doing exactly what he appeared to be doing, he was leaving. He was leaving, and Aegle wasn't going to stop him. He paused in the door, head tipped and poncho swaying and, for the briefest moment, she thought he would turn back, that he really had been bluffing after all.
But no, it was just so he could snipe her one last time, and duck any counter she might have the strength to throw his way.
"Who do you think asked me to come check on you? "Check your scroll."
Then he turned away, closing the door behind him.
"I think you missed a few calls." drifted in, just before it clicked shut.

It seemed very quiet, all of a sudden, beside the thudding of her heart in her ears, and she was no longer sure why she'd wanted so badly for Roland to leave. She listened to the silence, felt it shift and shiver around her, felt it vibrate with distant lives being lived, distant voices being raise, and the unheard turning of the world.
The heart monitor pinged quietly, and Aegle's eye crawled off the door and over to it. She studied its glossy plastic face, its flashing eyes, and the small line if slender fingers that connected her to it.
"Y'gotta laugh," she told it, and no one else, "Y'gotta."
She turned her head, feeling the ache in her jaw that laughing had left behind, the ache in her chest it had caused, and looked out the window once more. The Huntsman's star had gone behind a cloud, but the nearer galaxy of Vale City still shone bright.
"Y'gotta laugh." Aegle said again, "Or else, what other option is there?"
Her scroll, laying forgotten by her hand, lit up and rumbled across the bed sheets. She looked down at it and thought about what Roland had said, just as he was storming out, just before he left her alone.
She wondered again why she'd tried so hard to make him leave. Her throat started feeling tight as she wondered, and she worked her fingers under the scroll. Cupping it in her hand, Aegle angled it up so she could read it.

It was Vulcan.

Her thumb curled in, hovered around the green button beneath his name, and then flinched towards the red one, ending the call. The tightness in her throat grew worse, her eyes squeezed shut, and her fingers tightened around the scroll until it hurt.
After a moment, her grip loosened and the scroll tumbled from her hand, no worse for it.

Aegle opened her eyes and looked once more to where she knew the Huntsman's star should be and, quietly, she started to laugh.

Last Edit: Mar 22, 2019 4:58:53 GMT by Aegle Vitus

99

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

PLAYED BY Clockwork

personal text goes here

Aegle Vitus

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 25, 2019 19:56:12 GMT

Quote

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 25, 2019 19:56:12 GMT

Aegle's eyes followed the myriad shapes in the courtyard below, chatting silently with one another as they moved between classes. It would have been near lunch time, though that was only a guess as she hadn't bothered to look at the clock recently, and a few small knots broke from the larger throng, headed for the cafeteria instead. She wondered, as she often did, what it must be like to be like them, and how much each of them was like her. Instinct told her that there couldn't be that big a difference from herself and her classmates, but that had seldom proven itself in practice. It didn't seem fruitful to enumerate the differences, but there were a few and that was certain. She wondered why that should be.
Why should she be so different from everyone else? She supposed that question took for granted that she was exceptionally different, that she was exceptional at all, and she wondered if maybe it only felt like she was different from everyone else.
She wished suddenly, that she should be able to peek into the heads of the random passersby and see the world the way they saw it, and think the way they thought, that she might juxtapose those experiences beside her own.
Aegle quirked a slim smile. Yeah, and maybe she could wish to be big and strong and healthy. She could wish to not be in a hospital bed, recovering from injuries that were, after a fashion, all self inflicted. As well wish for the moon to be whole and the world peaceful, as those things.

Still, Aegle couldn't help but wonder, what was it that set her apart, or at least made her feel so apart. What made her feel like she was on the outside, ever looking in, ever trying to make sense of what she saw. She looked down at the random passersby, and wondered why they were all here. Why had they come to Beacon? What were they looking for? In that question, she thought she might have alighted upon an answer to the one which had preceded it. A lot of the people moving around outside probably had plans for the future. They had come to Beacon with some expectation of becoming Huntsmen, and had staked the next decade or more of their lives to that decision. Why had she come here then?
Aegle's slim smile quirked the slightest bit wider. She knew why she had come to Beacon, and she had to imagine it was a motivation which was, if not unique, and least fairly distinct. She did not imagine many of the people walking around outside had devoted their youth to hunting the creatures of Grimm for the same reason she had.

Aegle gave those long worn motivations an experimental prod, just to see if they were still solid, or whether their foundations had shifted with recent events. She did not think they had, she did not think she felt any differently about her reasons for being in Vale, for wanting to be a Huntress.

Where would they be, these faces below, these random passersby? Where were they going, what would they do when they got there? Beyond the classes and the school day? Beyond the whole semester, come to that? What would they be when they graduated, what would they be when they didn't? She would have liked to know the answer, wished she could see where their lives might end up. If she knew that, and knew what had brought them there, then maybe she could begin to know if it had been worth it. Had their lives shaped up the way they'd expected, had their time, their effort, their pain, been worth the end?
A darker thought insinuated itself into her wonderings. It was the frank acknowledgement that they were all headed to the same place, no matter how they ended up getting there.
Aegle's face twitched. It wasn't funny. She knew it wasn't funny, but she felt laughter in the pit of her stomach. She wondered how they could try so had, how they could not try at all, how they could strive or languish, when they all had to know where they would end up. Each of them had to know where the path lead, where any path lead. Each one of them was following a star to their final destination, each acting like it wasn't the same star. The same red star.
She giggled quietly, gritted her teeth, and shook her head. Maybe she really was different, or maybe it was just circumstance that made her so aware of where that red star lead. Maybe she was just crazy. Normal people didn't laugh about that sort of thing.

"Dear?" A deep voice broke through the silence. Though its owner had attempted softness, his efforts only made the sudden noise that much more offensive. Aegle looked up from the window and across to the door. Nurse Meed was standing there, his block of a head poked through a crack in the door, leaning in from the corridor without.
"You have a visitor." The big man looked slightly uncomfortable, like he'd been put in a most awkward situation.
Aegle arched an eyebrow, "Who?"
"He says his name's Roland," Meed answered, "Says you know him."
Aegle's eyebrows lifted, and her grin reformed. She had not expected to see the gunslinger again. The laughter in her stomach bubbled up again, and Aegle sighed it out.
"Yeah," She said mildly, "S'pose I do."
Meed smiled, uncertain, and tipped his head. He stepped back from the door and swung it the rest of the way open.
"Try not to get her excited," She heard the nurse say, though not so loud that she had been meant to hear it. She giggled again, and wondered if the Gunslinger had snuck in the last time she'd seen him, or if his entrance had merely gone unnoticed. Not that it mattered. Her fingers crept across the blankets, coiled around her scroll, and hid it in her palm, for all the good that would do. If what he'd said last time were true, or what he'd implied, he would already know she hadn't answered any calls since the last time they'd spoken.

24

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

personal text goes here

Roland Dallas

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 26, 2019 6:15:23 GMT

Quote

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 26, 2019 6:15:23 GMT

"Thank you, kindly." The freshly shaven Roland said with a gracious nod towards the sturdy looking orderly, who paused to study the tall dark stranger with bemusement before tiptoeing back to his post. It looked like a rhino trying to balance on a thimble to the middle aged desperado.

Still not sure if he was in much of a hurry to subject himself to the acorn calf who had been all beer and skittles the night before, the old ranger hesitated a moment and tapped out the corncob pipe that had already been empty anyway on the Cuban heel of one of his pointed boots. He hoped the little snuff would be a bit more accommodating now that he wasn't visiting on the shanks of sunset, but not hard enough to make him believe it would be any different this time. He stretched his back, which was stiff from burning the breeze the day before, and sleeping like a greased elbow at his desk that night, and he picked at the spot where the rear clasp of his double breasted waistcoat seemed intent on making itself at home between the vertebrae of his lumbar. Then he was picking at the cuffs of his swallow tail jacket, which always felt too small first thing in the day and tended towards too big by the time the big bell tolled. He was about to start picking his nose too before he realized he'd pick his entire self apart if he didn't stop procrastinating, and go on in to face the music.

Those shiny new can-openners on his heels, the kind that his tailor absolutely loved, and Roland hated but not enough to offend the old seamster by refusing, chimed a musical tune with each strike of his heel as he lurched into bow-legged motion and passed into the room, their starburst teeth spinning merrily around the axles like greased pigs around a tiny silver may-pole. It was no wonder that the nurse didn't remember him from the night before, because he couldn't have looked anything less like the barrel boarder who had staggered in the prior evening.

Today, in spite of himself, Roland was stitched up tight in his Sunday's best. Masquerading as the cowpuncher he'd been twenty years ago had been acceptable for an a day or two, but today he needed to start in earnest to clean up the situation that Solomon had kicked into a cocked hat, and it wouldn't have done at all to show up looking like a sentient scarecrow. In hindsight he probably shouldn't even have appeared to Aegle in such a sorry state, but he'd come straight to the infirmary even before checking into the local inn, and had thought that the road worn jackaroo that she surely took him for was a more honest representation of the man he was in his head.

Roland's official uniform was a three piece white and grey suit, a grey swallow tailed jacket over a twin breasted waistcoat of white, and grey parade pants, punctuated at top and bottom by a string-tie in the red of his old ranger unit, and a pair of shiny black cowboy boots respectively. Of course there was also the gawdy golden spurs that stuck cock-sure out of the back of his boots. Around his waist was a wide belt of black leather that twinkled with dozens of brass cylinders across it's face, nestled in little loops of leather like metal sleepers tucked into bed. At either side of the belt was sagged a pair of truly huge barking-irons, the sandal wood grips of which poking out of the holsters like groundhogs half in the barrow. As he drew near the bed-side he laid his left hand thoughtlessly upon the butt of one of the pistols, and stroked the wood that had been polished smooth by years of familiarity with that very palm, in a fashion that was both absent-minded and affectionate, whilst cocking his hips as if the caress was enough to set off the delicate balance of his belt enough to need compensating.

"Miss Vitus." He said simply to her, glossing right over the complete slick-up he seemed to have had since last they spoke, as he reached up and pinched with the forefinger and thumb of his un-engaged hand, the brim of his broad brimmed grey hat , which was unsurprisingly casting a deep shadow across his blue-blaze eyes, "Mind if I sit a spell? Or are you inclined to tell me to scuff off again?"

99

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

PLAYED BY Clockwork

personal text goes here

Aegle Vitus

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Mar 28, 2019 15:32:57 GMT

Quote

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 28, 2019 15:32:57 GMT

The man who stepped around Nurse Meed and sidled into the room was not the same one Aegle's rudeness had seen out the night before. He was the same build, sure, and about the same height, and had a very similar face, as well as the same proclivity for concealing that face behind the brim of his hat, but it couldn't have been the same man. Where the Roland of the previous evening had been scruffy and wrung out, the last strip of leather on a tired tanning line, this man was all done up like he had something really important to do. She'd seen the uniform, and it was a uniform -If there was one thing growing up with Atlesian television for her primary mode of entertainment had ensured, it was that Aegle could spot military parade dress from orbit- somewhere before, but she was unable to where she'd seen it. It was all gray, signifying membership to the true Atlesian military, and not one of the hundreds of private military contractors that plied their mercenary trades within Mantle's borders, and it was fancy, signifying some high rank in the organization. She hesitated to believe it, but it might have even been a general's braid and chevron that he was carrying about.
Aegle shook her head weakly at the thought, dismissing it. He was far too young to be a general. General was about as close to god-hood as an Atlesian CO could get, and they were almost universally stuffy old men with steel bars for backbones. Roland didn't have that air about him, that weight of stride, that arrogance of stature. He was arrogant, Aegle had seen a glimpse of it the night before, but not in the way a General would have been.

Aegle squinted at his chevrons, trying to decipher them from her rather limited, for an Atlesian, knowledge of military iconography. Was the number of stars important? Could he have been some lesser rank? Maybe a Brigadier or Major General?
The man who called himself Roland stopped before her bed, and it was only then that Aegle realized how strange it was that he'd not given a rank the previous night, or that he'd apparently not given Meed a rank to introduce him by. Leaving out your rank was like forgetting the first three letters of your name. It wasn't something serving officer would do. Maybe he wasn't serving, though his uniform wasn't exactly motheaten in a way that would suggest it had spent the last few years stuffed into a closet.
"Miss Vitus." Roland said, touching the brim of his hand with the hand that wasn't lovingly stroking one of the impossibly huge sixshooters hanging off his hips. The hat was an odd accessory. Colored gray with white banding, to match the bleak colorscheme the Military preferred, it was unlike the high cap or flat tops most servicemen wore.
Roland paused, listening to her hesitation without apparent impatience, and lowered his hand comfortably down to his belt, where it resumed polishing the sandlewood grip of his other massive gun.
He did this thing, this ever so slight tip of his head which was not enough to reveal his eyes but was enough to let her know he was looking at her, waited a moment more, then asked, "Mind if I sit a spell? Or are you inclined to tell me to scuff off again?"

A tinge of embarrassment fluttered through Aegle, as a lifetime in Mantle roused in her the sudden need to defer to the officer standing before her. She hesitated, almost nodded on sheer reflex, almost gestured for him to take the seat beside her bed, only to stomp savagely down on the impulse before it could bare fruit. She wasn't in Atlas, and she wasn't a part of the Military. She didn't owe Roland a thing.
"I dunno. If I say I am, are y'gonna make for the door without any intent on walkin' through it?"
She proffered a small smile. She'd said it gently enough, more of a curious inquiry than an accusation, then drew a deep breath through her nose, or deep as she could handle, and twitched her fingers at the chair he'd asked for, "S'the only one I got for ya. I'd get up and get ya better'n, but I'm not allowed to get out'a bed. M'not allowed any excitement, y'know?"
She wanted to avert her eyes, to show him some modicum of respect, but instead kept her eyes fastened upon him, watching for any glimpse of his eyes. His continued refusal to meet her gaze still rankled, and that squashed any need to be a good civilian in his presence.
"Y'a Ranger, innit'ya?" She asked, watching him take the only available seat. It was a guess, but an educated one, one dug out of some deeper vein of rememberance she'd yet to fully unearth. More and more, she thought she recognized him, or a man very much like him. She drew her scroll closer in against her hip, hiding it, while the fingers on her other hand tapped at the blankets in a slow, repeated rhythm. She considered what she wanted to say, what she aught to say, and what she was expected to say. She was supposed to be polite, be friendly without cloying, attentive without being sycophantic. She was expected to walk the tight rope every Atlesian too poor to be above the Military must walk when interacting with an officer of that fine institution. She remembered her conversation with the Commander, the casual courtesy he'd shown, his unspoken permission for her to act outside of that constrictive civilian role. Then she wondered if that was not why Roland had not come in uniform the previous night, if that might be why he'd not given his rank this morning.
That thought roused another tinge of chagrin inside her, and this time not wholly as the result of a martial upbringing. For a man to eschew his rank was to give up a part of himself, to hide something he'd fought for. It was an, as far as Aegle understood, intrinsic part of his identity. She felt faintly ashamed of her behavior and her disrespect, not because things like manners and deference were expected of her, a civilian, in a serviceman's presence, but because Roland might have been more than she'd given him credit for on his first appearance. Not in the way a general was somehow 'more' than a colonel, but in the way what she'd thought he was did not fully encompass who he actually was.

Should she apologize? Aegle tried the idea on, and found it to be far to constrictive for her liking. She didn't want to have to deal with the awkward back and forth that must accompany an apology, had no interest in participating in the socially acceptable process of saying sorry. Most of all, she didn't want to hear any dismissal from Roland, which might have been worse than him just flat out refusing the apology altogether. She'd done what she had done, and words could not be taken back; A punch could not be unthrown.
"I guess I made some assumptions, yeah?" She said finally, as close to an apology as she was willing to get at present, "'Fore I make anymore, maybe y'oughta tell me straight out why y'here, y'know?" He'd already partly told her, in his passing snipe the previous night, but she wanted him to say it in full, so they could both move beyond it.

24

posts

POINTS

APP

PLOT

PLAYED BY OOC NAME

personal text goes here

Roland Dallas

IS OFFLINE

Under the Sky Apr 1, 2019 2:14:54 GMT

Quote

Post by Roland Dallas on Apr 1, 2019 2:14:54 GMT

The moment of hesitation that his new appearance inflicted up the bedridden filly was subtle, but not so subtle that Rolland missed it. It was exactly why he'd come in his casual digs on the prior encounter, because the taffy that folks tended to stretch for him when they saw his uniform and his "Official" rank, tasted somewhat bitter and artificial. She could not hide how her green eyes danced across his crupper's and braid like a beetle on a skillet, and it gave the old rustler an absurd notion to fiddle somewhat, not unlike if her gaze truly were an riled up insect set loose in his threads. He worried briefly that she would try to apologize, and subject the pair of them to a period of useless jawing about how it was "Truly my fault," and, "No I insist it was mine".

"I dunno. If I say I am, are y'gonna make for the door without any intent on walkin' through it?"

Roland was ashamed to admit to himself just how much that retort stung. Regardless of how gentle the delivery, it raised his bristles some', not in the least because he had in fact up and moseyed on out after chewing on his fill of Aegle's guff. The smile she shot at him seemed a touch rueful, and gave away that she had seen through his little jig, but t'were that the case, then he most surely had her measure too, because it was clear that she didn't actually want him to skidaddle, and likely had not the night before either. He felt a tad lousy about walking out on the sickly whomper-jaw, and subjecting her to sleep in the same lonesome bed she'd done up for herself.

He was already situating his rump before Aegle had gestured towards the only other seat in the whole room. He grabbed the back of the jaw by the skull, and with a flick of his wrist his spun it about so that the were he to sit in the roost correctly, he'd be facing away from her. With a stiffness brought on by the tailored suit, he sat, straddling the spine of the chair and crossed his arms across the crown. In what seemed a pathological need to keep his blue-jay eyes in the shade, he bowed his head to cast all but his lips in the shade of his bonnet. Getting settled in was as hard as a bag of nails, but with enough imagination he could picture himself sitting in the saddle of a somewhat runty wooden horse, and it was enough to at least pretend at comfort.

Almost on cue, ""Y'a Ranger, innit'ya?"" Aegle asked in that pitched croak that passed for a voice, and Roland gave a grunt and a shrug, as if to say "Not fer a long time", despite being honestly impressed by the guess. It didn't strike him as the sort of straw that could be grasped by the simpleton most seemed to consider the girl to be. Given the lofty potential's to which all her kin had aspired, the idea that that same barn would turn out some lunkhead foal was foolish. In any case, she was certainly a spirited breed, and no mistake about it.

"I guess I made some assumptions, yeah? Fore I make anymore, maybe y'oughta tell me straight out why y'here, y'know?"

That seemed dangerously near to an apology, and Roland gave a dismissive way in reply.

"I done told you already." He replied gruffly, in a manner that made his voice seem like steam escaping from the smokestack of his hat, before wagging a finger at her "You were just too occupied feeling sorry for yourself that you didn't listen."

He sighed, more steam escaping, and cocked his head slightly, peering at her from beneath the brim of his bonnet like a sleepy toad in the reeds.

"I know your family. I practically raised your brothers. Stubborn as mules the lot of them, but smart as whips too. Some of the finest students I ever had. You probably don't remember, but we met once before when Vulcan graduated, you were just a sprout though so I can't hold it against you." He explained, his tone sounding somewhat fond, and even proud "I'd hoped to raise you as well some day. But you got a bee in your bonnet and scuttled on off to Beacon instead, and then picked a fight with the meanest deuce to ever ride through this town. Then you plain refuse to send so much as a smoke signal back to your folks, and near as I can tell your fingers ain't broke. So who do you reckon gave me a tearful earful as I am making ready to come on out to Vytal for the festival?"

Discord

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 15, 2019 21:26:40 GMT

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 16, 2019 2:02:31 GMT

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 16, 2019 4:58:48 GMT

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 16, 2019 6:02:13 GMT

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 17, 2019 17:59:46 GMT

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 18, 2019 2:27:28 GMT

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 19, 2019 0:28:32 GMT

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 22, 2019 2:32:45 GMT

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 22, 2019 3:47:39 GMT

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 22, 2019 4:21:24 GMT

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 22, 2019 4:55:15 GMT

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 25, 2019 19:56:12 GMT

Post by Roland Dallas on Mar 26, 2019 6:15:23 GMT

Post by Aegle Vitus on Mar 28, 2019 15:32:57 GMT

Post by Roland Dallas on Apr 1, 2019 2:14:54 GMT

Quick Reply