romund + siobhan // best draugrdad

[ghostsinthefog]

Who: Romund and Siobhan
Where: The Myron house!
When: the night of August 29th, after this post (unless Ginga corrects me. XD)
Rating/Warning: G, probably.

It would be, he realized, his first visitor since his death. It made him strangely nervous. He had never especially cared what others thought of him or his home; it remained clean because the maids had cleaned it, not because he desired to make a particular impression. As it was now, his home was a museum of cobwebs. He would have to hire new maids, maids who were not frightened of him or the ghost of his daughter that wandered his halls. The Others would not come to a dark home with no light or warmth.

Romund walked the entrance hall with a candle, lighting each sconce with care before he moved on to the next. It was a slow process; he could no longer move quickly with his size and weight, and there was a soft rumble through the marble floor whenever he walked. What would this young woman look like? He hadn't thought to warn her not to come to him as an animal; he worried that his condition might affect her. Just the previous morning a dog had wandered onto his property and gone mad; he'd found it howling and throwing itself against the gate. It had been a piteous sight, and he'd snapped its neck and tossed the body in a pit beneath a willow tree at the rear of his estate.

He lighted the last sconce and blew out the candle he held. The entrance hall was only a shadow of what it had been; dark, lit with only a dim orange glow. Romund gave a heavy sigh and waited.

Fortunately for him, Romund would not have to worry about Siobhan appearing as anything other than a human. Apparently, it was considered very rude to not be human when meeting people! Humans, she thought as she stormed angrily through Tyrol, had very ridiculous rules that she couldn't quite comprehend. Why shouldn't you be in the form you were most comfortable with when meeting new people? Why should she have to suffer being human and without fur just to please some ridiculous human sensibilities? She refused to admit it was a bit better than being tripped on every time she went out, either. She was hardly about to give the humans the satisfaction of being right about something, even if she did usually find them amusing.

The moment she found the iron gates of his estate, however, she immediately perked up. She had to remember why she was here. She was here to meet her first draugr, after all! The best thing ever! And she could finally tell Lorelei all about one because she would know now, finally! She'd want to know, wouldn't she? Though, apparently, she realized as she pushed open the gate and made her way to the front door, when one was dead, no one bothered to tend to one's home. Didn't he have children? Or other people who might move in after he was gone? The Evandros' house looked better than this... and a bit bigger.

Frowning, Siobhan approached the front door and, unsure what else to do, knocked on it, immediately pulling her hand away to give herself a quick once-over. Properly clothed? Check. Hair...? Presentable, she thought as she ran a hand through it. Anything else, well, the draugr would just have to deal. She wasn't used to being human.

He looked at the door and made no move to answer it. A few seconds passed before he realized something absurd: he had never before answered his own door. Alone, undead, in an empty house, he'd instinctually expected a servant to get it. If Romund had had a sense of humour he might've considered it so ridiculous it was funny, but instead he felt only a distinct sadness.

He took slow, heavy steps to the door and pulled it open. The young woman that greeted him looked... approximately as he'd expected, though older. By her eager questions, he'd expected a child. It was a relief; he wasn't sure he was ready to deal with a girl child just yet. "Siobhan," he rumbled with a faint, solemn frown, and opened the door wider to let her in. "You did not have trouble finding the house, I hope." Each word was slow and enunciated, and after he'd finished he paused and looked at her expectantly.

Anything she might have said once the door was open died in her throat as it slowly opened to reveal the most impossibly tall man she had ever seen in her entire life. She had to crane her neck considerably just to look at his face! No human was that big, she was almost sure of it! Was he even real? Did death do this to people?

"Not at all!" she assured him as she slipped around him and into the hall. She really couldn't get over just how big he was! There were so many things to ask and have answered the more she looked at him, and yet, the most ridiculous one seemed to escape first: "You are real, aren't you?" No comment about the state of the hall or anything of that nature, just... if he was real. It sounded ridiculous even to her now, but it was a bit too late to take the question back.

He blinked. "I am." Real? Did he not seem so? He peered down at her with a frown. Was it his size?

Romund held a hand out for inspection, turning it palm up, then down again. "I am... quite real." After a moment he cleared his throat. "My home has fallen into disrepair in my... absence. I apologize for its condition." It seemed important now that a guest stood in front of him, even if she'd given barely a glance to her surroundings. He'd lit a fire in one of the sitting rooms, and it was there that he motioned for her to go with him.

The palm was an invitation and she couldn't help but poke at it hesitantly with a finger. His hand felt real enough, but it was so strange! Humans weren't that big, at least none of the ones that she had ever seen.

"Oh, that's alright. I don't really care," she insisted, waving her hand a little bit. A place was just a place, after all, and she didn't particularly care about the state of the place when here she was staring at an impossibly huge human being. Admittedly, a dead human being, but he had been human at one point! Did that mean humans could turn into Others? Was it just after their deaths or could they be alive and turn into them? "I'm more interested in you, anyway."

The idea of being an object of interest was uncomfortable to Romund, but he nodded. She had come to ask him questions, after all. Even if they were concerning him, he would answer them. It was her due. He'd been answering so many questions lately... and asking them, too. It did not tire him - he doubted anything could tire him anymore - but he wondered if he was very good at it. He had always been much better at listening than speaking. If only he still had Sarah to guide him...

The sitting room was dark and still when they entered, and he motioned for her to sit - there was an array of armchairs and sofas - before he sat himself. It was a slow process, a cautious process; the first time he'd tried to take a chair after his reanimation the legs had buckled under his weight. The chair he took now was thickly made, with stout legs low to the ground. It creaked when he sat, but did not break. "What would you like to know, Siobhan?" Romund said, expression solemn but curious. He'd long been in the habit of addressing everyone - people he barely knew and relatives alike - by their first name. Addressing someone by title had always seemed rude, to him. Over-distant. But then, he'd never been a very good aristocrat.

The problem with Romund being this big meant it was a bit difficult to catch up to him. He walked slowly, but she still had to take several steps to match one of his, and she felt as though she was running after him all the way to the sitting room. (Humans had such strange names for things. Why did they need to name rooms at all?) Upon arriving, she immediately laid claim to one of the sofas, though she perched more on the arm of it than she did the actual seat portion.

"You're funny, aren't you?" she asked, chuckling. "The other noble folks I've come across usually insist on usin' the titles when talkin' to other people. You don't seem to." Not that she had one to use, and, come to think of it, the Evandros sisters didn't seem to do it, either, but she had only ever heard them talking to themselves and not about any of the other noble houses. "You talk to us like we're people. It's kind of nice not bein' yelled at."

Funny was not on the list of things Romund was usually called. He appeared concerned rather than amused; something he'd said had been misconstrued if she found him 'funny'. When she continued, his mouth parted in understanding, and he nodded.

"Titles are... polite," he said after a thoughtful pause. "It is natural for most to use them. You are unusual to think otherwise." Unusual, but welcome. "I'm glad it does not offend you. Rank does not seem to... matter," his voice fell heavily on the word, "To our kind." And why should they? Some had been around for hundreds, thousands of years. It was dizzying to think of. He had that potential, but he wondered if he would be happy living for so long.

Her? Unusual? That was a new one. She had to laugh a little at that as she leaned back, resting one hand on the back of the sofa for support. "Don't have a title to use, and I don't think anybody would use it even if I did. To some of them, we're less than people." Tyrol, she decided, was nothing like back home. Back home, they respected creatures like her, if only because the humans were too scared to do anything other than that. "Are all humans like that here?"

He didn't feel himself qualified to answer the question, but he frowned, considering it carefully before he answered. "I cannot speak to every human in Balfour. Some are. Some are not." He'd been human himself not long ago. It was still surprising, and very reassuring, that the Others in Tyrol had accepted his voice so easily. He'd expected resistance, protest that he'd been an Other for mere months, what right did he have to tell them their business? But none had voiced anything close. Very reassuring.

"They were not so where you are from?" he asked, reclining slowly and stretching his arms along the armrests.

That disappointed her, really. The humans in the Golden Hour seemed just fine around the various Others roaming around, at least. They provided a place to stay, at least, but it was in exchange for being poked at and prodded at and who knew what else? But everybody else, the people in the Citadel especially, seemed to fear them and she didn't understand why. Not all of them were dangerous!

"Most of us are respected back home." Well, if they were one of the aos sí, anyway. Everything else was pretty much terrifying to them, now that she thought about it. Humans were silly. "I could play with 'em and they wouldn't mind." They didn't really have a choice, of course, but that wasn't the point. Púcas got lonely from time to time, after all! Was it so wrong to take a random person for a ride every now and then? It wasn't like she hurt them. They were still alive when she'd leave them, after all! And sometimes they even brought people away from dangerous things. "Some of them get mad, but, really, I'm a nice one! At least I'm not a kelpie. They'd take you for a ride and then eat you and then where would you be?"

Romund nodded. "It is because we are all... foreign," he said slowly, "That we are not respected here. Balfour has little native folklore." A strange truth, but one he couldn't deny. He'd been born and raised in Tyrol, and the only stories he'd heard had been from other countries, other backgrounds.

"You came from Ireland?" He was grateful, above all else, that he'd retained everything he'd known from before he'd died. The nights he'd spent listening to the Magus' lectures with Sarah, or reading to Anja, had ingrained every myth and piece of folklore in his mind. Puca, he recalled, were from Ireland. Goblins, by the standards of most, but the young woman in front of him did not fit the traditional image of a goblin.

It seemed silly to her for a country this big to not have any folklore of its own. Surely a place like this would have some sort of native folklore or strange creatures that only came from here and nowhere else, but no. Instead, she heard stories from other places, some of them with glaring inconsistencies, and it seemed strange to her.

At the mention of her native country, however, she perked up a bit. Most everyone in Tyrol knew where Ireland was, at least, but very few of them seemed to make the connection between the country and what she was. She would have thought her supposed accent was a dead giveaway, but, then again, apparently not everybody was as smart as Romund was. "I did! You know what I am, then?" That was impressive. If she were to tell someone in the Golden Hour what she was, most of them would give her blank looks, but he knew!

For the first time he gave a brief smile. "I do. My late wife was passionate about mythology. Would that she... that she had lived to see it come alive around her." Romund frowned, distinctly uncomfortable, before he continued on to change the subject.

"Belief brought you here, I expect." There was a note of sympathy in his voice; he wondered how many had been drawn away from their homes, their places of worship or safety, to follow the trail of Belief to Tyrol. The Magus was not an evil man, but he was still one of few that could make Romund grit his teeth. He cared not a fraction about what damage he'd caused, nor did he see it as damage at all...

She would have commented about his apparently dead wife, but from the look on the other man's face, it looked like he didn't want to talk about it. If there was one thing Siobhan had learned since she had come here, it was best to just leave things like that alone so you didn't upset anybody else. Thus, she ignored it and moved on to the next topic.

Belief? She had heard that word thrown around the Hour quite a bit, but she still wasn't quite certain what it was. It certainly sounded important, anyway. "Maybe? I don't know." She frowned as she slid back onto the the sofa, her legs still draped over the arm. "One day I was just off hoppin' around Ireland and then the next thing I know, I felt like I was bein' tugged here. Never felt anythin' like that before. I thought it was worth checkin' out."

He nodded again, slow and thoughtful. He didn't have firsthand knowledge of what the pull Siobhan described felt like. Perhaps if he journeyed beyond Tyrol's walls he would notice it, but he was not able to stray far from his grave.

"Tell me," he said with his customary frown, "How you feel about your experience here." From his glimpses of life through the ledgers, he felt what he'd written that day was both accurate and necessary, but he had no direct source through which to view it. Siobhan's opinion could be very valuable in that respect. He hoped to have more of the Others he'd spoken to visit him; he wanted very much to hear their stories, to help them. It was their due.

"People here are weird," she said without any hesitation whatsoever as she turned her head to look at him. "Some of the folks at the Hour yell a lot, and a couple of them yelled because they thought I'd eat some of their plants." One of them -- Rowan, wasn't it? -- had flailed a bit when she had first met him. It had been a bit hysterical. "I was just lookin' at 'em. And there's this one woman in their library? She keeps lookin' at me like she wants to eat me every time I go in there as a rabbit." She frowned a little. "Can't say I'd complain, though. A couple of folks have been really nice and even gave me a ledger and this dress. Besides, the folks here are more fun to watch than the ones in Ireland."

That was not especially helpful, but Romund nodded again. It wouldn't do to discourage her; she had, after all, answered his question and answered it honestly. That she stayed at the Hour was not a surprise. For most, it was the only option. Few came to Tyrol with money and even fewer with experience in dealing regularly, calmly, with humans. However harmless Siobhan seemed to him, most humans would be wary of her at the least, hostile at most...

"Do you feel safe?" Perhaps, Romund considered, he should go straigh to the point. "Do you believe what I wrote, what I have started, that it will help you?"

"Now I do." Really, Romund should see some of the folks at the Hour. All of them said they were fine with the Others that wandered around, but given how many people had yelled at her for stupid things or the people who gave a talking rabbit odd looks and the things she had heard about the werewolves, she wasn't completely sure. The Evandros girls seemed innocent enough and more than willing to help her if they needed to, but Lorelei was too innocent for her own good, letting something like Katsuo hide under her bed like that. "I might've felt safe at the Hour, but I think their Magus thinks it's just a big game or somethin'. All this is gonna come back and bite 'im someday."

Romund gave a low rumble in his throat of acknowledgement. He expected she was right; the Magus' carelessness would eventually be his downfall. By the time he realized that the game he was playing had consequences, it would be far too late. Romund only worried that that moment would come for all of them if something wasn't done. The Others could not fall with the Hour.

"I hope we will all be... stable," he said slowly, "When that time comes. That the Magus will pay for his crimes. And the rest of us will not." What would Sarah think of what he'd done? She would approve, he imagined. Be proud of him. "If there is anything at all you need, Siobhan," he rumbled, "Please do not hesitate to come here, to ask."

"Long as we've got someone like you lookin' out for us, I think we'll do all right for ourselves." She grinned at him as she finally swung her legs around so she could sit properly on the sofa. "The Hour's good and all, but I don't think they'll ever see as anythin' other than 'things'." The man she was currently looking at didn't, she was almost certain of it, even before his death. She had seen fit to ask around a bit before she had come here, and even though the party he had thrown ages before she had come here had been the end of him, the fact that Others had been invited at all showed he had supported them even then. It was definitely nice to know.

That was good to hear. Romund gave her another small smile - aware, as always, how unintentionally sinister it made him look - and leaned forward slightly in his chair. It creaked and groaned. "I hope you are right," he said gravely. She certainly was about the hour; 'things' was the nicest term that he expected applied to how the Hour's Adepts and Magisters felt about the Others in their halls. They did not hate them, no, did not harm them, but in the end they were just interesting test subjects. Their own triumph, not sympathetic creatures that had lost their homes for their cause.

"If you would, tell the others that you have seen me. Encourage them to do the same. There is only so much... reassurance I can give. In writing." It would be a challenge for him, he thought with a faint frown. He had never been a leader, only a listener.

"Of course I will. Least they'd know it's actually you. Just... bigger, yeah?" It was so strange whenever it occurred to her that the man sitting in that chair was actually dead at one time. Did people know how he had died? How had he even been brought back? Would he tell her if she asked? Probably not. He might not even know.

"I probably talked your ear off enough, though." She could show herself out if he decided to kick her out, but... "Can I come back? Maybe bring someone with me?" Lorelei would want to meet him, wouldn't she? She'd have to ask.

"Of course. But," he hesitated, frowning again, "Be sure to come after dusk. I am not well in daylight." 'Not well'. He had stared at his own reflection for near an hour in the mirror that first morning he'd woken. Sunken eyed, decaying, pale. He'd watched a worm thread its way through a hole in his shoulder. It would not assure anyone to see him in that condition.

"Yes," he agreed with a small, sad smile. "Bigger."

After dusk? Did that mean dragur were a bit like the vampires she had read about where they could only walk around when the sun was down? She hadn't known that! "I'll remember that."

The sad smile was a bit curious to her as she shifted to her feet. Was he sad he was technically dead or was it something else? Still, it wouldn't do to just leave him looking like that. Lorelei would probably get upset with her if she knew, and then Siobhan wouldn't have anywhere outside the Hour to hide for a bit... Still, she had never been good at this whole 'comforting' thing, although she did her best to give him a little reassuring smile. "Hey, don't look like that. You're doin' a good thing, yeah? 'sides, it's not like you're that much different."

He was that much different, but, unwilling to dismay her, Romund simply nodded. Siobhan was a kind young woman, it seemed, though a bit headstrong and childlike. That she would want to reassure him was certainly a good sign. He was not so frightening as to be unable to gain trust.

"I am fine, Siobhan," he rumbled with as much of a smile - tight-lipped, slightly uncomfortable - as he could muster. "Thank you." Slowly, he rose from his chair. It creaked and groaned until he was on his feet, and the draugr looked down at her solemnly. "Thank you for visiting, as well. It is very quiet here." Even Anja was totally silent; he never noticed her until she was beside him, a softly glowing outline of a child. A pause, and Romund added, "I look forward to seeing you again."

Perhaps if Siobhan had been someone who had known him prior to his death, she might have seen him as different as he believed himself to be. As it was, she only had stories about Romund to go on, and, to her, apart from his height and his apparent return from the dead, he seemed like the same exact man she had heard about. Why should he be sad, then, if he wasn't different at all?

She frowned a little at the chair creaking, and she wondered briefly if he had broken any chairs since he returned. Come to think of it, she was a little surprised he had fit in the chair he had settled in in the first place. "Oh, I'll be back," she assured him. "I'll see who else I can round up for next time."