Who: James Franco & Ermesinda
When: Saturday night.
Where: The ball!
Ratings and Warnings: G with some teenage angst.
The problem, Bryke reflected as he picked cat hairs off of his costume, was that his cats seemed to be of the belief that they owned him in his entirety and as such they could do whatever they liked with his person and clothes. Only yesterday he'd woken up to two of them fighting for space on his head and neck and it looked like the other three had decided to make themselves comfortable on his costume. Not a big issue, though people he looked at seemed to be turning their noses up at him and his hairy costume. Their losses! He was a wonderful dancer.
Taking a glass of wine with a smile, he shuffled over to the side of the dance floor, smiling at a girl near him. "Nice party, isn't it?"
Ermesinda looked over at the man talking, gray eyes wary. Was he talking to her? Her lips pinched, and she hesitated, drawing in a short breath before she let it out in a sigh. "Is nice," she agreed listlessly.
It wasn't. There were far too many people and everything, she suspected, was functioning on a different level than she was. The nobles had their own rules, etiquette, and already she'd drawn stares for the way she gathered up her skirts when she walked. One woman had gasped and clutched at her chest when she'd caught sight of Ermesinda's bare feet. The witch looked over at the man again, looking him over critically. "You are... a knight?"
"I'm a knight," he nodded with a smile. "But I came as a suit of armour. A cat hair covered suit of armour," he held out an arm so she could see. "What did you come as?"
A grump? He raised his eyebrows good naturedly. Weren't girls supposed to enjoy parties? He looked around the room, waving a hand at a woman who'd refused him a dance before. She turned away and he smiled a little wider. "Truth be told, it's a little stuffy, don't you think? the nobles here all have their heads stuffed up their asses."
Was she a noble? Didn't look like it. Bryke swallowed a mouthful of wine, savouring the taste. "Maybe I'm wrong."
She plucked a cat hair from his arm and sniffed it. "An apple," she replied flatly. The first man to ask her had taken her off-guard. She hadn't remembered she had to go as something. She'd screeched at him for being impolite and stalked off, red-faced. She wondered where he was now.
Ermesinda looked up when Bryke continued, expression softening the more he said. He wasn't a noble either? "You are right," she said with a soft smile, her first of the evening. "Very much. All of them. They are very angry..." Looking down, she gathered up her skirts and stuck out one of her bare, dirty feet, toes wiggling. "They are very angry about this." She sounded proud, and she was. The knight thought they were stuffy too. They could show them together.
Why was she sniffing cat hair? Bryke stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, pressing it against his upper lip. Best not to ask. "I think you make a lovely apple," everyone liked compliments. They helped to grease social interaction to the point where they were almost indispensable for him.
Bryke eyed her bare feet for a second before bringing his eyes back up to meet her face. Asking if she'd forgotten her shoes would be rude - she certainly didn't think she had. "I swear, I think sometimes their rules are stuffed further up their asses than their heads. What's wrong with bare feet? It's not their problem if you're wearing shoes or not," he took another sip of his wine, then winked at her. "They're a bunch of idiots."
The wink put her back on her guard. She didn't like it when men winked or leered at her, or told her she was pretty. It wasn't flattering to Ermesinda, it was threatening. The witch looked down and let her skirts fall back, toes curling beneath the heavy curtain of her gown. "Mm." Probably, this man was going to ask her to dance. She looked up again, eyes searching the crowd for anyone she recognized. The Hour was scattered among every corner of the room and unrecognizable besides. Why had she agreed to come here?
After a moment her eyes narrowed, and she looked over at Bryke suspiciously. "If you hate the nobles, why are you a knight?"
Bryke shrugged. "Just my luck, I guess."
Well, that wasn't entirely true. He shrugged, rolling his shoulders beneath his costume. "My mother was married to a lord, but I'm not his son. I got sent to squire with a family who owed him a favour almost as soon as I could lift a sword."
That wasn't true either - not entirely. "So I left."
"A bastard?" Such things didn't matter to her, but she knew they did to other people. Titles and slurs meant nothing to witches. Her mothers had taught her that. Ermesinda stared out at the dance floor glumly. They'd been wrong. Titles mattered, because they meant how much people could hurt you.
She looked back to the knight with pursed lips. "Who do you serve? If you are left."
"My brothers, I suppose," they weren't too bad. He had the liberty of time and distance to view them as not too bad - were he in the same country as they were he'd probably leave again. "Whoever needs it, otherwise. What about you?" He sipped more of his wine, then gestured at the nobility. "You don't work for one of these people do you?"
His brothers? That wasn't a bad cause, depending on what sort of people his brothers were. Family was... worth serving.
At his question her eyes widened. "No!" Ermesinda said loudly, horror plain on her face. Did she look like a servant? She served no one. Flushed, she hugged her arms to her chest and frowned down at the hem of her dress. "I am... from the Hour. I did not want to come."
"Oh," Bryke raised his eyebrows. An Other? She didn't look like a monster, but then the lack of shoes, the misanthropy... Bryke smiled, raising his glass to his lips again and looking away, over the crowds. Others were little girls! How odd. Perhaps there were more like her here? But all of the other girls he'd seen had been normal. "Why did you come?"
"Amelia made me," she said thinly. It'd almost seemed appealing back at the Hour. She wasn't much for girlish things, for dresses and makeup and dances, but Amelia was nothing if not persistent and by the end Ermesinda had almost found the idea alluring. Now, faced with all of it in one snobby package, she hated it and wished she was home.
Her head turned sharply when she caught sight of a man in a priest's robes running after a gaggle of children, and Ermesinda backed into Bryke in a half-stumble. Was that--? Her heart was thudding in her chest, but when she saw the man's face her shoulders slowly began to ease. He looked kindly, and his coloring was all wrong... A Citadel priest. Not hers. Swallowing, Ermesinda glanced to Bryke with a nervous twitch of a frown and edged away again. "Sorry."
Bryke put out his free hand to steady her automatically, lifting it and holding it in the air when she moved away. He looked around, trying to spot the reason for her distress. An old priest? His eyebrows raised so high up they could have become part of his hairline. "I find the Citadel's up-tightness fairly frightening myself," he told her, trying to reassure her, hoping to ease the embarrassment of backing into him. "Though I find myself more inclined to breaking in to the Citadel and tickling The Occia to see if that lightens the mood rather than running from them."
She looked back at him sharply. Tickling the Occia? What kind of fool would do that? "You would die," she said with a soft huff, hugging her chest again. She wanted to sit, or lie down, or leave. Where was Amelia? Would she be angry if she left early? Ermesinda chewed at her lip.
"Why did you come?" she asked after a moment, frowning at the knight again. He had a very smug face, she thought. She didn't like it, even if he was nice.
"I would give my life for the honour of making the people laugh," he told her, mouth sliding into a smirk as he sipped his drink. It might be dangerous to speak this way - after all, there were members of the Citadel here - but what would they do here when there were so many Others here for them to annoy? Rig up a contraption that dropped rocks on his head whenever he spoke out of turn about them?
Bryke shrugged. "I like dancing." Simple enough answer. He watched her movements carefully for a few moments, finishing his wine and placing the empty glass onto the tray of a passing servant. "If you're unhappy here, why not just leave?" She'd said she was at the Hour, hadn't she? "And if you're an Other, why not just curse the whole lot of these nobles and get out of here?"
Curse them? Ermesinda looked around, then shook her head, her long hair shaking with it. "It is too much to curse all--" The witch's mouth snapped shut suddenly, and she whirled on Bryke with wide eyes. "Do not trick me!" she hissed, slapping her open palm against his breastplate before she started off, skirts in hand.
A trick? In that case it would have had to be a very simple one. Bryke made sure her back was to him completely before he covered his mouth and allowed himself a quick silent giggle. Then he ran after her, costume clinking as his joints moved, getting ahead of her, trying to stop her. "No tricks. You told me you were at The Hour yourself. But I won't mention it again if it's upsetting."
Teenage storm-offs though, they were hilarious.
She stopped short when Bryke stepped in front of her, pale fists tightening on her skirts. She could curse him. Make his tongue swell up, or his eyes cross. That would teach him... but it would also alert everyone else around to what she was. Frustrated and helpless, Ermesinda threw her skirts down with a sigh. "What do you want? Why follow?"
"To apologise. I obviously upset you."
A lie, of course. The truth - 'because that tantrum over information you already gave freely was hilarious and I want to see more' - probably wouldn't go over well. "Knights aren't supposed to hurt the feelings of young ladies. Or old ladies, for that matter. I thought it would be best to tell you I was sorry."
She eyed him warily. "I am old. Hundreds." It was an automatic lie by now. The first time she'd told someone she was over a hundred years old they'd cowered in fear, and the second time a man had called her the devil and ran. Pleased with her discovery, she'd used it ever since. It only seemed to work about half of the time.
Ermesinda inhaled deeply through her nose, arms crossing over her chest again. "I accept. But you will say no more about the Hour. Yes?"
She didn't look hundreds of years old, and she didn't sound it either. Still he tried to look the part, starting back as though shocked to please her - though it was only herculean effort that kept him from giggling again.
JamesFranco Bryke held up his hands. "I'll say no more about The Hour," he promised.
She nodded, satisfied... but now she didn't know what to say. Small talk that didn't include curses or threats was foreign to her. Even with Thea, or Amelia... they spoke of Hour things, of inhuman things. Uneasy, Ermesinda tucked a long lock of hair behind her ear, eyes sliding to the side.
"You are the first knight I have met," she said finally. "They are all like you?" Smirky. Rubberfaced.
"Knights are as varied as other people," Bryke shrugged again, still desperately attempting to keep the smirk off of his face. "It's Bryke, by the way. We never swapped names."
Bryke? "Cats," she blurted, thinking aloud, then flushed. He was the man with all the cats she'd spoken to on the Ledgers. "You- You have the cats," she mumbled, sighing. This whole party was a mess. "I am Ermesinda." She quirked her mouth to one side. "Air-may."
"Air-may!" Bryke grinned wider. It was weird, he hadn't been expecting to meet up with anyone from the ledgers here. "Yes, I have the cats. You have cats?"
"Not now." The last one had stopped a few days earlier, and she hadn't had caught a new one yet. They died sooner these days. Was her magic growing weaker? Ermesinda drew in a deep breath again, fingers curling against her arms. "Do not say anything in the books. About..." Her eyebrows drew together. "Me."
"I won't," he knew how to be discrete at least. "The least I can do for a fellow cat lover."
He inclined his head towards her, his eyes following the servant with the wine. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm feeling a little thirsty."
She followed his stare, her own faintly curious. She'd had wine a few times, but not very much or very often. It made her thoughts foggy and imprecise, and her magicks suffered for it. Pursing her lips, Ermesinda nodded. Maybe she'd have a glass of her own later...
"Goodnight. Knight." Flushing a moment after she said it, the witch sighed heavily at herself, gathered up her skirts again, and started away.