[Deaths] the Morrigan

Aug 20, 2009 16:55

Title: delivery of one prodigal, COD
'Verse/characters: Deaths; the Morrigan, Julian De'Ath
Prompt: 87D "hunger"
Word Count: 840
Notes: after she got back into Europe (after getting the word that her father was alive).

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The knock on the door was heavy and terse, a tall man's knock by the echo through the wood, no light tap as the Morrigan herself would have produced with her hands. Which was why she tended to knock with tools when she needed someone's attention quickly.

Whoever was on the stoop repeated the knock twice in quick succession in the time it took the Morrigan to put down the society pages and her tea on the kitchen table and head for the door. She automatically grabbed a blade on her way, this time a smallish machete she'd borrowed off a smith and forgotten to return before they left the area, instead of a sickle or a kitchen knife.

The knocking sounded more like a tax collector or a courier than a delegation of the local Council's young bloods, so she opened the door wide enough to peer around it, machete carefully out of sight behind her back in her left hand.

The figure on the stoop dropped back a pace as the door opened, stood with his hands thrust into his hip pockets and his shoulders stooped a little, the sort of slouch she associated with boys who'd grown a little too fast for their brains to find comfort.

He was definitely tall enough for his knock, and she gave the automatic once-over, noting the old-fashioned suit under the unfastened oilskin duster and the strap holding something long behind his back. His hat was pulled low over an oddly familiar shade of queued blond hair, against the morning's near-rain mist.

She frowned, opening the door wider because she knew that shape, somehow, and she was about to inquire when the figure reached up, tipped her hat's brim back with long fingers, and gave her a crooked grin.

"No greeting for an old acquaintance?" Angel Death's daughter asked, took her hands from her pockets to spread them in a low shrug of prodigal presentation.

"Julian?" demanded the Morrigan, when she finally regained power of speech, and Engeltod's daughter laughed, her smile untwisting as she straightened from her slouch.

"Ah, you do remember me."

The Morrigan dropped the machete unceremoniously onto the floor with a clatter as she leaped, nearly hard enough to send them both backwards into the street as she caught the other woman around the neck and squeezed, laughing until she felt like she was crying, too.

De'Ath arms closed around her, one across the small of her back and the other across the back of her thighs, crushing the layers of her skirt into her skin and the buttons of Julian's vest into her shirt.

The moment she relaxed her grip, she was set down--which she'd expected, somehow--and she laughed again, scrubbing at her eyes with her right hand. "Oh, my dear, my dear, it has been much too long."

Julian's crooked grin was back as she kissed the top of the Morrigan's head as she passed. Stooping to pick up the machete, Edmund's daughter stepped into the foyer and began divesting herself of outerwear. The Morrigan closed the door behind herself, stood with her back against the door to make a little more space for the new arrival.

The foyer was too small, really, but they wouldn't be here much longer, and the Morrigan only kept weapons in the foyer to save space.

Julian didn't remark on the space--or the rack of weapons that occupied one wall--but then, she wouldn't. This wasn't a stranger.

The hat came off and went on a hook in a single motion as she shrugged out of the strap that held staff and carrycase--she'd felt safe coming here, the Morrigan concluded, because the De'Ath was more than strong enough to walk her path out of human eyes, her scythe assembled and held in her hand instead of strapped to her back, and then changed her mind as the duster followed the gear and revealed a rapier belted to the other woman's waist, which was also unhooked and joined the others in the rack.

"Have you always had that?" the Morrigan had to ask, leaning forward to peer at the blade and nearly catching an elbow to the nose as Julian hooked her scythe together and put it in the rack as well.

Julian laughed, flipping her braid back down her back. "No--picked it up off a gent up north who decided he didn't like my face."

"Well, he seems to have had better taste in blades." The Morrigan pondered the fact that her tea was likely stone cold, then blinked at a rumble from the De'Ath's direction. "Hungry, you?"

"Starving," Julian told her in an oversolemn tone, put her hands back into her pockets. "But if you feel like giving me the tour of the house and grounds first I do believe I'll survive."

The Morrigan giggled, threading her arm through the De'Ath's. "Allow me to acquaint you with the kitchen first, my dear."

"Your will, milady," Julian replied, escorted her from the foyer and into the body of the house.

julian de'ath, the morrigan, list d, deaths

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