Two for One: Dusk & New Leaf
‘Verse: Natural Forces
Challenges/Toppings/Extras: Rocky Road #27 (bridge), Strawberry Banana #30 (farewell), Lemon Meringue Pie/Limited Edition Flavor #10 (old)
Rating: PG (off-screen death)
Title: Dusk
Summary: All things must come to an end, whether you accept it or not.
Notes: More hints at that elusive thing called Plot! I’ve written about Bran before, here.
The old lady was dying.
This Bran knew, though he had not yet quite accepted it. Though he had long since drifted from her and her batty stories of a world without magic, she still held a nostalgia for him, a secret place in his memory where she forever regaled him with her tales.
And soon, that mind-existence would be all he had left of her.
He had heard she was ill as he heard any important thing: from being invisible in the eyes of adults. It was easy; he was still smaller than he should have been, even now at thirteen, and adults rarely saw what was not right in front of them. And so he heard that the old lady was dying from the lips of his satisfied mother, chatting with the lady of the house one afternoon while Alain was away at school. The conversation was, ironically enough, about Bran himself. Even with him right there, absentmindedly stacking the dishes while his mother and Alain’s mother had a rare moment of faux-equality over the kitchen table, they talked about how at least he would not be so distracted by fanciful tales once his friend was gone. Never mind that he had not visited the old lady in months.
His hands shook, and he resolved that he would at least do one last thing for the old lady, she who had no one else to care about her. He would set things right - at least, as right as he could after his lapse.
And so he sneaked out the next night to visit her.
Bran picked his way along the street, past the high-class houses with their patrolling mage-lamps, over the wall that separated the fancy houses from the commercial district beyond. A few shops were still occupied, even in the dead of the night, and Bran ducked around these into an alleyway. There were stray cats whose eyes shone back at him in the moonlight, but no people - a stiff, merciless wind blew along the alley, cutting into Bran’s exposed face. He kept his eyes down to lessen the sting, wishing he had magic for yet another time in his life. It would have been simple enough to block out the gusts with magic.
He turned towards the river at the end of the alley. Gradually the neat rows of houses became less and less well-kept, until finally when he reached the river they were little more than shacks, pain curling and flaking if it was still there are all, sickly trees here and there in the bramble-covered lane. Erosion had claimed a few of the shacks; these were little more than hollow boxes of wood leaning over the river’s murk. Bran shivered. The people here surely knew him from when he had visited the old lady, but he still hurried and the thin hairs on his nape still stood on end. It would not be good to linger.
The bridge was just ahead, and he ducked under it with a breath of relief. His shoes squelched into the mud. Here the moon struggled to light the sad sight before him, but he still saw it: two bedraggled figures looked up at him, standing protectively over another figure, wrapped in blankets, lying on a pallet.
One of the figures, a man with a scraggly beard and wild hair, glared suspiciously at Bran, but the other, a slightly better-kept woman with face too hard for her age, seemed to recognize him, though he didn't know her. “Bran?” she said lowly. “What are you doing here?”
“I-” stammered Bran, suddenly not sure what he was doing. “I heard the old lady was dying. I came to see her.”
The young-old woman nodded jerkily, waving the man off. “All right. She’s here.”
Bran stepped forward, but then the woman said, “She may not want to see you. I wouldn’t.” Bran swallowed. He had to try. Besides, where had these people been when she wasn’t dying? He had never seen them before, and the old lady had always been alone when he came before. He walked quietly up to the pallet and knelt, whispering, “Hey. It’s me. How’re you doing?”
The blankets shifted and a shaking, shriveled hand came out, pulling the cocoon down until the old lady’s face came into view. She was wrinkled - she always had been in Bran’s memory, but now the canyons crisscrossed her face - and her hair was only wisps clinging to her head, but rheumy eyes fixed to him immediately and her broken-toothed mouth gaped in a smile. “Bran,” she gasped out. Her voice creaked ever worse than before, but Bran smiled back and took her offered hand gently, trying to hold in the tears. This was it. She was really dying.
“Oh, Bran. Heard, did you?” Her voice pitched so high on the last word that she broke into a fit of coughing, whole body trembling. The woman with the hard face ran to the other side, hovering over the old lady as if she was afraid to actually touch her, lest she crumble to dust. “Gramma,” she said in a strained voice, hands fluttering inches from the old lady’s blanket covering. “Gramma!”
“It’s okay, Marne dear,” said the old lady as her coughs subsided. Blood flecked her lips. “You’ll be okay. Let me talk to Bran now, will you? I have some secrets to tell still.”
Marne glanced between Bran and her - grandmother? Bran wasn’t sure if it was a term of endearment or not - looking unsure, but eventually patted the old lady’s hand and left, going with the scruffy man to guard the topside of the bridge.
“My granddaughter,” said the old lady, drawing Bran’s eyes back to her supine form, “came all the way from New Zealand to see me off.”
“That’s a ways,” said Bran in the pause that followed, but the old lady continued as if she hadn’t heard him.
“She means well, but she is too stubborn to know the mysteries. Her mind is not open, and while she is here out of love, love will not be enough.” Those fogged-over eyes turned to stare absently at the underside of the bridge. “But you, my dear… you will have to be enough. I only hope that my lessons will outlive me.”
Bran held his breath, a nervous jolt shooting up his spine. Somehow, he knew that this was about more than fairy tales of worlds long gone, if they had existed at all.
“Listen!” she said with more force than should have been possible from that frail body, and gripped his hand tight. He felt his fragile bones rub together and winced; she let go abruptly. “Ah… The second wind before dying. Hope is a dangerous thing.” She closed her eyes, took a shaky breath. “Where was I… Ah.” She fixed him with those unsettling eyes again. “Now, listen close and remember. I will not have time to repeat this.
“In the depths of the night, morning breaks. When morning breaks, the falling star shall rise.” Another pause, and the old lady’s breath suddenly came in sharp gasps, eyes widening.
“M-Marne!” Bran cried, grabbing at the old lady’s hand as if to keep her on the earth by touch alone.
Marne dashed over, shoving Bran out of the way and wrapping her arms around her grandmother, crying, “No, no!”
Gradually, the old lady came back from her fit, calming with slow, confused blinks as Marne sobbed into her shoulder. After a long time, she said, with not a trace of the creak that had characterized her voice before, “I have seen the mystery, and I shall go to my end with a full heart. Now let me rest. I will not go in such a dramatic way. No, I am but a drop in the vast ocean and that is how I shall die.” Her eyes closed again, but her breaths were gentle and quite audible.
Marne stared the old lady, then back to Bran. She looked strange, Bran thought; that hard face was not made for the tear-tracks now running down it.
“What did she tell you?” Marne asked as she guided Bran away from the sleeping old lady.
“I don’t think she would want me to tell you,” Bran said slowly. The woman’s grip on Bran’s arm tightened briefly, then loosened entirely and fell away. Marne didn’t say anything, just shrugged and poked back to the scraggly-haired man, who glanced sharply at Bran when Marne whispered something to him.
Obviously, he was no longer welcome.
It was only as he crawled back through his window into the silent manor that he realized he hadn’t said a proper goodbye, nor had he asked for forgiveness.
He hadn’t even ever learned the old lady’s name.
And when morning filtered through his window, it was to hear the whispers among the other servants - his friend had died in the pre-dawn hours, in her sleep, with her granddaughter at her side. She was not celebrated, not missed by anyone; in fact, her death brought a “thank goodness” to the lips of Bran’s mother, and Bran knew then that he must keep her memories and her secrets to himself for the rest of his days. The nameless old woman with the batty stories would live on only in the recesses of his mind, locked behind the walls he had long since constructed for that which must not be revealed.
‘Verse: Natural Forces
Challenges/Toppings/Extras: Chocolate Chip Mint #5 (vulnerable), Rhubarb #29 (so, what else is new?), Lemon Meringue Pie/Limited Edition Flavor #9 (young) + Pocky Chain + Butterscotch
Rating: PG for non-explicit birth
Title: New Leaf
Summary: Gwen gets a surprise, but her partner is there to make it a pleasant one.
Notes: I’ve finally given Nimue’s grandmother a name! The baby here isn’t Nimue’s father, but her uncle, who is long dead by the time of A Web to Catch the Wind. Another Skyrim easter egg’s in here, haha.
God. How the hell… I bit down on my arm to muffle the scream that ripped out of me. Much like the… thing that was now ripping out of me. My legs scrabbled on the floor, trying to find purchase in the blood and failing.
“Gwen?”
The door opened. I cried harder, trying to hide my face. My shame. My shame at being ashamed.
“Oh, God! Gwen, are you okay?” He tried to prise my hands away from my face. Too close.
Another rip. I screamed and arched, vision going black, then white, then spotted.
“Gwen… is that… a baby?”
~o~
I knew it was a stupid question. Of course it was a baby, the purple, squishy thing lying on the floor and bawling.
The better question was, how the hell had she kept this from me? Or… what if… she hadn’t known herself? I wondered how a woman couldn’t possibly know there was a baby inside her, but Gwen was sobbing, covered in blood and shaking like she had just seen a ghost. She, possibly the most powerful mage in the world, was so vulnerable in that moment that my heart ached.
“Gwen? I’m going to get you some help.”
~o~
“Is he mine?”
“Of course he’s yours. And I’m keeping him.”
“There was never a question about that. God, it’s just… I need to talk to my folks, okay? Maybe they can help. Babysitting, that sort of thing.”
“What, now I’m not capable?”
“It’s not that. It’s… they’re going to want to be a part of this.”
“Yes, and lecture me about how I’m too young. I was too young to fight monsters, too.”
“I know. They’re pains, both of them. But I love you, you know that?”
“Hmph.”
“Gwen…”
“Mm. I know, and the world will never overtake us.”
Challenges/Toppings/Extras: Rocky Road #27 (bridge), Strawberry Banana #30 (farewell), Lemon Meringue Pie/Limited Edition Flavor #10 (old)
Rating: PG (off-screen death)
Title: Dusk
Summary: All things must come to an end, whether you accept it or not.
Notes: More hints at that elusive thing called Plot! I’ve written about Bran before, here.
The old lady was dying.
This Bran knew, though he had not yet quite accepted it. Though he had long since drifted from her and her batty stories of a world without magic, she still held a nostalgia for him, a secret place in his memory where she forever regaled him with her tales.
And soon, that mind-existence would be all he had left of her.
He had heard she was ill as he heard any important thing: from being invisible in the eyes of adults. It was easy; he was still smaller than he should have been, even now at thirteen, and adults rarely saw what was not right in front of them. And so he heard that the old lady was dying from the lips of his satisfied mother, chatting with the lady of the house one afternoon while Alain was away at school. The conversation was, ironically enough, about Bran himself. Even with him right there, absentmindedly stacking the dishes while his mother and Alain’s mother had a rare moment of faux-equality over the kitchen table, they talked about how at least he would not be so distracted by fanciful tales once his friend was gone. Never mind that he had not visited the old lady in months.
His hands shook, and he resolved that he would at least do one last thing for the old lady, she who had no one else to care about her. He would set things right - at least, as right as he could after his lapse.
And so he sneaked out the next night to visit her.
Bran picked his way along the street, past the high-class houses with their patrolling mage-lamps, over the wall that separated the fancy houses from the commercial district beyond. A few shops were still occupied, even in the dead of the night, and Bran ducked around these into an alleyway. There were stray cats whose eyes shone back at him in the moonlight, but no people - a stiff, merciless wind blew along the alley, cutting into Bran’s exposed face. He kept his eyes down to lessen the sting, wishing he had magic for yet another time in his life. It would have been simple enough to block out the gusts with magic.
He turned towards the river at the end of the alley. Gradually the neat rows of houses became less and less well-kept, until finally when he reached the river they were little more than shacks, pain curling and flaking if it was still there are all, sickly trees here and there in the bramble-covered lane. Erosion had claimed a few of the shacks; these were little more than hollow boxes of wood leaning over the river’s murk. Bran shivered. The people here surely knew him from when he had visited the old lady, but he still hurried and the thin hairs on his nape still stood on end. It would not be good to linger.
The bridge was just ahead, and he ducked under it with a breath of relief. His shoes squelched into the mud. Here the moon struggled to light the sad sight before him, but he still saw it: two bedraggled figures looked up at him, standing protectively over another figure, wrapped in blankets, lying on a pallet.
One of the figures, a man with a scraggly beard and wild hair, glared suspiciously at Bran, but the other, a slightly better-kept woman with face too hard for her age, seemed to recognize him, though he didn't know her. “Bran?” she said lowly. “What are you doing here?”
“I-” stammered Bran, suddenly not sure what he was doing. “I heard the old lady was dying. I came to see her.”
The young-old woman nodded jerkily, waving the man off. “All right. She’s here.”
Bran stepped forward, but then the woman said, “She may not want to see you. I wouldn’t.” Bran swallowed. He had to try. Besides, where had these people been when she wasn’t dying? He had never seen them before, and the old lady had always been alone when he came before. He walked quietly up to the pallet and knelt, whispering, “Hey. It’s me. How’re you doing?”
The blankets shifted and a shaking, shriveled hand came out, pulling the cocoon down until the old lady’s face came into view. She was wrinkled - she always had been in Bran’s memory, but now the canyons crisscrossed her face - and her hair was only wisps clinging to her head, but rheumy eyes fixed to him immediately and her broken-toothed mouth gaped in a smile. “Bran,” she gasped out. Her voice creaked ever worse than before, but Bran smiled back and took her offered hand gently, trying to hold in the tears. This was it. She was really dying.
“Oh, Bran. Heard, did you?” Her voice pitched so high on the last word that she broke into a fit of coughing, whole body trembling. The woman with the hard face ran to the other side, hovering over the old lady as if she was afraid to actually touch her, lest she crumble to dust. “Gramma,” she said in a strained voice, hands fluttering inches from the old lady’s blanket covering. “Gramma!”
“It’s okay, Marne dear,” said the old lady as her coughs subsided. Blood flecked her lips. “You’ll be okay. Let me talk to Bran now, will you? I have some secrets to tell still.”
Marne glanced between Bran and her - grandmother? Bran wasn’t sure if it was a term of endearment or not - looking unsure, but eventually patted the old lady’s hand and left, going with the scruffy man to guard the topside of the bridge.
“My granddaughter,” said the old lady, drawing Bran’s eyes back to her supine form, “came all the way from New Zealand to see me off.”
“That’s a ways,” said Bran in the pause that followed, but the old lady continued as if she hadn’t heard him.
“She means well, but she is too stubborn to know the mysteries. Her mind is not open, and while she is here out of love, love will not be enough.” Those fogged-over eyes turned to stare absently at the underside of the bridge. “But you, my dear… you will have to be enough. I only hope that my lessons will outlive me.”
Bran held his breath, a nervous jolt shooting up his spine. Somehow, he knew that this was about more than fairy tales of worlds long gone, if they had existed at all.
“Listen!” she said with more force than should have been possible from that frail body, and gripped his hand tight. He felt his fragile bones rub together and winced; she let go abruptly. “Ah… The second wind before dying. Hope is a dangerous thing.” She closed her eyes, took a shaky breath. “Where was I… Ah.” She fixed him with those unsettling eyes again. “Now, listen close and remember. I will not have time to repeat this.
“In the depths of the night, morning breaks. When morning breaks, the falling star shall rise.” Another pause, and the old lady’s breath suddenly came in sharp gasps, eyes widening.
“M-Marne!” Bran cried, grabbing at the old lady’s hand as if to keep her on the earth by touch alone.
Marne dashed over, shoving Bran out of the way and wrapping her arms around her grandmother, crying, “No, no!”
Gradually, the old lady came back from her fit, calming with slow, confused blinks as Marne sobbed into her shoulder. After a long time, she said, with not a trace of the creak that had characterized her voice before, “I have seen the mystery, and I shall go to my end with a full heart. Now let me rest. I will not go in such a dramatic way. No, I am but a drop in the vast ocean and that is how I shall die.” Her eyes closed again, but her breaths were gentle and quite audible.
Marne stared the old lady, then back to Bran. She looked strange, Bran thought; that hard face was not made for the tear-tracks now running down it.
“What did she tell you?” Marne asked as she guided Bran away from the sleeping old lady.
“I don’t think she would want me to tell you,” Bran said slowly. The woman’s grip on Bran’s arm tightened briefly, then loosened entirely and fell away. Marne didn’t say anything, just shrugged and poked back to the scraggly-haired man, who glanced sharply at Bran when Marne whispered something to him.
Obviously, he was no longer welcome.
It was only as he crawled back through his window into the silent manor that he realized he hadn’t said a proper goodbye, nor had he asked for forgiveness.
He hadn’t even ever learned the old lady’s name.
And when morning filtered through his window, it was to hear the whispers among the other servants - his friend had died in the pre-dawn hours, in her sleep, with her granddaughter at her side. She was not celebrated, not missed by anyone; in fact, her death brought a “thank goodness” to the lips of Bran’s mother, and Bran knew then that he must keep her memories and her secrets to himself for the rest of his days. The nameless old woman with the batty stories would live on only in the recesses of his mind, locked behind the walls he had long since constructed for that which must not be revealed.
‘Verse: Natural Forces
Challenges/Toppings/Extras: Chocolate Chip Mint #5 (vulnerable), Rhubarb #29 (so, what else is new?), Lemon Meringue Pie/Limited Edition Flavor #9 (young) + Pocky Chain + Butterscotch
Rating: PG for non-explicit birth
Title: New Leaf
Summary: Gwen gets a surprise, but her partner is there to make it a pleasant one.
Notes: I’ve finally given Nimue’s grandmother a name! The baby here isn’t Nimue’s father, but her uncle, who is long dead by the time of A Web to Catch the Wind. Another Skyrim easter egg’s in here, haha.
God. How the hell… I bit down on my arm to muffle the scream that ripped out of me. Much like the… thing that was now ripping out of me. My legs scrabbled on the floor, trying to find purchase in the blood and failing.
“Gwen?”
The door opened. I cried harder, trying to hide my face. My shame. My shame at being ashamed.
“Oh, God! Gwen, are you okay?” He tried to prise my hands away from my face. Too close.
Another rip. I screamed and arched, vision going black, then white, then spotted.
“Gwen… is that… a baby?”
~o~
I knew it was a stupid question. Of course it was a baby, the purple, squishy thing lying on the floor and bawling.
The better question was, how the hell had she kept this from me? Or… what if… she hadn’t known herself? I wondered how a woman couldn’t possibly know there was a baby inside her, but Gwen was sobbing, covered in blood and shaking like she had just seen a ghost. She, possibly the most powerful mage in the world, was so vulnerable in that moment that my heart ached.
“Gwen? I’m going to get you some help.”
~o~
“Is he mine?”
“Of course he’s yours. And I’m keeping him.”
“There was never a question about that. God, it’s just… I need to talk to my folks, okay? Maybe they can help. Babysitting, that sort of thing.”
“What, now I’m not capable?”
“It’s not that. It’s… they’re going to want to be a part of this.”
“Yes, and lecture me about how I’m too young. I was too young to fight monsters, too.”
“I know. They’re pains, both of them. But I love you, you know that?”
“Hmph.”
“Gwen…”
“Mm. I know, and the world will never overtake us.”