[Deaths] the Morrigan
Title: a slight delay at the station
'Verse/characters: Deaths; the Morrigan
Prompt: 61D "fairy tale"
Word Count: 1030 1024
Notes: coastal_physics and klgaffney are partially to blame for this.
Odd Differences Between This World And Ours: 'roman roads' is their phrase for railroads; 'milestones' are train stations. I think. We'll see how it plays out. :)
---------
The lateness of the night before, coupled with the leisure of her rising, had led her to the not-unreasonable expectation that when she arrived at the milestone she would find the morning's rush nearly over, the local traffic cleared from the road and only the cross-country carriages remaining.
Instead, she found herself entering something of a madhouse as she came up the steps in search of a porter for her things, guarded by the hotel's driver in her absence. The main platform of the stone was thronged with bodies, and at least two badly-delayed local carriages were still standing in the road, to all appearances largely empty.
She paused at the top of the stairs, blinking, trying to decide if she actually had indeed just seen someone's cedar-bark brown camisole fly by in the breeze from a carriage departing in the opposite direction. When another one went by--this one a blushing cherry pink--she was forced to conclude that yes, yes she had, and mentally turned away to start the process of estimating the crowd between her and her destination.
She'd automatically shifted to her natural state while she was stopped, and only noticed it when a porter ran through her hauling a baggage-cart behind him and shouting for people to make way for it.
It took her some five minutes to locate a porter who could be persuaded to see her, in which time she found out what had happened through simple observation and shameless eavesdropping on disgruntled commuters.
Some poor soon-to-be-chastised porter had lost control of his baggage-cart, spilling a traveling salesman's entire stock into the path of an oncoming carriage. It had promptly exploded, necessitating a lengthy cleanup not yet complete judging by the flying dainties--she noted one hooked over a light fixture, colouring the people below it a rather jaundiced yellow--and lengthier delays as carriages backed up behind the one plastered over with clothing, perfumes and prayer chapbooks. She had absolutely no doubt that the story would rapidly grow into into the sort of thing no-one believed really happened, especially if a few boys took pretty things to their sweethearts and described the silks as falling from the sky like birds.
She dismissed the hotel's driver as the porter finished loading his cart with her things, blowing kisses and smiling, then followed the porter back up into the madhouse and forward to the cross-country carriages' designated area.
An hour passed uneventfully; she sipped at milestone tea and ate a half-plate of biscuits crowned with sugared violet petals as around her the crowd thinned out, deeply delayed commuters finally catching their rides and dispersing into the city and its neighbours.
Her carriage arrived eventually, the engineer visibly cursing the locals, and she hid her laughter behind her tea as the crew began the process of offloading the people who wanted this platform, some unexpected refueling and restocking, and finally began the process of loading their new passengers.
She'd bought her tickets off the young human attendant who'd asked if she'd like tea--she tipped him generously for the asking--and sent her bags off ahead of her when the porter from the carriage arrived for them.
When another young man approached her with a ferocious scowl on his face all she did was lower her teacup to its saucer and set it aside.
"Your safe-passage papers," he demanded as soon as he was within reasonable speaking range, and she raised her brows.
"Beg pardon?"
"I'll need to see your safe-passage papers before you board," he expanded slightly, and withdrew a key-wallet from his coat, showed her the proper sigil for a carriage-guard. One of the not-so-human-any-longer ones, more complex not because it needed to avoid forgery, but because the Councils never resisted a chance for ostentatious display.
She ruthlessly pinned down the desire to roll her eyes. Ordinarily she wouldn't fault them for it--she certainly had difficulty resisting finery herself--but when they started building symbols into the roofs of the milestones they maintained and the sigils of their guards, she found it a touch tiresome. The sickle-crescent skylights over the stairs had been bad enough--they'd at least restricted themselves to decorating the access-points and crenellations instead of mangling the immense steel-and-glass design of the main area's roof--but the bastard-sword design forming the basis of his sigil was just . . ridiculous.
"Young man, if I issued safe-passage papers there would be some very worried Councils," she told the guard, picked up her cup again, took a long swallow of the weak tea.
He bristled, began to take a challenging step forward, and she stood up, leaving her cup behind and showing her currently empty hands to him.
"I do not care to fight here," she told him flatly, "if we are attacked along the road you may count on my assistance, but nothing more."
He took another step forward.
Thinking You are much too young to be interesting and knowing it showed on her face, she unskeined her edges from her hands, her arms, let herself stretch as she hadn't her entire stay in the city.
The lights suspended far above their heads in the steel-and-glass roof flickered ominously, a rumble like faraway thunder trembling among the support beams. The yellow camisole finally fell from its light in the main area, fluttering like a wounded bird before settling on a bench where it could be captured easily and returned to its owner or discarded.
The guard backed away from her, nearly putting himself off the edge of the stone into the road before the pointed nose of the carriage he shepherded.
Ruthlessly tamping herself back down into a proper human shape, she wrapped herself up again. "Are we agreed?" she asked unnecessarily, lifting her skirts in her fingertips, ladylike.
"Yes, ma'am?" he replied, bowing just slightly as he indicated the carriage she'd originally been intending to board.
Catching herself before the smirk properly surfaced--she would be prepared to bet that that was much the same pose he took when Council-heads travelled on his road--she nodded to him and took herself off, leaving her tea to be collected by a charwoman.
'Verse/characters: Deaths; the Morrigan
Prompt: 61D "fairy tale"
Word Count: 1030 1024
Notes: coastal_physics and klgaffney are partially to blame for this.
Odd Differences Between This World And Ours: 'roman roads' is their phrase for railroads; 'milestones' are train stations. I think. We'll see how it plays out. :)
---------
The lateness of the night before, coupled with the leisure of her rising, had led her to the not-unreasonable expectation that when she arrived at the milestone she would find the morning's rush nearly over, the local traffic cleared from the road and only the cross-country carriages remaining.
Instead, she found herself entering something of a madhouse as she came up the steps in search of a porter for her things, guarded by the hotel's driver in her absence. The main platform of the stone was thronged with bodies, and at least two badly-delayed local carriages were still standing in the road, to all appearances largely empty.
She paused at the top of the stairs, blinking, trying to decide if she actually had indeed just seen someone's cedar-bark brown camisole fly by in the breeze from a carriage departing in the opposite direction. When another one went by--this one a blushing cherry pink--she was forced to conclude that yes, yes she had, and mentally turned away to start the process of estimating the crowd between her and her destination.
She'd automatically shifted to her natural state while she was stopped, and only noticed it when a porter ran through her hauling a baggage-cart behind him and shouting for people to make way for it.
It took her some five minutes to locate a porter who could be persuaded to see her, in which time she found out what had happened through simple observation and shameless eavesdropping on disgruntled commuters.
Some poor soon-to-be-chastised porter had lost control of his baggage-cart, spilling a traveling salesman's entire stock into the path of an oncoming carriage. It had promptly exploded, necessitating a lengthy cleanup not yet complete judging by the flying dainties--she noted one hooked over a light fixture, colouring the people below it a rather jaundiced yellow--and lengthier delays as carriages backed up behind the one plastered over with clothing, perfumes and prayer chapbooks. She had absolutely no doubt that the story would rapidly grow into into the sort of thing no-one believed really happened, especially if a few boys took pretty things to their sweethearts and described the silks as falling from the sky like birds.
She dismissed the hotel's driver as the porter finished loading his cart with her things, blowing kisses and smiling, then followed the porter back up into the madhouse and forward to the cross-country carriages' designated area.
An hour passed uneventfully; she sipped at milestone tea and ate a half-plate of biscuits crowned with sugared violet petals as around her the crowd thinned out, deeply delayed commuters finally catching their rides and dispersing into the city and its neighbours.
Her carriage arrived eventually, the engineer visibly cursing the locals, and she hid her laughter behind her tea as the crew began the process of offloading the people who wanted this platform, some unexpected refueling and restocking, and finally began the process of loading their new passengers.
She'd bought her tickets off the young human attendant who'd asked if she'd like tea--she tipped him generously for the asking--and sent her bags off ahead of her when the porter from the carriage arrived for them.
When another young man approached her with a ferocious scowl on his face all she did was lower her teacup to its saucer and set it aside.
"Your safe-passage papers," he demanded as soon as he was within reasonable speaking range, and she raised her brows.
"Beg pardon?"
"I'll need to see your safe-passage papers before you board," he expanded slightly, and withdrew a key-wallet from his coat, showed her the proper sigil for a carriage-guard. One of the not-so-human-any-longer ones, more complex not because it needed to avoid forgery, but because the Councils never resisted a chance for ostentatious display.
She ruthlessly pinned down the desire to roll her eyes. Ordinarily she wouldn't fault them for it--she certainly had difficulty resisting finery herself--but when they started building symbols into the roofs of the milestones they maintained and the sigils of their guards, she found it a touch tiresome. The sickle-crescent skylights over the stairs had been bad enough--they'd at least restricted themselves to decorating the access-points and crenellations instead of mangling the immense steel-and-glass design of the main area's roof--but the bastard-sword design forming the basis of his sigil was just . . ridiculous.
"Young man, if I issued safe-passage papers there would be some very worried Councils," she told the guard, picked up her cup again, took a long swallow of the weak tea.
He bristled, began to take a challenging step forward, and she stood up, leaving her cup behind and showing her currently empty hands to him.
"I do not care to fight here," she told him flatly, "if we are attacked along the road you may count on my assistance, but nothing more."
He took another step forward.
Thinking You are much too young to be interesting and knowing it showed on her face, she unskeined her edges from her hands, her arms, let herself stretch as she hadn't her entire stay in the city.
The lights suspended far above their heads in the steel-and-glass roof flickered ominously, a rumble like faraway thunder trembling among the support beams. The yellow camisole finally fell from its light in the main area, fluttering like a wounded bird before settling on a bench where it could be captured easily and returned to its owner or discarded.
The guard backed away from her, nearly putting himself off the edge of the stone into the road before the pointed nose of the carriage he shepherded.
Ruthlessly tamping herself back down into a proper human shape, she wrapped herself up again. "Are we agreed?" she asked unnecessarily, lifting her skirts in her fingertips, ladylike.
"Yes, ma'am?" he replied, bowing just slightly as he indicated the carriage she'd originally been intending to board.
Catching herself before the smirk properly surfaced--she would be prepared to bet that that was much the same pose he took when Council-heads travelled on his road--she nodded to him and took herself off, leaving her tea to be collected by a charwoman.