(I was going to take a break from Arathalian-shorts, actually, but I had a gorgeous dream about old Orinnia and just had to get it down. I'll be vacationing him in his journal for a while after this, though :P)
I adore this old bat and I really couldn't say why ...
Orinnia stood outside the cell door, puffing hard for breath after the long walk, and waited impatiently to be let in. There were all kinds of bad things about old age, yes - the pains in her knees and her back, the permanent cough that had set in her lungs - but it did give her the right to be loud and impatient in public.
"What's the hold-up?" she snapped through the open outer peepslot. "You'll be carrying me in with my coffin at this rate!"
"I give her fifteen minutes," she heard one of the little bastards snort, but before she could happily bray I heard that!, the bloody cough squeezed her lungs again.
Maybe he's right, she thought dourly.
At last - "long bloody last," it was - the outer door opened and she stepped inside. She was hardly carrying anything with her today - just a little sheaf of papers - but the inner-chamber search still managed to take just as long as it always did.
She got her revenge by hacking noisily every half-minute or so. The young guards were fairly good at not changing expression, but she knew it must get to them.
"Last time, eh?" one of them asked in a loud let's-speak-to-the-elderly voice as he shook out her shawl. She couldn't remember his name, but she had a feeling he was one of the good ones.
"Certainly if I can bloody help it," she replied, facing the iron door and its thumb-thick rivets. And then, since none of them were in any position to see her face, she smiled a nostalgic, depressingly old-woman smile. If anyone had told her - back when her skin had still fit - that she'd eventually come to love her work, she wouldn't have believed it.
Hacking a bit louder to show her impatience, she indulged in another old-woman habit - wandering thoughts. Remember the first time you stood in front of this door? Remember how your knees shook?
She cackled out loud. That first Query of hers with Arathalian was still departmental legend. No-one knew how she'd escaped being fired - or ironmagicked - but it had only taken a snarky fae comment or two to make a fiercely proud country girl stop quivering with terror and start shaking with fury.
She was, to her knowledge, the only Holder to have ever hurled raging abuse and a heavy pictorial at the moon fae's face.
When the sluggish guard-boys finally got around to opening up the inner door to let her into the cell, she was still cackling to herself in fits and starts. Arathalian - in his chair at this time of day, of course - folded his book shut as she walked in.
"What's got you so amused, you old hag?" he asked.
"Oh, I'm always in a good mood," she replied expansively, moving with slower but still-firm steps to his bed. She sat down uninvited; a courteous host he had never been.
"I've been waiting over a fortnight now, you realise." He shelved his book, all irritation. "Why've you been so slow to bring me the immigration studies?"
"Well, I'm sorry my failure to revolve around your whims has inconvenienced you so," she snapped. "I'm bloody glad I forgot to bring those studies now -"
The damn cough sprang in before she could get going properly. It was a long one, too - all that laughing before, probably. Unhealthy.
Arathalian waited the cough out, as usual, before speaking up again. "Forgot it? What's that paper-stack of drivel you've brought in with you, then? They'd better not all be questions."
"They're bloody -" hack, hack. "You always -"
Frustrated, she shoved the papers at him, trying to dislodge the misbehaving air from her lungs.
He eyed her a moment, then started to flick through the pages. After a while, his brow quirked in that subtle angle of moon fae amusement. "Transcripts? ... I remember this conversation. Hah, and this one. How many centuries ago were you 'just married' again?"
"They're ... a present ... you arse," Orinnia wheezed. "Cleared ... by Censors."
"So where are today's reams of tiresome Query notes?" he asked sourly, glancing up at her empty hands.
Having only just regained equilibrium in her chest, she spread her hands in a magician's gesture, presenting them back and front, shaking her head with a grin.
The fae watched her flourishes, his blue gaze dry at first. Then the angle of his brow began to smoothe level again.
"Oh," he said, "you're finally retiring."
She nodded, still grinning, but a bit differently.
"So I get to enjoy the company of a fresh round of slack-jawed new bloods soon?"
"Tomorrow!" she crowed gleefully. "Two of them, eager as hell to replace me."
"Wonderful."
"One of them's a reconciliations boy," she added with relish. "I'm sure he's dying to be your best friend ever."
"You old bitch."
She cackled again, triumphant, and then paid for it with more iron-wrecked coughing. This time she had to brace herself against the foot of the bed, swearing murder on the inside as her pathetic old chest tried to fold in half.
"Hah, look at this old interview," said Arathalian, his soft voice raised a little by necessity, his eyes glancing between her and the page.
"'SUBJECT. You must have less than half a brain to say that to me, you ironblood whore.
EMPLOYEE #45007. Yeah, and that's a brilliant thing to say to someone with the authority to shoot you full of iron, you jumped-up, halfwit pixie.
SUBJECT. What a patently empty ... listen, Orinnia Castlemaine, if you're not out of my cell in the next five seconds, I will squeeze you out through the doorslot.
EMPLOYEE #45007. Fine. You're a tedious son-of-a-bitch and I hate this frigging job anyway.'
"You really are damned lucky you survived to this age, you know."
Orinnia was dying to make some reply - or point out triumphantly that she'd clearly won that encounter - but the coughing wouldn't stop. It was last week all over again, the draughty bloody ward in the hospital ...
Arathalian flicked a few more pages, then stopped to look at her directly. "Get the door already, you wastes of space!" he snapped.
She flapped one hand, outraged, but couldn't get her breath back until half of the bolts had ground back. "Not finished!" she croaked.
"What's that?" someone called.
"Close it, you little git!"
The Special Issue might not have heard the 'little git' part, which had trailed off a bit, but 'close it' obviously came through clear enough. The peepslot slid open to check on the conflicting demands, then slid shut again after a few moments of staring at her firmly rearranged posture and ferocious glare.
Once the door-bolts began to slide shut again, she turned the trusty glare back on Arathalian. "Still think you're boss," she rasped.
Arathalian turned his head aside, shielding his lips from view, and whispered at a level she probably wouldn't have heard even in youth. When he turned back, he had his laquered brush-box in his hand, empty of brushes, but full of water.
Something imitating water, anyway. But she didn't care. She drank it.
"You ironbloods always have broken like twigs," he said contemptuously. "You're dying, you know."
"Yes, I do, and better than you, you know-all prat," she snorted, passing back the brush-box.
The moon fae's eyes slid watchfully towards the silent iron door, then back to her face again. His voice dropped to a point almost below her hearing; she worked out part of what he said only by context. "And did you realise then that you don't have to, old hag?"
"I'm sure you'd love the opportunity to smoosh me together with a hamster or something, Arathalian. But no. No Reshaping."
She looked back at him, pulling her shawl further across her shoulders. Perhaps it triggered another old-woman moment; she didn't know. But she smiled.
"The offer means a lot to me, though."
Arathalian leaned back to replace his brush-box on his desk, keeping the transcriptions out of creasing's way as he did so. "There are precious few researchers with even your quarter-brain down here. I'll die myself of colossal boredom, I expect."
"No, you'll be knocked off by some long-suffering Holder sick of your crap," she snapped. "Sooner than me, probably. All right, that's all I have to say. About time I bloody get out of here."
"I was just going to say that myself."
She got up from the bed - with the same steady-but-slow movements that had started to weigh down her life - and brushed the covers back into a bit of shape. Arathalian rose from his chair as well.
She was just about to snort and thank him for the honour when he said, "Goodbye, Orinnia Castlemaine. Circle turn brighter."
"Goodbye -" She blinked at him. "You think we ironbloods get reborn onto that Circle as well?"
"Very, very few of you," the fae replied with a dark downturn of his mouth, but he seemed surprised as well. "But of course you do."
"So what -" she felt like throwing another book at him; why open up this vast and promising topic now? - "is the deal with all your extermination-of-mankind rubbish?"
"Neither of us have enough of our lifetime left to discuss that," he answered, calm.
"I'm glad you've still discovered a new way to piss me off for one last time," she growled. "Goodbye, Arathalian. Don't lose the bloody transcripts in this pigsty of yours."
"I won't."
She walked to the door, still conscious of him standing there, and gave him a sour little wave as it opened to let her out. He nodded the same haughty, tilted nod he spared all departing researchers in his better moods.
As the door closed behind her, Orinnia felt an old-woman sadness again. When the frontmost Special Issue slid open the peepslot for a routine parting check, she ducked down beside him for a quick look. It was only brief - she saw him sinking down in his chair again, face suddenly turned away from the door - but it was enough.
"Circle turn brighter," she mumbled, whatever he thought.
"What's that, Mother?" asked the Special Issue politely, sliding shut the slot.
"Was I talking to you?" she snapped. "I'm not your bloody mother. Now help me up already - my damn back's out again."