WHO: Gilia St. Low & YOU! WHAT: One Girls Quest To Be Absolutely Unnoticable: The Beginning. WHEN: From [gestures] to [gestures further along] WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall NOTES: None forseen, save for social anxiety and occasional eldritch horror.
It didn't sound like madness to the Medicine Seller. It sounded like someone trying to describe something there weren't adequate words for. He'd seen it a lot, just like he had seen people broken down in sobbing messes and he likewise took it in stride.
"She is not something that needs to be slain," he said, calm and quiet but also assured. The ofuda vanished save for all but one as passersby slowed to rubberneck at what looked like some delicious drama.
He gestured to the rectangle of paper - blank as ever.
"Were she a threat, this would be covered in red writing. She is not a foe for you."
"All her secrets are a threat," the Hunter replies, but she's not looking at Gillia. She's looking off, away, out into the bleakness that is her awareness of the world. She wishes weren't here. She wishes that sea had drowned her here in the street and let her float free. No, instead she's still standing here ringing like a tuning fork.
"Desire for them drives men mad. This is no place for us"
Any of them. The girl, the merchant, herself.
She realizes then that she doesn't have her whip, and swoops for it, collapses it, hug it close to her body the way a child would hug a toy. She wishes she'd run Gillia through with it while she was still half-hypnotized by the swaying of the coral.
Only then does she look at the crying thing again. There's no apology or pity in her look, only frowning unhappiness and weariness. She opens her mouth to say something but only winces and turns back to the medicine seller.
I've no secrets she would protest, were she any other, because to her mind - save what the Seller has told her to keep to herself, she has done her best to keep to herself everything that mattered.
But as she is what she is, four eyes and all, all glitter wet and coral as soft as petals that dances to be seen and not seen, nothing comes of it. Only that she curls away from Anna's gaze, turning her body in. Wishing somehow, that her mother was here, that her fathers would do as when she was a child, and hold her until all the confusion went away.
They are not here, and she has no comfort to call on. Instead, Gilia curls her feet under her, watching the sea trickle against the deck. Drying as soon as it dripped away from her. The thick smell of salt air curling about her skin like a blanket.
Some wicked part of him wanted to say that it was humanity's own failings that drove them mad. That it was, so often, the regrets of humanity that twisted these things into the treacherous monstrosities - but he held his tongue. There was a sort of sense he could make of Anna's ramblings, that she had touched the raw, open wound of harsh truths, walked the places mortals didn't belong and that was a line of inquiry for another day. Private, away from the prying ears of those who cleaved to an absent god and sealed their prejudices with his name. The less of that trouble darkening his metaphorical doorstep, the better.
"I will take responsibility for this," he said, shifting to keep Gillia out of direct view of others. He hopes his words have some kind of assurance - he doubts it but he hopes nonetheless. He'd rather not see how this conflict would end (terribly, for everyone most likely).
She hasn't had anyone look at her so much, since she arrived, save for the brief passing of their gaze on a glowing green hand. The same hands that stay over her face as she sobs, wanting now, only to crawl away from the scrutiny. The attention without the wall of advisors to tell her what to do, what to say, leaves her bereft of what it is she's supposed to behave like. This wasn't in any of their lessons. For no one would ever dare touch her in such a way.
Still, when it is that the Medicine Seller comes back to her, she lifts her head just barely to look up at him, the same confusion on her lips. "Please, I did not do it. I swear it."
His tone wasn't sharp or angry, but there was an uncharacteristic firmness to it. Though he was usually polite to the point of passivity, there was a sense of urgency when he spoke.
"We should speak elsewhere. Can you get a hold of your abilities?"
She nods, shoulders stiff in her misery, but she nods. Then she shuts her eyes, opens her mouth and speaks as clear as she can. "Please, Father, I am safe now." The sound rushes once more of water, and then, as it came, it abates like a blanket falling over one's ears. Muffling it back to a dim far off noise, no longer beating against the senses as immediately, surely trapped back behind her skin and bones.
With it gone, or at least quiet, she begins to shakily pull herself up from the floor. Her clothes soaked to the bone, but it hardly seems to bother her.
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"She is not something that needs to be slain," he said, calm and quiet but also assured. The ofuda vanished save for all but one as passersby slowed to rubberneck at what looked like some delicious drama.
He gestured to the rectangle of paper - blank as ever.
"Were she a threat, this would be covered in red writing. She is not a foe for you."
no subject
"Desire for them drives men mad. This is no place for us"
Any of them. The girl, the merchant, herself.
She realizes then that she doesn't have her whip, and swoops for it, collapses it, hug it close to her body the way a child would hug a toy. She wishes she'd run Gillia through with it while she was still half-hypnotized by the swaying of the coral.
Only then does she look at the crying thing again. There's no apology or pity in her look, only frowning unhappiness and weariness. She opens her mouth to say something but only winces and turns back to the medicine seller.
"I'll... leave her to you..."
no subject
But as she is what she is, four eyes and all, all glitter wet and coral as soft as petals that dances to be seen and not seen, nothing comes of it. Only that she curls away from Anna's gaze, turning her body in. Wishing somehow, that her mother was here, that her fathers would do as when she was a child, and hold her until all the confusion went away.
They are not here, and she has no comfort to call on. Instead, Gilia curls her feet under her, watching the sea trickle against the deck. Drying as soon as it dripped away from her. The thick smell of salt air curling about her skin like a blanket.
no subject
"I will take responsibility for this," he said, shifting to keep Gillia out of direct view of others. He hopes his words have some kind of assurance - he doubts it but he hopes nonetheless. He'd rather not see how this conflict would end (terribly, for everyone most likely).
no subject
Still, when it is that the Medicine Seller comes back to her, she lifts her head just barely to look up at him, the same confusion on her lips. "Please, I did not do it. I swear it."
no subject
"We should speak elsewhere. Can you get a hold of your abilities?"
no subject
With it gone, or at least quiet, she begins to shakily pull herself up from the floor. Her clothes soaked to the bone, but it hardly seems to bother her.