[open]

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria & YOU
WHAT: Anchor-related adventures and/or drama in fantasy September.
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Some anchor and rift-related peril; open stuff is in the comments, but may use this as a catch-all. If an open prompt doesn't suit you, feel free to wildcard me or hit me up and I can write something bespoke. Prose or brackets is a-okay.

Comments

[heirring]

From the mussed make of her sickbed, Wysteria tips her head in return as if to receive the compliment like a star for some invisible sash about her.

"Thank you, Monsieur. It's very good to have one's talents recognized while one might still hear it. In fact, I would ask you to remind everyone how dreadful I had been but I fancy I'm so accomplished in the subject that the memory will persist splendidly without any assistance."

She laughs—ha ha ha. All nonsense aside, there is something very cheerful about any willing admission that she might have bested him at something. Even if that something is so ludicrous as a skill for spurning childhood education.

[degenere]

Val's hand drops. So does his face.

"What a very stupid thing to say."

He picks up the article. By now it is quite smooth and quite ready to be read. He flourishes the parchment with a little rustle and snap, and lifts it up, in order to cut her off from his sight once more.

"I am revoking my commendation. Not for your lack of accomplishment, but for--that." A gesture, with the page. He cannot be reading it. If he were, the line of his attention and comprehension would have been snapped by said gesture. One would find it difficult to find one's place again upon the page.

[heirring]

"Oh nonsense," she snips primly back at him, in increasingly good spirits despite being so woefully bedraggled. It's a good thing he's meant to be her husband. Otherwise she might have to be mortified for waking up and finding herself being seen in such a state, and she hasn't the energy for it.

"It's entirely reasonable. And besides, it's too late. I've already committed the thing to my memory. You can't have it back now."

[degenere]

"Of course I can have it back. I can have anything that I want."

This would--and does--sound stupid, but Val says it with such absolute conviction that it must surely be difficult to argue with. This is how he gets away with a good many things, without anyone questioning him or second-guessing him.

"But I suppose it hardly matters to debate. If you are determined to foolish speculation, then I will hold onto whatever I might say in this moment, and wait to argue with you when you," with disdain, "might not hear it. Things will be much simpler this way, and what luck for me."

He pointedly lifts the parchment once more.

[heirring]

Even from the depths of a sickbed, Wysteria's scoff is formidable.

"It is not luck. It is terrible. And I don't believe you really think so."

She hastens to add, weakly vindictive and just a little vicious, "—And if you argue otherwise, it will all but act as confirmation of my theory. So if you wish to prove your indifference and would really insist that it hardly matters, then you must simply read on and say nothing at all else on the subject."

[degenere]

"I," Val starts, a word that inflates as he draws himself up and sucks in a breath and drops the page again so that he can better stare her down.

Her. A stupid silly Rifter whose arguments he has, regrettably, come to enjoy. Enjoy? Yes, enjoy. How many letters has he written to Freddie and to Jeannot--my fondest friend, you must plainly tell me what you think: what is a Rifter and what does it mean when one finds their company amusing-- My dear companion, I am slipping into a madness, I think, and I hope it is one that I will wake from, though I begin to fear that I will not--I desire your counsel on this matter, you must help me to examine this situation that I have found myself in, with every ounce of objectivity--all of these letters, crumpled and thrown into the little stove in his workroom before they might be discovered or, worse, sent.

And here she is now, this person with whom he enjoys to argue, skin turned the color of chalk, laid out with a particular weakness that Val recoils from, just as he might recoil from his own thoughts. It is this which he is particularly unused to. His thoughts are companions as dear to him as Freddie and Jeannot. No, he must stop thinking of them now. Back to the page that she has selected--that, at least, is safe, words fixed down that contain no personal feeling.

"I", repeated, then finished at last with, "am reading now," and raises the parchment yet again with the air of a orator too frequently interrupted.

" 'Long before its first performance on le théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique, the work of Monsieur Dupont was not totally ignored by the Orlesian public, so eager and so aware of the artistic events of our time. Dupont, who has a weakness for young composers, gave Les cloches de Arlesans to Monsieur Gaspard Planquette, a young man who made a certain reputation for himself by composing songs for Blaisot and Pacome. And by the opinion of this author, this choice will prove to be Dupont's undoing in the artistic world.' "

And so Val continues, reading aloud to his wife. It is all very normal.

[heirring]

It's all very normal and doesn't strike even the faintest cord of dissatisfaction or unhappiness or regret in her. For naturally she can sense when he is digging his heels in for the sake of being stubborn—she had but said as much just a moment ago—, and obviously it is very satisfying to be entirely correct in her assessment and of all people in the entire world, Val de Foncé would be the very last person she would ever wish to clutch her hand over her sickbed and reassure her that all would be well. How very dire a picture that would be for any number of reasons, the most significant being that she can think of no time where the man has chosen to be anything but relentlessly—

Well, not practical. But reasoned? Certainly. And how damning would any alteration in that temper be? No, it would be very dreadful, Wysteria decides as she listens to him reading, if he were to suddenly choose to be anything different simply on account of her being trapped in some bed with her arm about to be struck from her body. In fact, she would never forgive him if he expressed some point of anxiety that proved to be entirely unfounded. How dare he concern her unnecessarily? After all this time of snub-nosed confidence, the absolute highest crime he might commit would be to prove otherwise at some crucial moment. There is nothing at all worse than a partner proving themselves as somehow secretly unreliable.

Having so thoroughly convinced herself of this simple fact, Wysteria submits herself as an audience to his reading with a characteristic petulance which fades into sharpened interest only once fed by a few paragraphs. She knows almost nothing about Orlesian theater, to say nothing of opera, but has read a great deal of Orlesian chivalric tales and the allegorical movements of art through the Ages and somewhere in the middle of the reading begins to confidently interrupt him in an effort to demand some bit of context, or to interject incendiary suggestions along the lines of 'You know, this is very in the same vein as Connell McCann's 'Stories Without Pages: The Oral Narrative of Ferelden'. You ought to read that.'

And if at any point Val does attempt to put one of his boots up onto the edge of her bed, Wysteria will faithfully protest its presence. It would hardly do if only one of them were dependable.