![](http://cobalt-company.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images/writing:2024-01-12-a-duchess-walks-into-a-priest-s-cabin-for/style="margin:/medium.jpg) |
| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | After a horrifying nightmare and a scare after, Avrenne seeks out Brother Casker John for some emergency help for her baby. Oh, and also maybe for Avrenne. She's fine, just a little crispy. Personal plot RP related to the Nightmare. 4100-ish words. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Behind the greenhouse and hothouse at the eastern end of the Fallon gardens is a shed. It was obviously once a basic garden shed, but it has undergone a recent conversion, it seems, and the neat wood-shingled building with its square windows now sports a little front porch complete with pots and hanging baskets of herbs. There is a tidy stack of firewood to one side of the Dutch door. The eaves and shutters of the house have been painted dark green.
At this hour of the night — of the morning, really — the tiny house is dark and silent, the dark-opaque windows reflecting wintry starlight.
There's no real sound of an approach, and the day after the new moon there's nothing but a sliver in the sky, the shadows deep enough to obscure a moving shape running over the grass.
There's a breath and the shape is gone, vanished — and then there, on the porch, a woman's hand balled into a tight fist banging at the front door like the heralding of the apocalypse. It sounds desperate, over loud and too quick, as if someone's very life depends on this knock being heard.
The woman knocking does not look like a duchess of Lordaeron. She is barefoot, her feet grass stained and gravel torn, wearing a dark rose silk gown that exposes her arms, and dips into a low neckline above her larger belly. It also gives clear view of old, heavy scarring of her forearms, new current burns on her hands and arms, more of the same on her chest and face — her left cheek seared worse than her right, and a deep burn in the center of her chest — her hair down and wild around her face, some of the pieces in front burned. She has an expensive, large blanket around her, which stinks of burnt cloth.
And most telling of all, she looks like someone on the verge of screaming for help.
"I'm here," calls a gravel-rasp voice. It is calm and reassuring, and does not sound like the voice of a man abruptly woken, but when the door opens the scarfaced priest who stands there was clearly asleep moments ago. His short, gray-threaded hair is in some cowlicky disarray, and he is wearing loose, drawstring cotton trousers and a blanket-shawl of his own, wrapped around a burly bare torso. He peers at Avrenne, and still nothing in his manner signals alarm or dismay, though he does straighten alertly. His calm seems anchored somewhere deep below the surface storms of the world.
"Lady Fallon," he says, and stands aside, bowing his head. "Come in. Let me see to ye. Sit, please, and tell me what's happened."
The interior of the little shed has been converted into something like that of a ship's cabin, everything compact and spare and neatly in its place; there is a raised bed built against one wall with drawers for storage beneath it, a kitchen counter and cupboards at the other end of the single room, and a pair of well-worn but comfortable looking chairs in the center of the room to either side of a barrel serving as a table, in front of a cast iron potbelly stove. The stove still radiates warmth against the wintry night chill, despite the fact that the logs within have long since burned to embers. There is a teakettle set atop it.
Something in Avrenne relaxes at the sight of the priest — he's awake, he's there, she did it, she made it — and it might be pure habit that has her walk into the cabin like she's a queen, visiting a subject on a matter of grave importance. Her hands clutching onto the edges of the blanket, shaking still with fear and adrenaline, and the trembling around her mouth give the truth to the lie of elegant composure she's striving for.
Nevertheless, she does as she's bid, moving to a chair nearer the stove, sitting with poise. She's blinking a little oddly, the way someone with an intense migraine with severe light sensitivity might. Her movements are economical, the tight control of someone who every shift is painful.
"I was asleep. I had a nightmare. It triggered a defense response of mine. Fire," she reports. Her voice is hoarse, fresh smoke inhalation audible. "The baby — " Her voice cracks, and she lets go of one corner of the blanket, letting it fall as she presses a burned left hand over her belly. "The baby isn't moving. Please. Please, you have to help the —." Her words get lost in shaky breathing, as panic surfaces and threatens to overcome.
"Ah," he says, a wash of understanding in the simple syllable. "We'll see to the child, and no fear, my lady. Hush yourself, now, be easy."
It is sort of an audacious thing to say to a Duchess, but it has none of that quality; it is the soothing way he might address a skittish animal or frightened child.
"Will ye permit me to lay hands on ye?" He is already lowering himself — slowly, a touch stiffly — to kneel by the chair, adjusting his blanket-shawl modestly.
Avrenne does not move her head, like someone carefully holding very, very still, but she does push her shoulders down a little. "Thank you. Of course," she says, the words and tone both courteous, a formality. Her teeth chatter briefly, as if she's desperately cold, but she clenches her jaw tightly. Calm. Controlled. Pay no attention to her shaking hands, or how her one handed grip on the blanket is failing more by the second.
He lays his hand over her belly and tilts his head as though listening to something quiet and far away. It is hard to know if the warmth of his hand is simply natural heat, after the chill of Avrenne's nighttime run and her shock, or whether it is some property of the Light.
That question is answered a moment later as the dim interior of the little shed brightens gradually as a sunrise with the glow of golden Light that leaks from between his fingers.
He smiles and looks up at Avrenne. He speaks softly. "Ah, she's only sleeping, the little creature, and well enough. I promise ye she's hale and sound and snug."
Avrenne's expression wobbles, and she looks down at her belly with overbright eyes, as if she can somehow verify this information by looking at it now, like he's opened a little window she can peek into a nursery and spot a sleeping baby in a cradle. Relief is a tensing, a shock out of breath, before she covers her face with her hands, fingertips pressing into her face like she's struggling to contain something spilling out from it. Her own pain kicks up a notch, the burns pulled and pressed, but she doesn't seem to care.
"Thank you," she says behind her hands, muffled and tight with emotion. "Thank you."
"All right," he says. "That's all right, then. But now, will ye tell me what's happened to ye, my lady? Is there trouble at the house?"
Avrenne lowers her hands from her face with a hitching difficulty. The redness around her eyes reveals something like tears, but there's none on her face — they've been halted at the gate, and forbidden to fall. "Oh, no. No, I — I halted the fire. It was my own. I control it." Oh, there's something in her voice at that, or maybe that's just the smoke. "When I woke, I put it out. No one was harmed. I…" She looks down at her hands, blistered and burned. Her expression empties a little, goes distant. "I burned myself." There comes another shiver, and a paling of her complexion.
"Then someone was harmed, aye?" Casker John asks gently. "Are ye in much pain? Hold a moment, I'll see to ye."
He presses himself stiffly to his feet again, using the barrel-table to brace his weight, and goes to the drawers beneath the bed. From the topmost one he produces a neatly-folded coarse woolen robe, and he sets his Modesty Blanket aside on the bed to pull the robe on over his head, his back to Avrenne. His back — what she might glimpse of it before the robe swallows it up — is covered in faded tattoos, blurred and indistinct with sun and age.
He moves back to Avrenne, looking considerably more priestly despite the cowlicks. "We'll see to these before they can set in," he tells her. "Do ye object to the Light's mending?"
Avrenne still seems to be considering the first question. "I… No. No, of course not. I have nothing but respect for the Light and its healing abilities." She blinks oddly, too long, too hard, like she is trying to clear her vision and can't quite do it. "I am in some amount of pain," she says at last. That's kinda vague, but her body language gives a sense of it, as well as the tale of someone who used to being in severe pain, or familiar with it. "Thank you," she repeats. When in doubt, be polite.
"Close your eyes, lass," he tells her. "It will be bright." He lifts rough, callused hands, gnarled and blunt-fingered, to either side of her face, not yet touching her. "Close your eyes and breathe easy if ye can. In slowly, and then out slowly — and with the out, feel the pain drawn away as well. Aye?"
Faint golden radiance glimmers back to life around his hands, and he lays his palms carefully against her cheeks, cupping her face as the light strengthens.
It might not be easy breathing, but she does as she's bid, closing her eyes and breathing slowly, and a little exactly, like she's counting off time and making them even on the in and out, if not accurate to the seconds of an internal clock. In, hold hold, out, hold hold. Repeat. Is she letting the pain drain away or is she shoving it away from herself might be difficult to tell, but an attempt is being made to distance herself from it at the least.
The pain eases as she breathes, as the warmth blooms along the sides of her face — not the devouring fire-heat but a gentler sunlight touch. The tightness of the burned skin eases, seared tissue softens and grows supple again, and the pain is gone.
"There," says Casker John, and lifts his hands away. "And now your chest, and then your hands. I can't — I fear I can't do anything for the scars that have set."
Avrenne remains where she's been told, eye closed and still breathing. There's a twitch of her arms though, of an awarness that they're bare, exposed, to a stranger, and her lips tighten for a moment. She straightens up a little more, deliberately holding her arms where they are, not attempting to pull them away or hide them. "No, no, of course not. They're quite old. Don't trouble yourself over them."
He doesn't reply to this. "Try to be easy again, then. Here we go."
The sunlight warmth touches the burn at the center of her chest and spreads softly outward, suffusing her limbs like bathwater poured slowly over her. The knot of pain in her chest eases first, undone by the warmth, and then her arms and hands seem to loosen, the pain washed away by the slow-trickling warmth.
She doesn't open her eyes — she might not be sure yet when she should, if there's some protocol at work here — but there's a softly uttered, "Oh," as she sways slightly in place, and her face relaxes, tilting upward not in strength, but like someone basking in the sunlight of a spring afternoon. For a moment, she doesn't seem so cold, so composed, a softer woman than she presents herself to be, before it's caught back by an invisible hand of poise and inner perfectionism; with the removal of the worst of the pain and fear comes the return of the Duchess, pulling herself back into place piece by piece. She is Composed. Elegant. Calm.
It would probably be more effective if she wasn't in her nightgown, barefoot, and with her hair a tangle around her head, but here she is trying anyway.
The priest steps back and surveys his handiwork. "There," he says. "How does it feel?"
"Warm," Avrenne answers softly, and then her eyes open, and she pulls back a little further into the composure. Ahem. What, no. She said nothing. Her accent goes crisper, her tone pitched like a lady aware of her station, but gracious about it. "Much better, thank you." She glances down at her hands, and there's no expression there, just that composure, except that she remains staring at her hands, turning them over and over like she expects something to change. Or perhaps she expected them to scar. She raises a hand to her face, touching the skin lightly there as if to confirm the same thing.
"There won't be marks, my lady," Casker John tells her. "I can give ye a salve if ye still feel pains beneath the surface sometimes, phantoms. Will ye have a cup of tea?" He's already shifted the kettle atop the potbelly stove, and stooped to collect fresh kindling from a basket beside it.
A brief closing of her eyes, some thought perhaps. "It would be most appreciated," she says, and it has that automatic sense to it, like someone who has possibly never turned down tea in her life, whether she wanted tea at that time or not. This time it seems likely sincere. What can't tea solve? She sets her hands over her belly, resting them over each other, her right covering her left. If someone had been looking for it, they might have noted she isn't wearing her wedding ring, a fact now covered.
The priest feeds the fire back to orange and crackling life before shutting the stove's door and moving around the chairs to the kitchen counter. He takes down two plain earthenware mugs glazed in variegated hues of blue and green, and spoons a generous measure of loose black tea into a matching pot.
Thus prepared, he returns to settle into the other chair by the stove and wait for the kettle to boil. He doesn't look at Avrenne. "Naught to be done for your hair, I fear. The Light can't grow that back."
There's a brief pause, and the rustle of silk, as though she's raised a hand up to check at the state of her hair. More rustling sounds. Said hair is being organized back, smoothed down, set into something of order, though she can't put it up. "That's quite alright. It is only hair. It will grow." She sounds genuinely unconcerned. Eh, hair. Whatever. A little snip snips will even it out from the singed ends, it's fine.
"Aye," he agrees, and laces his hands together over his belly. "It seems ye had a time of it, tonight. Will ye speak of it?" He isn't cajoling; the question sounds more like genuine, indifferent curiosity: Will she speak of if?
Avrenne sits like she's posing for a portrait there, A Duchess In A Priest's Cabin. "It was a nightmare. I do not ordinarily get them. In fact, I can not recall a single instance where I did have one in that manner, and I have never reacted so before. You need not be concerned that this will be a regular occurrence." She hopes, anyway.
"A nightmare," he repeats, watching the stove thoughtfully. His brows say he's frowning, but the scar at the corner of his mouth makes it hard to tell. "But ye don't have them often. This business of the sleeping-sickness, then, I expect. The Vice Admiral's been held over in the city on the same business, is't so?"
The kettle on the stove has begun to burble faintly, emitting only a faint smudge of steam yet.
Avrenne's hands squeeze together a little tighter, but the rest of her is controlled. "Yes, that's correct." Her eyes flick from the kettle to the priest, watching him now more keenly. It may be a little interesting, how she looks at him. It's not that she avoids the scar, inadvertently making it more obvious, but as though yes, she sees it, but that it's as normal a part of his face as his nose or chin. It's just there.
"Do ye think the nightmare's to do with his absence? Or merely another effect of the sleeping sickness?" The kettle is beginning to boil and hiss in earnest now, so Casker hoists himself to his feet to lift it from the stove and go fill the teapot. "I realize the man's away often and ye must be used to it, but I wonder if I ought to prescribe — a tea, a potion, something that might help? I'd no' like to do it long-term, especially wi' the infant, but there are things we could try."
"I expect it is the same affliction as others, the sleeping sickness. It had not affected me at all until tonight." Her hands squeeze together, and she flicks her gaze down to them. "I am a fire mage. I have a… an instinctive defense with fear and rage, that it calls the fire, automatically. If I were to sleep more deeply, and still feel such, I suspect all it would mean is that I do not wake when the fire comes."
The priest turns around to survey her. After a time he says, "Is there naught will keep back fear and rage in the first place? A calming tea before bed, perhaps, not to make ye sleep but to ease your nerves."
Avrenne's brows raise up high enough to cause faint lines on her brow. Her chin goes up a notch higher. "My nerves are fine, thank you for your concern. I will take other precautions." Like maybe not sleeping in flammable materials, or maybe with her hands wrapped up, who knows.
Ah, she's one of those types of patients. No, no, she can walk just fine on this broken leg, she doesn't need crutches, she can handle it herself.
Casker John raises his eyebrows and gives her a long, level look that manages to convey Opinion without specifying what the opinion is.
He turns around again to pour from the teapot into the mugs. The tea is not yet Fallon-strong, but it is also unstrained and therefore a little gritty with tea leaves, double bonus! He carries a mug over to Avrenne and offers it courteously.
"Thank you." Avrenne accepts the tea, at least, with grace. The Opinion has been possibly ignored. She asks for neither sugar or milk, and sips at the tea, still hot, with the disregard for temperature of a fire mage. "I do appreciate your assistance, and your discretion, Brother Casker." Did he offer that discretion? Possibly not. There's a brief pause of a sip. If not for her state of dress, you might think from her manner that they are in a receiving room, in some conversation of company, rather than a patient in desperate need of assistance a few moments ago. "May I ask you a question?"
"Ye may," he says, settling comfortably with his own mug back in his chair.
"You said earlier that she was sleeping," Avrenne says, setting a hand over her belly, very lightly, fingertips barely skimming the surface of her dress. "Was that only a convenient choice of pronoun, or do you… do you know?" It's hard to read her expression, controlled as it is, but that might be a touch of hope or yearning in those eyes.
"Ah," says Casker John. He sips his tea. After a moment's silence, he says, "I beg your pardon, I thought ye knew it. I know ye see the healers regularly. I hope I didn't spoil a surprise."
Avrenne's expression flickers for a moment, the start of some brightness of a smile she can't quite repress, looking down at her belly. "Oh," she says, soft and warm. Then, she recalls where she is, who she is with, and the emotion is whisked back under that composure. "No, it's fine. Thank you for the information." She sips again at her tea, possibly to cover the small twitches of her mouth of a smile.
He may offer her a slight smile in return, though again the scar makes it difficult to tell. "Quite welcome," he tells her.
She doesn't gulp at her tea — she is An Lady — but she does sip more at it, like someone aware that she's thirsty and trying not to burn her throat. But something must occur to her, because she moves her hand on her belly, all traces of a smile vanished. "When you say she is sleeping, is she — is she asleep, like the others? The sleeping sickness, can it affect her?"
He pauses in drinking his own tea and considers. "I hadn't thought of it," he admits. "But I can tell ye she's not in that way, not at present. Just a sleeping babe, snug and peaceful." A thought occurs to him. "Would ye like a sweet biscuit? It may be she'll stir for that."
This isn't for Avrenne, this is for the child, and it's clearer where her pride bends. "If it would not be too much trouble," she says.
"Not at all," he says, and sets his mug aside on the barrel to heave himself to his feet again.
At the kitchen counter, he rummages among earthenware jars until he finds the one he's after, and brings this back to offer it to Avrenne. It contains an assortment of little shortbread shapes, dusted with sugar.
Avrenne sets her tea down. "Thank you," she says, with the light tone of someone used to be served, taking one of them delicately, and biting into the cookie, a hand held beneath it to catch crumbs and falling sugar, her fingers poised in such a way to obscure most of her open mouth, like a Lady. She doesn't rush through it, but she is not exactly taking her time either. This is not eating a cookie for fun. It's baby medicine.
Casker John helps himself to one too, and sets the jar down between them on the barrel before resuming his seat. He does not delicately hide his consumption. It is not medicine. It is priest cookie.
He picks up his tea again and watches Avrenne patiently.
Avrenne is not a particularly interesting subject to watch, as she doesn't speak while she's eating, and her attention appears to have gone a little inwards, as if she's focused narrowly down to her waist, waiting to see if cookie will make The Thing happen.
It's a long silence, a cookie down, and then more tea. She seems to have almost edited Casker John out of the room mentally, her hand resting on her belly, as if she might will some activity through.
At last, there it is — a few swift little kicks, as the baby responds to the increased blood sugar with violence movement, shifting around, awake, and Avrenne's sags inwards, curling over her belly, for a moment before she straightens back up. You saw nothing. She was always perfectly composed and not at all weak with relief. "She's well," she tells Casker John. Oh, she did know he was there. With that, Avrenne rises up to a somewhat elegant stand, a little more difficult to do at this stage of pregnancy.
The blanket falls to the floor. Oh boy, bending over to get something off the floor, every third trimester woman's favorite.
"One moment," Casker John tells her, and gets to his feet. He stoops to collect the blanket for her. "Will ye rest easy, then?"
Avrenne accepts her blanket with as much dignity as possible. There's a moment where it's unclear if she's going to try to just put it over one arm — too large, very awkward — or wrap herself in it, and given the options, she chooses for a wrap, her manner of one putting on an open coat. Pay no attention to the fact that it's a blanket. It's a cloak or something now.
"Yes, I will be fine. Thank you again for your assistance." She gives him that light dip into a curtsey, an incline of her head, that she gives most priests and tidesages, sweeping her, and her giant blanket cloak, towards the door.
"Good evening, Your Grace," the gravel-voiced priest says, as courteously as though she'd just dropped in for tea and shortbread at 3 AM.
Duchesses have been known to do stranger things. Nobles. Eccentric lot.