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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | The Cataclysm of the elements comes to Azeroth with destruction, altering it forever. In one small corner of Azeroth's Eastern Kingdoms, one tidesage does every earthly thing he can, and House Fallon holds fast. 12,500~ words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
It is a gorgeous late spring afternoon, and the casement windows in Siamus Fallon's office stand wide to admit a salt-kissed, balmy breeze that stirs the curtains and ruffles papers on the desk. The sky beyond is clear and cloudless.
Siamus is seated at his desk in his shirtsleeves with his collar undone. A cup of tar-black tea sits near his right hand, and there are documents and open letters spread before him; a number of these are being confined against the breeze's mischief by the makeshift paperweights of compass and sextant.
"What a grim-faced little minnow she is, aye?" he asks of his wife, eyeing the infant in her arms with a fond smile. The smile fades after a moment, though. "And how was Lady Moore faring this morning? Are the arrangements settled?"
At four weeks old, Ery is much as described: wearing a perpetual frown while awake, a grim-faced little minnow scowling at the world with a newborn's disapproval. At this point in time, it just makes her seem strangely aware of the circumstances around her.
Avrenne tucks the edge of Ery's blanket into a more perfect diagonal line, holding the infant against her chest. Lady Fallon looks less worn than she did two weeks before, if not quite back to herself yet. Her dress is a favorite of hers, a long sleeved and square necked dark navy blue trimmed with gold, with a dozen buttons on the front, that has been tailored to fit her larger postpartum body. Around her hips is a belt, an unusual accessory for the duchess, but attached to that belt is the small black bag she took with her to Wintergarde, and this bag is the likely reason for the belt.
"Priscilla is doing as well as she can. Lord Bertrand has taken her out again this morning, to lift her spirits as best he might, and I don't expect they have returned to the house yet." She flicks her eyes from Siamus to some direction north and east, in the most direct line to Stormwind. "We are still waiting on an exact day for the funeral. The recent upheavals in Khaz Modan have slowed things even further with the process." Avrenne's own expression matches her grim daughter's, as she starts to turn from the desk, her attention now more on Ery, as she prepares to leave to feed the child and set her back down for a nap.
"Aye." Siamus glances down at the papers on his desk wearily. "If Gilliam would stop being such a shite about this relief funding —" He presses the lines from his forehead and grimaces, then glances up again. "Here, now, let a man have his minnow a moment before she's off wi' her ladies-in-waiting." (Avrenne and Emelia are apparently the infant's 'ladies-in-waiting.') He gets to his feet and comes around the desk, reaching for the little crosspatch.
Avrenne's smile flickers into existence as she adjusts her course, stepping toward Siamus to hand the infant over. "You might consider seeing if Count Westbridge could be convinced to use his influence to apply more direct pressure or know another potential approach, between his connections to the Church of Light, and his reputation for support of such causes." As soon as a hand is free of infant, she reaches it up to his face, skimming her fingertips along the surface in a lighter form of his own smoothing of the lines there.
Siamus is gazing down at the baby now cradled in his arms, his gaze softly aglow. At Avrenne's touch, he lifts his eyes to meet hers and smiles — and then un-smiles. "Westbridge. The man's none too fond of me, but if we put it to Ference…. He'll have that connection, Westbridge was behind his run if I recall aright."
He ponders this, his gaze distant, until Ery gives an impatient little squiggle in his arms. She wants a SNACK and this guy is the wrong person for the job. Her face squishes up redly in preparation for Noises of Protest. Siamus smiles again fondly — babies are so cute when they're not really your problem — and offers her back to her mother.
"You do, yes," Avrenne confirms, her own smile brighter for at least a few moments. Ah, nothing like talking politics with her husband to bring a glow to the Duchess.
But it doesn't last, a somberness dropping over her again like a veil. "I will check on Priscilla, after. Truth be told, the delay of the funeral may be for the best. I am not certain she's yet ready for that farewell."
Avrenne has already started a particular bouncing and rocking, as she takes Ery to hold against her, the movement an offering of a delay tactic to the inevitable crying at having been thwarted from immediate snacking.
Siamus nods somberly. "Perhaps I'll see if she'll have a bout before dinner this evening," he suggests, and then lifts his head as though listening to something distant.
After a moment, he shakes his head distractedly and turns back to his desk. He settles into his chair and reaches for his teacup. "How is Miss Coit settling in, have ye spoken?"
Don't delay the lady, Siamus, she has a hungry baby in her arms.
The hungry baby makes the warning sound, an unhappy not quite hiccup, and Avrenne increases the pace and depth of the bouncing, holding Ery now against her shoulder. "Yes. She seems well settled. I think she has been enjoying a moment of peace for herself." That's diplomatic Avrenne for she's been keeping to herself a whole lot, especially after the Lucy news. "A little less tense than when she first arrived."
"Good," Siamus says. He pauses, winces, presses fingertips to forehead again as if to smooth his brow.
The wind does a little stutter-whoosh through the weighted documents on his desk, rattling their corners.
Siamus lowers his hand and stares at the rustling papers for a moment like he's not clear on this phenomenon he's seeing. "Good," he says again absently.
Avrenne startles slightly at the wind, her eyes flicking from his hand to his face. She steps closer, not reaching out to him, as she holds onto the infant.
"Siamus?" She sounds softly concerned, but not yet panicked.
In her arms, Ery's discontented noises grow into an actual cry. Maybe she was as startled by the sudden wind as her mother.
"Shh, shh shh," Avrenne soothes. It does not soothe anyone, or the wind.
He glances up as though he's forgotten the pair of them were present. "What? No. I only —" He pauses, and does the listening head-tilt again. "Touch of headache," he says absently.
This in itself is bizarre. Siamus has never voluntarily admitted to any physical weakness, not even when he was literally dying of pneumonia and hypothermia. A headache is inconceivable.
His gaze goes to Ery. "I suppose — ye'd best get the minnow fed," he says. There's a line between his brows as he considers the squalling infant.
"A headache?" Avrenne asks, looking and sounding as baffled as if Siamus has just spontaneously invented a new, never-before-heard-of illness, and she's trying to confirm the name. What is a head-ache?
Ery's distress only grows, and Avrenne shifts her hold on the infant as she starts undoing her dress buttons then and there, her attention flicking from Siamus to Ery and back. "Yes, I suppose I should. Are certain you're well?"
Siamus gets up from his desk again as though he hasn't heard her question at all, and goes to close the window. As he latches the casement, he seems to catch up with the conversation. "Aye, pet. Just — if ye see one of the maids on your way, will ye send her? I'll have some tea, I think."
Only moments ago, he was drinking from the still two-thirds-full cup of tea on his desk.
"You have a tea still on your desk, just there. I can heat it if it's gone cold, and send for more," Avrenne offers, through the growing wailing of Ery. The tone of the infant's cries are changing though — this doesn't sound like her hungry cry. This sounds like pain or distress. "Alright dearest, shh, shh shh." She hastens at her one-handed button undoing, not yet turning to leave again.
Siamus has not turned from the casement. "Child," he snaps — yes, snaps, in most uncharacteristic fashion — "will ye cease your —"
He goes very still at the window. "Mallacht na baintrí," he says.
Avrenne has just barely unbuttoned enough to free a breast to offer the infant, and only the rooting reflex still present leads the child to turn her head and start nursing through the distress. Ery has been here for just four weeks, but thus far, most of her problems have been solved by nursing. For a few seconds, there is quiet.
"Siamus?" Avrenne asks again, and she sounds unsure now — as if she is asking him if he is, in fact, actually Siamus.
He turns from the window, white-faced; his black gaze is stark and strained against his ashen pallor, but his expression is a mask of forced calm. His voice, when he speaks, is weirdly nonchalant, as though he were aiming for calm and overshot the mark. "There is still time," he says. "But I need ye to do exactly as I say. There is time."
He moves to Avrenne's side, takes her by the elbow — nursing infant or not — and draws her toward the office door.
Avrenne needs no extra encouragement to follow him, and whatever questions she might have had have been shunted to the holding question box, as she rebalances Ery in her arms, walking and trying to keep the infant on her breast. She is only partially successful, but it is enough to keep Ery nursing in a strangely furious way, the child's hands balled into tight little fists.
"I will," Avrenne says, her own tone in the calm he's heard her use before when the Nightmare gripped Fallon House, and it's a blank check offered out in some reassurance. She's listening.
Siamus opens the door onto the hallway, and never mind that the Duchess is nursing. "Shine!" he barks. "Vane!"
He turns back to Avrenne. "Ye need to leave the house. Ye need to leave the house and go east toward the hills. Take the household with ye. Is Otto in the gardens wi' Larabie?"
Vane is rounding the corner at a not-quite run. Shine is converging from the other direction.
"He should be, yes." Avrenne's gaze is holding so steadily on Siamus, he might as well be the only person in the room, and she's gone paler, but her chin has lifted and shoulders squared. "Do we need to run?" It's asked with the same tone of asking him if she should reheat his tea.
Siamus releases her elbow to put a hand on her back. Before answering her, he addresses the two footmen. "Shine, clear the upstairs, household and family. Everyone outside and east, inland to the hills. Vane, find Moirin and have her clear the downstairs staff, and secure the bags ye made everyone. Have Burren find Larabie and Otto in the gardens and send them east wi'the rest. Lyra needs to run to the stables and tell Thredd to let the horses loose. There is time, but quick as ye can."
Neither footman waits around for formalities; Shine is already striding away down the hall, knocking on doors as he goes. Vane jogs for the stairs.
Siamus turns back to Avrenne, still masked with careful calm. He wraps his arm around her and draws her against him, catching the infant between them, and bends to put his face in her hair briefly. Then he straightens. "Aye, mo chroí. I'll need ye to run, most likely."
He can feel the tremor that goes through her, a hard enough shiver to extract a tiny sound from her throat. And then it's over, her own mask back in place. Her hands are warm enough to give the lie away.
"I cannot run effectively in this. I must change." She has that change with her, but if time is of the essence, every delay counts against the clock. Maybe she should have never worn a dress and been prepared ahead of time, but that isn't really Avrenne's way, to reconsider a thing she has done one way for so long, even with reasons to do so. She doesn't even pause as she tells him, "I need you to cut this dress off me."
There is not a moment's polite hesitation this time. Siamus takes the ivory-handled pen knife from his pocket and unfolds the blade. "Stay still," he tells her unnecessarily, and steps behind her.
He takes the neckline of her dress and fits the blade against it, angling it so the point is not directed at her skin. With a smooth motion, he shears a line downward. At one point, as the fabric's tension changes, there is the cold touch of the knife-blade against her skin, but he corrects both angle and tension at once, reflexively, so that it's only a passing brush of the flat.
There's a shake to an inhale when the knife touches her, but she holds so still, she might as well be a statue.
At her waist, he releases the shorn fabric of her bodice, which falls away to bare her back, and takes hold of her belt. A moment later, the pressure around her waist vanishes as the belt drops away to her feet, and then he's got hold of the cloth of her skirt and is slicing urgently downward.
One gets the distinct impression that Siamus Fallon has cut ladies out of their clothes before, and also that on this occasion it is a hell of a lot more serious a business than usual.
Under the dress is a possibly shocking amount of underwear — small black shorts, and a small black brassiere currently supporting only one breast.
She turns in place as soon as she's free. She looks no more frightened than she did a moment before. She believed he wouldn't cut her, all the way through it.
"Here, take her," she says, holding out Ery, popped off the breast like a barnacle.
Ery hates everything about what is happening. The infant's wail begins immediately, and grows in intensity until it is at decibels that can cause long term hearing loss issues.
Siamus snaps the knife shut briskly, one-handed, and drops it back into his pocket, already reaching with his other arm for Ery. He catches her against his chest, and then — his other arm now free — props her against his shoulder. He sways a little in place, rocking the baby with him. It is a slightly impatient rocking. "Shhhh, shhh shh," he tells her, in absent habit.
He glances down the hall to see what progress Shine has made. Downstairs, there is the sound of running feet in the hallway; a door opens and closes.
Avrenne stoops, reaching into the bag on the ground, and pulls out her outfit, as if she knew exactly where it was. It's obvious that she has trained for this moment, because she gets the pants on in seconds. They have a gnomish zipper, not buttons. The shirt goes on over her torso, zipped in the front, but it has no sleeves, leaving her arms exposed.
It's less than ten seconds, and she is dressed, the bag clipped at her waist.
She reaches out to take Ery again.
Siamus hands the infant back. "Get downstairs," he tells Avrenne curtly. "I want the two of ye wi'the first gone. I'll help Shine rouse the rest."
Priscilla and Bertrand are outside of stables, dressed in riding gear, having returned the horses they were riding not too long ago. Priscilla collects her purse. Bertrand offers Priscilla his arm, and she takes it, smiling at him. The two of them begin heading back towards the manor.
The young housemaid Lyra comes pelting breathlessly toward them holding her skirts above her knees, her eyes wide and her braid coming undone. "Thredd!" she shouts. "THREDD!"
Her brother, the head groom, steps out from within the shadow of the stables' entrance and squints at her. Lyra lets go of her skirts to flap her arms. "Set 'em go! Let the harses go!" she shouts. "'is lardship sayso! We gwan t'hells!"
Thredd's own eyes widen in an uncharacteristic display of A Feeling, and he vanishes inside the stable. A moment later, the deadbolts on stalls begin to clack open, and Thredd shouts, "G'wan! Get!" Horses emerge into the open air, one and two at a time, looking deeply unsettled. A couple of them turn and immediately head at a brisk trot toward the southeast.
"GWAN!" Lyra yells at them, and then turns to Birdie and Scilla. She does not even curtsey. "Ye't go t'hells wi' the rest! East t'hells! The Dochess'll lead ye!"
Priscilla seems quite taken-aback by this command and sequence of events, and she stops and stares at Lyra in open shock.
"The hills," Bertrand translates for her, tugging at her arm. "Scilla, come on."
Priscilla snaps her mouth shut. Ah, yes. The hills. Of course. She nods to Lyra and breaks into a jog. It is not her best jog, given that she was just horseback riding not so long ago, but it is a jog. Bertrand keeps pace with her.
Avrenne emerges from the house, dressed in pants and a sleeveless shirt, her forearms exposed, carrying Ery who is in the midst of attempting to scream her head clean off. She is so far unsuccessful in dislodging her head, but the Russian judge gives her an 8.1 for pure sound and effort.
Out in the garden with Larabie, Otto is standing with the older man when Burren arrives with his own warning. The three of them making their way out into the drive, headed east, are caught by Avrenne's ringing shout: "Otto! To me!"
Otto stops his run with the others to obey. He doesn't look scared at all, his expression serene. He doesn't seem to know what is happening. He runs over to Avrenne, reaching out a hand for her to take. She can't take it, she's holding an infant. "I cannot take your hand, just run with me," she directs.
Now Otto looks uneasy, as he tries to do so, as Avrenne makes for a direct line east towards the others.
Upstairs in the house, Shine and Siamus have each taken a corridor and are striding along hammering on doors. "Clear the house!" Siamus calls in his carrying Captain's Voice. "E'eryone clear the house!"
Outside, Moirin hurries after Avrenne and her cohort, clutching an armload of black mage bags. Catrin runs beside her, her own skirts hiked up, towing a recalcitrant, teary Phoebe by the hand. Emelia runs alongside them, holding her dress up to run, a strange mask of a smile affixed incongruously on her face.
Lena is in her room, fully dressed but curled up on her bed with a book she's drowsing on more than reading, when she hears the call. She sits bolt upright, the book falling off the bed and hitting the floor with a solid thump before flopping open. Lena's face goes pale. She wastes no time gathering her bags, still mostly packed, and her staff. She pokes her head out the door and calls, "What's happened? Are we under attack?"
Siamus turns his head at the sound of Lena's voice but doesn't stop his course down the hall. "No," he calls back curtly. "No time to explain. Go downstairs and out, head east toward the hills wi' the Duchess and the rest. There's time." He might as well be on the deck of his ship issuing commands, and he doesn't wait for Lena's answer before he's gone around the corner to the next set of doors.
Bren pops out of his own room and spies Lena. He gives her a look of confusion. "The hills? Maybe we're just not under attack…yet?"
Lena waves vaguely at Bren, maybe it means not now. To Siamus, she simply says, "Yes, sir."
Clearly, her time in the fleet has established something of trust in and obedience to her commanding officer. She ducks back into her room for a moment, making sure she has all her bags, and then she's in the hall, heading out. She glances over to Bren's room and calls, "I'll see you there. Hurry."
Outside, Avrenne's voice rises above and carries in a shout to the others as she sees them, calling them to her, gathering and grouping. She's still in sight of the House, her gaze flicking from counting people to assessing directions.
Ery provides a dubiously helpful fixing point of sound, as she wails.
Priscilla seems a little winded when she comes into view.
Bertrand has pulled his usual casual ponytail up into a tight bun, somehow managed while running. His face is serious. Only once Avrenne is in earshot does he pick up the pace even further, pulling ahead of Priscilla. "Do you know what the trouble is?"
"Siamus knows. Something is coming. There is enough time, but we need to be in the east hills, out of the house." It isn't exactly an answer that she knows what the trouble is, but it is the information as she has it. She is standing still now, catching her breath, eyes fixed on the house, watching for others to emerge to call them to her.
A group of horses canters past the humans, making for the hill-ridge themselves; several of them are white-eyed with alarm. Vesper is leading the troupe, and Siroc, his ears pinned back, eggs them on from behind. Penny seems to have concluded the Tirasians know what's up, and has fallen in with the little herd. Other horses straggle singly or in pairs to catch up.
Temperance arrives, nudging Brendol along until he becomes a herd with his fellow humans, then follows the other horses. Take care of the baby, humans. Bren stares after her.
"So um…" Bren stuffs his hands in his pockets. "Nice day, at least?"
There is a very faint tremor in the ground beneath their feet.
Priscilla stumbles, but doesn't fall. "Otto," she says as she closes in, and she holds a hand out for him.
Otto takes Priscilla's hand. "Is the ground moving nice?" He asks, Bren presumably, in a voice so soft it almost isn't audible over Ery.
Avrenne is bouncing up and down on her feet, making shhh, shh shh noises. She has her attention fixed on the house, because Siamus has not yet come out of it.
Bren looks dubiously at the ground as he braces himself. "Well it was a nice day. It's still… the weather's okay."
Coming up from the grounds is an older man who took the suggestion to run for the hills as walk fast and complain the whole way about youngsters and their impatience these days, when he was their age, people had manners and walked places, none of this running about all the time willy-nilly. He has a birdlike face, sharp and a beaky sort of nose, his hair sticking around his head in tufts of gray.
"Lady Avrenne!" He grouses as he gets within speaking distance. "What's this all about!" It isn't a great sign he's not calling her by either proper title, but we'll have to hope for the best.
"A training exercise," Avrenne lies smoothly, her voice louder. "For evacuations. We are to wait here until the Lord of the house has finished his calculations for safety purposes, to be within the correct time. If you would please, Mr. Latour, come stand with us so we might be counted accordingly."
"Evacuation exercises," Mr. Latour grumbles, but he does as she asks, coming to stand with the others now grouped up. If he noticed the ground shaking before, it isn't obvious in his manner.
Lena makes her way up to join the group, and she breathes a quiet sigh of relief when she sees Penny ahead. She doesn't speak to any of the others for now, just follows the path.
Bertrand opens his mouth only for Priscilla to shush him.
A grizzled, stocky older man in coarse homespun priest's robes comes trotting briskly from the direction of the gardens with a pack slung over his back. Casker John surveys the assembled group and nods respectfully to Avrenne.
When he reaches the others, he turns back to look toward the house as well.
"Miss Coit, you've got what you need for summons?" Bertrand asks when he catches sight of her.
"Yes," Lena says, making her way over towards him but not slowing down her pace otherwise. She taps one of her bags, and there's a clinking sound inside. "As long as I don't run out of… yes, yes I can summon. Has someone been left behind?"
"Siamus and Mr. Shine are coming," Avrenne says, with such confidence that it must be true. She bounces more aggressively up and down, holding Ery against her shoulder. Ery is not reassured or calmed by the action, and she cries on with enviable energy to devote to this expression of her discontent with the situation.
Sure enough, those two men emerge from the house below not a moment later. They make immediately for the group waiting distantly ahead; neither man is running, because civilians, panic, still time, etc., but they are moving at an urgent, ground-eating stride. All of a sudden, Siamus stops in his tracks.
"Oh, tides ha'mercy," wails Lyra thinly. Moirin says a word that might get a housemaid fired in other circumstances.
Behind Siamus and Shine, beyond the house, the sea has begun to withdraw. It slides swiftly backward like a tablecloth being drawn away, and where there was a glittering plain of water only moments ago, there is now a bare brown expanse of sand.
The sea reaches the far end of the breakwater, and keeps going.
Siamus turns around to stare at it.
There is a strange silence as Ery's crying stops, suddenly.
"No," Avrenne breathes, audible in the quiet. "Oh, please, no."
"Run?" Bertrand suggests, casually.
Shine seizes Siamus's arm urgently. Siamus looks at him, looks over his shoulder at the people gathered ahead on the hillside, looks back at the vanishing sea. He looks over his shoulder at the people again. There are clearly calculations being made.
He shakes Shine's grip off and says something sharp to him. Shine stares at him for a moment, glances at the sea himself, and then turns toward the people gathered ahead. "RUN!" the one-eyed man bellows, and starts sprinting toward them.
Siamus walks in the other direction, toward the cliffs.
Lyra wails again.
Avrenne does not run. She shakes her head, tight little movements. "Siamus!" Her own shout is, if one had to consider a description, one might say terrifyingly loud.
Lena stands still for a moment, mesmerized by the natural disaster that is clearly not happening right here and now, because how could it possibly… and then the shouts from Shine and Avrenne snap her back to the present. She runs.
The ground rumbles again.
Out on the horizon in the direction the sea is retreating, a line of shadow appears, and stretches upward. It stretches upward very, very fast, fast enough that it takes only moments to clarify that it is not rising, in fact, but approaching. Very, very fast. And the closer it gets, the taller it is.
Lyra screams and starts to run. Catrin snatches Phoebe up and runs too, Moirin and Cook on their heels.
"Go!" Shine shouts at Avrenne, and chances a look back over his shoulder. Siamus has vanished around the far end of the house.
The wave is still sweeping toward them, still rising as it does. It is clear long before it even reaches the breakwater that the monstrous wall of water is going to clear the house, and that contrary to Siamus's brusque assurances, there might not, in fact, be time.
Avrenne is exceptionally good at a few things, and one of those is judging time, length, and distance, and calculating it out. The math does not check out into an acceptable formula. "No," she says again, this time to Shine. "No, Siamus will be caught in it — "
"Otto," Priscilla says, and starts running, trying to pull the younger man along with her.
Bertrand rushes after Lena. "Soulstone," he prompts her. "On the priest, they have a priest here, it doesn't look like we're going to make it."
Otto listens to Priscilla's body language more than the words people have been shouting. There has been too much shouting, and too much noise. He makes a humming, buzzing sort of sound, and he runs with Priscilla.
Mr. Latour has, unfortunately, realized that this isn't the world's best simulation of an evacuation exercise. He screams, a thready, shrill sound, and starts to run back towards the house. "My shop!"
Lena is already running. She is not a sprinter, and she needs as much of a lead as she can get. Bertrand catches up to her quickly and she reluctantly slows, retrieving a small gem of shadow from her pocket. She stares at it longingly for a moment, and then nods.
"The priest," she repeats, and closes her hand on the gem. Shadow settles on Casker John, not far away.
Bertrand nods in approval.
Shine catches up to the group — he catches up first to Mr. Latour, who is leaving the group, and… doesn't tackle him, exactly, but also doesn't exactly not-tackle him. He hauls the older man with him back toward the rest. "We'll all be caught in it," he shouts to Avrenne.
We are dispensing with Not Panicking the Civilians, it seems.
Casker John is already moving after the others, but glances over at Lena, faintly startled. He spares her a nod and doesn't stop moving.
Bren starts running with the others upon seeing the ocean wall, though he does not look Okay with leaving Avrenne and Siamus behind. His pace is slowed as he keeps glancing behind him, trying to catch glimpses of them.
"That point is where it will still hit with enough force to do real harm," Avrenne says, holding Ery to her with one hand as she points behind her to an exact location, and then returns that hand to hold the infant, still eerily quiet. "Where is Siamus going? Miss Coit can summon him."
"Ye've not seen a great wave," Shine tells her, and tries to urge her ahead of him. "It's not just the break that matters. That's a flood from hell about to fall over all of us and wash House Fallon" — not Fallon House — "away. Go!"
He is not actively shoving her because she is a Duchess and holding a baby, but if both of those things were not simultaneously true, he might be shoving her.
The rumbling in the ground merges with the roar of the oncoming sea into a white-noise thunder. The wall of water begins to crest, looming —
— and there it pauses.
The crest of the wave curls further, bending toward the land below as though leaning in to listen, and then it… hangs there.
"I am not leaving without him! Miss Coit will — " Avrenne says to Shine in response, and whatever else she might have said, whatever she might have ordered Lena to do, halts, because Avrenne is looking at the wave, an incomprehension that gives way to awe slackening her expression. "Siamus."
Shine looks back too. "Tides ha' mercy," he says. "It'll kill him."
I mean, either way Shine, you know?
"No. It will not," Avrenne disagrees. It's hard to say what's behind her tone. Faith, maybe. Threat, possibly. In any case, it's surety — utterly certain — unwavering in the face of the potential inevitable with a denial that will not be questioned, that one way or another, the sea is not killing Siamus Fallon today.
From behind Avrenne comes the awed voice of the footman Burren, whom we may all remember as being not awesome in a crisis. "Like Ery on the wall," he says.
"Ery died on the wall," Shine snaps.
"Ery held the wall for five days. Won't be five days, will it?" Burren points out obstinately.
"Well, and he's not Ery," says Shine, and gazes bleakly toward the strangely-poised wave again. The water within it is moving, rippling and shifting, but the wall of it still holds.
"No. He's Siamus Fallon." Avrenne speaks it like an edict, like it means something more than just a man's name. Her eyes flick from the water to another point at an angle, then back to the wall of water holding steady. "He has promised safe harbor, that we will not have to lose this place if there is any earthly he thing he can do about it, and he will not fail in a promise given."
This is one too many things for Mr. Latour. People shouting at him to get out of his home, that's strange. People holding evacuation exercises in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, that's bizarre. But this? A tidal wave holding what looks like a conversation with a house? Sorry, that's fucken witchcraft, and Mr. Latour is not prepared for this sort of crisis. He makes a shrill noise, and suddenly Shine's baring his path towards the house becomes a non-issue, as the older man books it, arms flailing in the air in what might be rudimentary attempts at wards against evil, in the opposite direction. Luckily for him, that is east, towards the hells hills, which is the correct direction he's meant to go.
Avrenne does not. She heads south, moving with purpose, her eyes fixed on what seems to be a point of the wave — or perhaps on someone who would be below it, that she cannot yet see.
Bren looks back and sees Avrenne headed a different direction. Then he sees the waving wave. He blinks. Oh. Is it safe? He starts south after Avrenne.
Shine opens his mouth to summon both Bren and Avrenne back, and then his shoulders slump resignedly. He turns to Burren. "Get the rest of them up the hills," he orders, and jogs after the two stray lambs.
Avrenne isn't running, but she is striding quickly — those little legs can really move when she needs them to, huh.
In her arms, the infant Ery makes strange little noises, not crying, but fitful little mmmnnn nnnmmmhhh sounds.
Without looking behind her, she asks with deceptive calm, "Did he tell you, Mr. Shine, what he is intending to accomplish? Is he only buying time, or does he think he can halt it in truth?"
"He didn't," Shine says shortly. "Bit of a rush." He glances sidelong uneasily at the wall of water standing just beyond the cliffs. "But he told me to get you and the Lady Ery safe away, so I doubt it's the second. I don't know that he can halt it in truth." He glances at Brendol. "Westwind, ye may want to head for the hills with the rest."
"If it comes to that, of only buying time, we are too close to make it now. I will open a portal to Stormwind. I don't know the situation there, it may be worse, but it will not be a non-zero. I can hold it open long enough for the three of you to go," Avrenne says, still in that calm voice, as she now angles towards the house along that line to where she will be able to see Siamus. "I can teleport." That certainly sounds like that will be what happens, what her intent would be.
Only Siamus would know it for the lie it is, that she might be technically capable of opening the portal, but will not be able to teleport herself after them; she won't be able to do anything at all, for hours. Avrenne does not mention that detail of her limitations of a mage.
Bren, at least, is reassured. He's in the right place. "Does he have to be so close, to control it?" he asks. "What if he…slowly backed away while doing that. Just, put it down nicely like a blanket?" That's probably not how this works, Bren.
Avrenne doesn't know if that is how it works, and at this point, she's probably not going to ask anyone here. She keeps on her path, and at last, Siamus comes into her line of sight.
"Not how it works," Shine says curtly.
Siamus, in the distance, is standing at the edge of the cliffs, perhaps in the spot he stood in his dream; no one but Siamus can verify this. He looks for all the world like he is having a conversation with the wave, facing it with his head tipped back to gaze up at its crest.
It is clearly a tense conversation, though. He stands planted, his posture rigid, one hand a fist at his side.
"Lady Fallon," says Shine tightly. "If ye can make a portal, ye'd be better-served joining the rest and making one for them there. There are ladies and children among them as well."
"We don't know what is happening in Stormwind at present. There could be an earthquake there, or a hurricane, or worse. We could be leaving a moderate probability for survival for a much lower one. I cannot open any portal beyond that distance, even if we could believe Ironforge or Theramore or Dalaran was safe, and we have no reason to. If Siamus halts this wave until it passes, we are in the safest place we can be, possibly in all of Azeroth. If he drops it believing that he was only buying a short period of time, our chances here become non-zero, and Stormwind's survival may be higher, and worth trying," Avrenne tells Shine. "But I do not believe he will drop it, not until there is nothing left of him to hold it. And I believe there is more of Siamus Fallon than the whole of that wave."
Meanwhile, a panting Burren has caught up to the hills group. His fellow footman, Vane, has taken over Phoebe-carrying duty for Catrin, and the sobbing child has her arms linked around his neck. Catrin runs beside him, holding her skirts up in one hand and clutching the back of Vane's waistcoat with the other.
"Her Grace?" Vane demands of Burren. "Fallon?"
The breathless Burren shakes his head. "Has it," he says.
Catrin looks over her shoulder and her eyes go round; she stumbles on the uneven ground and falls. Burren stoops to help her swiftly up.
Moirin looks back at the brief commotion. Her gaze slides inevitably to what is behind the commotion, and she gives a strange, small cry. Now, in turn, Casker John looks back — gawker chain reaction — and he freezes.
"Ah," he says. "That's — Fallon, then? A sage?"
"Keep moving," barks Vane. "He can't do it forever."
Emelia halts her own running to look back and just stands there for a moment before she says, her voice high pitched with perpetual tone and also fear, "There are sometimes we don't always understand our friends, but we always want to practice good water safety!" And then she keeps running in the opposite direction of something she doesn't fully understand, but definitely looks dangerous.
Priscilla looks behind her. "Oh," she says, and pauses to breathe, staring as if searching for something other than the wave. "How much… further?"
Bertrand is at the head of the pack with Lena and he doesn't break his stride. He glances behind him briefly, but he keeps pace with Lena. It seems like he could probably be running faster if he so chose, but he is deliberately remaining near the lady who can summon people for a reason.
"Not far," says Vane grimly. "We're near the crest of the ridge. No higher ground for miles." He glances back and assesses the distance from them to the motionless wall of water. "Can't tell ye how far it'll come, if it does. May not reach. He may break it before. He may not."
"He'll… hold it," Burren insists, huffing along. "Ery on the wall."
"Shut up, Stan," snaps Vane.
Phoebe has lifted her tear-smeared face from Vane's neck and is staring behind them as well.
Otto makes it more difficult for Priscilla to get going again, because he has looked back, and there is no Avrenne behind them. She is way over there. He is completely red-faced, and sweating enough for his hair to plaster around his forehead. "Avrenne," he says, and he starts trying to walk that way, towards the Duchess, now nowhere near them at all.
"Otto, no," Priscilla says, planting her feet. "She needs us far away, that's why she sent us here. We need to get to the top of the ridge and then watch to see if she signals us, alright?"
Otto shakes his head. "Avrenne knows where to be," he insists, and lets go of Priscilla's hand, to walk back down the way they came.
Vane swears under his breath.
"She knows where she should be and she knows where we should be, and she is a mage and we aren't," Priscilla says, trying to grab at his arm. "Otto, you can't go back. Oh, Light, where is Mr. Westwind?" She has just noticed Bren's absence as well, clearly.
Otto is oddly slippery for a guy who doesn't seem like he'd be difficult to catch, and now he starts running back the direction they were before. He is not a fast runner, but he is oddly determined.
Casker John makes a grab for the boy but not fast enough.
"Burren!" barks Vane as Otto eels away. The other footman lets go of Catrin and also makes a swipe at Otto.
"Otto, pet!" calls Moirin, high-pitched and shrill. "Avrenne said she would meet us on the hilltop! Up here!'
It's good efforts, but Otto either doesn't hear them, or has made a decision based on an understanding that makes sense to him, because he keeps going.
Welp.
Lena does not look back. She only has so much breath, her heart is pounding, and she already knows what's back there. Death. It never helps to look. She keeps running.
Far behind them, past the cliffs past the house, the wave shudders and seems to rise, like a person drawing herself upright indignantly. The lone figure of Siamus lifts his other hand in a gesture like pleading or placation. If he is actually speaking — or singing — no one is remotely near enough to know it. It is a strange pantomime of a conversation between a man and a natural disaster.
The ground rumbles again.
Ahead of the runners, the hillside shifts. Pebbles rattle a warning underfoot, and then a nearby sapling topples over in slow-motion into a crevasse that has just grinned opened in front of it.
Lyra screams again, helpfully.
Lena tries to stop, but stumbles as she struggles to arrest her own forward momentum. She raises her arms, trying to keep balance.
Bertrand does not have that problem. He plants his feet solidly in the dirt as he comes to an abrupt halt, grabbing the back of Lena's dress. "Watch out!" He does not haul her backwards any more than is necessary to keep her from pitching forward into the ravine, and lets go as soon as she seems to be steady.
Otto makes his way back towards the House. When the earth shakes again, he stops and crouches down, covering his ears. Even after it passes, he stays there for a moment. He might be getting very tired. He finally gets back up, and alternates running and walking to where Avrenne is, one hand reaching out for someone to take a hold of.
Meanwhile, Avrenne stands firm, a resolute statue of a woman, holding onto her infant child, watching her husband try to convince a tidal wave to reconsider its current course of action. She moves neither forward or backward from where she now is, in between the cliffs and the hills.
Bren stumbles a little, but keeps his feet, reaching out for Otto as he approaches. Here, Otto, Bren will hold your hand. He probably wants to hold onto someone too, at this point. "The cliff isn't going to fall, is it?"
Otto gladly takes Bren's hand when he catches up to them. His face is just a red circle, tears in his eyes, and it's unclear how much of the streaks of water on his face are from sweat or tears. Maybe both. His hand is very sweaty.
Avrenne doesn't immediately answer, but her lips press together. "Not at that force, no, it will not fall. It would take a greater amount of seismic force for that, if I have estimated it correctly." The phrasing is not only habitual. There is a brightly plucked yellow thread of terror and doubt woven in her voice.
Shine moves closer to Avrenne's side. He does not repeat his advice to head for the hills. It seems sort of six of one, half dozen of the other at the moment. Might as well just have the apocalypse comfortably where you're currently standing, I guess.
Siamus unclenches the fist at his side and lifts his left hand as well. He gestures with it. The whole movement is slow, heavy, as though he is dragging his hand through the water rather than tracing a motion in the air before it.
A moment later, to the south of where he stands, the crest of the great wave seems to roll back on itself with a roar, and the wall of water in that direction begins to slump and collapse on itself. There is a geyser of foam as it falls back into its proper bed, and — inaudibly below the thunder of the sea — the piled-stone breakwater that marks the southern boundary of the beach below the cliffs is obliterated.
It is a strange, slow-flowing movement, though: the collapse runs along the wave from the south up toward where Siamus stands, still apparently holding the central crest before him and the wall of water to his north at bay.
"I told ye!" Burren crows jubilantly to Vane up on the hillside. "I told ye."
Vane, his attention on the vast potential force of the remainder of that poised wave, does not answer.
"Our lady below," says Moirin in a hushed but oddly matter-of-fact tone, as though rather than reverently invoking a power, she is introducing it to the rest of the group.
Bren cringes as the southern ocean sets down loudly. "There now," he says, when things are quieter. "Like a blanket." A heavy, noisy, deadly blanket, but okay, sure Bren. "Now if he can just back up a little, and set the rest of it down…" Bren's voice is strangely calm, as though he is somehow at peace narrating their doom.
Ery makes a reaching motion from within her blanket, one tiny hand free, opening and closing, grasping for something. She makes another mmnnnn nnnmm sound, and Avrenne makes her own shhhh, shhh shhh.
There are bright tears in Avrenne's eyes, held back by her own refusal to let them fall, watching Siamus like a fixed point. Her lips are moving, without sound, but someone good at lip reading and familiar with what she might be saying, would see it as the sailor's prayer to the White Lady.
The slow-collapsing domino effect continues; there is a moment it slows, seems to pause, as though the wave is reconsidering whatever bargain is being made, but then the central crest that looms over Siamus rolls back, and the wave seems to collapse in the wrong direction, falling to one side and then away from the shore. The foam-fountaining roar of its settling goes on and on.
Siamus lowers his left hand cautiously, still in that slow, underwater way, and looks to the north, to his right. The wave's collapse is still running in that direction, but again it slows and hesitates. Siamus sways a little on his feet. No one is close enough to see the way his hands shake.
On the hilltop, Lyra clasps her hands to her bosom and says shrilly, "Tides be praised."
But the bargain is imperfect, and just as it seems the wall of water will continue to roll back all the way along the cliffs toward the north, a smaller, breakaway wave mutinies and surges inland after all. Siamus turns his head to watch as the invading sea sweeps the grounds behind the house. Trees buckle and vanish; the greenhouse and hothouse both sway and slump, and a moment later the greenhouse comes apart like a toy in the tide.
Priscilla reaches her hands out towards the wave as if hoping she can catch it herself, trying to manifest secret magical powers that she could have had all along. Unfortunately, she does not have any, and the wave continues its course.
On the hillside, Larabie makes a pained sound, and Cook steps over to put her hand on his shoulder silently.
Otto makes a keening sound, high pitched and strained, as he rocks back and forth on his feet when the garden is lost. He closes his eyes tightly. If he isn't looking at it, then worse things can't happen.
The water runs all the way to the stables. Paddock fences collapse, and the flood reaches into the building itself.
It swells southward toward the house.
Mr. Latour, halted with the others, sinks to the ground, covering his face with his hands.
Siamus turns to face the north. He makes no additional gesture — he is pale and visibly unsteady on his feet now — but the water hesitates and the wave grudgingly withdraws. It ebbs and spills back over the cliff's edge to rejoin the restive sea below.
The ornamental gardens and paths behind the house have been erased, the land wiped clean save for, here and there, a drunkenly tilted but obstinate live oak. The wall around the round stone telescope terrace has tumbled into a random strewing of stones, and several of the paving stones jut, uprooted. The telescope is gone.
Avrenne's eyes flick at the movement of things, noting the losses with a cold calculation of acknowledgment, memories and beloved things and places lost. There is no grief immediate on her face — if she feels anything more, it is buried deep enough not to show here where others can see her — and she returns her steady gaze back to hold on Siamus, waiting until the last of the wave falls.
When it does, she shifts on her feet, a brief sudden sagging swiftly caught, enough to reveal how tightly she'd been holding herself there. She blinks rapidly, and smiles. "Siamus." She takes a step forward to start walking towards him.
Ery does a hiccup sob, a small cry, and then is quiet again except for a faint wheezey exhale.
Bertrand lets out a low whistle. "What just happened?" he asks, directing his question at the household, who seem to know more than he does.
Lena, pulled up short by the collapsing earth in front of them, turns around. She is visibly confused by the sudden lack of gigantic wave.
The distant thunder of the great wave falling back begins to soften into the ordinary roar of a storm-surge.
"He did it!" cries Burren, though whether in response to Bertrand or in general jubilation is unclear. He turns to Vane. "I said he would, aye? Didn't I, though?"
"Stan," says Cook this time sharply, her hand still resting on Larabie's shoulder.
"It's all right, Siobhan," says Larabie, and summons a small, weary smile that doesn't quite touch his eyes. "Gardens regrow." He pats her hand.
Lyra whoops and turns to fling a hug around Moirin and then turns in the other direction to throw a hug at her brother and then does a little jig in place. And then she drops down to sit on the ground and start crying, as shock and adrenaline overwhelm her.
Casker John turns to Bertrand directly and says, "Fallon, I believe." He has just gotten that memo himself. (Though being Kul Tiran gave him a head start.)
Bertrand whistles again, impressed. "You're telling me a single shaman stopped that wave? Fallon on his own?"
Moirin eyes him like who invited this guy? "He's not a shaman," she informs him. "He's a tidesage." A moment later she remembers to add grudgingly, "Your lordship."
Casker John starts down the slope. "If he did do it on his own, he'll no' be well right now. No sage e'er exerted himself like that and went to supper afterwards."
"Is it safe?" Lena asks, taking a step after Casker John as she looks to the Kul Tirans. "Will there be another wave?"
"The person who could tell us that," says Vane, "is Fallon. Can't say as I was expecting the first one, myself."
"Oh, tides," says Cook. "Them down t' th'arbor. What's coomev th'arbor?"
A grim silence falls.
Below them, Shine tears his gaze away from Siamus as Avrenne starts in that direction. He moves at once to tag along beside her.
Siamus, unaware of either of them, sways again on his feet and then sinks helplessly to his knees, his head bowed. He is wracked with tremors now like a man in the throes of a fever.
"Siamus!" Avrenne's voice carries across the distance, and her reasonable pace turns into the start of a careful baby-carrying jog.
He jolts at the sound, startled, and lifts his head heavily to look back over his shoulder. His eyes widen.
His lips move as he says something inaudible across the distance and the sound of the sea, and he shifts his weight forward and puts his palms on the ground to help press himself clumsily upright. He staggers to his feet and stands for a moment gazing toward his wife, and then he takes a step toward her.
There is a second sound beneath the voice of the surf, and Siamus's expression changes.
With a low rumble, the earth shudders again, convulsively.
Siamus stumbles forward into something like a run.
If Bren had been wondering what Avrenne considered enough of a seismic force to potentially dislodge the cliffs from their current position, he might no longer be wondering it now, because Avrenne pulls up short in her jog, and holds up a hand of a military gesture to halt immediately at Shine.
There's something about the look on her face, eerily calm and frozen all at once, like she had started an expression of composure and then forgot to do normal things like blink or breathe.
"Keep the children safe!" Is all she says, as she shoves Ery against Shine — the infant gives a mighty screaming wail of protest — and then she is gone.
And I don't mean she starts running quickly away from him, I mean she is simply no longer there at all — she is almost a full twenty yards away, running towards Siamus like the button to save the world is just up ahead and she has seconds to press it.
Shine is suddenly holding a baby, reflexively, and staring after Avrenne.
Behind Siamus, the edge of the cliff gives way. It crumbles inward as though dissolving, and one moment there is earth under Siamus and the next there is not. He pitches backward over the edge and vanishes.
Avrenne doesn't stop running. The newly formed cliff edge is right there before her, and she does not slow down at all.
She shifts her angle away from a direct line to Siamus: first northwest — her foot on the edge of the cliff — then a twist of a several degree turn to southwest —
And she leaps off the cliff after Siamus.
Bren stares wide-eyed, then quickly pulls Otto into a hug, also trying to block his view. "Everything's… It's fine. We're going to be fine," he says softly.
Otto peeks around Bren, because Avrenne went somewhere and he's supposed to be with Avrenne. It's just in time to see Avrenne go over the cliff, but rather than panic, the younger man relaxes, nodding. "Avrenne can't fall. She floats, like a feather," he tells Bren. Does he mean in the water? Something else? Who knows?
All along the edge of the cliffs, the ground is giving way, crumbling inward. A broad section of the washed-out gardens is no longer washed-out, it's simply… gone.
Shine turns and begins to sprint toward the hillside, bellowing. Lieutenant Shine, it turns out, has an Officer's Voice too. "MISS COIT! LENA!"
Ery lends her voice helpfully (?) to Shine's shout, screaming loudly with an infant's disregard for hearing loss.
Priscilla sits down hard on the ground when it starts shaking. "Birdie, what's going on?"
Bertrand whips out a pair of birdwatching binoculars from a bag.
"What's happened?" Lena shouts back, but she does not have an Officer's Voice, so it remains to be seen if Shine hears her above the rumbling.
In the air, Avrenne zeroes in on her husband, both of them above the water with now dangerously sharp rocks at the bottom. For a few seconds, all she seems to do is have a hand stretched out to him, desperate and reaching.
And then strange multicolored lights begin crackling over her skin, jagged bolts that flicker in and around her fingers.
Shine does not hear Lena because in addition to the earthquake there is a baby screaming in his face. It doesn't matter. He does not slow his approach. "SUMMON!" he shouts. "SUMMON THE FALLONS!"
Phoebe has decided to join the chorus of shrieking infant and sobbing Lyra and is doing a sort of kindergarten compromise of both, wailing despondently. Even when, after a few interminable moments, the earth stops shuddering, the cacophony is astounding.
The cliffs gradually find their new edges, and the land settles with an uneasy groan. Fallon House is now perched only meters from the new cliff-edge. Behind it, a great semi-circle has been gouged out of the land; the telescope terrace is entirely gone.
The arcane power grows like a storm caught around Avrenne's fingers.
She is still yards away from Siamus, calling his name, ripped from her mouth by the wind.
And then she isn't yards away at all. She crashes into his chest with what can only be calculated force, wraps her arms around him.
It is not only a sentimental embrace, however. That storm she gathered spreads through first him, then her, and the force of gravity itself loses its grip on both of them, a defiance of the inevitable, the mage reaching into the aether and reorganizing the physics of mass and velocity to her demand, and they drift lightly through the air at Avrenne's angle towards not the open ocean or directly below, but the edge of the coast of the beach and relatively shallow water.
Lena snaps into action immediately, pulling a crystal out of her satchel. She does not waste time explaining, only shouting, "Bertrand! Someone! Now!"
She does not wait for her helpers to step into place, but immediately starts casting, the shadow shimmering around her hands and then settling in the dark shape of a portal.
Bertrand reaches in to help immediately.
Moirin drops the bundles she's holding and steps around to Lena's other side. She has no idea what she's supposed to do, but she's ready to do it.
"Put out your hands, and reach out," Lena says, the two statements presumably instructing them to do two different things.
Moirin obeys at once.
Over the sea, Avrenne struggles to hold onto Siamus tightly enough, stretching out a hand behind his back. Her teeth are clenched tightly together, and blood starts trickling down her face from her nose, as a brightness forms and gathers in her palm. There's a sense of heat, and strange lights in Avrenne's eyes, and then a burst of fire shoots up into the air like a firework, fizzling out after it clears a certain point.
Otto lifts his face up when the fire goes up, and watches, holding onto Brendol because hugs are nice.
The Fallons start falling faster for a second, before Avrenne's arcane catches them back once more in the slow fall.
The shadow collects and shimmers around Moirin's and Bertrand's hands. Lena's lips move without sound in the words Siamus Fallon as she pulls gently on her helpers to reach out for his soul.
Siamus wraps his arms around Avrenne almost by reflex, or instinct, hanging on to her. There isn't much strength in his grasp, and she can feel him trembling against her.
And then he makes a strange, soft sound — a half-formed protest — and is gone.
Avrenne falls several feet, and then catches herself again with another slow fall. She's losing color in her face and the arcane darts wildly around her, crackling in and out.
Siamus doesn't step out of the summoning portal; he drops out of it, and sprawls on his back on the ground, the breath knocked out of him. He is very pale, soaking wet, and looks dazed. There is blood on the collar of his shirt, but he doesn't appear to be bleeding himself. He stares uncomprehending at the people around him.
Lena doesn't even look at Siamus, because she isn't done.
Her jaw tightens as she draws up another portal, nodding to Bertrand and Moirin. Then she whispers, audibly only to those close to her, Avrenne Fallon, her gaze intent as she reaches out with all her strength for a somewhat less familiar soul.
It takes no time at all for Avrenne to answer it. There's a strange lightness to her when she comes through the summon portal, drifting forward eerily as she floats a few inches above the ground, the arcane still crackling all around her in flashes of multi-colored lights, before it ceases, and she drops down those few inches, and catches her balance to stay on her feet by what may be sheer force of will.
Lady Fallon is nearly completely dry, but blood streams from her nose over her lips, and she is pale all over in a way that makes the hypertrophic scars over her arms stand out in sharper relief.
Siamus gazes dazedly up at Avrenne now. Oh look. It's Avrenne again. Surely someone will explain something to him shortly. He's just going to lie here on the ground meanwhile.
No he's not. He rolls abruptly onto his side to retch violently.
Casker John looks between the Fallons and then picks Avrenne first, since she's the one actively bleeding and Siamus may need a moment. He moves toward her, his upraised hands already shining.
Bren has no idea that the summons have happened — and successfully. He is still hugging Otto, and he seems to have closed his eyes. Somehow he is not shaking, probably because of the Otto hug. Everything is fine. Maybe. Maybe not, as far as he knows, but he is trying to keep it together for Otto.
Otto seems strangely together. Maybe it's the hug. It's also quieter here, now. No one is yelling.
Avrenne waves a hand out in a curt dismissive flick at Casker John, croaking out a, "Only magical blowback. It will pass." She turns her attention to Siamus for a beat like she needs to see him to believe he's here, and then to Ery — who is still screaming with an infant's willingness to cry uninterrupted for hours, go on, put her stamina to the test — and reaches out her arms to take the child back.
Shine, breathless, hands the infant over to her mother only too readily. He stares at Lena for a moment and then nods once.
Vane takes a few steps away from the group to cup his hands around his mouth and bellow to the two youths below, "WE HAVE THEM SAFE. UP HERE."
Siamus has fallen back again, and is lying on his back now propped on his elbows, still looking like he's not quite sure what the occasion is or who invited him to this party. Casker John goes to his side to crouch down.
Bren perks up. "They're…safe," he says. There might be a little doubt in his voice, but he repeats it anyway. "They're safe. See? It's okay." He might be telling himself that, as well as Otto. With a tentative smile, he releases him, in case Otto wants to run towards Avrenne.
Otto does not want to run. Otto doesn't want to run anywhere for weeks. Otto is tired. But he nods at Bren. "Okay," he repeats, and then reaches out for Brendol's hand. Hold Otto hand, go walking speed towards the people with a lot of noise.
Bren takes his hand and starts walking towards the others. Now there is a bit of a tremor to his grip, and he wipes at his eyes with his free hand.
Otto reaches into a pocket and holds out a flower — a small bloom of his Talandra' Rose — to Bren. "Are you sad? The gardens being gone is sad. But we have our pockets." Maybe Brendol also has flowers in them, who knows. "You can have this one. Looking at them can make people happy." Like, magically? Or just aesthetically pleasing? Unclear, and it's Azeroth so maybe doubly so.
Bren takes the flower delicately, and stares at it like he's not quite sure what to do with it. "Th-thanks," he says. At least puzzlement is a nice redirection for his sudden Feelings.
"You're welcome," Otto says because that's manners and those rules make sense of set phrases.
Lena takes a shuddering breath and returns Shine's nod. Then she turns to look at the people she's brought here, the bleeding and the retching, and alarm flashes back onto her face.
"What did…? Are you…?" Lena stammers, then quickly produces healthstones and holds them out.
Siamus ignores Casker John in favor of reaching up to accept a healthstone from Lena as politely as if she'd just offered him an hors d'oeuvre at a cocktail party. His hand is shaking. He is not taking questions at this time.
As he crushes the healthstone in his hand, Casker John discreetly settles a shimmer of healing Light over Siamus. Maybe he won't notice. Maybe he'll think it's the healthstone.
Avrenne starts to shake her head, goes a little green around the edges of her jaw and temple and stops that motion immediately. There are strange colors in her eyes, shifting arcane and fire both, and her arms are full of screaming infant she is trying to soothe. "Thank you, but there is no need. Magical blowback," she repeats. Her voice sounds less strained, but quieter now, like she's trying not to raise her voice. "Not a wound to heal."
Ery resists full soothing, but Avrenne's voice and closeness has dialed it down from deafening wail to loud newborn unhappy crying. "Shhh, shh shh," Avrenne tries again, setting Ery against her shoulder, tucking her tightly, and patting, bouncing, and swaying now, that greenish tint growing worse. The combination takes the crying down to fitful whimpering. We'll take it as a win. "Siamus?" She asks him.
"Mo chroí?" Siamus holds a hand up and Shine steps in automatically to take it and help hoist him to his feet. Siamus staggers a little again and leans on Shine briefly before he straightens with visible effort and rakes a hand through his wet hair. He would do a far more convincing Casual Gentleman if he were not so — ::gestures at that whole situation::
"How many are here? Did we come through?" He looks around the group.
"Twenty-two," Avrenne reports, without looking around. She has already counted. "Yes. And the house, and around 70% of the grounds are intact, if I have estimated the acreage correctly."
"Seventy percent," Siamus repeats, and turns to survey the scene below them. He is still and silent for a moment. "Ah," he says at last.
"We came out of it better than we had right to expect," Shine points out sternly. "And I'll wait till you're well again before I thump ye for that piece of recklessness."
Siamus doesn't rise to the bait. He's still staring at the reshaped grounds, the feral sea roiling beyond. "Ye'd no' have made it," he says. "I saw it. There was no way out of the path."
"Ye were Ery on the wall, sir," says Burren respectfully.
At that, Siamus turns his gaze — but to look at Avrenne. "Aye," he says to her. "Something like that."
"He was Siamus Fallon," Avrenne corrects. Her smile grows from a small flame into a lambent glow; there is no Composed Mask here and now. "It is more than enough." She is probably in pain, of various sorts, but that doesn't stop her from stepping forward into him gently, Ery held between.
Lena stumbles back, still breathing heavily from the run.
Despite his best efforts to conceal it, Siamus's condition is apparent again for a perilous moment when Avrenne steps into him and it seems like he might simply topple. He catches himself and puts an arm around her — a gesture as much in earnest feeling as it is to disguise his unsteadiness.
"He's in some shock," Casker John observes politely, resigned to the fact that he's probably fired anyway.
Siamus ignores him, and turns a searching look over Avrenne's head to find Lena. "Miss Coit," he says. "Once again, we owe ye a debt." He surveys her with concern. "Are ye well?"
"Am I?" Lena asks, blinking at him. "Nothing happened to me."
"Ye seemed a touch out of sorts," Siamus tells her, which is certainly some kind of way to describe how all of these people are right now. "I beg your pardon."
Priscilla looks very relieved to see Avrenne and Siamus make it through safely. "Might I recommend sitting down?" She is seated on the ground herself, so it's not like she isn't taking her own advice. "How will we know when it's over?"
Otto sits down on the ground with Priscilla. He also wants to be sitting down now.
Avrenne does not lean against Siamus — she is a second steadying point for him, and as she holds still there, warmth grows and spreads, as the chill of the ocean's water is softly lifted away and replaced by a fire mage's magic. Ery settles down further. "If it is safe, I would like to return to the house to sit down. Siamus?" He's the only one who can tell if the ocean is winding up for round two. "Can we go back to the house?"
"I believe — the sea will hold," Siamus says, and there's a note of buried feeling in the statement, something left unsaid. "There won't be another wave, and she'll bide. I can't… answer for the rest of it. The earth, or the…." He trails off mid-sentence and doesn't seem to remember he'd been speaking at all. He gazes silently downward.
"Shock," says Casker John again gently, just in case anyone feels like listening to him. "He's blessed his heart didn't give out. He shouldn't be standing."
"I understand, thank you, Brother Casker. He can be carried, and we can rest at the house. It will not likely be any worse than out here, and the sun will set soon. Mr. Shine, Lord Bertrand, if you will assist," Avrenne says. It's not exactly an order, but there is an authority in her tone, and it may be that she's saying it out loud before Siamus might deny the need, and maybe she'll get away with it while he's still in enough shock to allow the help.
Bertrand makes sure his binoculars are secure in the case and nods to Shine. "Yeah, of course." He seems willing to help carry Siamus.
It does, to Avrenne's credit, take Siamus a few moments to catch up. He's still staring down the hillside. But when Shine nods back at Bertrand and approaches to put a hand on Siamus's shoulder, his processing catches up. "What's — I don't — tides below, I don't need carrying."
And then, helpfully, he passes out.
He falls into Shine, who staggers and wraps an arm around him to keep him propped, then nods again at Bertrand. Casker John steps in beside him to lay a hand on Siamus's brow in some radiant benediction, presumably because he's in no state to object at present.
The priest steps back and nods. "He'll bide. But he badly needs rest."
"I'll get his feet," Bertrand offers.
Lena is in no state to be carrying people right now. She watches, waiting to see what she might do to help.
"He will have it," Avrenne says to Casker John, and her tone is difficult to parse; it's either faithful reassurance, or possibly a threat to the world itself. Don't test her, Azeroth. She seems to become aware of the blood on her face, because she uses a corner of Ery's blanket to wipe it away. As foretold, the bleeding has stopped. Her expression grows composed, her shoulders squared away, as she regards the rest of the staff.
"Moirin, the bags, if you will please. We will return to the house, and take stock of what has been disturbed in the earthquakes. Mr. Shine, I will want an accounting of anything that needs immediate replacing as soon as possible. Cook, if you will see to the meal, and hot drinks, please, served in the dining room as soon as is reasonable. I expect we all will benefit from a repast. Anyone who requires their meal sent to their room please inform Caitrin. Mr. Latour, if you will return to your shop, please. Brother Casker, if you will remain at the house, in case of additional injuries." Or, say, Siamus' heart stops. She isn't saying it, though. "Miss Coit, if you will come with me, I must ask a favor of you." She looks to the rest, and this time it is an order, "To the house."
Priscilla drags herself reluctantly to her feet. "I've never seen a wave that large before."
"Of course, ma'am," Lena says politely, carefully not staring at the bloody blanket as she moves to Avrenne's side and prepares to follow her back. She seems to have gotten her breath back, and to be ready to take on whatever apocalypse comes next. Then again, the calmness is probably just shock.
Otto tries to stand up with Priscilla, and is not successful. "Siamus made it stop being a wave. What was it after it stopped waving?" He asks Priscilla.
Priscilla tries to help him to his feet. "I think it was a wall, and then it was a splash."
"Okay," Otto says, accepting Priscilla's help. He is not difficult to lift up, but it's clear he's exhausted, and he staggers into an attempt at a walk. "I have never seen a wall or splash that large before, either."
Avrenne might as well be on her way to see the king as she strides forward to lead the household back to House Fallon, intact if shaken, her bearing regal, and we are going to ignore her iffy complexion.
The rest of the household, relieved to be taking orders again in some semblance of normalcy, gather themselves and their various things together and follow the Duchess. (And the Vice Admiral, but he isn't really leading anyone anywhere since he is presently being carried by two guys.)