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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Oranna and Bran head back to Oranna's house in Ironforge after a doozy of a day on Blue Squad, to talk about cultists, organization systems, and ways of thinking, and how sometimes it's okay to not be okay. 6300~ words. Post Squad Log. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Oranna Stormbreaker's house in Ironforge is on a corner diagonally across the Mystic Ward from the Cobalt Company Headquarters, close enough to the center ring of the city to get a ruddy glow on the stonework that tints it softly orange rather than gray. The prime real estate should likely have cost an extremely pretty penny, but such evaluations might ignore the possibility of other factors, such as a previous owner remembering an uncommon kindness of a buyer done many years ago.
For a small but steadily sprouting family of a newly growing clan with a matriarch out on the front of a flourishing mercenary company, an engineer who would manage a shop downstairs, and a household filled with giant pet likes snow leopards, wolves, and bears, it is the perfect size and shape.
For one lone dwarven woman and her cat, it is depressingly over-large.
There is an incongruous autumn-themed wreath of metallic leaves with several chips where it has fallen and not been repaired on the front door that Oranna strides up to, shifting her hold on Dane's cape to one hand as she works to unlock it.
"Ye'll have to give me a moment," Oranna warns Bran as she eases the door open. "Ta disarm the traps. Jus' need ta…" She reaches a hand in through a narrow space, moving fingers carefully along memorized paths. Three distinct clicks are audible. "There we go!"
Oranna opens the door. Aside from the evidence of two fire trap launchers, and a net above, the place is a heartening slice of normalcy. The main room on this floor is nearly all of a single piece. To the left is a kitchen along a wall with an extremely sophisticated stove, and a hum emanates from a rectangular deep freezer. The kitchen table holds a circle nearby with six chairs that speaks of the hope of company to host.
To the right is a living room with one small couch for people and several rugs and large cushions that tell a story of pets who once occupied them. The walls are taken up with shelves filled with hundreds of books that spawn an extraordinary variety matched only by the truly obscure method by which they were arranged (it is not alphabetical, by size, by color, or even by subject — but there are patterns that emerge enough to suggest that there is truly a system in place).
Even without the obvious knowledge that Oranna has been away recently, the place has an unused feel to it, a stagnancy of solitude and the lingering quietness not of peace but of emptiness.
At the far end opposite from the door are a set of stairs that lead down, where the bedrooms and door to the former workshop must be.
As Bran enters the house, his hair and beard matted and his white robe hopelessly stained with an eldritch horror's digestive juices, his gaze does one quick sweep and then zeroes in on the bookshelves. He leans wearily on his staff as he gazes at it, possibly trying to work out the pattern.
What he says, though, when he finally breaks the silence the two have allowed one another during the walk and tram ride, is, "Should we have somethin' ta eat, ye thenk?"
Befound rumbles approvingly, as she pads into Her House, sniffing various objects on her way to Her Pillow Bed in the living room. Yes, feed her, Oranna. She has had nothing to eat in all her life, and look at the state of her, she is naught but skin and bones.
She is also the cleanest of the trio, and about to be cleaner as she sets about taking another bath in addition to the one she took on the tram.
Oranna offloads her bags at the door, hanging up Dane's cape on one of the many pegs, and closes the door with a foot. She looks around the room as if faintly startled by the idea that there might be something to eat already out and she just hadn't noticed it. (There is nothing.)
"Oh. Oh, aye," she agrees. "I've got meat frozen fer Befound, but ahhh, fer us… there should be some things still in the cupboards. Cans of things — that is food cans, I mean, not jus' random things for us in there, like soap or… towels… which we should probably… have."
They probably should. Oranna's dress is in strange tatters from where the digestive acids ate away at even the enchanted cloth, and her hair is one large wet rope that bangs into her back and legs heavily as she moves farther into the room. "Do ye want ta get changed and cleaned up while I get somethin' together?"
"Oh aye, I'll get changed," Bran says agreeably, his gaze still fixed resolutely on the bookshelves. "When ye wear white ye always have a backup in a waterproof bag. But maybe we could just order out, aye? I can't imagine ye feel like cookin'. Light knows I dinna. But I got coin, an' I could run to a tavern an' be back, get everythin' laid out, wash up an' dress, before yer done with yer hair."
It's said in a light tone, but not mocking. Just the tone of one who understands physics and basic mathematics and is pleased with his plan.
Oranna pats at her hair, surprise and dismay written large on her face at the state.
"I wouldn't be too sure of that," she says with a weak chuckle. "Think I'm carryin' another five pounds from whatever's in it."
Befound continues her bath, unaffected by the dwarves considering their options. She knows she's going to get fed.
Oranna meanwhile takes another look at her cupboards, as the idea of a tavern sinks in and finally expands her awareness of other options than those right in front of her. "A tavern… actually, if ye've a mind fer it, I have somewhere I can go, an' get a good deal. They know me, an' won't be lookin' at me askew fer showing up in…" She gestures in a way that might be meant to signify her clothing state, but looks a lot more like how someone might try to show two birds colliding in the air.
"There's a whole shower downstairs, second door on yer right, just after the guest room, which is the first door, I probably should have started with that door, it's… the doors," Oranna explains.
Bran finally tears his eyes away from the Tantalizing Bookshelf Pattern and points them vaguely in Oranna's direction.
"Oh, if ye have a favorite place, aye, that'd be best," he agrees. "Get me whatever's spiciest. Or whatever they do best, if they en't good at spicy. Thank the Light fer the shower! Some lasses only have baths, and I canna abide a bath. I mean, I'll take it if there's no other option, but how do people bear just settin' an' soakin' in their own felth? Blecch. Especially after taday."
He gives a dramatic, theatrical shudder, then smiles again. His gaze roves the kitchen.
"If ye show me where the deshes an thengs are, I can a' least set the table once I'm showered an' changed. I know what yer probably thenken, but I've never broken a dish in me life!"
Befound stops her bath, and assumes a feline innocence.
"Befound has," Oranna tattles on her snow leopard. Befound huffs and removes herself from her cushion bed to… another cushion bed. Oranna shakes her head as she cross the room to open up not one, not two, but three cupboards.
"The shower's new, well 'new' relatively, as in it didna with the house. Bargrimm… Bargrimm put it in, on account of the shop, the chemicals in the shop specifically, since a spill of them meant ye'd want ta rinse them off, not… linger in them," Oranna says, grief pulling her expression down, a pushing weight that has her drooping. "And with his leg, a bath was… he couldna get in an' out easy, so it was…he needed ta have the shower, so he built it."
The cupboards Oranna open have dishes in them, but not in a usual configuration of all the dishes in one place. On a first glance, it seems a strange chaos. On a second glance, a person might note that each dish is in a cupboard that contains all the usual things that would be used with that dish — cans of soup alongside bowls, glass containers of pasta alongside plates, and so on.
"Not that ye needed ta know any of that," Oranna finishes lamely. "I'll jus'… go get us food, an' while I'm at it, check somethin'." A something that makes her uneasy and nervous, which is a tell, but pretty nonspecific for Oranna.
"I never mind hearin' the story of a theng, lass," says Bran warmly. "And look at those cupboards! Ferst ones I've seen tha' make any sense. Ef I ever have cupboards tha's just how I'll arrange 'em."
Bran belatedly realizes his bags are still strapped across his chest, and begins to divest himself of them. He studies Oranna for a moment as he does
so.
"Wot needs checkin'?" he asks. "Anythin' I can help with? When I stay at an inn I usually pay, but I doubt ye'd take kindly ta me tossin' coin at ye, so I'm happy ta earn me keep however I may."
"No, it's jus', ah, a thing… someone wrote ta me about how I might come back here, and go to his ma's pub — that's where I'm goin', ye see — with a note that might have said he was elsewhere, but he might have come back, an' if I wasna expectin' him here, I might think he was a Nightmare double, an' now I jus'… want ta check… that," Oranna explains (?).
Bran parses this stream of very normal words, then nods. "Well all righ' then," he says easily. "I'll just clean up before I handle yer deshes, an' then I'll set the table if yer not back yet, aye?" He studies her carefully.
Oranna nods. Worry has started to edge around the false calm of normalcy from home, but she frowns in determination as she grabs Dane's cloak again, mutters to herself about it, and heads out.
Befound looks up from her pillow bed, and then to Bran. He should come over and pet her, maybe brush her, she is but a widdle house cat, so soft, so mild —
Oranna opens the door again and pokes in her head to say, "Ignore Befound, dinna brush or anythin', she'll bite ye an' no' in a nice way, an' it's against her training!" She darts back out.
Befound huffs, and sets her head on her tail. Foiled again.
Time Passes
It takes longer for Oranna to return than what would be expected on a food speedrun. A reasonable assumption might be made that when Oranna showed up looking as she did, while Thalstan's ma might not have panicked, she did get curious, and Oranna is not capable of telling a lie.
Whatever the explanation that Oranna gave must have evoked a reaction that explains the sheer volume of food she carries back, so much so that she strains with the effort of hauling it up to the door, and opening it with a shoulder as she keeps the take out bag barely above the ground.
Bran, dressed in a new clean white robe just like the one that got digested today, rises from the chair where he was sitting and reading one of Oranna's books. He moves to help her carry the food over to the table, which has been set adequately if not elegantly.
"I was afraid something' got ye," he says lightly, "but I see ye were just busy findin' all the food in Ironforge. Fer that I thank ye. I'm feelin' a bit ravenous now that I dinna smell like… well, ye know. I can arrange the food while ye clean up," he offers.
Oranna shut the door with a kick, and surrenders the bag over to him, flexing her fingers with an expression of the mild pain from it. "Oh, aye, thank ye. Thal's ma might have… worried a bit, after I told her about, ah, thengs," Oranna says, and then waves both hands in the air as if to erase something on an invisible board in front of her.
"An' dinna worry, it was her, an' not a new Nightmare. I could tell. I've seen her in a Nightmare — ah, the Nightmare, ye know, an' I shot her through the eye, so. I'm…familiar. With tha'. An' Thalstan wasna there, in either real or Nightmare form, an' I'd know if he was. An' you, I'd know, fer the same reason as his ma, not — not because I shot ye in the eye, I didna, I knew it wasna you in the Nightmare, an' ye didna really…have eyes the whole time…" Oranna trails off awkwardly.
"I should shower," she hastens to add and also possibly escape.
"Take yer time," says Bran amiably. "If the food starts ta get cold I'll just warm it up with some holy fire! It warms things up withou' burnin. Er, unless they're hostile, or undead. I'm assumin' the food is neither."
Bran, do not give Oranna nightmares about hostile undead food.
Oranna pauses on her way towards the stairs, concern and confusion on her face. "Is tha' from… extrapolation or experience with hostile undead… food?" Then she shakes her head. "No, no, never mind, I dinna think I'm ready fer either explanation. An' I don't eat meat, so, mine's jus' vegetables an' things, an' I've never heard of undead vegetables so… tha's probably… safe." Probably, right?
"Ah, yers are the top three in the bag, an' look mostly red an' make yer nose hairs singe when ye open them," Oranna calls as she hustles down the stairs towards the shower before she can say anything weirder.
She hears a "Woo hoo!" fading away as she goes downstairs. Not as loud as his usual woo hoo, but it seems sincere nonetheless.
Oranna's not gone long — it's audible from the way the pipes of the house groan and rumble that the shower is brief, closer to a rapid chemical rinse than a luxurious bathing moment, and Oranna marches back up the stairs in a blue woolen dress with a towel over one shoulder as a barrier between it and her hair, still in its braid.
But she looks better already, fresh faced and cheeks still pinkish from the water.
She sits down at the table like someone who has been wanting to sit down and maybe put her head down on something for a good while now.
The food is steaming nicely despite Oranna's absence. Bran has even dished out a portion of veggies onto the plate he's not sitting at. His courtesy ends there, though; he is already stuffing his face. He seems pleased at the spice level of Oranna's pick; his red and lightly perspiring face is beaming with good cheer, more so than she's seen it since the wedding.
Oranna starts slow, and then rapidly picks up speed as if she had been so worried about the future and so concerned about the past that she'd sort of forgotten about how in the present, she's hungry.
It takes her until she's already halfway through an entire plate before she notices the book. "Oh, ye were readin' the 'Understanding The Cultists: A Look At Today's Believers.' That one got me in a bit of trouble, back in the day, with the Stormwind library. I took out too many books all at once tha' made it seem like I was lookin' ta build a tram based farming commune cult, an' it didna help me case any tha' I might have said tha' I wasna tryin' ta build a cult, because that sounded suspicious."
Bran chokes slightly at "tram based farming commune cult," but after a few coughs and chest-pounds he's fine, and just laughing heartily.
"Oh aye," he says, once he can speak. "I'm not a cultist, I swear!" is exactly the sort o' theng a cultist would say, so there's really no winnin' once they get on tha' track."
He has a drink to further soothe his abused pipes, then sets it down and studies Oranna. He seems to be considering saying something, then visibly switches tracks.
"Pretty decent book, though I wish it had focused less on why they do wha' they do an' a bit more on predictin' what sort o' schemes they might put in place. Tha's what I've been havin' trouble seein' ahead enough ta help us with. Their minds are just… pure chaos from all I can tell so far."
Oranna considers it. "Ah, it'd be helpful, aye, in stoppin' them. But, I think maybe it's a little comfortin' ta know we dinna think so much like the cultits ta know what they'll do. Tha' was part of why I got the book in the first place, actually. I was curious.
"We'd jus' encountered cultists a few times in Cobalt jobs, years back, an'… there was an uncomfortable amount of crossover, in a general way ye know, twixt a group of like minded people like Cobalt, an' a cult of like minded people.
"We dress the same, an' we identify ourselves as Cobalt in a collective way an' individually when show up places and say we're Cobalt, an' we follow a leader, an' we follow orders, an' we've got ideals. But, like the book says, it's about extremes, no' the generalities. It's an authority tha' canna be questioned, an' it's ye canna have an identity outside the cult, an' ye canna leave or wonder if ye've gone wrong, ever.
"So, ta think like them enough ta know what they'd do, ta follow tha' pattern, we canna look at the whole, we have ta look at the top, at the person whose authority orders it all, an' that's…" Oranna shrugs.
Bran nods. "Aye," he says thoughtfully. "I'll admit tha' I struggle quite a bit ta understand their way o' thenken', or why anyone would put such blind trust in just… one person. I have never in me life met even a small group o' people, much less one person, who collectively had even a fraction of a full picture of anythin'."
He eats thoughtfully for a moment. His turquoise eyes go a bit unfocused as his gaze drifts off somewhere into memory or speculation. Then he looks back to Oranna.
"Tha's not ta say I havena met wise people I've learned from. But they know one way I can learn, ye ken? I like ta know the other ways, too."
"Well, aye," Oranna says, slowing down only slightly in the food shovel. "I think sometimes people get desperate, an' there's something easy sometimes in not questionin', not… thinking fer yerself. Ye jus' surrender, do what yer told, an' yer promised rewards fer it."
She chews at her lip for a second or two. "But the Old Gods thing… I think tha' scares me more than any of the other cults combined. Ye remember when ye werena sleepin' from the Nightmare, an' ye kept seeing tentacles everywhere we went?"
Bran sets down his fork. He gazes at his plate for a moment.
"Aye," he says solemnly.
Another moment, as he stares at his food as though it might be about to grow tentacles. Then he lifts his gaze toward Oranna. For a moment, there's naked suspicion and wariness in his eyes - he perhaps has not had enough practice with negative emotions to learn how to keep a good poker face. It's the look of someone steeling himself for a blow - or waiting for someone to abruptly shift into a faceless horror.
But the expression is gone almost as quickly as it came. Not hidden, but melted away, the feeling itself dismissed and swept aside. It is replaced by a weak smile as a hint of the old twinkle returns to his turquoise eyes.
"I do remember," he says sheepishly. "But I was sorta hopin' no one else did."
"It's nothin' bad," Oranna says, reaching out to pat his arm reassuringly. "People see things when they're that tired, an' magical things happenin' in dreams. It's only somethin' I've wondered at sometimes with the Twilights. If that's maybe… how they see the world. Somethin' done to their heads, I mean, so that what they see isn't what we see.
"They're so difficult ta convince to believe again in hope an' light an' that there's nothin' inevitable about what's happenin' with the Old Gods, tha' it makes a body wonder, are we even seein' the same world anymore? That if they saw tentacles an' darkness, an' the whole world wriggling in destruction, wouldn't it be us who sounded mad to insist otherwise?" Oranna asks.
Bran considers this soberly. He's silent for a moment, pushing food around on his plate.
"They say…" he says carefully, giving his fork a little tap-tap on a chunk of red pepper. "…That there's no comin' back, for 'em. That once the Old Gods get hold o' yer mind… that's et. Have ye read anythin'… you know, any other examples? Counterexamples?"
His tone is too light now, too casual, for any sensible person discussing such dark subject matter, as though he's trying to overcompensate for the horror it causes him and has leaned too hard in the other direction.
"Oh, aye," Oranna says, half-rising awkwardly, and then committing to it fully, pushing her chair away as she scuttles off towards a pile of carefully collected Company Newsletters. "We've actually done it ourselves. Cobalt h-has, I mean, not.. not you and I ourselves, the bigger ourselves, the…ye get what I mean."
She pulls one of the folded letters free of the pile. "It was when Blue Squad was up workin' in Mt. Hyjal. I remember it because we had ta organize the requisition paperwork fer it. 'In the process, they encountered Twilight's Hammer servants who were sufferin' from some kind of mind control… our squad was able ta brew an antidote.' Jo took the recipe from the report, an' the ingredients are a bit tricky, but aye. It exists, an' Cobalt's got a small, precious stash of it, fer emergencies," she tells him, flapping the newsletter with an encouraging smile.
Bran all but snatches it from her in his eagerness, his eyes sparkling with curiosity. He scans over the report, searching it and muttering in Dwarven, although he'd been speaking Common with Oranna the entire time before.
"This is why I really should read these newsletters when they come in… wait, which address are they even sending them to…? Where is it… oh there!"
He reads carefully for a moment. Then he's back to Common.
"I see, I see… brelliant!!" He hands the newsletter back to her, eyes disappearing into his beaming smile. "I canna thank ye enough fer showin me tha'. I'll just pop by the Capn's place sometime an' ask 'er wot's in it exactly, all the details!"
Oranna smiles, warm and bright, obviously and visibly pleased that her old lady collection of National Geographics youngish dwarven person with a normal stash of Company Newsletters has proven to be a wise use of her shelving space.
"The Ironforge Clinic with Niris an' the others are likely ta have the ingredients themselves of what we could get, an' all the methods fer the how tha'… happens," she tells him, gesturing in a way that maybe is meant to convey an alchemical property, but more resembles two ostriches grappling with entangled necks, "an' ye know Niris, of course. The only thing I know that is a real problem is tha' it canna be made ahead. They said it's jus'… ye know. Ye've got minutes after it's done brewin', so no bottlin' an' keepin' on hand."
Bran fumbles for the satchel nearest his chair and pulls out his journal as Oranna talks, opening it precariously near to his plate full of Peppery Somethings and scribbling in it, his expression intent and delighted at the same time.
"Brelliant," he murmurs again, and when he's finished scribbling he snaps the book shut and looks up at Oranna, picking up his fork without putting the book away. "Takes a load off me mind, ye have no idea. I'll grill the lady alchemist on the details once we're not quite so…" he twirls his fork in the air in a manner generally indicating chaos. Then he smiles. "By the Titans, Boomer, how are ye keepin it tagether so well in all thes? Much as you worry about thengs, an' still ye held the line taday when thengs got… worse'n even the worst imagination could conjure. Is that hoew ye do it? By rehearsin the worst ahead o' time?"
Oranna opens her mouth, visibly wobbles between affirmative and negative, and then has to agree.
"I think that's part of it? Ye know, at least I think that's part of why I do it. Try ta think ahead of what can go wrong. Like seein' something horrible, the first time it's… shockin' on top of all the rest of it. But, as soon as it was mentioned that we'd be flyin' over, I was thinkin', 'what if it knocks us all out of the sky an' eats us.' So when it did, it wasn't shockin', jus' horrible. Elo's Three Prong Approach ta the past had a bit of that as the first. Ye tell a story enough times, it loses its sting. An' that's true of the past and the future," Oranna says, as she sits back down, squeezing at her hair with the towel wrapped around it. Her eyes look to the right, at some fixed point not in sight, but in memory.
"An' I've been through it afore, that realization tha' yer jus'…going ta watch everyone die, and there's nothin' ye can do. I know ye can live through that. Findin' out it was jus' another Nightmare, well. I've done that, too.
"Plus, it's not like I was doin' anything more than following orders. I wasna the one who had think about what ta do or where ta go. That's all I was keepin' together. Dane an' that Earthcaller were the ones doin' the step harder of thinkin' and not jus'…breathin'." When Oranna breathes out in those metronomic ways, it's because she's sniping something.
Bran studies Oranna for a long moment, looking like he's trying to see past her to something in the distance, something beyond the walls of the house.
"Maybe I've just nae lived through enough yet," Bran says. "Maybe it's good fer me, ta see more o' the worst the world has to offer… so I can see the other side of et, the way you do."
He continues to stare at and through Oranna for a moment… then gives his head a little shake and tucks back into his food with the aim of finishing it off.
Oranna rubs at her left arm for a moment before she shakes her head. "No, it's not always like tha', though. Sometimes, exposure ta a thing, that experience, that hurts us, jus'… hurts us. We dinna get used ta it, an' it never stops bein' something that hurts us, no matter even when we expect it. We flinch. Ye canna wear it down. It wears you down." She sighs, and gives Bran a little smile.
"An' it's all right, ye ken, ta say 'that hurts me, and I dinna have ta get used ta it.' Experience doesna always mean ye come out of a thing stronger just because ye survived it. I guess I just try sometimes ta get out ahead of it, an' expect something bad that I've already survived, an' think about how I'm still here, weaker or stronger," she says. "It's a thing I learned a while back. It's okay ta not be okay."
Now Bran looks sincerely puzzled. "I'll… have ta thenk on tha'," he says. "Tha' one's a real headscratcher fer me."
He squints at her, as though maybe it's written somewhere on her face? No? He lays a hand on his book, then pulls it back, glancing at Oranna again.
"Would it be… offensive to ye if I wrote tha' doewn? I gotta write everythin' in here so I can have it all… somewhere I can compare an' cross reference an'…" He trails off awkwardly.
Oranna now looks puzzled. "Why would I mind? I do the same thing meself. I had ta take notes when I asked Elo about how ta… give off a metaphorical Second War Wall in my head. It was things I wasna used ta hearing, so how else could I get them ta stick?"
"Oh good, good! Glad ye understand."
Bran immediately begins jotting in the journal in his odd, seemingly machine-printed handwriting. It's Dwarvish, but also a Dwarvish substitution cipher apparently, because the letters are all in the wrong places.
"Okay… not to… be okay." He blows on the page, then snaps the book shut and smiles at Oranna. "I've learned ta ask, though, because once or twice I didna and someone started screechin' at me somethin' awful."
He tucks the journal back in his bag, and when he sits back up his expression is thoughtful. He's clearly trying to figure out how to say something, and rejecting about six or seven possibilities. Finally he speaks, his eyes straying in the direction of those intriguing bookshelves.
"So… ef say I were leavin early in the mornin before ye were awake and I wanted ta tell ye somethin before I left… wot's the best way ta wake ye up without, ye know, startlin' ye half ta death or given ye gray hair?"
Oranna's face dips suddenly into grief, and is pulled up into a forced smile. "Oh, ah, I got used ta that with Bargrimm. He was an early riser, and I wasna one meself. I got used ta waking up earlier with him, but he was still up with the sun. Not — not literally, we dinna get sunlight, the room is, we're… it's stone wall — " She clears her throat. "But earlier. A knock on the door, jus' the door, not the walls or anything nearby, I startle if I think it's a pipe breakin'. Or if she's up, tell Befound ta come get me, and she knows how ta wake me."
Befound stirs briefly from her nap. Her name? …. nothing else? Clearly not important. She resumes her cat nap.
"Oh! Ach, an' speakin' of — I need ta feed her," Oranna exclaims as she hurtles up into a stand.
Befound jolts to attention, she wasn't sleeping, she's never slept a day in her life, where is the food? Where are her treatos?!?!
"Where does she sleep?" Bran asks, looking at Befound. "Or… not sleep, if she's nocturnal, I suppose… where would she tend ta be in the middle o' the night?"
Befound turns a sapphire blue stare on Bran. Luckily for him and the day he's having, she doesn't do anything like have her eyes turn all black as she speaks in an unheard voice in an unknown language that tells him she is EVERYWHERE.
She just blinks at him.
Oranna hustles over to her bags, drawing out a bag larger than the bag it came out of — weird Azeroth magic at work — and making her way to Befound, who waits for her food like a princess.
If princesses started drooling at the sight of fish bags, that is.
"Oh, she roams. I'll tell her not ta bother yer door, an' she won't. Sometimes she goes in there. I… I slept in there, the spare room, fer a while after…" Oranna sighs heavily. "After." He probably gets it. She turns a curious, questioning look on Bran. "Is it just a hypothetical thing ye might want ta tell me, or is it something sittin' in yer head now and yer just wondering when it'll fall out?"
Bran gives Oranna a bit of a deer-in-headlights look for a second. If deer had voluminous damp orange beards, that is.
"Just… I wasna sure if… well just on the off chance I should wake up an'… if there's somethin in the room and I dinna know if it's there there or just… well, ye said sendin' Befound was the best way…"
He turns a little red and abruptly decides now would be a great time to bring his plate to the sink. Just nice guestly things, being guestly.
"Never ye mind," he says as he starts rinsing the sauce off the plate. Sauce is all that's left. "Just thenkin out loewd the way I do sometimes in the evenin's, no sense to it at all."
Oranna laughs, not at him, but if anything, at herself. "Bran, ye've known me now fer four years. I talk mad all the time, or in ways that make no sense. Got inta the habit of talkin' ta myself, well, an' Mywill, but mostly… jus' talkin', and now everythin' I think just falls out, half formed, half baked, all doughy. Half the time, I don't realize what I'm sayin' until I've half said it." She straightens from a crouch, having appeased the wild animal she keeps in her house.
"It worries ye still, then, ta not know if ye're seeing true, or if something's got inta yer head?" she asks gently to his back. "It's all right, ye know. Ta worry, I mean, not that it's all right that it's happened ta make ye feel unsteady, that's… that's a sad thing. But, it's nothin' ta be ashamed of, yer worry. An' aye, if ye wake up, an' something's strange or yer unsettled, ye can come get me. Or Befound, too. If ye see something, an' she does too, growls at it, or goes fer it, ye'll know she's no' pulling one over on ye. She cannae. She's an animal. An' ye know me, Bran, aye? I couldna convince ye of a lie of seeing somethin' or not ta save me life."
Bran nods, still working on the plate. His shoulders seem to relax as she talks.
"What would I do without ye Boomer," he says. "Keepin me beard an' me thoughts nicely braided." He nods, nods. "Aye. I'll come get ye if tentacles start sproutin' from the footboard or some such. Probably willna happen, but, it's nice to have a plan, aye?"
He tosses her a little wink over his shoulder. When he finishes rinsing the dish he locates a towel to dry it off, as though he's been using her kitchen for years.
"As fer the way ye talk, if folks canna understand it they're just not listenin' to it right. Ye gotta listen to the whole theng, not follow the string o' words all narrow an' straight like it's some kinda road. It's all there, if ye wait fer the pieces."
Oranna smiles at him, gathering up her plate, and walking it over to the kitchen. "I didn't always. Talk, I mean. I used ta be quiet, afore — a long time afore. With my family, I was… talking got me inta trouble," she hedges. "So I learned not ta. But, then after the Second War and I went ta live by meself, it was… quiet. Too quiet, ye ken? Silence would get so large, it'd be loud, so I talked, ta me, because well, I wasna gonna get angry at me fer it. And now…" She shrugs as she looks over at him, a sad sort of smile on her ever readable face.
"Sometimes I wish I didna talk the way I do. But, Bargrimm… Bargrimm used ta say that it's better I talk like I do, an' fit around people who like it, than fit meself into a quiet box ta be around people who don't. An' I think he was right." She sniffs, and clears her throat again. "Anyway, I should get proper showered, an' deal with my hair, an'…rest up. The spare room has everythin' ye'll need. It's… I keep it up, because I've thought of rentin' while I'm away, so it's all… like a room. That a normal person would stay in."
Bran nods. "An' I'll be grateful fer it. I've not stayed in anythin' approachin a normal person room in quite some time!"
He chuckles, then sets down the dry plate and gives a big stretch. Something cracks slightly in his spine, but from the expression on his face, that's what he was going for.
"Ahhh, well, I'll off ta bed with me then. If yer still asleep when I'm ready ta leave in the mornin, should I wake ye, or wait, or just leave a note lettin' ye know like, 'I left of me own accord rather than was snatched up by a giant tentacle' an' then quietly bugger off?" He beams a smile at her.
"Oh, wake me. I've still got ta ask ye tomorrow if ye're okay. I promised ye I would," Oranna says softly with a smile as she heads towards the stairs, but with the kind of steeliness that shows sometimes on the field. "An' if the answer’s still 'no,' that's okay, too. I'll keep checkin' in and askin', until yer are again, aye?"
Bran's eyes suddenly get really bright. Not like, color-bright, they're always like that, but, suddenly they are REALLY reflecting the light in the room as though they were, I don't know, slightly watery or something.
"Oh, aye," he says roughly. "Just hope ye dinna have ta ask it at two in the mornin' on account of me runnin about howlin like a madman about eyes on the ceilin' or whatnot. Hehehehe."
With that, he picks up his bags and shuffles off toward the guest room.
"That's what friends are for," Oranna tells him, and heads off to her own, alone and not, at the same time.