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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Following a trip to the Lore Depot (The Seat of Knowledge), Bryn Baird comes across a familiar local goth taking in the sunrise. The two exchange significant personal lore, knowledge, and opinions. Melancholy makes an important decision for the future of her fashion. 10k~ words. Personal Plot RP. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
It isn't quite light yet at the Shrine of the Stars, when everything is a muted golden shadow, the grass has been visited by dew fairies, and only the night elves living up to their name roam around in their vigilant watches. The dawn will take its time slowly creeping up the side of the mountains, as the darkness recedes gradually, and for the moment the world has that held-breath quiet as the light shifts in soft gradients in anticipation of that breaking.
Not far from the path of the Shrine, and on the visible patrol routes of the kaldorei, is a great wide tree accompanied by several boulders framed by a lovely patch of golden bell flowers in bright bloom, overlooking a pond and the vale. Today, as it has been periodically, that spot is occupied by a dark black picnic blanket, where a young woman who looks like she might be dressed for a funeral sits, her long legs out before her, and a little spread of snackish breakfast plate of dark fruits, fried cheese curds, and black sesame crackers by her side, as she looks out at the view in glances as she pages one-handed through a book of poetry. It's an older anthology of collected poems related to the spirit or the soul, though it's well kept.
She's in her usual preference of clothes of a velvet and satin peplum top with marquisette gauzy sleeves, a set of black lace gloves with red fabric roses at the back of her wrists, and a long, multi-tiered sateen skirt with lacey hems and peeks of red satin interiors, and her usual black lace up boots. Her hat is small, with tiny decorative red roses embroidered where the usual net lace is attached, to set a veil over her eyes. Her make up is, as usual, impeccably applied. It's unclear if she ever takes it off.
A shadow moves in the golden pre-dawn landscape, making its unhurried way along the road that curves southeast toward the Shrine. It is not a particularly menacing figure, both for that unhurried pace and the fact that it is following the road rather than creeping stealthily over the fields or something. It's following the road in a sort of casual, meandering, sometimes-defining-"the road"-a-little-creatively way, but it's in the vicinity of the road.
As it draws closer, the shadow in the soft light resolves itself into the silhouette of a human man, and then, more distinctly, a lean young human man with his hands in his pockets and a rifle slung over his shoulder.
Oh.
Baird is dressed, despite the hour, less casually than usual: tweed trousers and waistcoat, a brown waxed-canvas jacket, a flat cap. His white shirt is open at the neck. He looks less like a naval sharpshooter and more like a young country gentleman out for some grouse. It might be hard to distinguish him as Baird, in fact, because the flat cap conceals the tousled sun-streaked hair and his face is in shadow. Only someone well-acquainted with his build and gait might recognize him.
He is also, despite his casual pace, making his usual sharp-eyed survey of his surroundings, though, and as he approaches a broad boulder alongside the road just above the pond, his gaze snares Melancholy. He lifts his chin to stare in her direction, and then, without changing his pace at all, he ambles off the road and up to where she is seated.
"Veil'd Melancholy," he greets her, gazing down at her in that fixed, impassive way.
Melancholy, absorbed in her own thoughts and book, with likely an expectation of solitude, startles with a faint nip?! sound, then laughs, tipping her head to look up at him. "Just Baird," she greets back with a red lipped smile. "Good morning. Are you going somewhere?"
"Always," he agrees. "Right now, back to the Shrine. I don't mean to interrupt, if you want the quiet."
Melancholy closes her book with a gentle snap, and shakes her head. "The quiet and I are old, good friends. We can make room for a new one. Would you like to sit?" She lifts up her breakfast plate to scoot a little further to her left, making more space on the blanket. It does seem, by its size, like it was made to accommodate several people, though it bears no evidence of wear that it has been regularly used in that way. "You were out, then?" She looks over his outfit curiously as if it might hold clues.
"Yeah." Baird takes the rifle from his shoulder and lays it to one side as he settles on the blanket. "Up to the Seat of Knowledge, and then around for a walk. You're out early. Unless you're out late."
"Early. I was up about an hour or so ago. I keep early hours by preference. I like the world in those hours," she answers. "'A rose in early morning / The spiders' lacework shone like glass, / Tied up to flowers and cat-tail grass; / the dew-drops bounced before the lass, / sprinkling the early morning. / Her dark curls fanned among the gales, / the skylark whistled o'er the vales.'" She recites the poem with that way of hers, plucked from some invisible shelf. It seems likely apropos, as the poem tells a story of a young man who comes across a country maiden described as a fair rose of morning just on the break of sunrise. "What's at the Seat of Knowledge — aside from knowledge, assuming it's informatively descriptive?"
If Baird recognizes the poem, he makes no comment, though he watches her carefully as she recites.
He takes his hat off and scrubs at his hair, tousling it familiarly as he sets the hat on his knee. "The Lorewalkers. It's where they've set themselves up. Above the old mogu palace. It's an old library they've moved into, to sort through all the histories and artifacts and stuff they've got from around here."
"Oh, what fun!" exclaims a young woman who once believed it was her destiny to sort through things in a library. The thought that completes in her head seems to be of a similar nature, because she loses the brightness immediately, instead reaching down to pluck up a black sesame cracker for an immediate distraction. Cronch. "Were you helping the sorting, or studying to add more for your mind house?" A moment's pause. "Or both?"
"Neither. I have been studying there, but I went up this morning to try to find out information about the mantid. I thought Mrs. Shine might appreciate it."
Melancholy frowns in thought, as if for a moment she can't conceive a reason why Lena would be interested in the mantid, and then it clears. "Because of Shine's assignment," she says out loud. It had evidently not occurred to her prior to that moment that Lena might be comforted in knowledge with her husband away in dangerous territory. "What did you find out?"
"Nothing that Mrs. Shine would want to know," Baird says, and plucks idly and impassively at the grass next to the blanket. "What are you reading?"
Melancholy glances down at the book. "This?" As though she might have been reading something else. "It's an anthology of poems on the soul — an old favorite of mine, taken as a whole, though I don't care for them all equally. I've read it so many times I could probably read it by the sound of its pages in pitch black," she says blithely. "Like the quiet, it's an old friend."
Baird smiles faintly, a little wryly. "An old, good friend of the quiet. Yeah." He is quiet a moment himself, plucking the grass again, and then he sits up and brushes his hands together. "An anthology you bought, or put together? And if you don't mind my asking, if you know them all so well, why the preference for reading them in a book when you could just sit here and read them to yourself instead?" Another judgement-free question: He is genuinely curious.
"Did I put this together? No, no, no, this is professionally made. I have put together one, and bound it myself, but it was an exceptional amount of work — to achieve a rather lackluster final result — but the recipient was pleased, so a success by that count. In that case, even with only two words for the cover, the contents were well advertised," she says primly.
"As for why I can't read them in a book in my mind, it's to do with that problem of mine of where things go without my say so. You see, they're not in a book order in my mind; they're all scattered around on all sorts of shelves." She flutters her fingers in demonstration, tapping her long red nails on the cover of the book. "So if I want to read them altogether, or remind myself of ones I don't know in full, I need the book as an aide. Otherwise I sit here and try to think of them all, but I get easily caught in remembering poems about ponds, or vales, or other — other things." She gestures to the pond, the vale, and then… lets her hand fall back to the book.
Baird watches her again in silence as though he is reading the Other Things written on the back of her skull. "Melancholy things," he suggests at last, ambiguously but gently. "But you prefer the dawn."
It draws out a smile from her, a miniature dawn breaking. "That's right. 'Rosy morn now is born; / Dark thoughts may not stay. / Day my brain from foes will keep; / Now, my soul, I sleep,'" she recites again. She looks out at the vale, growing rosier by the minute. She doesn't quote the earlier parts of the poem, where the poet sits alone and weeps, listening to the sound of the rain. "I like to be here when it happens. It reminds me to banish them." She turns her head to regard Baird. "What about you? You don't seem like you have melancholy thoughts."
For a fleeting instant, his mouth twitches, and then he is Just Baird again, regarding her in that steady way. "Sometimes I do," he says. "I have all kinds of thoughts. But I've learned a specific kind of focus. Or — " He thinks about it for a moment. "You know what the bottom of the sea is like?"
Melancholy thinks about it for a moment, then makes a hmm! sound. "I don't know what the bottom of the sea is like. Certainly not from personal experience, but I don't think I've ever particularly thought about it, except in a vague, unformed way when someone's said 'the bottom of sea.' I suppose I always imagined something like the sand extending out from the shallows, only darker. But, it turns out, I don't really know. I've only assumed. Why?"
Baird settles more comfortably. "I don't mean the seabed, though that can be all kinds of things too. Sand, rock, jagged reefs and deep trenches. But the bottom of the sea itself, out where it's wild. In the deeps. You couldn't survive there. I couldn't. It's dark — you don't have to go far to imagine how dark it is, you lose the light pretty fast when you dive down — and it's cold, and the water pressure is crushing." He makes a fist to demonstrate. "Tons of ocean water sitting above you, bearing down. Even if a person could breathe underwater somehow, they'd be crushed in the ice-cold dark before they reached the bottom." He pauses again. "Oh. You can, can't you? Breathe underwater?"
Melancholy, listening curiously to the Ocean Facts, pops up a smile at that. "Yes, I can. I've practiced it both with and without a soul shard," she says brightly. And then reflects on that implication, and the smile vanishes. "Oh, oh no, which means — so if I ever were to fall or go into the water that far out, I would just sink to the bottom, dragged slowly down into an eternal darkness to be crushed in the ice cold waters. Well. That's horrifying, isn't it?"
Baird flashes a brief smile and reaches a hand over as if to pat her knee reassuringly, but he does not complete the gesture. "Well," he says. "Probably not. First of all, because people can swim. As long as you can breathe, the trick is just figuring out in the dark which way is up, and then swimming that way. And second of all, because people float. Naturally. There are plenty of conditions where you might get dragged or washed under, but in general, if you can relax yourself completely, you will float."
Melancholy doesn't move, like she might have allowed the gesture, but doesn't do anything to make it do so. She looks less reassured by this reassurance. "I don't know how to swim. I don't even know if I know how to float, naturally or unnaturally. The most water I've ever been in was a bathtub. I thought, as long as I could breathe, I'd find a way out of it — walk, maybe — I suppose I'll have to think on that."
Baird regards her for a moment with mild consternation. "You should probably learn to swim," he tells her gently. "There's a lot more sea than ship." He continues to gaze for a moment and then returns to the earlier subject with no outward change in demeanor.
"But okay. It's a metaphor. Do I have melancholy thoughts? Do I have other kinds of thoughts? I've served in three wars now. I was in Northrend when we lost half the fleet in the Icecrown sea. But." He considers again, his gaze still directed at Melancholy but not on her, that seeing-through again. "The bottom of the sea is always there. It's black and it's cold and it'll crush you to death. But… I know how to swim, you know? If I'm sinking, I know how to figure out which way is up. I know how to let go and float. I can't change the bottom of the sea, but I'm not going to let myself drown."
Now he focuses on her again, mild and patient.
Melancholy has drifted somewhere distant in the description. "I think I knew how to swim. Before," she says quietly, and flicks off the expression, pulling up a smile. "So, you're a good swimmer, metaphysically and physically. Was it difficult to learn how to do it? Or did you always know how?" Are some people born knowing how to swim? Is it a hidden talent someone might have, like, say, a local goth girl who has only been in bath water previously?
"Physically? I learned when I was a kid in Fallon Harbor. Diving off the rocks in the breakwater like a damn fool because the other kids were. We were always in the water. Bunch of noisy seals. Metaphysically, part of the trade. As a sniper. Either way, it has to be learned."
Melancholy looks like she might be taking mental notes. Learn how to swim: jump off rocks into something called — "I don't know what a breakwater is," she says.
"Oh," says Baird. "Okay. You ever been at the harbor or the shore and seen — yeah, there's one at Lion's Landing we built, where the battery is. I don't know if you saw it. It's kind of a rough wall of rocks — big ones, boulders — built out into the water like an arm. The one at Lion's Landing isn't that big, relatively speaking. The one at Fallon Harbor is much bigger. Was. Much bigger. It's called a breakwater because that's what it's meant to do: break the roughest of the sea coming in. Helps shelter a cove or harbor.
"So picture a long wall of stacked and jumbled boulders stretching from the shore all the way out to the harbor-mouth, and then picture a lot of skinny kids scrambling over it and jumping off it. Like… demented mountain goats."
Melancholy snacks while he describes, taking mental notes rather than physical ones. She laughs at the description, covering her mouth with a hand.
"I actually do know what that looks like, at least with the goats," she says. She takes her unoccupied non-snack hand and sets it up on her knee, palm down, and sets her thumb and pinkie parallel, and the same to her forefinger and ring finger, and curves her middle finger, to create a little hand creature with a long neck and head. She hippity-hops it wildly, making its 'head' turn every which way, and then wiggles its front two legs before jumping off her knee to land with a stiff legged plop on the blanket, and return to being a hand. "The grummles had these mountain goats who had become deranged from eating an excessive amount of kafa'kota berries, and they were rather literally hopping mad." She gives him a red lipped smile and laughs again, possibly from trying to imagine Baird as a hopping mad kafa'kota goat.
She returns her hand to rest on her book. "I gather from the explanation that it's not necessary for the breakwater exactly, but that leaping from a boulder or rock into a body of water should be sufficient — like this one here — to learn how to swim?" she says, looking to the nearby pond. Wait, is she planning on just jumping into the water — possibly alone — to learn how to swim?
Baird watches the mountain-goat puppet with a smile tugging one side of his mouth upward. Then he follows Melancholy's gaze toward the pond. "Well," he says. "If you don't know how to swim, I do not recommend just jumping in anyplace. Especially not if you're by yourself. We all started paddling around in the shallows before we got to the jumping. And with people around to keep an eye on us."
Melancholy pouts, briefly. "Self-study isn't a recommended option, you mean? I was hoping I might find a book about it, and work on it in my free time." She tosses that to the side, metaphorically, and lightens purposefully, undaunted by this recommendation of changing to a new plan. "I suppose I'll have to find a local teacher willing to take me on as a student."
Baird regards her impassively. "I could teach you. Long as I'm up here. Since you're going to teach me to ride a bike. Right?"
The vale grows brighter, the first few rays of dawn starting to show over the mountain peaks, as the sky blushes pink.
Melancholy brightens in a similar way, and there might be a little blush to those fair cheeks. "You're right, that's fair, isn't it?" she says to him, and maybe to herself. "I'll try to be a quick student at it. I know you're busy with important work. Learning how to ride a bicycle is something you can do in a single day, really, depending on how quickly you find your balance. Once you've found it, you always remember it — well, unless something alters significantly in the bicycle or the ground, then you might have a moment of needing to adjust suddenly. I expect you'll be rather good at that though."
"Balance is a thing you learn on a ship," Baird agrees. "I'm interested to see how it translates. Might be also your bicycle riding gives you a head start with your sea legs."
"You think so?" Melancholy bounces her nails on her book twice, contemplating this. "How long did it take Woe to get his?" Will Little Melancholy beat her Ocean Brother?
"Don't recall," Baird admits with a shrug. "I could ask him." He gives her a sideways smile. "You think you can beat him?"
Melancholy's own smile is approaching smug. "Maybe. It would be delicious if I did," she says, picking up a dried date. "Woe's the nicest to beat. He's always sweet and proud, and never becomes angry with me — which did set the bar rather high for other people for me, but I think it's fair to have preferences of what you like and don't in someone you spend time with. It's not supposed to be a punishment you endure, after all.
"Some things you should endure what it is, because it has a purpose beyond enjoyment — like a uniform with trousers or a closet bedroom." As random, non-specific examples. "But other things, like poetry, if you don't like it, you shouldn't grit your teeth and force yourself to pretend that you do."
"That's perfectly fair, yeah. To prefer certain people and things. To love poetry but not excessive use of spacing." He sits back, palms flat on the ground to prop himself. "Sorry about the trousers. And the cabin. Pretty sure if anyone can make it her own style, though, it's you."
Melancholy pops the date in her mouth and a smile at that. "I appreciate the vote of confidence. Either way though, I'll grow accustomed to it. There are worse things to get used to," she says, watching the sky.
"Besides, even I can't imagine that fashion and facilities were what the fortune was warning about." She reaches into the ever useful pocket, fishing around in it for a moment, before she pulls out a rolled scroll of a Darkmoon Faire Fortune, holding it out to Baird for him to see. It's written in dark, sparkling ink in a mystical hand: Let not the tides of war wash you away.
Baird sits up and leans forward to read it. "'The tides of war,'" he repeats thoughtfully. He settles back on his hands again. "What do you think it means?"
Melancholy rolls it back up, and tucks it back into its home, drawing up her knees, ladylike, to one side. It leaves her leaning a little closer to Baird, a little further from her snack plate. "Well, obviously it has something to do with my choice to go to the Fleet and the navy, but I think it's a warning that whatever I do, whatever I learn, whatever I adapt, that I musn't let it alter me so far from who I am, fundamentally, that there's nothing left. And possibly literally, that I should be careful with waves in battles or some such." She makes a sweeping illustrative gesture with a hand.
"I didn't think much of it, as a warning goes, until I came out here. I had this impression that it would be easy to resist, because I am myself so fully. Of course I wouldn't be swept away that way, so maybe it meant only literally for me. But, after the past few months, I think… it will be rather difficult in the long run, actually, maybe more so emotionally than literally." She looks at Baird curiously. "What do you think it means?"
"'Wash you away,'" Baird repeats this time, and stares through Melancholy for a moment. "I think your read is probably correct. I don't feel like most fortunes are inclined to be literal because they're sort of poetry themselves, in a way. So I don't think it has to do with literal waves or anything. You could read it to say 'don't get carried away in the war,' meaning emotionally, with anger or hatred or whatever. For the Horde. But you're not at risk of that. You don't seem like that kind of person. So probably it means, as you say, don't let it take away what makes you you."
He considers for a longer moment. "Which already seems like a concern of yours. So it's possible that rather than warning you there's a risk, it just means you're on the right course. You've got your mind made up the right way."
Melancholy grins wide enough to show the little gap between her front teeth, pleased. For a moment, she's brighter than the early dawn, but it fades again, as she considers what he's said in another light.
"I do get angry, and hateful," she admits, staring down at the book in her lap like she's looking down into something else. "When the Horde devastated Theramore it was…" She tenses, fury pinching her features, an old fear draining some color from her cheeks. "Our sister Malaise was out there, a doctor — she wasn't there when it happened — and poor Miserie, she knew so many of the Kirin Tor who were killed. It was — shockingly personal." Tears fill her eyes, as she breathes through her nose.
"Even when D — Deathwing," she almost chokes on the name, but goes on, "broke everything, it was like trying to be angry at a natural disaster. Theramore, though, that was…" She shakes her head, unable to find a word to describe it, even with her vocabulary. Her hands ball into tight fists, crushing the lace. "I suppose that's my 'ocean floor.' I don't go down there. I don't like it. I hate how it makes me feel."
"Hey," says Baird, and sits up again. This time he does touch her knee, gently, with just his fingertips. The gesture is withdrawn just as gently. "Hey. That's — just being a person. With feelings. If you didn't feel a pretty powerful way about Theramore… that would probably mean something worse. We all got kind of broken by that."
He hesitates. "After Northwatch, when the Horde was marching, we were all pissed off the navy wouldn't send us. We wanted to be there, you know? For the defense of Theramore." He's quiet again. "And then — you know. It feels pretty terrible to feel relieved. But you do. But it feels terrible."
Melancholy doesn't move when he touches her, though she looks at his hand for a long moment, before trying to look up and watch the dawn. In the end, a few tears spill over, leaving a slight trail of makeup in its wake on her pale cheek.
"When someone," she starts, the word falling off into a whisper she has to start again. "Someone dies in your place, everything about it is terrible." She swallows hard, pressing her lips together, and when she smiles it shows pain more strongly than if she'd started to sob. "What's below the 'ocean floor?' Is there something even deeper?" The blithe tone she aims for doesn't land.
"Yeah," Baird says. He watches her. After a little silence he says, "Sorry. That I don't have a handkerchief or something. I forget gentleman stuff."
"What? Oh." Melancholy reaches up to her cheek, sniffs, and rummages around in her pocket. "That's fine, I have one myself. I don't generally spend time around many gentleman." She finally locates a handkerchief (black, of course), and carefully wipes at her face, looking up so she can blot around her eyes without smearing her eye makeup. "Well, except for Theris, who still is one. But I can't — " A brief tightening of her lips. "I can't cry around him," she finishes quietly.
"Why no- oh. Yeah." A pause. "I'm sorry. But I don't mind if you feel like it. Swimming all the time is rough." Baird shrugs. "Or I could talk about something else. If you just want to talk about something else."
Melancholy finishes dabbing around her makeup, taps at it with a fingertip, brushes once more at her cheeks, and then sets her handkerchief back as she smiles at him. "Yes, I know. You're accommodating like that. I appreciate it, really. Sometimes, I don't want to talk about certain things. I don't like to be forced — well, tried to be forced, I can't be made to if I don't want to." She brandishes a little fist, with her thumb half tucked under an index finger, before setting it back down.
"You're easy to talk to though," she says genuinely, and turns to face the vale again. "And always easiest when I know the dawn is coming. See? There it goes."
It's not quite as speedy as her words suggest, but it's true that the moment comes where the sun genuinely breaks over the ridge, shining directly onto the vale below, warming the world again in light, even if it also sharpens where the shadows are.
Baird turns toward the east and watches in silence.
"Here it comes," he says at last, a not-quite-echo of Melancholy. "You should see it at sea. Well, you will someday." He tilts his face up toward the spill of warm light and closes those sky-pale eyes for a moment.
Melancholy makes a considering hmmm as she lowers her eyes from the brightness. "I think I know a poem, or part of one at least, about sunrise by the sea, but I can't remember where I put it," she says, as she lifts up a hand and rifles through the…air? in front of her as if she can see a bookshelf he can't, her fingers moving exactly the way they would if she was moving actual books.
"No, no, these are all Sunrise, but these are vale and woods. Appropriate for now, but not that one by the sea. It's not one of mine, it's a Woe poem because of the sea imagery — not really my taste, generally. Not for the sea part, only that it wasn't really saying anything more than how lovely it looks, in a nature worshipping sort of way." She shifts to another invisible bookshelf. "I can't recall a line from it, and there's too many with Woe that mention the sea." She lowers her hand. "Well, maybe I'll find it by that time."
"'Athwart the harbor lingers yet / The ashen gleam of breaking day, / And where the guardian cliffs are set / The noiseless shadows steal away?'" Baird suggests.
Melancholy startles so hard you'd think he appeared in the middle of her mind library with a book in hand. She gasps, sets her hand to her chest, and looks at him like she's never seen him before, or maybe in a new light.
"Yes," she says, a little breathlessly. "That's it exactly. 'But all the winnowed eastern sky / is flushed with many a tender hue.' How in the world did you know that?" Her own pale cheeks are flushed with a tender hue.
She doesn't ask, can you read minds, but it sort of hovers in the air around her.
Baird flashes her that quick, lopsided smile. "I like the word 'athwart.'" But this does not answer her question, so he thinks about it. "It seemed like one of yours. Like one you'd know. 'And be the first to greet the sun.'" He pauses and then repeats, "Athwart."
Melancholy laughs with delight. "I do, too. That and 'winnowed,' which is probably why I remembered that part better. I don't have the whole poem memorized, as I thought. I trail off somewhere 'roistering, wayward winds.' I must have written it to Woe at some point." She laughs again, clapping her hands together. "That really was the most incredible thing. What a remarkable mind you have. It was like you were my librarian for a moment."
For a moment the gray gaze is a little blank, and then it softens. "Thanks," he says, and looks away to squint toward the sun again. "So sea poems are Woe's department, then? He loaned me the one about, uh. 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' not that long ago."
Melancholy nods primly, selecting another cracker to nibble on. "Mmm. I don't know that one, I don't think. It doesn't sound familiar. But, yes, Woe adores sea poems. Oh, and the ones about creatures. I say 'creatures,' because 'animal' is not broad enough, but sea creatures in particular. He has a special fondness for poems about the ones that are unloved or reviled or that people find frightening or unsettling. He thinks they're cute." Local creepy goth girl who may unsettle some people smiles brightly, possibly in example.
"The poems of the sea speak to the feelings he has when he looks at it, or is on it — which is all perfectly understandable, I simply don't share the feelings so I'm not particularly interested in them. I don't need a poem to find the words for how I feel when I see the natural world in general — not specific to the sea — for what it appears as. Now, those that examine what seeing those places reminds me of beyond the physical world, that's another story. Those are more my domain," she shares.
"A preoccupation with the metaphysical," Baird agrees. "I think probably I come down on Woe's side of the thing. There is a kind of… power, I think, in being able to put words together, commonplace words, even, in a way that make another person see and feel a thing as though they were. When I read a poem and they have caught something physical in just a few words, caught it in a way that is true, that you can feel and see down to your bones…." He shrugs. "I am not denying the artistry of the more metaphysical poetry, just — I think it's powerful to be able to make something real out of air and sound."
Melancholy gives him that broader smile again. "That's more than fair, I think. It's an appreciation for the power of the form. It's what separates poetry from prose, which wants to invite you to see and experience something, but in a way that is broad and part of a greater story — it may evoke something, but it's not the sole point. Poetry can capture not the image of what you see with your eyes, but what you feel in your soul when you look at it, narrow in scope and deliberate. It's why poetry endures, even with prose for stories, because of the nature to seek out ways to capture experience that cannot be elucidated in a single word, only distilled into lines of them. That's what I think of it — why I love poetry."
"Poetry has to be true," Baird says. "Even when it's fiction. I was trying to explain that to Lieutenant Shine."
Melancholy bounces her fingers off her book, and bounces herself in place more delicately on the blanket. "That's it exactly." She cronches into her cracker, pleased. And then pauses and asks, "What did — or does, if he didn't change his mind — Shine think?" Her eyes have that clear golden look to them, like she's perfectly willing to hear out someone who might have a radically different view, and consider it fairly.
"He said fiction's fiction. But he doesn't read poetry. I'm not even sure he reads that much fiction." Baird gives that quick-flash smile again. "In the specific case, at least, he conceded my point."
"That speaks well of him." Melancholy reflects on it for a moment. "You two must be close, then? I have the impression that Shine doesn't often give his opinion on many things. Not that he doesn't have them — I think that's an incorrect assumption perhaps some people make — but that he isn't free with them, and maybe a little like he waits until he's considered it carefully and purposefully, not straight off the cuff."
Baird thinks about it. "Yeah," he says. "That's pretty true. I think we get along like that. If someone wants my opinion, they can ask for it. If they don't, I guess they don't. Maybe I picked that up from him. Captain says we're thinkers. Anyway, he was an officer when I joined up, so I served under him till he stepped down. He's a good officer."
"I don't know if I know the distinction of that, if there's a difference between a good officer and something else, like a good person," Melancholy says. She's still smiling at him. "I should say it now then, for clarity, I want your opinion."
On…? That seems to be the entire sentence, where it ends.
"On…?" Baird regards her unblinking.
"Everything," Melancholy answers. She considers that, and clarifies, "As they come up, of course. I don't mean to implore you to exhaustively start at A and work through Z of everything all at once. But, I think you have an interesting way of thinking and a unique point of view I would like to consider, and while you might not think the same way I do, you seem to understand how I do think. So, I want your opinion. You may consider it an ongoing invitation to give it, as you like."
"Oh." Baird thinks about this. "Okay," he says. "I like your lipstick." It is not clear from his tone whether this is a sample of the opinions available or a change in subject.
Melancholy puts a hand up by her lips. "Oh, thank you. I think it's my favorite, although I might have said that about each one I tried for a while at least. That was why I chose them, after all. When I first started, I wore a pale one, which made me look quite ghostly," she says, but her tone suggests ghostly was the desired effect, not a downside, "but then I switched to black, and finally to red. I don't know if I'll keep the red if I decide to change all my colors after all." She tips her hands to look at the red roses on her gloves as if once again evaluating them. "It does seem like the right direction, the more I consider it, even if I'll miss the red."
"The dark is good. The black was really good too. It's helpful. Why are you changing your colors?" Baird watches her.
"Because I'm a warlock now. Lena's of the opinion of being discreet about our status of it for a first impression is the best course, and I see the reasoning and the logic, given the way some people think and believe about warlocks. When I don't lead with it, people have more of an opportunity to evaluate me on a personal level rather than broadly of what they think 'a warlock' is, so that I become Melancholy, the warlock, rather than The Warlock, Melancholy," she reports, as someone who has studied this deliberately, and come to agree with the idea that was not her own.
"But I think I would like something subtle that does say it already, for the book cover, you see. Something that once you know that I am a warlock, it fits. To dress deliberately otherwise, to not say something of it, feels disingenuous to me, and therefore not quite myself." She holds up a hand like she might halt a thought. "Not that there's anything wrong with someone doing it the other way, for who they are, of course. I don't see anything wrong with it, because ultimately it is still who they are, because who they are may be someone who chooses to dress counter to who they truly are. It sounds circular, but I think you may know what I mean."
Baird nods thoughtfully, still watching her with that neutral intensity. "Okay. That makes sense. What are warlock colors, then?"
"Green for the fel, or purple for shadow I was thinking. The study of Affliction, as it's called, uses both, so either might work. I don't think I want both at the same time though, too busy," she says as she lowers her hands again. "The black is a given. That's for me, a Grimlocke. So it doesn't change."
"Purple," says Baird.
She laughs in delight, and nods. "Thank you," she says, probably in response to the readily given opinion. "Any particular reason why? Or does it simply seem to fit?"
"Because it's darker." Baird flashes that quicksilver smile. Then he pauses and, perhaps, considers what a lady might consider a good reason. "And it fits. And it'll be more flattering than green, probably."
Melancholy's face gets that odd, distant expression briefly before she forcibly pulls it back up. "That's almost a point in green's favor, that it would be less flattering," she says blithely. She taps a finger by her lips, and continues more thoughtfully, "But you're right, with purple being darker, that it might be the better fit. It has red in it, but it's not as bright, and it's become something else. I'll think on it for that. At the moment, purple does seem best for me of the two."
Baird regards her unblinking. "Why is it better if it's less flattering?" he asks in that neutrally curious tone.
"For accuracy, for the book cover," she answers, as she starts picking at the back of her glove. "Maybe I'll give the purple a try for the trousers outfit, and you tell me if you think it stands up to effect in practical application."
Baird's gaze drops to the glove and the gesture. "Why," he persists mildly, "is it more accurate to have a less flattering book cover?"
The picking grows worse, as she pinches at the lace hard enough to catch the skin of her hand a few times, and she forces her hands to rest flat on her book, holding them both down. Her gaze jumps wildly around the vale, as if it can't find a place to settle. "Because I don't have — " She tries, so quiet it's getting close to a whisper. "If someone found — I'm not — " Her gaze lands on her book of poetry on the soul. "Because I don't have a reason to try to appeal to someone with a flattering appearance, and it wouldn't be honest for what's beneath." She starts fussing with her snack plate again. "I still think I like the idea of purple better, overall."
Baird has leaned in a little, watching intently as she speaks in her disjointed half-whisper. When it's clear she's finished speaking, he sits back. "Okay," he says, and continues to watch her with a faintly puzzled air. "I am… not clear how all that follows. About flattering and dishonest."
He settles back propped on his hands again. His searching air of puzzlement doesn't really fade, but his tone lightens, turns drier. "If it helps, though, I like the darker ones because I can hear you so much clearer. The black one the night we stole the cannon, when we had to be quiet? That was great. I'd never thought about it before. The difference it could make."
Melancholy abandons her snack tray to turn her own puzzled look on him. "You could hear me clearer when I was wearing black lipstick?" Even after she says it out loud, it doesn't seem to entirely click. "Do you — can you hear colors?" she asks in a genuinely asking way, like she's ready and willing to consider another way the senses can work. She's friends with a guy who is variations of color blind depending on the state of his diet, after all.
Baird flashes his smile. "I'm part deaf," he says, and lifts a hand to cover his right ear. "I can still hear okay on the left, and I pay attention, so I get by. It's best if people are on my left, though, or I can see them. If it's harder — in a place that's noisy, or when people are being quiet — it helps to watch them talk." He takes his hand from his ear and gestures toward her face. "Even with a veil on, you're pretty clear to me."
She blinks in surprise. "Oh, oh I had no idea — obviously," she says, and consciously turns to better face him more directly. She has that mental-notes look on. "Left, where you can see." She puts a hand up by her lips on her cheek. "Should I speak louder than I usually do? Or enunciate more? That is — what I'm really asking is should I change anything that would make it easier for you to hear me?"
He shakes his head. "Thanks. It's okay. Just know that if you're on my right I might miss something, and if you're being quiet it helps if I can see you. If I know I've missed something, I'll just ask you to say again. If you know I've missed something, you can just wave at me and say again." He shrugs. "If I've talked to a person enough it gets easier to pick out their voice, too. I don't have to watch as close."
Melancholy nods. "That's good to know. And the lipstick helps? Oh!" She points to her mouth. "Because it makes my lips more distinct? When you're watching them for words."
Baird smiles at her. "Yeah. It's like… if you're trying to read a page being held a little bit away from you, and then you come across a part that's in boldface print."
She laughs a ring of a dark bell, and claps her hands together. "That's fascinating! I never would have thought." She considers its implications. "Well then, that's decided it. It will be purple."
"I'm glad," he says. "You don't have to choose on my account, obviously. But it's nice of you to want to keep talking to me."
"Oh, mmm. To say it's 'nice of me,' makes it sound like I'm doing you a favor. I think I'm acting rather self-serving, honestly," she says lightly. "Besides, I can hear you, so it's only fair if I make sure you can hear me back. It's a significant factor in weighing the pros and cons of each color." She tippity-taps her book with her nails. "Might I ask you a rather personal question?"
Baird nods. "Sure."
"I apologize if it's rude to ask, but were you born only hearing on one side, or did it happen?"
"Not rude at all. It happened. I'm pretty sure it's because I was a gunner. Any time you spend a while running cannons, in battles or in drills, you're gonna spend a day or so a little deaf afterward. It was kind of gradual — like, each time my hearing came back it just seemed like the world was quieter than I remembered, but I didn't think much about it. But then finally it didn't come back at all."
He shrugs, sits up, and plucks at the grass beside the blanket again. "My stepmother says I had bad ears since I was a kid, a lot of fevers and ear trouble like kids get. She thinks that's why. Pretty sure cannons'll do it, but maybe it's a combination of things, I don't know."
He has her full attention, turned to face him. "I don't know either, though that's not likely surprising information." She considers the words. “'Each time you came back, it seemed like the world was quieter than you remembered,'" she doesn't quite perfectly quote back, some slight shift in an imperfect memory, perhaps. There's that melancholy look to her again at the thought of those words. "Do you miss it? The way the world was before?"
He is watching her in that steady, seeing-through way, and for a while he doesn't say anything.
At last he says slowly, "I don't… know? The world still is the world. I get around in it differently now, but I'm not — I'm still me, too. My right ear wasn't what made me. The inside of my head's the same. I don't know certain things going on around me that I would have before, and yeah, sometimes I wish I did. But not as much these days. Sometimes people have to make allowances for me I wish they didn't, but people make allowances for each other in a lot of ways. I do notice different stuff than I used to. It's not really better or worse. It's just different information. The world's still the world and I'm still me, and we get along okay. "
He cracks a smile. "I was never going to make it as a concert pianist anyway."
Melancholy listens with sympathy without pity, and soft honey eyes. She makes a little pop of a smile back when he does and then looks down at his hands at the last, studying them like they might tell her something. "Oh, do you play?" she asks genuinely, as if it wouldn't surprise her at all to find out he also plays the piano on the side.
He does have the sort of elegant long-fingered hands that might have played the piano — but they are work-roughened and callused and as sun-browned as the rest of him. He clenches them briefly, self-consciously — there's the crossed-guns tattoo — and laughs a little. "Nah. Even when I could hear, I never was musical." He pauses. "You?"
She's still studying his hands for a moment longer, then looks back up at him. "Oh, yes, I am. I play the Lordaeron Horn. I know it's not quite what you might have imagined I would — people usually guess the cello or sometimes the harp, and twice, bells — but I do love it. I heard it several years ago from a gnomish marching band, and it was instant awareness of recognition of something I was meant to play. So I learned." She relates this as a simple fact — she wanted to know, so she learned. Obstacles meant nothing to her decision of fated instrument.
"It can be mournful and soft, but mostly it's bright and, well, rather loud, as a horn. I brought it with me, but I've mostly been staying in so many places with other people close by in rooms that I haven't had much opportunity to practice. I don't wish to be rude," she tells him primly. And then her face falls a little as she obviously reflects on the nature of the ship. "Oh, I won't be likely to be able to play it on the ship, either, I suppose, for the same reason."
"I don't know," Baird says. "Sailors like some music. Lordaeron Horn might be new to 'em but they'd probably like to hear it." He tilts another smile at her, this one rueful. "Good thing it can be loud."
Melancholy takes an extra second to understand why, but then she bounces her nails against her book. "Yes, it is, isn't it?" Maybe it was fate! Who can say.
She looks back to his hands again, or one hand in particular mostly. She uses a delicate, soft point of her finger towards his cannon tattoos. "I did want to ask again, properly, what the tattoo there is for, if it's not too personal. Is it meant to be you and Woe, as cannon enthusiasts?" The guess may be due to a misunderstanding from when he showed her the tattoo in the context of Woe.
Baird looks down as though to check he does not in fact have a tattoo of Woe. "Oh," he says, and looks up to smile at her. "No. Cannons means I've served on a warship and not in the merchant marine. Crossed cannons, specifically there" — he lifts his hand to indicate the distinctive placement — "mean I was a Gunner's Mate. Like your brother now."
She makes a little oh! sound, leaning much closer to inspect the crossed cannons. "So, it's like the tattoos are part of your book cover — of the history section," she says approvingly as she straightens. "How clever!"
He smiles at her again. "Yeah. They're all like that. Bits of history. They… embellish the book cover, I guess."
Her lips part on a breath to say something — and then close as she seems to think better of it suddenly. Either the early morning sun is starting to get to her, or the color in her cheeks is from something else. She gives a little self-conscious laugh, as she opens her pocket for the bag that contains her sun parasol, taking it out to open it over her and create a personal shade, and for a moment busies her attention on her snacks and blanket, before deliberately raising her head to speak directly to Baird.
"I should probably be heading back with the sun coming up in full. Delicate complexion," she explains, setting her book back in her pocket.
"Yeah," Baird agrees. He takes his hat up again and puts it on, then picks up his rifle and rises to his feet to sling it over his shoulder. "You need a hand getting all that together again?"
"Yes, thank you," she says, as she reaches up for a hand to help her up, with a lady's expectation.
He takes her hand readily to assist. "You come out here every morning?"
She stands delicately with his assistance, and then bends to collect her snack plate and set it on a nearby boulder. "Every morning unless I'm called to do something with Lena early in the day, then I make sure to stay in so I'm close by," she confirms, and steps off the picnic blanket. "Though I like it much better out here for breakfast."
Baird bends without being asked to pick up the blanket. He steps away from her to shake it out briskly and then folds it with quick, practiced movements. "I can see why."
"I have been making more progress on that front of apprenticeship." She twirls the parasol as she watches him work, getting out a bag from her pocket one handed. "I'm hoping to be able to assist more with the mogu resistance efforts soon, maybe in a day or two, pending Lena's final say of course — I do abide by her assessment of my capabilities — especially now that I can use the Unbound Will ability successfully, most of the time."
"I don't know what that is," Baird tells her matter-of-factly. "You want this in there?" He gestures with the folded blanket toward the bag.
"Yes, please," she says, resting her parasol against her shoulder and her chin as she holds the bag open with a red lipped smile. "'Unbound Will' is the name of the technique Lena mentioned before that uses the fel to purge any magical or physical effect that restrains a person, or anything that might impose another's will over yours. So I won't tear any more skirt hems." Or other things internally.
"Oh, yeah. I should have remembered that." Baird tucks the blanket into the bag. "So you going to come out and hunt mogu again with us soon?"
"Hopefully. I would like to help, if I can," she says, pulling the bag closed and tucking it back into her pocket. "I'd also like to see that mogu soul library for myself, because as macabre as it must be, it also sounds fascinating."
"Yeah," Baird says a little wistfully. "I would love to see that." He shrugs, adjusting the rifle on its strap. "But I'll see you around for mogu hunting at least, I guess."
"I'm not in charge of the decision of course, but if you'd like to go to the souls library, we could ask Lena for when she organizes permissions, since it's of her own interest as well," Melancholy suggests. "I don't know of any reason why you couldn't go, and I'd like to have you along."
"Yeah? I would like that." He gazes at and/or through Melancholy for a moment. "I've been trying to make a good impression on the Lorewalkers." He smoothes the front of his waistcoat self-consciously. "They don't seem to mind me, anyway."
Melancholy's eyes drop to his outfit again, and back up to his face. "Would you like a luckydo?" she asks sincerely.
"Is it a skull?" he asks, also in all apparent sincerity.
"Not this time, no. It's an ornamental feather. I don't know what bird it's from, but it blew down from the mountains directly onto me, so it seemed a luckydo," Melancholy says, and points a finger up at his cap. "I was thinking of the saying, 'a feather in your cap,' and that it might be the right luckydo."
"Oh." Baird considers this, staring. Eventually he nods. "Yeah. That makes sense. I could try it."
Melancholy gives him a red lipped smile and opens up her pocket, rummaging around, more than usual as she digs through various things she keeps in there. At last she pulls it free and presents it to him with a ta-daaaaa.
As advertised, it is an [Ornamental Feather] of unknown bird, mostly purple with an ending of gray and white, around seven inches long. The quill end is smoothed down and a little shiny, possibly from repeated finger twirling by its current owner.
Baird takes it, inspects it in silence for a moment, and then glances up and observes, "Purple." He flashes a smile at her. "Thank you, Melancholy."
"Purple," she agrees. "You're welcome, Baird."
"You can call me Bryn," he tells her, and tucks the feather carefully behind his ear.
There's that sunrise on her pale cheeks again, and a spin to the parasol. "Bryn, then." Her gaze shifts around a little, and fixes back on him. "I'm headed back to the inn. I have some studying to do. Alchemy, not warlocking."
"Okay," says Baird Bryn. "Well, I'm headed that way to sleep for a couple hours. I can walk with you."
Melancholy blinks. "Oh, you — you've been up the whole night through? I — I'm sorry, I never did ask you in return if you were up early or late. Of course," she says, fussing with her parasol as she picks up a walk towards the Shrine, like she's been personally delaying him on his route and is now trying to correct it. "Do you usually stay up through the night?"
"Oh, not the whole night," he assures her. "Just since like one. Went to bed the first time around ten. But I tend to pull the middle or the morning watch aboard ship, so I'm used to getting up in the middle of the night and being up into the morning and then sleeping a few more hours."
"I don't know what the middle or morning watch are," Melancholy says, still striding along to the Shrine, although she's adjusted her speed slightly in relief that he had some sleep at least. "Is that typical? Will I be sleeping like that?"
"You? No, no. You and Mrs. Shine are exempt from watchkeeping. So are petty officers, for that matter. Watches are shifts on deck. The middle watch is midnight to four. And then the morning watch is four to eight."
Melancholy holds onto her parasol by tucking it into her elbow, walking up the stairs while she takes out her notebook and pencil, turning to the latest page. "Middle, midnight to four. Morning, four to eight," she says as she writes. "Petty officers are exempt." She looks over at him with a smile. "I don't know what a petty officer is. I assume it doesn't mean 'petty' as in 'trifling' or 'mean spirited.' Or does it?"
"No, no. Your brother's a petty officer. A warrant officer, sometimes they're called. Do you — I can explain it?" His gaze is doubtful, as though he suspects she might have had her fill of Naval Facts.
Melancholy only brightens. "Yes, please do, I would appreciate it," she says, pencil poised over her notebook to face him while she speaks to him, and only after she has finished the sentence does she look down to her notes to continue writing. Woe, petty officer. Warrant officer.
"The easiest way to explain it, I guess, is that petty officers are specialists. In a particular trade. The ship's carpenter is a petty officer. The master, the gunner, their mates — they're all tradesmen of a sort. They're also called 'warrant' officers because sometimes they have official Crown warrants — certificates — in their particular trades. They're not officers because they're not in the naval chain of command the way an officer is. But they're in charge of — responsible for — their various trades.
"A regular officer is… an officer. He's responsible for the whole thing, and the whole crew answers to him. He's not a specialist. If he's smart, though, he listens to his specialists, because that's what they're there for.
"Because the petty officers are specialists, they're exempt from watchkeeping. There's no reason the carpenter or the gunner needs to be on deck at three in the morning if nothing needs repairing or shooting. Regular officers — lieutenants, like me and Mac — stand watches. Our master, Mr. Pascoe, does too, but that's because a master's specialty as a petty officer is… sailing. Navigation. And that's pretty applicable at any hour."
He glances over at Melancholy to watch her face.
She slows her walking as she writes faster, with all the attentiveness of a diligent student learning a preferred subject of interest. Her notes aren't completely orderly — she often writes a single word, like petty officer and then spokes of lines out around it of various connections and meanings, and sometimes writes out several words like Bryn, Mac, and Mr. Pascoe, with a circle around them all with the words stands watch, and another smaller circle around Mr. Pascoe that has a line drawn back over to petty officer. It's a system that allows her to write almost as fast as he explains, ordering it into something that makes sense to her as she goes along.
When she's finished with the batch, she smiles at him. "That all makes sense," she says. "That does seem fair about the petty officers as trades specialists. If they're not on the watches though, it sounds like they're expected to be ready to jump into things, if their specialty becomes relevant? Is that what Mrs. Shine and I are, specialists?" Sorry, she is still not done learning Naval Facts, not while she has the opportunity.
"Yeah, that's right." He ruminates for a moment, staring in that way he does, and then says, "I think that means you ought to be considered petty officers. You could be warranted by the WEB, I expect."
Melancholy may be interested to note that if warlocks officially become petty officers, that would make her the same rank as her brother.
She keeps to her strolling pace, making a little hmm! sound at that. Little Melancholy, a specialist! Like Woe! Imagine that.
As they get closer to the interior of the Shrine, she tucks her notebook under an arm (only Woe gets treated like an extra pair of hands), and closes up her parasol to put it away back in the bag in her pocket. "What an interesting system," she says to him once she's done, turning her head to face him. "It's like a little world unto itself, the ship."
"It is," he agrees, with another quick-flash smile. "Most people don't get that. But also most people think sailors are sort of… peculiar. When actually it's just that we're from a foreign country. Ship's a different country from the land."
Melancholy laughs. "Well, most people think I'm peculiar. I don't know yet if I'm the same peculiar as sailors, but Woe does seem happy there, so maybe it's at least one Grimlocke's peculiar. Is each ship a kingdom of the larger Ship Country, or are they each a different country apiece?" An observant person might note that as they enter the doorway to the Golden Lantern, her pace is slowing further, either consciously or unconsciously.
"I'd say… each one's a kingdom of the whole," Bryn decides thoughtfully. "The same rules and patterns generally apply across all of 'em — a Gilnean sailor meets a Stormwind sailor meets a Tirasian, and they all live in four-hour watches and know the same deck hierarchies and speak the same jargon. But of course each one's also got its little government, and the Captain's the king. And just like kings, you can have bad ones or you can have good ones and it'll come out in the culture of the place."
"If a captain is a king, what's an Admiral?" Melancholy asks, after she makes a small note in her notebook.
He thinks about it. "An… emperor?" he guesses. He gazes straight ahead ruminatively. "I should read some political philosophy."
"320.1," Melancholy says, an old automatic reflex, and she sighs. She tries to pull up a smile to cover a distant look in her eyes. "That's the library system code for philosophy and theory of politics." She glances towards the end of the hallway where her room in the far back of the inn is — local goth girl does not find rooms with a view of sheetrock and virtually no daylight a negative.
"320.1," Bryn repeats seriously, and nods. "I'll remember that." He slows to a stop and puts his hands in his pockets, then nods down the hall toward her room. "Enjoy studying. Thanks for the luckydo." His grave, gray gaze returns to her face.
Melancholy steps ahead and spins on her heel to face him. "Thank you for — " She considers the list, before deciding on, "the morning. 'But tis the morning glory of the sun, / I would request you now to view with me, / 'Twill cheer that smitten heart, thou grieved one, / And lighter make your load of misery, / When you can hear and see all nature's glee. / Come friend arise, determin'd, drowse no more, / But stroll away to yonder hill with me.'"
She gives him the little knuckle salute after she finishes the recitation. "Ta-ta, then." She waits entirely until she's finished speaking before she turns away from him to walk to her room and a pile of books with her name on them.
"Ta-ta," Bryn says quietly to her back, smiling a little, and then he turns away to find his own room and a few hours' sleep.