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| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Melancholy and Bryn Baird take another bicycle ride out into the Golden Vale, to discuss their recent decisions and resulting correspondence (and how Melancholy is thought to be a Pandaren to some people). Baird gives context to his history, and why he hasn't written home about a girl before. Melancholy demonstrates the technical aspects behind fel-runes magic and connects a reader with what he has wanted to read. Romance Plot. 10k~ words. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Chain: Melyn
The Golden Vale may be the center of an ongoing invasion, but someone hasn't informed the landscape or Spring, and the beauty of the long hidden paradise lends itself to a stunning afternoon backdrop for a couple of young lovers — warm breezes drowsily caressing golden leafed trees, mellow sunshine spilling over soft brown roads, and the scent of clear water in the air.
It doesn't affect the wardrobe of Melancholy, though, who stands next to her chrome bicycle as if she's ready to go to a spring funeral for someone who had a joie de vivre: a sleeveless, structured corset style bodice with a flare of fabric over her hips; long, lean, tight mageweave pants decorated with midnight velvet sedum flowers in dark purple along the sides; black lace ankle boots; black lace and ribbon gloves covering her from fingertip to upper arm; and a little black hat with two purple feathers, pinned with a soft netting lace set with amethyst accents. Her makeup is flawless, in purples and blacks, and she wears her Purple Melancholia perfume.
She waits beside her bicycle with restless energy, stroking fingers along the handlebars, and her gaze traveling over her surroundings in leaping thoughts.
Bryn Baird approaches. He moves at a casual stroll, hands in the pockets of his usual faded canvas trousers; in the balmy spring afternoon, he is wearing only a white t-shirt again, with neither sweater nor jacket. His hair and skin are both shades of gold in the golden afternoon light, as though he were some native creature of the Vale. His cloudless sky gaze is fixed on Melancholy, and when she sees him he flashes her a smile reflexively.
Her own smile is wide, and accompanied by a forward lean as she bounces a light, happy push against the handlebars of her bicycle, before she leaves off it to start to meet him in small but drifting forward steps, impatient with the distance. She gives him his knuckle salute, and a sweep of her eyes over his body and face.
"Here we are, then," she says brightly as he gets closer.
"Here we are," he agrees, still smiling, and gives her a long up-and-down consideration. "Queen of Night," he says. "The tulip.”
"I don't know what that is exactly. A flower type?" Melancholy sets a hand along the side of her thigh where the embroidery starts.
Baird nods. "Spring flower. Perennial herbaceous bulb in the family Liliaceae. Deep black-purple-maroon color. Long stemmed." He steps closer and sets his fingertips lightly on the back of the hand she has laid against her thigh. "How are you?”
She uses the opportunity to turn her hand around, setting her wrist against his, and lacing her fingers with his. "Well, I have been meaning to pick a day to ask for some of Cressidha's time, to make some alterations to my clothes — to reincorporate the rose motif. And I've been working on memorizing some new poems, to add to my favorites, in place of others that were a favorite but no longer accurately describe what I feel. Because I'm. Happy." She pops a smile at him. "How are you?”
"I," he says solemnly, "am happy. To hear that you're happy. Will I get to hear some of your new favorite poems?”
She laughs as she turns pink. "Yes. Some of them I wouldn't share with anyone else. They're. Personal." Another laugh. She clears her throat — and checks the nearby proximity to the Shrine of the Stars. And then re-angles herself by rotating them around until she's both facing him, and facing away from the Shrine.
"'I have known no man, ever — and I know / That all my body burns for you. / Surges from some vast ocean ebb and flow / My hot veins through. / And while our souls communed, in me there grew / A hungry, passionate, wild glow. / My flesh is yearning for your flesh, a new / Immense, strange throe,'" she recites. "I'm still working on the rest, but that part… was easy to memorize.”
Baird takes a deep breath, his gaze fixed on hers. He exhales. "That's… excellent. I'd be very glad to hear the rest, when you have it. But that part… yeah. Easy to memorize." He squeezes her hand laced with his briefly, and his gaze roves her face intently for a silent moment. Then he smiles. "Let's go for our ride. It's a beautiful day and I wouldn't mind being out of sight of the Shrine.”
She gazes back at him for a moment longer, grinning, and then lets go of his hand and drops her attention to the discreet pocket of her pants to open it up and fish through it for her athame. Once in hand, she concentrates to open a portal for her Dreadsteed to step through, which walks precisely to stand next to the bicycle, not a single step farther than exactly necessary.
She takes a breath. "I told Lena about us, yesterday, after the work. She approves, and was glad to hear that we're not rushing, and that there's a plan in place for your career while not aboard the ship," she says as she steps between the bicycle and the dreadsteed, waiting for him before she mounts up.
Baird goes to the bicycle and takes the handlebars. "That's good," he says. "That's good. Mrs. Shine's a good lady." He mounts the bicycle but doesn't yet push off. "I talked to the Captain. And your brother.”
The dreadsteed kneels down to be even easier for Melancholy to mount into the saddle, her attention on Bryn, her eyes wider. "Oh! Oh, what did he say? Both he, I mean. Did it go well — again, both it?”
Baird smiles at her. "Captain Fallon told me the course would be a waste of my time. So he's going to put me forward for the lieutenants' exam directly, and then we'll see afterward what the school requires." He pauses, gazing through her. "Woe said he's okay with it. It was… hard to tell, but you know how he is sometimes.”
She is visibly relieved and puts a hand against her chest. "Oh, I'm so glad. I had started to let my imagination run a little wild with other possibilities, and was trying not to let it get out of control. I will say that I do like Admiral Fallon, both from what I've heard and how he was in person." She considers the other part. "I suppose though, to be fair, I don't really know what Woe is like when I'm not there. I would assume much the same, but I can't really say so, and his sense of mind has always been so easy for me to tell. But he wouldn't have said that he was all right with it if he wasn't, I'm sure. I just can't imagine him ever being upset with me though. He never has been.”
Baird flashes his smile again, a little ruefully. "Doesn't mean he can't be upset with me. But he just asked some questions, told me in a very polite way that I'd better not hurt you, and then said if I was asking to transfer off the Blanche then he guessed my intentions are sincere." He shrugs. "So he's being a good big brother.”
Melancholy pouts. "Oh, but! If he only thought about it for a moment, he would come to the right conclusion of how could he be upset with you if you make me happy? He must realize you do, or I wouldn't have accepted. He knows how particular I am, how utterly unwilling I've been to consider any option unless I was sure, ever since I entered the marriage market. All we Grimlockes are like that," she says proudly. "We want only just the right person, and only that person, or we'd rather be alone.”
"Well, if he isn't happy, he'll probably come around. And if he is, maybe he was just being… extra Woe-y about it. Sometimes he just takes his time about stuff." Baird pushes off on the bicycle. "And I do intend to make you happy.”
"You do," she says, and the dreadsteed moves into a walking pace when the bicycle moves. "Oh! I heard from Bryling today, a letter, to introduce herself to me. I have absolutely no scale whatsoever to know if she was more or less Bryling-ly about it. She sent cookies." She gasps and puts a hand up by her lips on her cheek with dismay. "Oh, no! I should have saved some for you! I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. I ate them all already." She winces with chagrin as she looks over at him. "'Forgive me / they were delicious / so sweet?'”
"Bryling…?" Baird laughs. "Right, of course she wrote already. It's okay, about the cookies. She'll send more. And she'll be pleased you liked them so much. What kind were they?" He's still a little wobbly on the bicycle, but as they continue, he finds his balance again with his confidence. "And what did she say in her letter?”
"Double chocolate chip. She was trying for a dark food for me, since you'd mentioned my preference. She said quite a few things. She talked about you fondly, and she mentioned that I should expect a sweater — or sweaters? plural — from your stepmother, which is beneficial to you as apparently it will relieve how many you receive," she says brightly. "And that for some reason, people have an impression that I am a pandaren? That part I didn't understand at all. I asked her about it in my letter back. Oh, I did write her back this morning. I was fueled by cookies.”
Baird winces briefly at mention of the pandaren confusion. "That all sounds like Bryling, yeah. It was nice of you to write her back so fast. She'll be pleased about that." He pedals along for a few moments. "The pandaren thing is a rumor she started herself. Before she knew I actually had a girl here. She was… trying to be helpful. In a Bryling way.”
Melancholy makes an oh! sound and laughs. "What a near hit of the truth! Maybe she's a little prescient. Let's see, that makes me part tanuki, part gazelle, part otter, part fish, part pandaren — all Ancient Arathi queen," she says blithely. "No wonder the Arathi managed such historical unifications." She smiles over at him. "Do you want to know what I wrote her?”
"If you're willing to tell me. You're welcome to your privacy in conversations with my family. Just as long as you know that it might not stay private on their end, anyway." He grins at her again. "I imagine my next letter from Bryling will have plenty to say about yours.”
She laughs again. "Well, that's fair. And there's nothing I would say to her that I wouldn't say to you, of course. I told her about my brothers and sisters, and my mother sending vegetables the way your Phryne sends sweaters — and that it will relieve my own supplies, since I can't do much with the vegetables, myself, I can't cook at all. I gave her a list of all the dark foods that I like, and how I like them, because she had said she couldn't think of many, though I did tell her that I will try anything at least once, and I like plenty of foods. I just have my favorites. I sent her some taro chips, sesame crackers, fried yak cheese curds, and kafa, for a Pandaren sampler of my favorites.
"I told her about being an apprentice to the librarian, and that I write in my books as a terrible habit of mine — since she is a dog-earer herself — and offered to translate the Thalassian poetry, if she wasn't able to read it herself, of the books she bought for you. And." She turns a little pink, and puts a hand on her cheek. "I told her that I care for you, very much. And a little bit of why.”
The bicycle veers a little, bumps off the road into the margin of grass, and then Baird gets it under control again and back onto the road. "I… oh. That's…." He can't seem to think of a word for what that is, and at last just nods. "Thank you." He glances over. "Very lucky me.”
She leans forward at the veering, with mild concern, and relaxes once he is back on the road. She still has a hand on her cheek. "Well, I did leave some things out, obviously, in a letter to your sister. I wasn't about to tell her anything like how when you kiss me, you put the dawn in me, or that every stroke of your tongue is like a ray of the sun on my body and soul," she says shyly. "I'm not writing that to anyone, ever." A pause. "Unless I'm writing to you, of course.”
"Veil'd Melancholy in the Temple of Delight. You are the poem and the poet," he tells her. After a moment he adds thoughtfully, "It's probably a good idea not to write anything to my sister about my tongue. I feel awkward just saying it."
She laughs, a hand flying her near her mouth, and stopping back on her cheek instead. "I wouldn't. I couldn't," she says. She looks over at him and the bicycle. "But did it surprise you? That I would write to her about you?"
"A little? I would not have considered myself anything to write home about. So to speak." He flashes her another smile. "But I'm glad you wrote back to her straightaway. Not that you had to, but she'll like that."
"I try to be a good correspondent. I was a terrible one for long enough that I do my best to make up for it now." She smooths a hand over her hair lightly before taking up the reins again. "But, well, I thought about what she might want to know about me, and what I would want to know about someone courting one of my siblings — and I concluded that the most important thing would be how that person felt about my sibling. I'd want to know if they liked them for the right reasons. So, I told Bryling the truth, and I don't know if they're the reasons she would think are the right reasons, but that's for her to decide."
"Thoughtful of you," Baird agrees. He considers. "Should I write directly to your family?"
"If you want. We're not quite so strict as some Houses where you would need to ask their permission to propose or sign a betrothal contract, and it's not like there's a dowry negotiation or estate entitlement to worry about," she says lightly. "I don't come with anything anymore, not even a legal connection to the title." She shrugs. "Just me."
"There's no 'just' you, Remarkable Melancholy. Don't know what else I'd want or need." He pauses. "… am I supposed to have anything?"
"For my parents?" She shakes her head with a plum lipped smile. "No, there's only one thing that they would care about, and you have it already. My preference." She considers it. "Not that Mom would say no to heirloom seeds."
"Seeds," Baird repeats thoughtfully. "I could maybe do something about that." He pedals in silence a moment. "You've got… two sisters and two brothers? Am I missing one?"
"No, that's right. Two brothers, Woe and Torment. Two sisters, Malaise and Miserie," she says in a bit of a sing-song.
"You and your sisters are alliterative. But your brothers aren't," Baird observes.
She laughs. "If Mom had another boy, she was going to name him 'Tragedy.' Woe would have been the only odd one out," she tells him. "That reminds me though, I spoke to Theris yesterday. We were working on picking out poems for you, with different structures and cleverness — that's what reminded me, the alliteration, sometimes it's part of a clever poetic point. I think we found a good selection. You can tell us if you don't like some. I don't like them all myself."
"Oh, damn. That's excellent. I can't wait. Thanks, thank you both. How's Theris doing?"
"He seems well. He's probably even better today. I set him on the mogu that were encroaching on Mistfall, so he's likely the most like himself," she says, and she gives him a wider smile. "I also told him about — us. He wasn't surprised, of course."
She touches her fingertips together through her gloves, and lightly bounces a forefinger off her thumb. "But we spoke about something else that I think — he said he can't tell how much I might be missing, about my soul. It's not something he can sense or see the same way. But he can always tell about pain, and he says that what I've had since the Shattering. It's healing. That it's barely there at all. And it's changed more in the past few months than all the time before it. I don't know if that means — if it would mean maybe I can grow something back, like a liver. But I think that it healing means Something." She gives him an imploring look. Doesn't it?
"That's wonderful news," Baird says. "Resilient Melancholy. You must be on the right path for yourself." He gives her a quicksilver smile, his cloudless gaze warm. "So you talked to him about your soul? And you feel better about it?"
"Yes. It was easier than I thought it would be. Or it was easier than it might have been before, because of you," she says. And then she picks at the back of her glove idly. "He said — well, he implied really, that maybe I should talk to a healer, who might know more about the soul. I don't know if I'm." A shrug. "I don't know who I would talk to about something like this. I can't imagine having that sort of conversation with someone I don't know." She pulls up a smile. "But, well. It's still something. Even if all it means that it won't get any worse on its own. There's still the fel, but that's the nature of the magic. It will corrupt. All you can control is how fast it happens, not if."
"We'll go down that road when we get to it," Baird tells her gently. "You're healing right now, and we've got plenty to look forward to. I'm looking forward to it."
She smiles back at him, wide enough to show the gap in her teeth. "Me, too." Speaking of the road, she looks from him to it, and glances back at the Shrine of Stars, and then around them again, before leaning forward as she turns her face towards him. "On that note, though, did you want to see the fel in action? What we were talking about yesterday, the way to make certain runic power circles inert, and the elements of power structures in them?"
"I do, yeah. I'd like to. Is it geometric? A form of geometry? Is there a good place for you to show me?" He scans the landscape around them.
She nods brightly. "Geometry, yes. I took a course on it at the Keep a few years ago, and it must have been in preparation for it. I'm still not sure when the archaeology and the philosophy courses might come up — oh!" She thinks about it in real time. "Or has it? I suppose I hadn't thought about it, but that's a bit of the combination from what we've been doing with the mogu. I should have probably opted for more of the practical studies archaeology course, but I mostly just liked learning better immaculate techniques for rubbings."
With that, she points to a shaded area not far from the mogu palace. "What about over there? A little off the road, and a place out of the sun. And enough room to make it large enough to really see."
"You do immaculate rubbings," Baird agrees solemnly. "What philosophy courses did you take? And yeah, that looks great." He checks over his shoulder to see how visible the location will be from the Shrine.
Melancholy's dreadsteed makes a direct, unnatural line towards the shaded area, helpfully completely out of line of sight of the Shrine. And, possibly equally important, out of sight of Mishi, that notorious Lore Depot gossip.
"Oh, Cuddly — oh, no," she says with a laugh, fingers rising up next to her lips. "Cuddy Nordlinger's Philosophy class. There was a wonderful dwarf who asked the absolute best questions, and he always got Professor Cuddy's name wrong — Cuddly. It got to the point where even in my head, I hear it as 'Cuddly' now. We ended up in two classes together, archeology as well. Prospector Bran…" She clicks her nails together in a tappity. "Something. Stillwater? It's been a long time since I saw him. But it was excellent to have him in a course — really put a professor through the paces." She grins at Bryn. "Like you would be, I think. Thoughtful and earnest. You know, that's an idea! If while you're in Stormwind, you might take some of the classes at the Keep, if you did have extra time from the Admiralty school courses."
Baird nods thoughtfully. "I'd like to, definitely. I don't know what tuition's like, though. I still have to sort out my finances to make sure I can pay for Admiralty courses."
"Oh, I know what the Keep's classes cost, of course. I could pay for them. They don't even exceed my monthly allowance at most, and I have savings beyond that," she says brightly. "I didn't spend very much for the past two years, and though I've been spending more than I usually do since coming here, the only time I've gone over my allowance is with Cressidha, but she's worth it — the enchantments alone."
She smiles at him. "When's your birthday? It could be an early or late or extremely timely present, like a Philosophy Adornment for somewhere in your Mind House."
He regards her for a moment in that steady, clear-eyed fashion. "July 9th," he says at last. "But Melancholy, I'm not courting you so you can pay my way for stuff. I don't… want anyone to think that." He pauses. "It's very generous of you."
She dismounts from the dreadsteed, smoothing a hand self-consciously over a thigh. "Oh, oh, no, no, no. It's not because of that — really. I would have offered regardless, just by knowing you. Even when I was taking the classes, I opted to pay a fuller cost, because sometimes they have reduced ones on offer, and I was always happy to pay for more to help support that, and I could afford it. I learned a lot about access to education working at the library, where often people would come in for a means to learning, unable to pay for a trainer. Or when Theris came back and he wanted to fix up the Manor and he no longer had access to his money, so I bought books and tools for him." She picks at the back of her glove. "You don't have to, of course, if you don't want to. Or if it would bother you, to have me pay for something. But it would make me happy to get you something you would truly like."
Baird swings off the bicycle, still gazing impassively through Melancholy. At length he says, "If it would make you happy. But maybe just one course for now. See how I like it." He pauses. "Theris still fixing up the Manor?"
Melancholy smiles at him, bouncing her fingers off the back of her gloves when he agrees. She grows more solemn at the question of the manor. "Oh, well — yes and no? He did his best, really, and he worked very hard on it the past few years. There are still some irregularities, and we've had a few close calls with certain spaces, but Theris is always faster than disaster. It's also deeply in one of the worst cursed areas. Things get warped easily there. So you can't be too hard on judgement of it."
"Oh, I wouldn't judge it," Baird says. "I asked because I'm not a bad carpenter. My dad's a master joiner, helped restore Fallon House after the war."
Melancholy gasps and steps forward to him, reaching for his hand. "Oh, of course. You said your father was a carpenter, and that you'd decided on another career, but of course. Would you be willing to help him with it? Theris has sort of just quietly accepted that the place is what is what is. He can't afford to fix it himself, and I don't think he's wanted to try to ask the family to try to do it, especially since he's been the only occupant for so long. His father doesn't acknowledge him really, not as a death knight, only as a dead son. Lord Lysander is a stony man. I don't care for him."
Baird takes her hand and squeezes it gently. "Yeah. I'd be glad to help him. I'll be back on the mainland with school, after this, and I've never been to Duskwood." He pauses. "I'm sorry about his dad. I don't know too much about what noble dads are like, but Captain Fallon's was pretty stony too. A good guy, though."
Melancholy's excitement grows enough to set her to a wiggle. "Maybe I could go with you, for a day trip, when you would go to Duskwood? I could always be summoned back here, after all. I could introduce you to my parents, and you could meet my father, for an entirely different nobleman. He's the sweetest man. He's a lot like Woe in temperament, only a bit quieter." That's certainly a scale. She considers further. "He's also a bit, well, delicate, but in a masculine, poetically thoughtful way. Woe, Torment, and I take after him in looks."
Baird watches her face for a grave moment. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, Melancholy. I'd like to meet your parents. But you'll have to stop by Fallon Harbor then and meet mine, or Phryne won't forgive me." There is the brief flicker-flash of a smile. "What's your dad do? Do… sorry, do noble dads… do stuff? Captain Fallon's was in the navy too, but I don't know if most of them… are just noble."
She grins back at him. "Oh, Dad manages the House, of course." A pause. "Which… I suppose is 'just noble' if I take the meaning? He manages the land and the tenants and the finances of investments and so on. We don't have anything like the Aspenwood vineyards, though. But the Grimlockes have been on the land for six generations now, and we've been steady the whole way through." She trots her other hand through the air in illustration of this through time experience. "We're just not especially important or wealthy. Certainly not in comparison to the Fallons, but the King isn't wealthy in comparison to the Fallons."
Baird laughs. "Well, the King should've paid more attention to his fleet, I guess. But yeah, we're tenants in Fallon Harbor, obviously, and nobody there goes without. They're pretty good to us. Which I know… is an exception from a lot of places, the last few years."
Melancholy winces. "Yes. But, don't worry — Dad isn't the sort. He would never let something go amiss like that, no more than Woe would. They both take their obligations seriously. It's part of the burden Woe has though, to make sure he marries well, to someone who can help manage the House." She shrugs lightly. "I'm sure the right person will find him."
Or maybe she already has.
She tugs on his hand. "And of course I'll be happy to meet your parents."
"Haven't met Woe's girl," says Baird. "But he's a responsible fellow. I don't have to tell you that. You'll like Phryne, she's easy to like. My dad's… quiet, too. Takes his time about things."
Melancholy looks briefly confused in a thoughtful way, but the expression clears as she focuses back on the rest of the information. "Then I suppose I'll try to make sure he has enough time to come to a good decision," she says. "I'll try not to be nervous about it. I'm not really in the habit of trying to win people over. I tend to just let them decide what they will about me, of whatever they think is fair for them for who I am. Sometimes that means someone won't care for me, but that is what it is. It's even more so now that I'm a warlock. There are people who will always dislike that enough that it won't matter what I do or say. I know that's part of why Lena chose the Fleet."
"Just to be clear," Baird says, "I'm not saying my dad won't like you. Just that he's quiet and takes his time, so maybe don't expect effusive. It's… a pretty striking contrast with Phryne. And yeah, the fleet is… the Fallon fleet, at least, seems better for warlocks on the whole. We've got some mainland fellows aboard" — says the guy who seems sometimes to forget he's a mainland fellow — "but it's mostly Kul Tirans so Mrs. Shine didn't have too much trouble getting along. Especially not after Northrend. That pretty much won her the mainland, too."
"I doubt I'll manage something so impressive as that, but I'll try at least to make sure I've been worth the trouble and the teaching," she says blithely with a plum lipped smile. She gives his hand another light tug, and then lets go to get out her athame dagger again. "Here, let me show you. Actually, speaking of portaling, a teleportation circle is probably the best one I could pick, because even if it's wrong, the only person who would be in danger would be me, because it's the personal version. No risk of anyone else getting hurt or accidentally summoning something."
She takes a step back, examining the area.
Baird also steps back, to give her room, and puts his hands in his pockets. He looks on with silent interest. He does not seem concerned that there's a chance Melancholy might get it wrong. (She does immaculate rubbings.)
"All right, so the basis of a runic circle like this is that there are two components." She holds up two fingers in illustration. "Oh! Have you ever studied mathematical logic?"
Baird nods.
She claps her hand against her athame. "Then this will make a lot of sense." She starts with a glow of the fel over the athame as she begins articulating a precise circle, carefully. "So, two components. The first is that something has to draw power into the circle, like an electric source. This is the first way you can make a rune inert — cut the cord that powers it, and nothing can happen."
As she speaks, the teleportation rune begins to form in the air, and dropped down to the ground, and she deliberately strikes a foot through a part that looks something like twin dotted moons. Immediately, although there is a lingering line of the rune on the ground, the intensely green glow vanishes.
"But there's also another way, and it's the one that's much riskier for having the most potential to go wrong if you erase the wrong the part, or smudge the wrong rune, or get it wrong," she says as she now uses the athame on the ground directly, writing each runic part with studious, exacting precision.
"Because all these, here, are the second component, what tells the power what to do. Like if-then logic statements. So, for a dangerous example, take like a demon summoning. It may be something like, [summon a demon into this circle, bind it to my will, prevent it from crossing this circle unless I will it.] If you take out [summon a demon], obviously nothing will happen. The logic can't continue through to the next command, allowing you to practice all the other parts. If you take out [bind it to my will], however. Well, that's how it goes very badly."
Baird nods thoughtfully. "And does each of those runes represent… a word? A command phrase? Or are they a kind of semaphore or shorthand? Do you memorize them for your studies?"
"Somewhere between a command phrase and shorthand. Someone at some point probably figured out exactly how to order it, but it likely wasn't pretty. I was taught to understand what each sort of part means, because Mr. Carlay is a lot like Lena that way — very cautious, but in a way where they want someone to understand how to be careful more than just 'don't ever do this thing.' But, the most important thing is to not try to freehand experiment, without a strong reason, because it's not as simple as combining phrases. Sometimes if you're missing just the right piece, you'll explode." She makes a boom motion with her free hand.
Melancholy steps away from the runes she's made, checking her work. "Part of what the six months before Mr. Carlay said I was ready to make a pact for power was making sure I could identify, on sight, in a second, when a runic circle wasn't correct. Because sometimes that's all you will have. And always knowing which are the lines of power to halt the flow. That's always the safest way to stop a rune."
She points to the center parts of the rune, and then to the edges. "Something like, for example, gives the exact instructions of how far I can be to trigger the teleportation — 50 yards at most — and a part that's a little hard to explain. Sort of like, 'something else holding me bound, free me from it.' So that even if I were tied down, I could still return to this circle, and it would free me from it. It also tells the rune to remain in place for six minutes, and then self-destruct. Or dissolve, maybe is the better word."
Bryn steps closer now and tilts his head to one side, his pale gaze intent on the markings. "So it's… a diagram that is also encoded instructions, complex enough for conditionals, employed to… direct magical power in terms of those instructions."
Melancholy laughs. "That's it! I don't know if that takes the magic out of it, or makes it better," she says lightly. "I liked it. Somehow it feels less terrifying when you understand that there's a method of it, and it's controllable. Chaos, contained. It is a fine line, but so are a lot of things, like grenades. Which are a different sort of magic, really, like all gunpowder things." She smiles brightly at him.
He nods slowly, still studying the lines. "No that's… that's really fascinating. It's all — even when we say 'magic,' then, we're talking about a kind of… system. Mathematics, engineering. Engineered power." He glances up at Melancholy and gives her a quicksilver smile. "Like a gun."
He drops his gaze to the diagram again and paces a few steps around one outer edge. "Is all magic engineered this way? Is it only fel magic?"
Melancholy makes a wibbly-wobbly hand. "Not entirely others, no. I took a seminar from Lady Spellbond at the W.E.B. for the arcane — that's part of the W.E.B.'s philosophy, that warlocks need to keep their perspective broader than a creepy basement of the fel, and it was mostly like what Miserie has talked about. The arcane is more like finding a way to harness absolute order. It requires immense concentration, and the perfection is more for making it work at all."
She steps around the other side of the diagram staying on his left. "That's part of the danger of the fel — it's deceptively easier. And the way Holy magics worked also seemed different to me from another talk from the W.E.B.. Similar principles, of using runes — like a Fear Ward — to form a magic into a power and constraint, but the fel is a lot more mathematical, a lot more of doing things to funnel an otherwise pure chaos into a form. You can cast a healing prayer through thought, or even make a magic portal through pure concentration. If I tried to just pull hard on the fel and tell it to teleport me back to a place I'm thinking of, it would probably do nothing as the best case scenario, and terrible things at the worst."
He nods again. "That's really fascinating," he repeats. "I've never talked about it with Mrs. Shine, so I don't know any of this stuff. Can a… layperson learn about it? That is, could someone like me with no intention of channeling power or using the fel just learn, in the abstract, to read the codes?"
"Of course. That's how I learned them, after all. I wasn't a warlock yet. Sort of like — courting, really. I had the intent, but until I made my pact of 'engagement' in the metaphor, I could have walked away at any point without becoming a warlock," she says, but she steps to his side and reaches for his hand again, for no reason. "You can also do it in the reverse, which is what sometimes happened. You can stumble into a pact and the fel, with no knowledge of the runes or what they say or do. That's what the W.E.B. seeks to remedy, honestly. That's one of the things Mr. Carlay usually does. He's never actually helped another person become a warlock before. I was a special case. Normally, he works with people who became a warlock, for one reason or another, and helps fix where they had gaps in their education."
Baird takes her hand reflexively. "I'd be interested to learn some of it. Just the codes, I mean, the abstract. Is it covered in the de Champ book at all, or is that book more a general text?"
"Oh, no, no, no, for the runes, you would have to go to the W.E.B. or order some books specially for it, I imagine. None of the books I read had anything that specific, or something that you could use to become a warlock," Melancholy says. "De Champ was more about what makes being a warlock a warlock, and not a 'mage of the fel' or something similar. It gives an entire overview of what the fel is as a philosophy, a cosmic power, and how it empowers a warlock, what its influences are on the psyche and what a warlock is, well, made into in a pact. You won't find anything in it that's a 'how-to' sort of chapter. It's much better for the concept behind the how."
"So if I'm just curious about this, but don't intend to apply the knowledge, would there be a book or something I could study?" Baird tugs on Melancholy's hand to pull her in front of him, her back to him. He lets go in order to set his hands on her hips and pull her back against him. There's nothing pointedly Seductive about the gesture; it is a casual Boyfriendly possessiveness.
It stutters her breath on a little gasp, and brings a rise of a blush to her cheeks. She leans back slightly against him, turning her head to his left side. And it still takes her an extra few seconds to speak again.
"There are, yes. It might be best to speak to Lena about it. She's part of the W.E.B.'s core warlocks, and she'll have access to all the most reliable sources," she says. And then it's probably obvious that she is not thinking deep thoughts about warlock resource books with the way she's looking back at him, tracing a visual line from his shoulder to his arm.
He turns his head slightly to look at her. For a time he just studies her serenely, and then he says, "You're a tall girl, Melancholy Jane."
She pops a smile at him. "I am. I used to be even taller with higher heels, but they were horrible to ride a bicycle in, so now I'm content with a modest two inches for exactly 6 ft," she says primly. "I still have party shoes that would put me at 6'2" though, in a closet somewhere. I'd be even more Legs in trousers with them."
"I would like to see that, then," he says solemnly. "I never dated a girl my height before. I don't know if I knew human girls my height. It's pretty fantastic."
Melancholy laughs. "I'm glad, because I can't be smaller. Usually it's women who like my height, and men who don't. We're all a bit tall, us Grimlockes. Miserie's only an inch shorter than me. Torment and Malaise are about an inch taller. You know Woe, obviously." She considers for a moment, and then looks away, though she keeps her head turned. "Were there… mm."
An uncomfortable pause and her tone shifts, going lighter, but not brighter. "I don't know if it's appropriate to ask how many girls there have been, before me. It sounds like it might be rude to even ask, but I don't want to pretend that I'm not curious. I just don't know how to ask it properly, or if I shouldn't at all. You don't have to answer, of course."
"You can ask me anything you want," Bryn says, watching her face. "I don't know if it's rude to answer, though. If it's… 'personal'?
"It's been…." He pauses a moment, thinking. "Seventeen. Most of 'em were girls I just went with a little while, a few dates when I was on shore leave kind of thing. Some of 'em were girlfriends for longer, but most of the time things broke off when I went back to sea. I'm mostly just a pretty good time, nothing serious." His hand slides down her hip, and his other arm wraps around her waist.
The number surprises her, a few blinks suggesting she was possibly not even imagining double digits. Oh.
Her expression shifts from surprise to considering curiosity, and then confusion. "That's not the first time you've described yourself that, like you're transient and ordinary somehow," she says, and she sets her arm over his, the other still holding the athame. "That's not at all how I would describe you. It's not what you are to me, at least."
Her own words bring a slight hitch of tension to her, and there's that moment of concentration, a channeling through the athame as a soulstone closes around a piece of his soul, and she relaxes again, deeper, leaning back against him.
"I believe you. That that's not what I am to you. And I'm glad, because if I could pick any one girl in the world to read the whole book and not just look at the cover, it would be you." His arm tightens around her waist and he rests his head against hers. "There's the kind of girls who pick the book up for its cover and then decide I shouldn't read so much, remember things out loud, keep facts about birds or plants or astronomy. Be deaf. There's girls who like the reading and remembering and thinking but wish I was more polished, dressed different, had a diploma. Wasn't a sailor." He shrugs gently. "And then there's Remarkable Melancholy. Perfect first try."
Her own grip on him tightens as he describes the rejections of his self, a sympathetic pain bringing tears to the edges of her eyes, but she smiles wide at him at the last.
"Perfect first try," she agrees, tapping her index finger against his arm. She rocks back and forth slightly, a little sway in his arms. "I want to devour the whole book, cover to cover. I want to memorize the whole of it, read it so many times, until I can read what it says in total darkness by running my hand over the pages." She strokes her fingers along his arm. "Everything, as it is, sublime for being what it is. Just Bryn Baird. My perfect, first try."
She stops her sway as she recites, "'A youth to Fortune and Fame unknown. / Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, / And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.'" She raises her arms up as she spins slowly on her heel to turn around in his hold to face him.
He laughs softly, delighted. "'And Melancholy mark'd him for her own,'" he agrees, and kisses her, sliding a hand up her back.
He rests his forehead against hers. "To be clear, I was never all broken up about those other girls, or just being a pretty good time. There's worse things I could be than a pretty good time, and most of the time I wasn't after much more than that myself." He lifts a hand to touch her cheek, his thumb brushing back and forth. "But I would like more than that this time. And I would like to memorize the whole poem of you. Melancholy, who is a pavilion at the center of a nighttime garden. I would like to be a whole book in your mind's library. I don't know what my classification code would be, though."
She sets her arms over his shoulders, keeping the athame carefully angled away from him.
"920.71, which isn't terribly descriptive even if it's probably the most accurate. That's a biography of one man, since you wouldn't be associated with any singular subject or classification of field, because you're so many things. You can't really be under both the categories of 'philosopher' — 921 — and a 'scientist' — 925 — for example in the system," Melancholy explains with a smile, her eyes a soft golden honey growing darker as he strokes her cheek. "And I wouldn't put you under only the Navy as an extension, or under literature alone, for example, because that's too restrictive for all that you are."
She looks between his eyes and his lips. "And I'm a pavilion in a nighttime garden? That's very romantic," she says. "You have so much beauty in you."
"I am not much considered a romantic," Baird tells her seriously. "But then I guess Melancholy mark'd me for her own. And now she's in the garden and it just keeps getting lovelier." He lifts his hand to take hers (the one without the athame) and lay it over his heart. His clear gaze is steady and unblinking. "Spreading like a wild climbing rose."
"You're my variety of romantic," she tells him, gazing softly back into the clarity of his eyes with the same sweet serenity as she watches for the dawn. "You're the reason I wear the rose again. I thought I had lost it, or left it behind me. But, all it did was move to a safer place, unfading."
She strokes her nails over his shirt, tracing petals of a rose. "Her dark curls fanned among the gales, / The skylark whistled o'er the vales, / I told her love's delightful tales / Among the dews of morning. / She crop't a flower, shook oft the dew, / And on his breast the wild rose grew; / She blushed as fair, as lovely, too — / the living rose of morning,'" she says, altering a pronoun from the original poem.
"You know your eyes are the most incredible color," he tells her matter-of-factly, and then his hand moves to the back of her neck, his thumb framing her jaw, and he kisses her again.
He catches her lips in a smile, and a hum on her lips of the start of a laugh, before she sighs into the kiss. There's the pillowy warmth of her lips, and the way she drags her bottom lip especially along his to savor the sensation, to invite him to pay attention specifically. She doesn't demand anything, but the longer she kisses him, the more her hand drifts southward to the edge of his shirt, and tugs it upward, to sneak underneath for his bare skin.
He smiles against her mouth and shifts his arm a little, an acceptance or invitation, before catching at the lush temptation of that bottom lip. He draws back just enough to murmur, "I like our lessons. And I love your mouth."
There's a distinctly triumphant satisfaction to the way she smooths her hand up under his shirt, the soft texture of her glove's lace a particular sensation, as she makes her way over his skin across his hip, and around to his back where his tattoo resides.
"I like all the lessons, but I love the lessons you give my mouth," she says, louder and more clearly. And then, a little movement, a quick breath of a reminder falling into place. "Oh, lessons." A hesitation where she makes a mmmmm sound, and then continues to kiss him instead.
But, after another few seconds, she does say, "I have things for you. Books, physical books." She makes no immediate move to get them, unless she's storing them under his own shirt, which would be a trick.
"Say again?" he murmurs, but there's an edge of laughter on his tone that says he's only pretending, that he doesn't want the kissing part of the lesson to end. Indeed, he forestalls her ability to repeat herself by kissing her again.
It makes her laugh against his mouth, a vibration of a dark little bell. After a moment, as she refuses to break the kiss to say again, she deliberately holds him in place with her hand pressed in the center of his back, as she shifts her hips away from his — not to create distance, but to carefully stow her athame away.
Once the blade is tucked back into its place, she uses her free hand to pull her body flush against him, with a purposeful stroke of her tongue against his.
He makes a soft, avid sound and his hands go to her hips again, his fingers digging in.
Now he breaks away, with a rueful curse. "This is the problem with pants," he says breathlessly. "They look amazing, but they make it a lot harder to get at you than a skirt would."
She's already struggling to catch her breath, and she presses her nails into his back in several restless pulses.
"Oh, well, that's going straight onto the Cons for trousers, and Pros for skirts," she says lightly, staring at him with a heavy, hot gaze.
"I can get them off you," offers Baird, who is nothing if not an enterprising young man, "but then you'd be out here without pants on and maybe we're not secluded enough for that." He leans in again, tilting his head to nip gently at her ear and then kiss the side of her neck.
She tilts her head to the side in a languorous sigh, sliding a hand into his hair. "Oh. Well, I have an umbrella, a parasol, a blanket, and a hard won reputation for building the best forts," she says blithely. But she considers the other things. "It's only if there's — well, if there were certain sounds. Those carry." She gives him a plum lipped smile. "But the inn's walls are thick enough."
"Well," he breathes in her ear, a smile in his voice, "what if you try to be very, very quiet?"
She laughs. "That is with me trying," she counters, honestly. "Someday maybe we'll be somewhere completely soundproof and I'll stop trying, and you'll see the difference."
He laughs, kisses her ear, and steps back again. "Well then I guess the pants stay on. I'd be happy to help you out of 'em back at the inn, though. Should we get back to lessons, then? Regular lessons," he specifies.
She strokes a hand down his neck to his shoulder, her eyes trailing lower down his torso and then back up. "Lessons… oh! Books," she says. She opens up her pocket, sifting through the contents within as she speaks, to pull out a smaller bag. "Not really our lessons so far, but what I've been working on with Aszera, I have some of the results for you. And also something that I thought — well, I'm not really used to showing it to other people, but I thought you would like especially."
A pause and another little laugh. "Like my legs. Although, I don't know that this will drive you wild." She grins at him as she lets go of his shoulder to pull out first a professionally bound, near luridly colored purple paperback, titled Polyphonic Splitting Hairs, an anthology of surreal short stories by Alliance authors, edited by Herman Barthe, handing it to him in that automatic hold this for me she's done with Woe, her attention already on the next thing in her bag.
He grins back at her and is still smiling when he accepts the purple paperback. He drops his gaze to the cover and his smile is snuffed out as his entire attention is immediately absorbed by the book. "'Polyphonic,'" he repeats thoughtfully to himself, and flips it open to read the table of contents. "Stories."
"Surreal short stories by Common authors," she confirms.
She pulls out an amateur bound collection of papers, around 40 pages, similar in size to a standard paperback, written in beautiful, clear handwriting of someone who learned how to write formally from a young age, and then trained it later into something a professional scribe would use. The cover reads Portraits of Sun and Shadow, Part 1, For Bryn. She hands it out to him, still looking at another thing in her bag. "And these are the first installment of the Thalassian surreal stories that Azsera spoke of — I was able to find the book she mentioned — it's 'Portraits of Sun and Shadow' edited by Caeria Featherbright, published 520 King's Calendar. Those are the ones you mentioned from her of the fish and the winter, 'Transformation' and 'Eternal Winter.' I also included two others that were short and easy. We've paused on the rest at the moment to focus on the poetry, but I thought you would like to have these now, since they're done."
"Oh," he says: a sound of soft reverence as he accepts the collection. "Oh. You… found it? You translated…?" He trails off to flip this one open and stare at a page. "Damn, your handwriting is — Melancholy, this is amazing. This is… so much. Trouble you went to." He looks up at her again, stricken and uncertain.
She looks up from her bag to smile at him, wide enough to show the gap in her teeth. "It's worth it, for you, of course. And to thank Aszera for all her time, I've been transcribing the Thalassian poetry in a magical ink that she can read, so she can have a book that she can read whenever she likes. That's part of the delay on the rest of the other book for you," she explains. "Everyone should be able to read what they would like to, whether that requires a translation or a transcription."
And then she pulls out a notebook, deep black as all her notebooks are, and holds it out shyly to him. "This is the other one, the one people don't usually see, and the one that I thought you might be interested in having. These are all my notes on the translation of those stories, from the word-by-word meanings to cultural phrasing adjustments and significant grammatical structures that influence an accurate translation. It's chaotic — I'm sorry if it's difficult to read. I thought about cleaning it up, making it all orderly, but I thought — well, it's also a bit like reading how I think. You could also learn some Thalassian because of it, the way I taught myself."
It's as she describes — a notebook, filled with the original Thalassian in double spaces, with room for her to go word by word translation, and then notes filled all around, written in the margins, in lines and circled words to other places, tiny asides of interest, parenthetical annotations of thoughts and alternatives. It is chaotic in its organization, pulled all around by movement of arrowed lines, but there's a pattern to the process, an imposing of order that ultimately leads to the final product.
"Ta-daaaa," she says.
"Melancholy," he says. "Tides and… Melancholy. This is — " Wide-eyed, Bryn sits down unceremoniously in the grass and opens the black notebook to bow his head over it intently. He traces an arrowed line from one circled word to a parenthetical notation, nods, gently tracks another. "Amazing," he repeats softly, and looks up at her. "Melancholy, I can't believe you went to all this trouble. For me."
She seems slightly puzzled, although she smiles wide at him. She steps to his left side, and uses his shoulder to fold delicately into a kneel, and then a sit, as she tucks her legs to the right. "I'm glad you like them. I had practice at it already. I made an anthology for Theris of collected poems I thought he would like — that's how I learned how to bind books — as an apology, after I didn't visit for over a year, after the Shattering. And it's not like I can go out fighting every day in the Vale, but I can write every day."
She slides her hand along his shoulder and down his arm to his hand. "You're quite literally healing my soul, Bryn, out of happiness and safety, and being with you. Do you really think there is anything I wouldn't do for you? There's no such thing as 'so much trouble' when it comes to you. It's joyful to give you something you would like."
He closes the notebook gently to meet her gaze. "Melancholy," he says. "The best thing you could give me is to tell me I make you happy. I could live on pretty much that alone. But this is… I never had someone go to this kind of trouble to make me something so amazing before."
“Well, I’ve never had someone decide to go through all the trouble of rethinking his entire career trajectory, and the future of his life, simply to hold onto me,” she says, lacing her fingers with his, leaning into him. “Or the trouble of scouting out quiet, secluded places to be alone with me, or the trouble of assigning himself a morning watch to meet me before the dawn, or the trouble of staying with me to hold vigil on a long, terrible night. The trouble to notice all the foods I like, and prepare them, and bring me breakfast and dinner and snacks whenever I might need them. To watch over me in the field, always with an eye on me, as though I'm the most important thing he could do with his attention. To protect me, to comfort me, to teach me, to learn with me, to laugh with me, to pleasure me, and with all that work and trouble, say, how very lucky he is.”
She smiles at him with those soft, warm honey eyes gone a little brighter with a touch of tears. “It’s like I told your sister – I will hope and strive, as best as I can, to be as good to you as you are to me. To make you as happy as you make me."
Bryn wraps a strong hand around the back of her neck. "I am very lucky, though," he says. "Pretty much all of the things you just listed are at least as nice for me as they are for you. Because they're for you." He leans to kiss her.
"Then you know how I feel," she tells him before she sets her lips to his to ardently express those particular feelings in the variety of ways that those lips can do.
His lean becomes more pronounced as his focus falls entirely into the kiss. After a moment the books slide from his lap toward the grass. He does not stop kissing Melancholy as he reaches blindly to collect them again, so that's undoubtedly how his hand ends up on Melancholy's knee rather than a book.
Of the things that could be in his lap among the possibilities, Melancholy clearly wants it the most, as she immediately shifts her leg to first stretch it out, and then reangle it back up towards him as she turns her hips, reaching her other hand to hold onto his shirt and pull herself closer.
He slides his hands beneath her to pull her firmly in against him. Books are forgotten; this is better.
She goes more than willingly — she goes happily. It takes her only a few moments to settle herself in his lap, her legs drawn up over one of his and left invitingly parted, as she gives her mouth up to his with a small shiver of pleasure. She has always particularly enjoyed matching a reader to what it is they want to read most.