eldest

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

She passes through the courtyard, not a slight hesitation in her step betraying her interest. A polite, neutral expression (marred somewhat by the brass gag, but one works with what one has) masks her attention, paid to corners, cracks in the wall, places to hide. Not useful now, she's still bound and has an escort, but later. Knowing the terrain helps.

She pauses for a second as she comes into view of the Gate. A moments break in her step, eyes flicking across the closed door, taking in the unnatural light, the shifting shadows, before coming to a stop where directed and kneeling. Mud's not worth paying attention to. Half dozen dolls, certainly enough to win out against her if she tries to escape now, bound as she is. A gate to hell in front of her: she'd likely rather die than go through. An unstable warlock behind her: frankly, likely her best tool for escape.

She turns over what she knows, reviews old training, as she kneels in front of the gate. Something to consider instead of the other side, and what she's waiting for. One does not panic when one can plan. One does not panic when one has information to sort. Eventually, one does not panic, period. Until something comes along to disturb the careful mindlessness.

There is silence. There is knocking on the door, a moment of blaring noise, and then silence again. And eventually, there is those same discordant chords, as the door opens and somebody slithers out.

“Disgusting,” comes the new voice, as sounds of heavy things being moved and place play out around her. “Drab. Muted. Ashamed of itself. Even worse than Whirling-in-Rags’ little pet; at least it attempted something with color. Left to their own devices, they never fail to disappoint.” She cannot respond, the gag forbids this, but she does change posture, looking up at the demon.

There is no particular ceremony to the Laema's ministrations, even as she's sure care is being taken here. She is cut free of bindings and clothing alike, assistants holding her steady on a rug to avoid dirtying her feet. The assistants measure her, thoroughly, commenting on her body with language that would make a sailor blush. Piripiri hears it but does not. It's not from the Laema or the warlock, so it does not matter, and is simple noise, to be ignored. She does mark Azazuka's gift, pulled out of the rags that was once her outfit and set aside, with the few jewelry pieces she had been wearing, a muttered sneer about treating the prisoner and her things as a set.

And then she's dressed. She floats above it still, just as unresisting as when she was bound, while she's draped in layer on layer of thin, fine silk, translucent and gossamer. A single piece covers her arms, easily seen through, and a half dozen keep her privacy about her bust and below. The rest of her is somewhere between those two states, visible but faded, teasing what was previously covered and proper. A pattern of yellows and greens run diamondback along her spine from clever layering, yielding to a simpler pattern elsewhere of the two.

She's given heavy bracelets on each arm, a stylized reminder of her status here, and lighter anklets. A thick choker of brass, with a jade heptagon at the front, is put on, and then finally, finally, the gag is removed. She takes but a moment to work her jaw, giving relief to long stretched muscles, before staying meek as the makeup is applied, her teeth painted. She looks in the mirror. She smiles. Somebody else smiles back, a painted lady of Hell, with black teeth and far too much on show. Ignoble. Base.

And then, to her surprise, she finds herself asking the Laema a question. "What colors would you recommend for me to wear, outside of your greens?"

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri does not react, at all, to the Wrack-doll's laughter. Not a blink, not a twitch. It didn't happen. There is a difference between defiance and inviting disaster, and an insecure warlock who's dealing with authority issues might take off her head if she pushes too hard. So, defiance, to the end, but not mockery. And as such, she does not fight back, does not escape, but walks with her captors if allowed, head held high. You know, if she's not dragged there. Not like she can resist much of that now. So walk, as best you can, and try not to think of the merchant you're (being forced to) turn your back on.

Oh, you're surprised at no escape attempt? You know the best time to escape? When you are expected not to escape. On arriving, she was expected, tried to escape, and it failed to work. On moving to another location, she's expected to escape, and will likely have failed. At the Gate, whatever that is, she might have a chance. Later, if it seems she's been... not beaten, but at least prepared to endure rather than escape, that's when you should look for that.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The moments pass quickly, or slowly. She can't tell, because time doesn't mean anything for her at the moment. From her floating perspective, Piripiri waits, and then at some point later, watches. A new woman enters the room, a warlock, in charge and insecure about it, overcompensating. Azazuka attempts petty defiance and by doing so, gives her a chance to exert her authority. A reinforcing loop, it's how you break somebody to your will. There will be sugar, later, to convince the merchant compliance is rewarded, with defiance punished. Keep it up long enough, if you are skilled enough, and anyone will fall, to the conditioning or death. Piripiri doubts the warlock's skill here, though they are in Hell. She would doubtless have tutors.

And then Ven (though she does not know her name yet, she will learn it in the flow of things) turns to Piripiri and the passive waiting is over. Insults, yes. Demeaning, humiliating even, but the barbs fail to find their mark. She floats above them, uncaring, unimpressed. She looks up at Ven as the thumb presses the gag slightly deeper. "Plain. Unimportant. Disposable." These are true words, in a way. She's a tool. Even then...

Even then, she stares back into Ven's eyes, disdainful. She has lived honor. She has fought for her family and her land, navigated the politics of the academy, bleed and done terrible things. But she has never given up. This warlock, she's forfeited. She took the easy path, the path that any sucker could take, and calls herself special for it, for having bought power at the cost of kneeling to the Broken King. She gave up on the idea that she could fix things.

Piripiri stares up into her eyes, from within the binding ropes, torn leggings and tunic paling beside Azazuka's finery and Ven's infernal wardrobe, and her gaze burns. Her thoughts can clearly be read in her face.

How pathetic.

That's a 10 on enticing. This will be as fun and unhealthy as a drunken run to White Castle for food.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The unpleasantness of being swallowed. Not something she'd experienced before, a disgusting and frightful act which set off primal, visceral disquiet. Being eaten is a messy and slow death, a fear so thorough that even in civilized times it pervades masked plays and horror songs, played after the young have gone to bed. A quick memory flash of having snuck out of bed, one such night, so long ago, to listen to a player who before the sun's setting had sung of such wonders, and the nightmares that accompanied her that night after listening to his terrors.

Then a series of experiences she only knows because they remind her of other experiences she's had. Being under the earth, squirming through a tiny hole to find the cave it guards. Hiding in the grass, stalking a merchant from the ground beneath his notice. Hiding in a closet from proctors sent to shoo them to bed, a quick squeeze of hand saying "I am with you, I am here". It was like these things but was it's own thing, but she cannot remember it for itself and so constructs it after, out of fragments of other things.

Sensation again. One's surroundings, the gut-twist of imminent danger. An attempt not at combat, but at flight, her knowledge useless unless delivered. Die if one must but come back first. The swarming of hundreds, here for two, the inelegant dance of scrabbling, furious negation, overwhelmed by pure numbers. The ropes.

Piripiri comes back to herself slowly, within the embrace of those profane ropes. She is not fully herself, yet, and probably will not be when so bound. Her normal stillness of action withheld has turned to action denied, and there is a peace in that, even as she gives a perfunctory shrug of the shoulders, testing her bindings. No give, no escape, as is expected. So instead she floats, thinking of nothing at all, eyes closed and ears tuning out Azazuka's angry threats as useless noise. There will be time, later, for plans, resisting interrogation, escaping or fighting or even just being executed. But for the moment, nothing can be done, it has been enforced that she does nothing, and she relaxes into that blessed relief.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Well shit.

And then one is underwater, and one has choices to make.

One's choice to specialize, when it comes to the training of gifts of spiritual power granted to one of a noble bloodline of Hymair, can be beneficial at times. One's choice has already been made there, and this is not one of those times. Azazuka clinging to her arm does not distract one with dreamy thoughts now, as crisis clears all such thoughts quite thoroughly. There is no wood essence nearby, no plant that aren't suffused enough with water essence to be useless against a creature of corrupted water like this. And while on land water would feed wood, surrounded by an element not your own is a terrible place to face a creature who belongs there.

And so, the backup plan, a knife pulled out by reflex even as you (we are back to being you instead of one, training has been run through and your mentor's speech habit banished until the next time it is needed) took in a deep breath to hold throughout the hopefully bloody violence that is about to unfold. A knife, and shedding layers of restrictive cloth, veil and overrobe free as modesty loses to survival and a kick forward to swing the knife, just so, into the eye of this hellish snake.

A click as it bounces off scale, the blow misjudged, is all that greets her.

Defy Disaster: 5+1 = 6, aka drat.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Azazuka puts her hand on Piripiri's, and then says something. And then something else. She's listening, even, it's just there's a slight distraction and that makes it hard to put meanings to words. Piripiri stares out to the city, head tilted just enough for the veil to hide her face, while she tamps down her feelings, swatting them out of the way like somebody encountering layer on layer of cobwebs, each one a distracting possibility that tantalizes and isn't. Useful. Now.

The end result of all of this, is that it takes a good twenty seconds of careful breathing and thought before Piripiri reconstructs sounds into words and words into concepts. Ah. Danger. She can talk about danger. If she chooses to seize at this topic as a drowning woman might a line cast to her to avoid thinking about -don't think about it- things, or if she's disregarding the careful layers of what could be true and who could be a piece in the Great Game to again not think about... things, that's to be expected, under the situation, she's sure.

"Most of the time... most of the time when somebody's in danger, it's not at all pleasant, or like the stories. You tell the stories afterwards to make yourself feel better or impress pretty girls. You don't mention the days of shivering in your tent as you wait to find out if the fever will break after your wound turns infected, or if you'll be found by the next person to attempt a crossing of the pass at a later time of the year, when the snows are less hostile. The hours of waiting, not knowing if the wolves will rush again. Holding a rope taunt for two hours so that the sail won't break in a heavy wind is a lovely story, but nobody will brag about how they had to have their fingers peeled off the rope after the storm's passed, because they just can't let go."

Piripiri looks at her host, really looks at her, and pauses. Nobody here but them, it'll be fine... no. No inpropiety. She gestures along the back of one hand, leading up along the arm towards the elbow. "I've got a scar there the better part of a foot long, that I got doing something dangerous and stupid. The difference, the crucial difference, is I did that because the alternative was my family getting hurt. Anybody who chooses to face danger, with no reason but bravado, is a fool and a danger to themself and all about them. But everyone will have something they will face the world's end to save." A tiny smile at the end there, but an honest one, perhaps her first in this city.

Hm. The mask is a little too loose, perhaps. She'll sort her feelings and meditate until she feels in control again, after she's inside her rooms behind walls and guards. For now, deep breaths, and if something must compromise, make it something strategically unimportant.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri stares out at the lights as she answers, for once unable to fully hide the longing and homesick in her voice. She decides to do the most dangerous thing, and tell the truth.

Well, two truths, and a lie. She still has her role to play.

"We have grand things. Hy-en-ala the Floating City, which can take a day to walk across and swallows those new enough and foolish enough to not take a guide, so byzantine are the pathways between the various stilt-platforms and mangrove-towers. The hundred monasteries of the dragon-blessed, speckled across the slopes of Greatuncle Fire-eater, each of which practice their own forms and test them against their neighbors, so that we may be best defended against the fey reavers and any angry lava escaping from Greatuncle's mouth, and that demons will never know what to prepare for."

She gestures to the city. "We have nothing that matches this" she lies, with a slight smile at the awe of it all. A technical truth, even, the best kind of lie. "None of our cities come from before our arrival," she continues, because that would be heretical, the ancient structures are what the monasteries are built upon, to be closer to the will of heaven. She takes a moment to breath, and take it all in from a distance. It's... impressive, yes. She can easily say that. But she'd rather be home. She can allow herself that desire, at least, before duty calls again.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

It's a quiet calculus of problems, oppertunities, and furiously denied daydreams, as she glances from beneath the half-veil at the developments. An actual rat on the street urchin, possibly a desperate level of poor, possibly stupid enough to try for a robbery, unlikely but possible that she'd have to actually intercede. A coin given again mindlessly, worth enough to imply far more on her person or in her retinue if Azazuka's taken hostage, but the risk involved with that plan implies stupid and greedy or just swiping the purse and swimming to shore. Not worth preparing for specifically, just keep it in mind for the general paranoia of the shadowed life.

Lanterns. Fire risk, unlikely but possible on a tiny boat in a lake, able to signal with them or be a prearranged signal. Spur of the moment makes that last one unlikely, two lanterns also implies two people in case somebody else is watching and planning something. Urchin may be a surprise in their favor at that point.

Azazuka doesn't want to wait. In spite of herself, a slight surprise, only betrayed by a raised eyebrow under the charcoal gauze, barely noticable to somebody paying close attention, which her host isn't. Blackmail, trickery, seduction, all of those are possible. A brief whirl in her mind to imagining half-clothed elegance in the privacy of the lake, before her training reaches out and quashes those thoughts, focusing again on the calculus. She's not allowed to dream here.

Yes. The worst scandal Azazuka could produce from this would be nothing compared to what she'd do to herself, given the relative status between a fourth-born and the merchant-heir. Any planned seduction could be bowed out of with deferance to honor, with a swim in the lake and potentially offending her host better than serving tea at her mistress's pleasure. Onto the boat then, an umbrella over them both and a lantern in the other hand.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

This is a brilliant idea that cannot go wrong, she's a genius, and she's completely not covering for how inadequately prepared she feels with ego. A nice, non romantic, chaparoned trip on the lake, get away from the hustle and bustle so that Azazuka stops buying her incredibly expensive things with obvious... hm, disregard is the wrong word for how Azazuka is viewing the price. That implies something intentional, a blatant show of wealth. No, she's instead paying no mind to it at all, and in a way that's worse, because she just bought a genuine work of art and then a paper cup of noodles and fried shellfish and then a scarf all in the same mindless way, where the price never even enters a thought.

Not intimidated by that at all, ignore any panic and do the job. Which is simple, don't seduce Azazuka.

So Piripiri slips up besides her host, subdued elegance next to joyful exuberance, and took a second to breath in the hint of the sauce from that paper cup, before speaking up. "As a thought, I think we might get a good view of the street festivities from one of the flatboats, with room for one of your retinue to keep your umbrella aloft."

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

The flower is half the gift.

She's telling herself that, because beneath the half veil and the painted lips she's trying not to break into a sweat in spite of the rain's cooling effects on the street. Her family is powerful, and wealthy as a result, thought they don't chase wealth for it's own sake. She was so casually given something that might be an honor-gift between mother and heir-apparent, a craftsman's final masterpiece, or an antique from the days of old. She was told, while being taught notables of the area, that Azazuka wanted for nothing, but to see it in person was a different story entirely.

It would be remiss to not note, here, that Piripiri is estimating at values here. She was taught shadows, not coin, and while she can play a passable merchant she is not one. Stark and austere has been her life under the tutorship of the Dominion, the better to dazzle the lessors when needed. And there is, of course, no note of blush under that hood, for she's been trained better than that, and would be the first to deny that being given a pretty gift by a pretty lady would stir any such feelings. She'd be lying, but that she's been taught to do masterfully.

Regardless. The flower is half the gift. And so she follows her host into the street, carefully tucking away the gift within a deep inner pocket where none will get at it, and works at the puzzle of being grateful without being enticing. She doesn't want to be enticing, after all, there is no small voice that asks what happens if she damns the consequences. She lies to herself best of all.

[Rolling to figure out Azazuka, starting out strong with a 5]