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Tag
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Joined: Dec 2010
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Karma: 1 |  | Tomorrow Night's Drink
« Thread Started on Feb 11, 2012, 2:45pm » | |
The wind was hinting that Winter was coming. The last of Fall's leaves had hit the ground and the cold had come into the air. At night he shouldered close to his leather jacket, worn so well it knew his arms and how they liked to rest. In the evenings he sat on the bench at his porch, the one with the chains that bore a bit of rust as they grinded in the wet of Summer. He swung, just barely so, with rust gritting into the air as he did so.
When he drank he had a glass of brandy. It was better in the Summer, almost as if the warmer weather scented it with cinnamon at those time. His glass of brandy in hand and the kind one, not always with a host, sitting at the top of the three steps leading to the floor of his porch. Like harmless bait for Madison, calling her back in to the den where families were if she want to be there.
He took another sip.
There were plants in his garden he remembered in their infancy, hardly more than knee high and now they had outgrown him. Tall and raking the sky with their wooden fingers. Plants were strange like that, often appearing insignificant and easily wiped out only to outlive everyone else and support Heaven. Sometimes at night he wondered about Rona, if he had understood her incorrectly or if she had always been that way. Looking at it now he should have known he was a passing moment for her and not her life. She had come and went. Come again and went. The only thing which had changed was that he'd been surprised about it.
Penny was starting to sleep well, now. For the first year it had seemed that she was plagued by nightmares but now... her breaths were drawing easy. How had she been able to heal? Had he tricked her into thinking he was healed from all his life's trauma, so she followed his misleading example and became that which he wasn't? Mostly, wasn't. He rubbed his neck and felt the tips of the scars on his back.
He took another sip of his drink.
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FadedVelvet
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« Reply #1 on Feb 14, 2012, 10:50pm » | |
Penny wasn't the only one who drew breath easier these days.
The night was cool, but not bitter, and revived her spirits as she stepped out of the incessant gloom of a house she was still learning to call her own. It still didn't sound right to her - even with all the workmen she'd hired to get the place up, explaining over again her possession. The men did not understand a woman living alone in the middle of nowhere with so many walls around herself, but the repairs were made, the repairs her hands were not accustomed to, ones she hadn't figured since straight after Elijah's death. She watched the men closely as they worked so next time it would familiar, and saw a quiet genius to the way these men inspired a ramshackle vestige of Cadentia's dead era to spring to new life, only this time more robust, all her bones in place. Madison smiled in the night at that; she too drew parallels with her breath, for Madison could claim all the same for herself.
Leaves turned in their sleep under her boots as her silhouette melted into the yard. Some old, half-remembered, half-forgotten, impossible memory stirred like a spider to fan webs over her mind.... of all the whens she had walked up this path. This time, it felt like out of all those instances, she was the most fortified. She was not at his stoop with ill-tidings or a sore heart - sure, she had her pain, but she kept it safe inside, something to treasure rather than forsake, wrapped in cloth and cedar somewhere behind the ribs. The aches, they came and went.
"Hey..", she bends, she smiles, she takes up the invitation knowing it had no cruel attachments, this was no transaction, no blood to spill a debt. Most of her relations, her friendships, had felt more like a bargain. Her eyes fill up with the sky with the tip back of her head to take a good taste. It tasted aerial as drinks had outside often did,she thought, of stars, of shadow, of secrets. Better than whiskey, which had come to know her mouth as regret.
"Mind if I join you?". boards and leather creak and whine as she steps over to drop down beside him, denim and cotton, summetime and slow, steady rhythms. If the woman was a song, she'd be blues, poured out shuttered windows on a grey and warm afternoon. And whatever she is, it doesn't matter, because she is drinking in his atmosphere, the almost violent comfort his nearness affords her. Maybe... it is true, that Madison, now knitted with more years than whence upon they first did meet, is and was still a stray. As wild and lonely as a winter gale, despite all the sun of the smile, the sheltering in her arms. Her elbow nudges his and she hands the bottle over, dangling it from a gloved hand. "Penny.. " , she winced, "Penny is something else." Her smile contrived with truth.
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Tag
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« Reply #2 on Feb 19, 2012, 8:21am » | |
"Anytime. I've reserved the spot for you." The one next to him at night where they would muse, definitions of past and present too tangled for distinction. When the bottle appears he takes it from her, tops off his glass and sets it on the ground by his foot like a book he just finished reading. His eyes read her face, the story of her body that changed strangely on each page. She was the only person he had ever met who could do that. For him, life had constants to which he was contently bound. He was sure most people had their constants. Not Madison, though, she was floating.
"She is. I wonder who she will be when she is an adult." His smile was faint. Fathers generally looked like that when they thought of their little girl being grown up and gone. It was hard to believe, sometimes, just how much she had grown and changed when she first came to live with him. She was more introverted then and even when she did talk, her words and vocabulary were so small. The nightmares would probably never go away but they weren't consistent anymore. There were happy nights of rest, normal days of whining that she wasn't ready to go to bed. The usual drama of being a young girl was starting to dominate her life.
"Sometimes she says she wants to be a healer... sometimes she's the hero and on other days she wants to be the cook." His smile breaks with a laugh behind it and he looks at Madison. When he was a child there was no discovering what he wanted to be. Feudal systems didn't work that way, they didn't let people breath like that. Watching Penny was like seeing his dream when he was that sixteen year old boy, wanting to make up his own mind about what his life would be. Now it was in a little girl. He stood back, watched her twirl and pick out of the sky thoughts of her profession.
When given so many choices, how did anyone ever decide?
Some days he wasn't on his porch. Sometimes he went to the Red Dragon Inn but lately during his visits he felt more and more isolated from the crowds. It was like they were speaking a different language and he had trouble keeping up. People there burned wildly as if they were afraid they were going to die soon. He suppose in a way that they did-- many never reappeared. At least, not during his rare visits to the world. The experience to him was a strange one. He had once gone to the inn and sat in disbelief at what would pour from mouths and bodies. Never had he seen such a collection of freedom and punishment. There was then the envy to be part of it, which he never seemed able to overcome himself to fully integrate. Then there was this feeling he had now, of separation without sadness. Yet he would still go on rare occasion as if trying to find something that was lost. Keeping that thin connection. Madison could do it so much better than he.
He wondered if Madison would still stroll over to the burned remains of the Orpheum the same way he would go to the inn. Revisiting a connection, the way it had changed and was still the same.
"You would be a good mother, I think."
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FadedVelvet
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« Reply #3 on Feb 19, 2012, 10:54pm » | |
There were notes the right people hit if the music between you made sense. Sometimes the right notes still hurt, but in time even these didn’t sound so bad and you come to sing along. Tag had struck such a note - Her greatest sorrow in her husband’s disappearance had not been only the misery of thinking him dead, but knowing the child they had spoken of and prepared for was never going to come. If Madison was going to be honest, it was the cruel fact that still dug some hole in her side after all these years but one she had come to live with. As much as she had come to live with the fact that Elijah and her didn’t have a marriage anymore. Of all the things that the dark man might say, saying she would make a good Mother had been the farthest thought from her mind. She worried that he saw her, sometimes, still, as only the runaway or the killer. Both were aspects of Madison, let that be known and for always, but they were not the sum of all her parts. Madison believed that she would be absolved, that her ultimate redemption would be a child of her own. But the reality of a child in her world still seemed a long way off.
“I hope so.”
She sat back again, in her place, the one reserved for her, cuddled up in her coat and warm thoughts, the drink. “How did you know you were ready? Didn’t you question it after.... your Magpie?”
When Elijah had died, so too had a dream. When he had returned, the dream still lay dead. She hadn’t thought of picking it back up. But Tag had picked up his dreams and it made him all the more gallant. There were knights in Rhy’Din, as there were castles and dragons, moats and dungeons, but all of that seemed like fantasy. Here, she figured, was a knight, without any of the armour, or the praise, the tall undulating flags announcing his arrival. But he had been hers, and he had been his own hero. Her hand rises to squeeze his shoulder, massage the place where spine met nape “I don’t know how you do it, but, you’re stronger than me, so maybe I never will.”
She reaches for the brandy.
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Tag
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« Reply #4 on Feb 23, 2012, 2:50pm » | |
"A long time ago, I knew I was ready." When he hand touched the back of his neck he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, so she wasn't having to reach back to massage the highway between his brain and heart. His eyes were forward, watching the new wind chime. It wasn't very windy, it had hardly struck a note the whole evening. With Madison here, though, it had had a small song to say on the matter before becoming silent bits of metal in the air.
"When I was eighteen I was assigned my first job. He was a younger Samurai who had a wife and two daughters. My family life had been different, my father was not proud of me and my mother was no longer alive. My... idea of family was wrong. When I saw this man with his child I realized, I felt..." the pause came long and he looked at her, "that it was an answer I had been wanting to know for a very long time."
He took a swallow of his drink before handing her the bottle she reached for, "Regardless of my magpie and what she did, it never changed that I knew the answer. The only change I ever felt was whether or not I could get to it." That a woman would have a child with him. Stay with him in this house and not grow bored in a world of vampires, dragons, fires and affairs. The drama, the ability to wander uncontested in Rhydin was an endless temptation, even for him a couple of years ago. Yet he was here, like an anchor to an old ship that knew the wind.
"I am also older than you." He paused at saying that and then seemed to correct the statement, "Somehow. I don't think everyone comes to know their dreams at the same time in their life. Are you still looking?" Was she content to be lost or was something scratching underneath her skin?
The offer comes like fog, "I'll help you, if you ask."
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FadedVelvet
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« Reply #5 on Mar 8, 2012, 4:37am » | |
The promising simplicity of the statement struck her - the words made no sense for a full minute, they sunk, pure weight, as her face tilted his way. She always fumbled to reach out and comfort him, and it seemed his place was in beating her to the punchline. Madison regarded Tag like he were a stranger, like the words didn't belong to his face or his voice or fit his mouth..... That's where her eyes linger, upon that feature, haunted by the impression. The bottle hers again, but she's gripping it dumbly, as though there was no feeling in her hand. Madison did not question his capability nor tenderness, but was silenced by where they went.
The road had darkened considerably beyond the fence line. Night animals, night things, night winds, night leaves, they moved beyond it, swirling and racing in their own amnesias and directions, beyond the haven of a known place, safe parameters. The world inside the house was not hers to set foot in, not in the way perhaps it was perceived from outside their twosome, but maybe it was a right she ought to let herself have, here, and within the walls of the house she condemned in Cadentia. One day it would have to soften her further. Much like Tag's words did.
Another flame started.
A world burning down.
This was a match lit in the dark.
Flip.
Spin.
Heads, or tails?
Where was that man that could be found spending much of his day laughing?
Catch.
Madison took a summoning swig, swallowed it, and leant across to Tag in his solitude (for he always seemed alone, even beside another, even, sometimes, with her) and confirmed agreement within a kiss, fingertips tracing summers and futures behind his collar. Surprise was not lost in this translation, nor the gentle fire of a warm mouth on a cold night, of gentle knowing that it felt right.
Maybe, one day, Penny would stand before them and say "I am a healer", maybe one day Tag would not feel so disconnected from the city, and maybe one day Madison would bring herself to look at the remains of the building. But the only gleaming certainty was that they had each other.
Family.
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Tag
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« Reply #6 on Apr 23, 2012, 6:19pm » | |
Tonight he was setting out the tea lights, building up a constellation that did not tell her where to but how to get back here, to the porch seat he had reserved for her. The kiss prompted him to smile slightly, wrapping an arm around her in a half hug. The dream was there, his dream, challenged but with an untarnished truth to it. Was that what caused her to kiss him? He believed Madi could not have been happy if her told her dreams expired, or that he blindly and perpetually followed what he thought was the truth. There was something much more pleasing to the notion that the truth had always been there and it was only his ever changing path around it to reach the answer.
A small earthquake came from the body she was pressed to. It was a laugh, but he wasn't looking at her or the loose wind chime that was forgetting its song. He was looking ahead at nothing. A memory that he supposed had not been so funny when it had been fresher. Now that it was old, he found it somehow humorous.
"I remember the first time you helped me. It was with the bear trap, wasn't it?" The one that had bit down on his foot. He thought he would limp forever and still, some of it followed him around. Especially on the cold days he could feel those triangular teeth marks in his flesh. It was so long ago. Did she remember? She hadn't seemed surprised or startled then. Not like she might have now. There was a greater tenderness to her, now. He supposed it was embarrassing for him, getting caught in an old trap like that. Now that it was years ago he could laugh at the misfortune but also at how different her face had become.
"Tomorrow," he spoke again as if narrating the night, "will be the first time that Penny will ride a horse. Would you like to come?" Or were their boundaries still between them, odd and strange markings in the sand that kept getting rewritten. He let her draw the lines, he observed and respected them, the imaginary walls of what was personal and impersonal. It was a difficult thing, to become involved in a child's life when there was no mother.
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FadedVelvet
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« Reply #7 on Apr 30, 2012, 12:34am » | |
The embrace is shared, by an arm slinging around his middle, her side meeting his. At first, she's beholding him strangely at the sudden laughter, but the mere fact he had found that memory to be funny, however spontaneous, gave light to her face, and spurned a hoarse little chuckle.
"You sure weren't laughing that day, Tag", and she hung her head, laughing with him, against him. This was how they should have been, were meant to be - forward-facing to the sun and laughing even if it all came crashing down. Even though that had been a strange day, and the first day he'd seen her as she was, before he knew her the first time, in the sentimental confusion of their obscure history, it was a day to remember.
Madison considers him, while he speaks - that he might permit her into their tight-knit world was poignant. She met his suggestion with another smile, bright and relieved, her face tilted so that they breathed each others breath. Noses nearly touching. "If she doesn't mind the company. You know I would be there." Her eyes said she was touched by the offer. He trusted her in totality. It was probably the first time she had been allowed into someone's life like this. "I'm afraid I can't think of anything nicer right now", reverently. Madi didn't feel like searching anymore than he did dream, but Penny lived and dreamed enough for the two of them with her crayon, paint and potential. Boundaries would be scattered by a big enough wind.
Change cat-crept past them on the porch.
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Tag
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« Reply #8 on May 28, 2012, 8:23am » | |
"I have to go to bed soon," he admitted to her, feeling old and also like a child with a bed time when he said it. His eyes were on the moon and then on her face as the offer came, "Penny is getting ready to give me a performance." Though, in the standard way of children he had almost seen the whole show during her practicing.
"It's a puppet show. I will ask her if it is okay if you watch it too on opening day." Penny had changed a great deal from when he met her. She had been shy, drawn into herself and seemed to hesitate with him. As the weeks had passed she not only felt comfortable with him and his affection but entitled as well. Sometimes she would tell him what they were going to eat or where they were going to go. Usually he could agree with her and was surprised at her need to plan the events of their day. He wondered if it made her feel empowered, in control when such a wild and uncontrollable thing like a firehad taken her birth parents away from her.
Or it was just that he was a vine and she was building him the lattice to grow on.
"I believe she told me in two days the show would be opening." She had also grown fond of puppets, another activity that allowed her to be in control and give the characters the happy outcome they desired. Well, that was mostly true. It was always the Penny-character that got the happy outcome, she didn't much emphasize with the saddened state of other characters and their resulting wounds. He was told that was part of her age group, though, that empathy was something they were just beginning to learn to have for others.
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FadedVelvet
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« Reply #9 on Jun 23, 2012, 5:01am » | |
"You know my answer. I'm hoping for a front row seat. I'll cook a storm up for us to have after. Gotta celebrate her first real show." Madison rose gently away and rushed a hand back through her hair. She took a deep breath of the air, waking up some. She'd not meant to linger so late. But...
"Just let me know the date, Tag."
She moved towards the stairs. "Maybe one day we could take her to the markets, buy her a marionette? They're made off-world and shipped in a few times a year. The detail on them is astonishing. My shout."
Out there, sitting in Cadentia, was a house. Out front, an old tin sign swung in the wind, scratched into it the name of the property, and a notice to her terrible sense of humour. "REDEMPTION" it said. Whenever the builders came to site, they'd glance at it and give her a look, much like they had anyway, seeing her strange, for her choice to live out so far alone in a dead city, for her sparsely decorated property. One, seeing her rifle, had started up whispers of Lofton. She let them talk. She knew better. Tag, and one day, Penny would too.
"I've got a long walk ahead of me, anyway", conceded. The road waited.
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