tushanshu_logs | [October catchall, OPEN] he don't say a word

Entry tags:

[October catchall, OPEN] he don't say a word

Characters: China Sorrows and OPEN
Date: all of October, especially the early bits
Location: Keeliai. specifically: her apartment in Fire; Earth Sector, suspiciously close to the chiaroscuro household; Water Sector, up.
Situation: many, lots. including: a small piece of revenge.
Warnings/Rating: As ever, please be aware of China’s emotional manipulation magic. The thread with Anton now contains ~~minor~~ violence, some talk of torture, and some really very cranky people. additionally, lots of spoilers up through book 8 of the Skulduggery Pleasant series, in case you're concerned.

[A]
very early October [2-3?] | Earth Sector | semi-open

It is not, she will note, a fit of pique. That implies a passing grievance acted upon in rashness. Rather, China’s actions in early October are partial action on a grudge she’s been nurturing for the better part of fifty years, sparked in this instance by Solomon Wreath’s inability to recognize when well enough should be left alone.

China had the array mostly crafted before that, for a variety of reasons; it’s simply a matter of adjusting it a little. It’s a sleek, minimalistic little arrangement, designed to temporarily remove a person’s voice, and which keys off the passing of a threshold -- it wouldn’t work anywhere else, the way she’s crafted it. The trade-offs were calculated. She does, pointedly, add a conditional activation. It won’t trigger save for a man who possesses death magic but lacks eyesight.

(She has no illusions that it would be a good idea to catch Sage in a crossfire.)

Wreath’s schedule is less fixed than Sage’s, but it’s not exceptionally difficult to find a time when they’re both away and the building is relatively unobserved, even for someone who draws as much attention as she does. It’s twenty minutes at most with ink and brush and her exceptionally steady hands, and the precise curves of those tidy interlinked sigils go active, fading into the doorjamb.

As tempting as it is to stick around to watch, that will make it plain something’s afoot. China retreats to a café within reasonable distance instead, and she remains there much of the day, her head bent over a sheaf of papers which are filled with the sigil equivalent of gibberish.

[ooc; feel free to encounter China at the café, where she will be some variety of shifty, but her sabotage sigilwork is something which has been cleared with all parties to be affected by it and should not be interrupted. If you have questions or concerns, please pm me.]

[B]
mid-October | Water Sector | open

When a contact prefers to conduct a meeting in public -- where it will, in theory, be more difficult to waylay them -- China will often meet them in one café or another, and as a result she’s become quite versed in the virtues and vices of a number of the little restaurants in Keeliai. This one’s small, but in the open air. Good visibility. A number of ways to approach.

China’s been stood up, or so it looks by her irritated expression and the untouched drink opposite her. Either that, or her contact did not, in fact, want to deal. Whatever it was, it must have been especially annoying to her for the irritation to actually show.

[C]
any October | Fire Sector, apartment, up or down | open

China hasn’t taken to rooftops in many years, but certain of her interactions with Arno in September have reminded her that they’re more viable than she usually considers, and also that she hasn’t properly warded her own.

So there will be a few points in October during which she can be found, not inside her building, but atop it, ink and brushes and carving tool in hand, tinkering with her wards in great arcs of black ink and graven lines.

One evening, she simply sits, and appreciates the sky.

Much of the month, though, it’s easy to find China in her domain. She’s taken to lighting a lantern to tell people whether she’s available to speak to or not, a pale papery thing that she leaves just outside her door. It’s practically guaranteed she’ll answer the door if it’s lit.

[ooc; if you need anything more specific or just want to plot, toss me a pm or a pp at

makaricrow]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Makes everything else so much easier." Arno nods, appreciating the sentiment, er lack of one, involved in that. It makes sense as a concept to him, the idea that there are people who, for whatever reason, you wouldn't have a problem with any other time or day. It hadn't happened much during the years he was on active duty, so to speak, but ideally, it's why the Brotherhood chose as it did, when giving out assignments. Keep it from being personal, make things as professional as possible. Bring him peace in accordance.... You can't do that so well if there's anything personal behind it, can you?

"I'm glad then. Knowing where I stand can help" Well, for the moment, he's sitting, his boots dangling a little over the edge there as he takes in a few breaths, watching with renewed eyes for a few moments there.

"It doesn't seem the same city, almost, like this."

He really doesn't take the time he should to appreciate beauty, does he? There's something in the way he looks at the city. China suspects he spends so much of his time patrolling -- or, perhaps, drunk -- that he doesn't simply stop often. And while China can't fault him for industriousness, it's something of a pity, as well. There should always be the time to admire beautiful things.

"It hasn't changed," she points out finally. She sounds contemplative. "You've only stopped moving. Then again, it's amazing what a change in the point of view will do, isn't it?"

Drunk, mostly, aside the time he's lately spent focusing on their guests, yes. Before that, more of the first. Arno would admit he's not taken much time to get to know the town as such. He's spent a lot of time exploring, maybe, but his mind has been on other things, strategies he could use, if he needed, sulking, a little, even, pestering Shay...

Helping Shay with the bit of work they managed to find, though he's not commenting on that one at the moment, has taken up a bit of time too, so...no, really. Arno's not been looking around at more than the obvious much. It's probably been a mistake. Not his only one, but another to add to the Things To Think About Right Now list.

"I've stopped moving..." he repeats, a half smile crossing his face there. "I used to think that was the worst thing in the world one could do. Apparently, not always. More viewpoints, I suppose."

"There's an appropriate time for everything," China says. It sounds more like she's just stating something, rather than outright addressing Arno-- still contemplating, almost.

But she, too, has occasionally fallen prey to becoming trapped in routine.

"I could offer you a great deal more broadly meaningful statements," she says eventually, back to airiness, "or you might come in for tea."

She's right, most likely. Arno's heard the same, several places.

"Ecclesiastes, right? 'A time to kill and a time to heal' ...among several others."

Why that's the bit of it's stuck around, Arno's not going to waste time pondering. It doesn't really matter anyway. But the rest of it's something else again.

"I could accept the invitation, easily. I don't know very much of tea; it's not exactly served where I'm from, besides terrible medicine that makes me choke, but if you'll forgive my ignorance, and that of my chemist, I'd welcome your scintillating conversation on near any other topics."

A peculiar bit of scripture. "The breadth of your studies never ceases to interest me," China says idly. Philosophy, honor, subtle killing, but not tea. "But you're broadly correct, yes. For everything there is a season, and so on."

She stands, then, carefully given that they've been on the edge of the roof. There isn't a roof access door, per se, but there's a skylight which currently stands open, and the reason she thought that adding better wardings to the roof might be a useful idea. This she gestures to now, in invitation. "I'm Irish," she says, with a little laugh. "If there is one thing the vast majority of my countrymen can agree on, it's tea." The national stereotype has some truth to it. "Come, monsieur Dorian."

A good deal of scripture was, to Arno's mind, when you considered some that hardly seemed to fit together with the rest, different authors and accounts, styles, all meshed together, when the ultimate truth, as he'd come to understand it, went far beyond what was included in current biblical accounts. Current...what a strange thought. As though anyone would update it, or care to do that.

"Ah, well, my tutor had to keep me busy after algebra put us both in tears on multiple occasions." He allowed, as an answer. "A good part of the job DID involve distracting me from uncovering too much of what was going on around me. So...eclecticism." But, no tea, unfortunately, no. "Things I had to learn in my own season, I suppose."

He's standing now too, grinning as he spots the open skylight, not needing his Vision for the general idea.

"Well, then. Quite an expert, indeed. Lead on then, Madame, if you would be so kind."

"Both of you," China says, and laughs. She crosses to the skylight, taps something on her thigh, and drops lightly down as if the height of a full story or so is nothing.

Below is, as it happens, her bedroom, which is relatively richly appointed. The rug that covers the floor has ornate designs in it, but the walls are bare. By the time Arno descends, though, China is already moving toward the door into the rest of her apartment, indicating that he will not have over-long to peruse the area.

Any truly personal touches are out of plain sight if they exist, at any rate. "This way, my dear," she says, her voice floating back over her shoulder. "And what else did your tutor find to keep both of you out of tears?"

"Rather." Arno laughs, too, following her on the descent, looking rather impressed at that tapping thing, before his own easy drop downwards.
Arno's dropped into, climbed or passed through many boudoirs in his day, and, while he would quickly admit to curiuousity, and the chance at working out secrets, he can accept the idea that time, and place, are all wrong for that.

Instead of lingering to attempt searching for valuables, or artifacts of any kind, he's quickly following, his impression of China rather unchanged as he trails along.

"Well, let us see." he muses, contemplating for a moment. "I did rather come to enjoy learning myths and things of that sort, too old, and too...fantastic to be history, persay."

Edited 2015-10-30 15:41 (UTC)

She leads him downstairs to a comfortably appointed sitting area. There's a tea-tray off to one side, which China crosses to, though her version of tea preparation seems to mostly amount to pressing a finger to the graven symbols under and around the teapot. Those glow slightly as she does, evidently doing something with heat.

"Myths?" she says as she does, leading for elaboration. "So many of those, I have found, have more truth to them than many people would like to think. It's a wondrous and terrible state of affairs. Did you take to any culture's in particular?"

Arno watches this, rather impressed. The sort of magic he's even remotely familiar with is not exactly the province of people you actually meet in real life. Even the Sage he's been chasing, with his abilities and the prophecy thing, is not exactly on this level. Excuse him for watching with...a lot of interest, even a year in to being on the island. Some things are just...different, is all.

And sort of fascinating in a zoned out, starring at the pretty symbols going all glowy way.

"That is true, actually." Arno has to agree there. "Greek and Roman for my education, for the most part. The smallest bit of Norse, but nothing from, well, anywhere else. The explanations they provide seem to cover up...quite a lot of things that most don't consider. But as to much else...I am quite clueless, I confess. There was...not a lot of call for it in Paris, then."

"That's a pity," China says, sounding wistful. "Oh, Greco-Roman myths are the classics, of course, but the Norse have some delightful tales of trickery, and the Egyptians were far more complex than modern teaching gives them credit for. And of course there's the Irish."

She'll leave out the Faceless Ones, for now. Not because she doesn't wish to scare Arno, though it seems there's likely little enough that would scare her charming assassin. No, rather they don't merit a mention because they are no myth, and the tales that survive are truth, not simply a lovely cloak for it.

"What did you learn of the Norse?"

"It IS, really." Arno agrees. "I suppose I see the reason. There were still other things to teach me, even with trying to avoid numbers dancing around my head like stray smoke bombs, and limited time, but still. It would have been a benefit, I think."

It would have given him more references to drop at strange moments, anyway. As for now, and his answer, his eyes are glinting a little, and he looks amused.

"The trickery is mostly what I HAVE learned of. Well, bits." he eyedarts. "Loki's children, for one thing, but, also, Thor's wedding. I did always enjoy that story." The disguise involved for one thing.

By that point, the sigils she's activated have done their tea, and China pours tea for them both, setting Arno's cup where he'll be able to reach it, along with, a moment after, the tray, and thus the things Arno may or may not want to put in his tea.

"When your time is limited, you must prioritize," China says. It's agreement, but she still sounds, somehow, like she'd rather have the knowledge. Then again, her time is not near so limited as his.

She's smiling when she comes to sit opposite him. "Ah, Thor's wedding," she says, amused. "Most of the tales involving Loki will be similarly amusing-- though they don't all end so well for Loki himself, naturally. Cleverness is your preference, then?"

Arno smiles at this, trying the tea first of all, because he's not quite sure what it might be like, then adding a bit of sugar after an initial sip. He's hardly self conscious but he does feel a bit odd about that all the same. Still, she hardly seems to have noticed, so there is that much.

"Thank you." he says. "And yes, that, entirely. And a lack of resources, I suspect. It has been interesting to learn how much I've missed." Especially lately. "I like the chance at finding out more. And, yes, indeed. I do appreciate the tales where ingenuity plays a role. It's become more imperative lately too, that being clever is better than being bold, at times. Anything for inspiration, I suppose."

She did give him the extra fixings for a reason, after all; she'd hardly do so if she didn't expect them to be used, and she can't predict how he likes his tea. All China does is note what he puts in it, for future reference, and then ignores whatever else he chooses to do with his tea.

"Hm," says China thoughtfully, and raises her tea to her lips. She herself hasn't altered it all, and apparently prefers it that way. "I'm inclined to agree with you. Cleverness will carry much more than boldness, especially when one is outnumbered or outmaneuvered."

She pauses, traces one finger around the rim of her cup idly. "Would you like to hear others?" she offers finally.

It's the sort of thing that Arno's not sure everyone does in every circumstance, so it makes the experience nicer, somehow, that it's a non issue and he doesn't have to worry about appearing sophisticated or polished or anything else. There's less of the suave assassin to stand on here, and that makes him happy.

"I would love to hear more, yes, if you have the mind." He's finding that he's leaning forward a little, hands curled around his cup, almost as if he's in the cafe, watching some kind of performance or another. How funny, in a way, that some things stay sort of the same.

"I don't offer what I don't plan to follow through," China says. That will perhaps tell Arno something. About how often she offers to do things for people, or the quality of her word, or both; it's up to him what he takes from it, but it's truth. A truth.

She sips her tea again and sets it down, and leans to one side, resting on the arm of her chair with her chin in one hand. "There's Lugh the all-crafted, of course," she says, "though his stories are less trickery and more pure cleverness. Or any of the tales of Loki. You said you knew of the marriage of Thor; were there others you'd already heard? The fortification of Asgard, or the debacle with Sif's hair?"

"Mm." Arno says, but that's not so much a dismissal as an indication that he's listening, and, well, considering that point. He's gotten the impression that favors of that nature, if not rare, are, quite probably limited to a few people. He can understand the reasoning for it. Letting too many have too much of you? It kills you in the end.

"Pure cleverness can work as well as anything, I think. But Sif's hair...that one I've not managed to hear in FULL."

"Only pieces? What a shame." China sighs lightly, and she puts the tale in order. "Very well, then. Sif was the wife of Thor, as you may know, and she had flowing hair like spun gold, and it was her pride and joy. Not only for its beauty, but because her husband loved it well. This was a well-known fact, and so when Loki found Sif asleep outside her house he could not pass up the opportunity, mischief-maker that he was."

She doesn't bother explaining identities, since Arno has already said he has some familiarity with the Norse. "So Loki cut her hair," she explains. "Carefully not waking her in the process. Sif was distraught, of course. Enough so that she hid from her husband on his return. She'd assumed that her beauty lay only in her hair, or perhaps that her husband loved her for her appearance and no more than that."

The bits Arno has heard mostly have to do with the fact that Loki did it, so to speak, so anything else? Is bonus material, that he's eagerly drinking in, leaning forward a little, and considering.

"That hardly seems to be something the Thor I know would do." He muses, "Though...I can see why. Never pleasant when the person that we love finds us thoroughly shamed." If Elise had seen him after his expulsion from the brotherhood, as a drunk mess, for instance. But Sif's shame seems entirely not her fault. At any rate, he's interested.

"So then?" He's asking, rather eager.

"It isn't," China confirms for him, waving her free hand dismissively. "Thor was appropriately incensed on his lady's behalf, when she came to him weeping in shame. She was hardly rational about her assumptions; I suppose distraught people rarely are."

It's entertaining, how eager Arno is for the tale. Especially given he's among those who takes her magical charms as more or less negligible. "So Thor brought the matter to the other gods, and the immediate assumption, of course, was that it was Loki's doing," she goes on, sounding amused. "They were by this point far too familiar with his habits, and naturally they assumed the only mischief-maker so bold would be Loki. Odin summoned him to face what he had done, and Loki, who had thought the matter simply a great joke at first, was somewhat sobered by the fury in Thor and the steel in Odin's gaze. He could tell even before much had been said that he would have to remedy what he had done somehow."

"If that isn't the truth, I am hardly sure what is." Arno had seen irrational people brought there by reasons of being distraught before. The results tended not to be pretty, to say the least. "We make our worst decisions at times like that, don't we? I suppose even gods are not so immune."

It's a nice feeling somehow. And even Loki and his own pratfalls, brought about by whatever motivated him, seem to be along those lines, though less in terms of being distraught.

"Loki does seem to be particularly good at them himself, this tale. I can only imagine facing down the pair of them, what that must have been like."

"Loki has a gift for terrible decisions, doesn't he?" China agrees. "I'm inclined to think much of his cleverness was learned simply by continually needing to get himself out of such trouble again." She shakes her head. The trickster so often makes his own bed. "Emotional compromise is a terrible thing."

That is not, at all, close to home.

"So he turned his mind to reparations. Though Sif's hair might regrow, it would surely take years for it to equal its former glory. Loki promised, of course, for he had a sense for preserving his own life, that he would find some way to make her recompense. Naturally his thoughts turned to a replacement, for what else could equal what he'd taken? And Loki went then to visit the dwarves, who had been, if not outright friendly, then more so to him than other races were. Loki's reputation was justly gained, after all," China adds, as an aside. "He thought in terms of the gold the dwarves worked, and how akin it was to the gold of Sif's hair, but when Loki came to the dwarves he also saw many of their other skilled works, and he became... hungry, I suppose."

"He does indeed." Arno thought about Sleepinir and Loki's other children who weren't quite human as he considered those choices. "The trickster making his own bed..." He looked thoughtful there. "Something of a lesson in that, and how to handle choices. Maybe it's a warning we ought to be a bit more careful. So it is. It can destroy you."

Emotional compromises. Ah. Never fantastic things. The ones that Arno has made have been difficult to say the least. Elise was the center of most of the ones he made, though some others came to mind. His childhood and his adulthood, with their abrupt shifts in values and learning for example, Bellec and everything that followed as he'd had to make his choices.

"Pity that we ARE so emotional at times, without being able to see clearly what we might deal with. Emotions in and of themselves are good, better than not having them,"He added, looking thoughtful. "But some sign that we're doing right or wrong, or ability to assess it would still be helpful. But reparations, then." Let's see how Loki handled them when Arno had a couple to make, himself.

"Golden hair for gold." Arno imagined it being spun, or the way jewelers described it being beaten into sheets. The idea of a golden weave of sorts intrigued him enough, but the other glories of the dwarves must have surely stood out then.

"What treasure did Loki desire, then?" He wondered, sure it must be something on those lines. He thought, absently, of the Piece of Eden mentioned in his letter from the future, and what seeking it out must have been like. The dwarves could be very much like the precursors in his personal analogy, he thought, knowing it would bother him to see something valuable in their own hands.

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