Closed Where Crowns Rest (Madeira)

[Allassanachassanya]

"Speech"
"Others"

She hadn't spoken. Neither of them uttered a word as Madeira took the knife and began her work. She was utterly fascinated to watch her friend in action. It was clear that she wasn't used to carving with a knife, or handling the knife at all. But... it didn't seem to matter that much. What she lacked in experience she more than made up for with a sheer sense of determinedness, spiking like a physical vibe from the set of her shoulders. The only sound that escaped her lips was the small huff of a sigh as the tip of the blade first touched the bone. They had began.

Throughout, Ssanya watched. She wasn't predatory, she didn't hover like a hunting hawk over it's prey. Nor did she stay in the shadows, lurking. Her elbows rested casually on the table as she tilted her head to follow Madeira's actions, her curiosity occasionally allowing her eyes to gaze at aspects of the house (plain, yet prettily simple), or Madeira herself, lingering on the various injuries the young woman sported, and finally at the marks she made. If the woman made a mistake, she didn't notice, nor indeed correct it. Malediction was about more than 'getting it right'. It was art as well as magic, and because of that, there was no right or wrong, in some respects at least.

Finally Madeira had finished. There had been a pressure that had grown at the culmination of the carving, but it dropped sharply as chairs scraped and Ssanya idly spun the knife on the table with a grin. Madeira wasn't seeking approval, but she said, "You did good," anyway. It was true. The Dhani woman had never had the opportunity to teach before, but she was impressed with the way the blonde Spiritist could pick things up. It was that intense focus that she wore like a comfortable fragrance, she surmised. Or something else that she couldn't grasp of her character.

Thoughts were dismissed entirely as she grasped the handle of the knife. It sat comfortably in her palm, and she ran a thumb lightly along the sharp of the blade, feeling the fine dust of bone like ephemeral dust floating into the nooks and crevices of the table. Then she sat, comfortably sinking into the seat, and gently took the skull into her spare hand. Up close, she traced the faintly cut lines of Madeira's circle, feeling intently for where her own should connect and how they should interweave.

There. A small nick marked itself as a thread to tie her own to, and she poised the point, and dug the knife in. It became an extension of her hand... still clumsy at times, but then she herself was clumsy on occasion. It was a part of her human nature that she still needed to master. Her focus was not on how she carved though, but what she carved, what she imagined, what she poured herself into. Ssanya needed to bring trust from the skull and display it. Catherine was trusting, and so the sketchmarks she had made on the paper slowly but surely etched into the skull.

Her own knifework was steady, and her eyes were clear and bright, darting from each part of the skull to the other. Catherine seemed to dance in the air in front of her, a smile on her face. She struggled as she felt tugging in her core, but kept her focus as best as she could. Bone dust filled her mouth and her lungs as she drew a deep breath. She tasted death and life on her tongue, their tastes indescribable, and finally finished the last scrape of the knife. The skull lay quietly in the still room, and Ssanya trembled once before stealing a glance at the Spiritist.

Now the final question was, would it work once they activated it? Could they do it, the two of them? Her voice was somewhat shaky as she separated her lips to speak. "There isss one final thing. We need to bleed. Give our djed (she said the word with a lilting tilt of an accent, barely recognisable to an Alvad ear) in our esssence, and bring the artifact to life."

She wiped the blade on the cuff of her sleeve, and passed it over again. "For you." Then she massaged her right palm, crisscrossed with faint scars, and waited.

[Madeira Dusk]

Madeira watched with fascination as Ssanya etched her design into the skull. While Madeira had divided herself between the pressure of perfecting the design and dragging the djed from within, Sanya was calm and inward-facing. Her hands coaxed the design out of the skull, and her parted lips breathed through the focus. There was no force, no demand, she was letting the Fetish make itself.

Finally it was done. The skull sat in the golden glow leaking through the shuttered window, somehow ten times larger than it was not half a bell ago. Ssanya explained the next step, and the enormity of what they had just done rocked through the Spiritist. They were dragging life out of death! They were touching on things that others would shrink away from. It was intoxicating.

Now Ssanya offered Madeira the knife, handle first.

"For you." she said. And Madeira heard the nearly soundless trembling of exertion in her voice.

Madeira took the knife from her and began rolling up her sleeve. Blue veins were mapped out clearly under the thin skin of her arm, and over them were hundreds of tiny incisions that echoed the pale scars in the palm of Sanya's hand. There was a sense of camaraderie in that, she realized. One more thing that tied them together: they were both willing to bleed for their magic.

"Your arm", she asked, holding out her left hand beneath her rolled sleeve. She did not wait for a response. She took the Dhani's wrist in her hand and held it over the skull. "We should do this together. I don't want to activate one part at a time. It should be seamless, right?" Underneath her reasoning there was a genuine fear that her inferior design, activated by her inferior blood, would somehow ruin this joint effort. If there was some way to counter her inexperience with the Maledictors blood, she would take it.

She brushed the pad of her thumb over the narrowest part of Ssanya’s wrist, looking for the raised, spongy texture of a vein. Finding it, she nicked the very tip of the knife over her wrist in a practised motion. A ruby-red bead of blood bloomed under the pressure of her hand. Working quickly, she stabbed the tip of the blade into her own wrist, just above the palm, and turned both of their hands together.

She imagined the blood leaving her as soulmist. She gathered herself around that red liquid and focused on the life force leaving her body. The blood of the two women hit the bone together with an sound both inaudible and the loudest Madeira had ever heard. The red soaked into the cracks of their shared design, bringing it into sharp relief against the oily yellow bone.

Madeira's bloodshot eyes narrowed, and her bruised cheek gave a painful twinge as she chewed on the inside of her mouth. She dropped their hands and looked to her teacher with honest confusion.

"Did it work?"

[Allassanachassanya]

"Speech"
"Others"

Ssanya drew on her magic and focussed, hard. First she took and inhaled the essence of their jointly created malediction circle, tattooing every whorl and curve of the carving onto her eyeballs. Then came the sharp pinprick of the knife, handled so naturally by her friend, that gave her focus. The thin pain washed over the image in her mind, giving key parts clarity and vibrancy. She imagined their blood, their shared offering, as she pushed it and brushed it against trust and against love. Her head twinged, and she almost lost the mental, mapped web of magic that was her mother's teaching of Legacy. But as a drop of her blood of life fell inexorably onto the lifeless skull, she reached down through the thin, flimsy thread that connected her to Catherine's silent core, straight through the centre of the circle, and pulled upwards. Her head exploded into the headache she had been holding off, but she kept pulling with all her might, as small as that might be. Bring the trust and the love, pull it up and bring it out. The map in her head quivered, and then fell apart as her eyes fluttered shut.

"Did it work?"

The snake-woman opened her eyes. There lay the skull, freshly stained with rapidly darkening blood. She pressed her thumb to the tiny wound on her skin absently, and squinted through the throbbing, stabbing pain floating somewhere between her eyebrows. Then there was the euphoria, the sweet bliss of having put all her effort into her beloved magic. This time it was shared, and that made it all the more amazing. "Madeira, we did it! Sssiku we did it!" A surprised laugh bubbled from her lips and she grabbed the other woman's shoulders to pull her into a tight hug across the table. If she were a silly type of person, she might have exclaimed some nonsense word of victory. Instead, Ssanya leapt up and came round to the same side of the modest table as her friend, her mouth babbling as she tried to wrap her head around what they had and hadn't achieved.

"Thiss iss.. Oh godss, I think we did it anyway. Look at it. What do you think?" She picked the skull up in both hands, and felt the weight of it. The bone was satisfyingly substantial in the cup of her palms. The bone was warm to the touch too, not overtly, nor even that unusual considering. But there was an ever so slightly warmer feel to it than should be natural. Ssanya presented it to Madeira. "Doesss thisss... feel warm, to you? Ssssometimes there iss an effect. Not alwayss. But thiss talissman feels warm to touch, and I sswear iss heavy. Heavier." Her voice pitched into earnest enthusiasm. "I really think we did sssomething. Maybe not everything we wished, but a little sssomething. I am sso happy." Her accompanying smile was one of pure gratitude, and of happiness for a job well done.

The skull sat back on the table, looking at them with empty eye sockets that seemed kindly. Ssanya rocked back and tried not to think about the headache that threatened to wash over her and take away her glorious excitement. They had a dilemma now, unspoken as of yet. What shoud they do with their newly minted, illegally maledicted talisman? They couldn't sell it, that was for sure, despite Maddy's links to the Cravens. They could test it, but on who? Ssanya groaned, with her knuckles rammed into the bridge of her nose and her eyes screwed shut. "Ssso, what do you want to do with our creation, Madeira? Maybe..." Her eyes glinted. "Maybe we could find the effects, leave it on the street and keep watch. Too sussspicious?"

[Madeira Dusk]

The diminutive snake-woman pulled Madeira forward across the table by the shoulders, and threw her arms around her in a hug. The Spiritst sucked in a gasp of pain through her toothy smile as her bruised ribs and aching muscles protested the awkward position. She wasn't sure what had happened, but the bubbling, electric excitement of her friend roared through her, and it felt like victory.

Ssanya let her go and came over to her side of the table, she was all teeth and tongue as she babbled in earnest excitement. The skull was pushed into her hands with a question: "does this feel warm to you?” Indeed, it did. Madeira swept her palm over the dome of the skull, caressing poor, sweet Catherine like you would a treasured pet. No, more than that. They made this. She was as proud and protective as it it were their new child.

"Yes. But not... not like a fever heat. It's like it's been in the sun for a few bells." She turned the skull this way and that, looking for any sign that something had changed. She agreed that the skull felt heavier, too. But the logical part of her told her that the thing was carrying the weight of their expectation, and couldn't be trusted.

Now was the big question: what would they do with it? Ssanya, with a glint in her brown eyes, casually suggested they leave it on the street.

Part of Madeira, the human part, perhaps, said No. If there was anything she knew about Malediction, it was that it was dangerous. There were enough local legends about corpse in walls, cursed bone combs and leather belts, to remind her that unleashing anything they made could hurt someone. But there was another part of her, one that spoke with cool logic in the voice of her father, asked her if it truly mattered. The two of them weren't strong enough to cause real damage. Nobody would be grievously hurt. It was Maro's possession all over again; she was willing to risk someone else's safety for her own gain. They both were. The thought turned sour in her mind, and she pushed it away. It was not worth thinking about.

"We cant just leave a severed human head on the street even in Alvadas,… " she paused, and something seemed to dawn on her. "Or we could. If we can hide her, somehow..." She paced to the window and threw open the shutters. Sunlight pierced through her bloodshot eyes and she was forced to squint like a drunk as the world was brought into blinding focus. As she looked up and down the street, Madeira has a sudden bout of self-awareness that brought a dark little smile to her cracked lips. Here she was, huddled in her dark cave with a Dhani, mentally sizing up various places to hide their maledictated corpse to test on an unwary public. Gods, what had her life turned into?

"Wait, wait, right there", she pulled Ssanya over by the meat of her upper arm and pointed across the street, where a red terracotta flower pot sat empty beside her neighbours house. You wouldn't be able to see her unless you were right on top of it. And we could watch from here.”

With the skull still in her hand, Madeira returned to her chest. From within she pulled out a large square of faded blue fabric. The rag was perforated with little holes and dotted with strange rusty brown stains, but it covered the skull nicely and kept it out of view.

“I’ll be right back.”

As she opened the door and stepped tentatively outside for the first time in bells, the strangeness of Kenesh-Alvadas opened before her, lush and green and heavy. Tall grasses and low waters rose from cracks in the street. Her house and others around it worse wet layers of moss like shrouds. She walked barefoot across the street, with her blue bundle under her arm. Nobody paid her any mind as she stooped near the door of her neighbours house and gently inserted it into the empty red pot. She let her hand rest gently on the crown of the skull for just a moment before returning to her house and friend.

Once inside she sidled up to the window like a child at a toy store. Her nails started to bleed afresh as she bit excitedly at her destroyed hands.

“How long before we know if there is an effect? What do you think it will be?!”

[Allassanachassanya]

"Speech"
"Others"

Madeira's inner moral dilemma was lost on the snaking woman, whose thoughts simply rested on the problem of figuring out what the effect was without being caught and put to the mercy of the city's ever-watchful gaze. There were stories of Speakers and their trialsIt was not that she was some kind of monster- not in that sense, anyway. She simply knew that it was unwise to test the thing on themselves. Who knew what kind of effect it would have? So when the Spiritist began to prepare a cloth and said she'd, "Be right back", the Dhani stood and peered at the window in the hopes of seeing her plan.

Madeira's form traced across the street, a picture in fair yellow and crumpled white linen. The item was placed in a terracotta pot on the opposite side, and Ssanya picked it out carefully. Despite their precautions, she did worry. A maelstrom of emotions twirled inside her, like oil in a rain-left puddle. But Madeira was a Craven, she was virtually famous. And Ssanya, the foreign, evil maledictor remained hidden, only peeking around the edge of the window, looking like one of the very ghosts that her friend conversed with. They made an odd team, she thought. Twins of death... a wry happiness curled in the cavity of her chest, and then Madeira returned. "Now we wait, I sssuppose."

She peered from the window, watching an ephemeral illusion float past, sparking and jolting through the air. A long woman walked with purpose, her hair elaborately crafted into a turret of silky, auburn perfection. Two children ran past, laughing, the sound muted through the walls of the house. To pass the time, and because she was curious, she asked a question that had been preying on her. "Why are you a Sspiritisst? Why do you... get thiss? Out of everywhere I have been, I was outcast with thiss magic. Everywhere apart from home. Why do you undersstand?" The street remained eerily silent, and Ssanya waited.

After a time though, a promising character appeared. It was a short man, possibly an Isur, dressed in a vibrant yellow overcoat that clashed wonderfully with flamboyant violet trousers. It wasn't what he wore though that made him interesting. It was the fact that he sauntered across the street, eyes piqued and on the look out, and by the fact he dragged a cart behind him, filled with junk and oddities and debris. That in itself was enough to make the snake woman stare. A snapped candelabra lay comfortably next to a pile of haphazardly heaped green cloth, nestling a perfectly ordinary clay pot, which housed a perfectly inordinary fake flower whose petals rotated in the soft breeze.

"He might go for it, Madeira." And indeed he did. Ssanya's anticipation grew, as the man reached out a hand to pilfer one of the innocent plant pots. She saw him stop and reconsider, and tensed. Then he picked up the bundle containing the skull, and she grinned. She muttered a hissed, "Yess," then glared with vim through the panes. The strange man held the skull in his hands, now exposed from the cloth that fell like a feather to the floor below. His expression was unreadable from the distance, and she almost wanted to run out and violently shake him, question him, ask him what he felt. Restraint bit her ankles, and she stayed. The man twisted the skull this way and that, then pressed a finger to the mark on Catherine's pale, waxy forehead. Then, slowly, he walked on.

The reaction was disappointing, to say the least. Ssanya exhaled shortly, and watched him go, taking their creation with him. His hand still grasped the skull though... They couldn't just leave it! Wildly she turned to Madeira, and spoke in a rushed, compressed mess of speech, "We have to go, now!" Without checking to see if she agreed, the Dhani rushed to the door and opened it with a fumbled grasping hand. She stood waiting impatiently in the door for the Spiritist to follow, and then set off after the stranger whose cart was just trundling around the corner.

[Madeira Dusk]

As the two watched with sharp, hungry focus the little pot across the street, Ssanya asked a question Madeira was not expecting. The Spiritist took her bloodshot eyes off the window and looked at her for a long tick. She wasn't sure how long a Dhani lived, but at that moment she was sure she could see decades upon decades of loneliness settled in the bones under Ssanya’s her skin. She turned her attention back to the street and cleared her throat.

"I understand because I'm not afraid of death. And you would be floored by how many people are." she laughed uncomfortably "They think you're evil. They thing I'm scary. Just because we dabble in something they shy away from. But for what it’s worth, you have me, and I understand."

Just then, an odd little man with his odd little cart rumbled into view. A connoisseur of fine junk, it would seem, from the heaping load of nicknacks and bobbles he towed. Madeira craned forward, obscuring her own view as her tense breathing fogged the glass. The man paused, and leaned over the little red pot.

"Go for it!" Madeira hissed, her mouth a long gory stain of blood from her ruined nails. She continued to mutter encouragement as the man knelt and picked up the skull. Then, to her bafflement, he tottered away.

Oh no, Catherine.

Ssanya demanded that they leave, now, and Madeira was quick to follow. She shut the door with a snap behind them, and followed Ssanya out into the Kenashian street. Thankfully their little friend wasn’t moving too fast. But the man was walking with purpose, and it was becoming more and more obvious that the two women several meters behind the cart were following him.

The lush, overripe smell of vegetation began to slowly erode away as they walked. Something hot and dry carried itself on a wind as abrasive as sand, and the grassy cobble was soon withered, cracked and baked under their feet. Eventually Madeira was tugging uncomfortably at her high collar and acquiring new stains under the pits of her arms. Syna seemed to reach out for them like a friendly embrace made of barbed wire.

"Is this Ahnatep?" she asked the Dhani, her brow furrowed in prickly disbelief. "By the gods, this is awful. How could anyone possibly live here?"

Piles of sand began collecting in eves and smothering gardens. The houses around them were made of a crumbly looking yellow stone Madeira didn't recognize. Even through her soft shoes the ground was burning. Her thin, lilly-white skin was being both rubbed raw by the wind and cooked by the sun. The more prepared citizens wore veils over their faces and turbans over their heads, but some like her were left to suffer.

Though his bright purple coat and long trousers seemed to put their stocky prey in the same sinking boat as Madeira, he seemed wholly unaffected. His cart rumbled along, the skull in hand. The Craven wiped her brow and followed doggedly.

[Allassanachassanya]

Title, etc.
"Speech"
"Others"

They trailed after him, their unassuming prey. It was good that he trundled with little care in the world, for Ssanya was not as stealthy as she hoped. The two together were both quite emotional, in fact the snake woman's heart was beating wildly, both from fear and excitement. The man still held Catherine's skull outwardly in his hand. It would be recognisably maledicted to anyone who looked at it, and she really did not want to have to leave Alvadas without getting a chance to learn its ways and become one if its own.

They would have to find a way to claim her skull back. Somehow. Ssanya's teeth gritted in frustration, but if it had worked then it was likely the skull was somehow attached to the man, even if he didn't know it. They should corner him somewhere out of sight and out of mind of the city. It wouldn't do for Madeira to do it, after all she was a well-known figure in Alvadas by sheer virtue of her name.

Her thoughts were interrupted as their landscape changed to one she was intimately familiar with, and her eyes lit up with a bright spark of honey-warm happiness as she felt the hot sands brushing against her cheeks. Turning to look at her friend though, it was obvious she wasn't quite as enamoured. Ssanya raised an eyebrow at her bold statement. "Thisss iss Alvadass, Madeira. Thiss palesss next to the real Ahnatep. I came from here. From nearby to here, in a Dhani nessst, underground. Ahnatep wass my playground as a child." Ssanya fell silent, and continued stalking their target.

She missed the warmth and the flavours of her home. The smells and the sands. The facsimile that Alvadas had produced was amazing, and she loved it. But nothing was as good as the real Ahnatep, not even the near-perfect illusions of her new home city. The heat did not hold the same depth. "You would like it too." She smiled, and appraised her friend's attire. "If you wore the traditional clothess of Ahnatep, perhaps. Although maybe they would not be your... thing."

Their banter was broken as Ssanya, who had been watching the snaking path of their 'friend', suddenly noticed the man had stopped. "Look, we need a plan. Everyone can sssee her ssskull. Thiss man collectsss junk. Maybe he sssells it. You cannot go, you are Craven, famous here right? If Alvadasss hates magic," she lowered her voice to a soft hiss at the word, "Then I should go. My face isss not recog.. is not easy to notice."

Unless Madeira made some kind of protest against the plan, then Ssanya would step forwards. Conviction and a kind of dread thrummed through her as she attempted to make herself seem normal. The biggest thing that made her stand out was her hissing and spluttering tongue, and that was the one thing that she knew she struggled to mask. Yet still, she tried. "Hello. Do you ssell this..." She fumbled desperately for a word that wouldn't send her mouth into a long spasm of hissing, and finally settled on, "Thiss item?"

She smiled, but her face felt like it was ironically frozen. They were stood on a street, where orange silks blew in a gentle wind above their heads and marketwomen haggled prices for jewels and spices all around. She felt as if every eye was on her, both illusionary and human, as she waited for the man's answer. His eyes seemed to glaze over slightly, but she stood patiently. Tell me... tell me... Finally, even though it seemed to take an age, the man replied. "I don't normally sell any of my belongings, dearie. Did you have one in mind? I could tell you all about it. You could bring your friend over there too, and I can tell you the history of Queen Vanessa's Cloak, or the Broomstick of a Thousand Sparks? If you'll follow me, of course."

[Madeira Dusk]

"San, wait!"

Too late. The Dhani had slipped on ahead, leaving Madeira sputtering in her wake. If the magic was obvious, Madeira was certain she should have confronted him. Her name was a shield from persecution for all but the most serious crimes. The Dhani had no such protection.

As Ssanya engaged the portly man in conversation, Madeira tried her best to blend into the scenery. A old woman with a weathered face was sitting on a blanket selling spices within earshot of the Dhani and the junk collector. Madeira hurried over to her and pretended to be interested in her wares.

Out of the corner of her eye she did not miss the way the Isur's eyes glazed over as he spoke to her friend, or how his smile turned dreamy. Madeira quite forgot to pretend to listen to the old woman jabber on about the benefits of her cinnamon. She stared at the man, startled. Was this Catherine working on him? What did a success in Malediction even look like?

Or, she realized, he could just be enamoured with Ssanya. The thought gave her a lurch of possessiveness out of nowhere.

"You could bring your friend over there too," she heard him say, “and I can tell you the history of Queen Vanessa's Cloak, or the Broomstick of a Thousand Sparks? If you'll follow me, of course."

Caught staring, Madeira flushed a blotchy red under her various bruises. The man smiled vaguely in Madeira's direction, completely nonplussed by her mutilated hands and swollen, discoloured face. Up close Madeira could see a faint hint of blue in his skin tone. And while this could easily be a reoccurrence of a fad from her childhood, where people would dye their skin blue with a combination of tea leaves and dogwood, she suspected that was not the case. He was several centimetres shorter than herself and broadly, though nor powerfully, built. He must be some diluted decedent of an Isur.

Then without a word, certain they would follow, the junk collector turned and trundled away down the street. Madeira looked at Ssanya, shrugged bemusedly, and followed.

He took them from the burning deserts of Eyktol (which Madeira despised, no matter what her Dhani friend had to say) to a lush grassland. A bitter wind whistled over a wide street paved in grass, lined with tents and pavilions made of hide and tough cloth. The Alvadas native had just enough time to wonder if this was the legendary Endykras before the man and his wagon suddenly stopped. He parked his wagon in front of the door of a rawhide tent, and began pulling junk from his horde. Into Madeira's hands he shoved a dented mechanical box, a deck of singed playing cards, a wax bust and a flea bitten hand puppet of Zith. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to what stayed and what was gathered. In his own over ladened hands he gathered up Catherine’s skull among other knick-knacks. Madeira watched it's progress with her lip caught between her teeth. The blood had dried in the grooved circles on it's forehead, so they stood out in sharp contrast to the oily yellow bone. Yet if he noticed it he made no sign. He motioned them inside with his chin and a bright smile. He had forced nothing onto Ssanya, Madeira noticed.

Passing the hide flap that served as the door, the inside was a typical stone cottage much like her own. And the first thing Madeira noticed was that, much like her own home, his was almost sterile in it's cleanliness. She was expecting towering piles of useless junk and broken things, yet not even a speck of dust was out of place. The man himself, in his flamboyant suit, looked foreign in his own home. The effect was off-putting, and made the Spiritist nervous, though she couldn't explain why.

He took the junk from Madeira's arms and put it all carefully on the floor in front of the empty fireplace. He motioned to the two women to sit on the rough wooden chairs that ringed it, but he himself sat on the floor and began sorting through his collection of bizarre things.

"My name is Dandelion." he announced. "You are Daisy" he nodded to Madeira, "and sweet lady Rose", he blinked dreamily at Ssanya. Folding his hands across his wide belly and beamed at the pair of them. “Now that the introductions are out of the way, would you like to hear of my collection?"

"Yes!" Madeira cut across immediately. She skipped over the fact that this stranger just gave them new names, she had more pressing concerns. "You have some spectacular... treasures here", she ventured. She struggled for what to say for a moment, before throwing caution to the wind. "That skull, for instance", she said in a hurry. “That's pretty special. Do you have any attachment to it?"

Things may have gone off track, but this was still a test. They had to figure out what affect, if any, Catherine could be having on this strange little man. She caught Ssanya's eye and raised her brow at her. Though she did not like the interest 'Dandelion' was showing in the Maledictor, this would be an excellent opportunity to use it to wheedle him.

[Allassanachassanya]

"Speech"
"Others"

Instead of the suspicious glances that Ssanya was sure would be shot their way at Madeira's brazen question, the man, 'Dandelion, simply grinned down at it. "Isn't it lovely? I found it in a pot of all places. Look, my lovely Rose, isn't it pretty?" To her astonishment, the man extended the skull towards her, for her to gaze at it in much the same way as the squat figure in front of them. It was more to her astonishment that the man virtually ignored Madeira alltogether, as if she were merely a breath of air in the room rather than an actual living, breathing person. Ssanya, now sharing some of Maddy's discomfort, uneasily glanced at her friend and made a gesture that meant, what do we do? Dandelion had turned back to his treasures, but seemed keen to hold onto the skull.

But she saw the logic in Madeira's question. After all, they would never be able to read this man's mind... but maybe they wouldn't need to. Dandelion, that isss a lovely ssskull. I agree. It makes me feel..." She broke off, and took stock of his demeanour. The man was strangely gazing at her, eyes glassy and wide, with a hint of a smile on his lips. It was the look of a madman, that was for sure. She could already have guessed that, from the massive piles of junk he carried around in his cart. But was it the look of something else too? Was it Catherine's skull, working their magic on him?

"I think the ssskull makess me feel happy. Maybe lovely!" She leaned forwards, and although he smelled strange (although not in an unpleasant way, which weirdly made the smell even less pleasant), she grinned her most charming smile and weakly touched his shoulder as if he were a close friend. "Ssskulls alwayss make me think of laughss. They are laughing!" She was tilting her voice to a slightly higher register than it usually resided in, and she could almost feel the smile itching to escape her lips. Everything about the situation was so odd that it almost made her feel like laughing herself, to join Catherine's silent grin and Dandelion's pathetic, love-sick smile.

Love-sick!

"Do you have a wife, Dandelion? Any love in your life?" Their questions were as far from subtle and clever as a pair of sledgehammers, but the duo instinctively seemed to realise this man wouldn't exactly notice. Indeed, he burst up at this latest comment, letting his precious 'treasures' clatter to the floor. "No, Rose! Oh, how I would love a little love. Maybe we..?" His blue-tinged face visibly took on the colour of Ssanya's new name, going a light rose, as if his face were a ruddy sunset. Then he recoiled, skittering away to the corner of the room, and turned his back as he bent to a small chest and began rummaging through it's contents.

Whilst he was distracted, Ssanya wheeled to Madeira with wide eyes. She whispered, "I think he thinks he lovess me. Isssn't that.. sstrange? Catherine.. do you think?" But before the Spiritist could answer, Dandelion had returned beaming like a loon, bearing a hefty box that he placed heavily in front of Madeira. The thing's lid must once have been gloriously patterned with gold, but now it was water-stained and shot through with wood worm. A tiny handle protruded from the side of the box, but gave no indication as to what the device actually was.

"Here, Daisy. You wanted to see my collection. Look! This is a music box. You turn the handle and music comes out. Isn't that delightful? It used to belong to Lady Jillie, ohh she was a famous one wasn't she, and now it belongs to yours truly. Go on, turn the handle, then Dandelion and Rose can dance""

[Madeira Dusk]

"I think he thinks he lovess me. Isssn't that.. sstrange? Catherine.. do you think?"

Ssanya's wide eyed confusion was reflected in Madeira's own. She had no answer.

Dandelion was back. He dropped a heavy, damaged box at her feet and spoke in a way that threatened laughter at evey uncomfortable syllable.

"Go on, turn the handle, then Dandelion and Rose can dance!"

As he grabbed Ssanya by the hand and pulled her to her feet, Madeira was seized with the compulsion to snatch the Maledictor away from him. But she remembered how strong Terag the Isur blacksmith was- how she once watched him bend cold iron in his stone fist. How did this mad half-isur compare? He had dropped the skull in favour of the Dhani, but Madeira couldn't leave without either of them. With nothing else to do, her blood crusted fingertips found the handle of the metal box.

There was a clicking and a squeal of metal on metal as the gears warmed up. She wound it until it would go no farther, then let it go. Off tune, tinny music filled the empty house. From a seam she did not notice the box popped open, revealing a little scene turning on invisible gears. In descending circles row after row of little painted wooden flowers moved in opposite directions, their petals eaten through by worms and paint faded with time and lack of care. In the middle of the independently moving circles was a little dancing couple revolving on the spot. A dark haired girl in a white sundress  was holding the hands of a man someone had sloppily painted over in blue. Madeira's uneasiness intensified.

Dandelion was humming along to a completely different tune as he danced, completely oblivious to Ssanya's participation, yet never looking away from her. Taking advantage of his distraction, Madeira leaned forward and carefully, very carefully, lifted the skull off the floor by hooking a finger in its empty socket.

"Oh my Rose. My lovely Rose. You would flourish in my garden. Join me and my collection, won't you?" he asked dreamily, revolving on the spot.

It was then that Madeira noticed a strange, magnetic pull in the room. It was if gravity had shifted to the fireplace behind Dandelion and Ssanya, it's pressures infinitesimal but growing. Madeira watched the fine hairs of her unravelling chignon slowly lift in response to the strange force.

The Spiritist suddenly shot to her feet as the nervousness roared into something much more real. The skull hooked on her finger was held behind her back, it's teeth scrapping her blouse.

"This has been great, Dandilion. You have a... marvellous collection. But my friend and I really should go now." Could he hear the crack of uncertainty in her voice? She reached forward with her free hand, intending to pull Ssanya away from him.