[Infirmary] Little Monsters (Hadrian)

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

32nd Day of Summer, 512 AV Tock hated kids. Really, really hated them. They were loud. They were smelly. They were always sticking their hands where they didn't belong. They ran around, getting underfoot, knocking things over, making messes, crying, and generally disturbing the peace every chance they got. They never seemed to do any work. By the time Tock was old enough to walk, talk, feed herself, and hold a tool, she'd been working. Her Granddad had had the perfect solution for a whining little child that was getting underfoot: put a tool in her hands, and put her to work. She'd loved it. It had defined who she grew up into. Yet kids around Zeltiva didn't seem to know the first thing about working hard, earning their keep, or making themselves useful. And yet despite that, she couldn't seem to get away from the little buggers. Every time she found herself anywhere near the Infirmary, they tracked her down. She'd made a name for herself among the children with her animated crutches, and then the mundane crutches she'd made for a lot of the children that same week. Then she'd made more of a name for herself with the puppet show she'd put on with Satevis. So when she'd cut her arm on a stray nail today, she really hadn't wanted to come anywhere near the infirmary. She'd have preferred to just bandage it and call it a day. But the nail had been jagged and especially sharp, and as much as she hadn't wanted to, her boss had insisted that she go get stitches. And while she was sitting there, getting stitched up, a group of kids tracked her down and started hounding her. "Tock, Tock, Tock!" a group of them were calling out. Thanks to her dear Satevis some of the others were insisting on calling her, "Miss Zipporah." She hated that, and she intended to get revenge on Satevis for it, one way or the other. She rolled her eyes as the kids swarmed about her, groaning and covering her eyes with one hand. "Tock can we have another puppet show!?" the kids asked. "Please can we can we can we? Can we Miss Zipporah? Pleeeeease!" They started tugging on her clothes, whining, and begging, until she just couldn't take it anymore. "Oy, fine!" she said, just to shut them up. Of course the kids couldn't tell the difference between a glad agreement and an irritated submission to constant badgering. Either way, they got what they wanted. And so it was, with her cut freshly stitched and bandaged, she found herself setting up at the stage she'd built outside the infirmary. She had no idea what kind of show she was going to put on, since Satevis wasn't here today to narrate and write the script. So she'd just have to improvise something so the little monsters would leave her alone.

[Hadrian]

Everyone who lived in Zeltiva knew who Ethel Farson was, and Hadrian meant to look her up soon for possible help keeping Aurrealis in Zeltiva. The kid was tough and resourceful, but his yen for travel was going to get him killed. Hadrian was going no further than Zeltiva for some time, and he could not be sure the orphan was safe if he didn't stay put. But he was wandering the city, reacquainting himself with streets and haunts from years ago, when he heard about a puppet show at the infirmary for children that may or may not have involved animated automata. His interest piqued, he went there. It was no work at all to exude a hypnotic aura of He belongs here as he walked around. This tactic was old hats for him, having kept him safe in perilous places in Ravok, which made this place a walk in the park. When he was about to leave, a strange chanting came up, as if the children were worshipping half a clock. Tock, tock, tock... In no hurry, he leaned up against the wall to watch as the children managed -- without hypnotism that he was aware of -- to persuade a young woman to bring the puppets and the puppet stage to life. Interesting...

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

OOC"... a strange chanting came up, as if the children were worshipping half a clock." LMAO!!! Tock had no idea how she was going to coordinate running this show by herself. She wasn't good at stories. She was barely any good at controlling the puppets. She could keep them up with someone's narration, but she didn't know how she was going to both control the puppets and at the same time make up and narrate the story. She glanced around and saw the dark haired stranger who clearly belonged here. Well, if he belonged here, then what was he doing over there!? She walked over and grabbed him by the arm, forcefully dragging him over to the stage and planting him right next to it. "'Ere, narrate," she told him. "Make 'er a good one, aye? Else ye'll 'as a riot on yer 'ands..." This would make it much easier. She wasn't sure why she'd been worried before, when this stranger so clearly and without question belonged here helping her. She raised her hands, fingers spread, over the puppets. The glass pieces installed on top of their heads saw the movements and the puppets responded, rising shakily to their feet. She was only using two today, the ones painted to look like Syna and Leth. The children cheered when they saw the puppets standing without strings, guided only by Tock's hand gestures. She walked them out center stage, weaving her fingers through the air, her hands out of sight behind the stage. From the front all that could be seen were the two magic puppets against a starry backdrop. She glanced at the stranger and gave him an impatient nod towards the stage to start the story.

[Hadrian]

OOCI aim to please and... dammit! Hadrian's freaking out and I'm trying to think of a story...

She walked at him so fast, he had no time to run or throw a lightning bolt at her face or anything. When she grabbed his arm and started telling him what he was going to do with plenty of authority but no -- so far as he could tell -- hypnotic power, his nerves started sizzling with anxiety. "What?" he almost yelped, then an agonized stage whisper: "No!" But she did not relent, and suddenly he was standing wide-eyed before a crowd of children who were chanting for blood or maybe it was a strange cult to Tanroa that had sprung up in his absence. Interesting anthropological question for another time. As for the present, he gulped and tried to think quickly. Kendall would've been much better at this. "Ah, so... um, right... yes. Anyway... It is said that when the world was yet uncreated, the great Tawannen sacrificed itself to end the last great cosmic war, it was shattered into countless pieces. Its joyful energy became Syna, and its darker wildness became Leth..."

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

OOCHey, "trying to think of a story" is what we do with every post. A "story within a story" should be no different Tock completely ignored the man's protests. People were always trying to tell her what to do, or not to do, or what they didn't want to do when it clearly needed to be done. She'd found it was much easier to skip the arguing, and just get straight to the part where everyone did what she said. Lots of people tended to be so thrown off guard by the fact that they were never given a chance to properly protest, that they just went with it. Her new assistant did the same thing, which saved him a lot of potential headache. As he started telling the story, Tock pulled up the colorfully painted backdrop that looked like explosions of light and magic. Some of the kids themselves had painted this one, and it seemed fitting since the storyteller was starting with the cosmic war. At the mention of "joyful energy" becoming Syna, she had the Syna puppet dance onto the stage, her arms raised in the air, frolicking around happily. The movements were choppy and unrealistic, since Tock wasn't exactly a skilled puppeteer. The basic feeling though, that this was a happy puppet, was obvious. The "darker wildness" of Leth was portrayed by the other puppet hopping up and raising his arms in front of him like he was clawing at the air. She had him crouch down and bat at the children, prompting laughter and leading some of the kids to mimic the wildness, clawing at the stage and going, "Grrr!" She gave the narrator a nod, and silently hoped that the story didn't get too complex. There was only so much emotion and complexity she could portray through the puppets.

[Hadrian]

"Oh, right," he said when she nodded to him. He had been looking on in disappointment, hoping the puppets were Animated, but it was not to be. Perhaps he could secretly Animate them while nobody was looking; that would be entertaining. Of course, he wasn't very good at it. He would have been comfortable discoursing on the topic of theogony, but he was beginning to suspect that wouldn't be the easiest thing to portray to an audience of children with a pair of puppets, unless she had the whole pantheon back there, and some mortal followers... but that seemed unlikely. "Syna danced," he said, thinking that was easy enough. "She danced for Kihala, and her energy made the world bloom. And when Leth saw her dancing, she calmed his wildness, and he, in turn, stirred her. Then Tanroa put them into the sky as Sun and Moon, and they danced across the heavens." More dancing, which was mostly just flopping the puppets about, but if it kept the children content... "But when the Valterrian came, the Star Lady, Zintila, fell to save Semele. Syna was close to her, and attempted to come to her aid, but she would only have hurt herself, and so Leth caught up with her before their time in order to keep her from falling to the earth too. This was the unexpected eclipse..." He might have been wandering into lecturing, so he paused, letting the woman do her thing for a bit while he tried to figure out what to say next.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

OOCThe puppets are Animated, they're just not fully independently automated. She controls them with hand motions above their heads, but there are no strings. They walk and move about on their own with magical movement, she just needs to use hand motions to direct them where to go. At the man's narration, Tock made the puppets dance, weaving her fingers in the air above their heads. She directed Syna to perform the closest she could manage of a ballerina's pirouette, twirling in circles with her hands above her head. Then she moved both puppets close together, their arms around each other, her hands twirling in circles above their heads to make them spin about the stage in something like a ballroom dance. She was a bit uncertain what to do for the next stage of the story, so she flattened her palms to direct the puppets to fall to the ground. The children gasped, thinking the puppet-Gods were hurt. But then she had Leth scoop Syna up in his arms, her fingers rising to command them to stand again. The story was a bit different from the one Satevis had told at the first puppet show, but the mythology seemed to be related. All this religious stuff was usually above Tock's head. Other than the most basic things like the names of the Gods, Tock didn't know much about any of it. She wasn't a religious scholar, or even a believer. Sure, she knew that the Gods existed, but she didn't pray or worship any of them. She generally figured if she left them alone, they'd leave her alone. That was how she preferred it. The children were watching expectantly, waiting for some kind of climax. Tock eyed her assistant uncertainly, hoping he had something in mind to carry the story into a conclusion. She didn't know if he was quoting something from real mythology, or if he was just making it up as he went along. Either way, she hoped it would be something good.

[Hadrian]

As the odd-looking -- here the pot calling the kettle black -- woman manipulated the puppets and he got over the sharpest edge of his nerves, he realized that they were indeed Animated, but that they required some direction from her nimble hands to dance in an orderly fashion. His attention was rather captured by her work, tasting the auras of the little things, watching the way they reacted to her. It wasn't until she was staring at him that he remembered his part in this mummery, and he blinked, trying to recall where he had left off in the narrative of the celestial orbs. "Ahh, the god of the moon suffered a hurt in his lover's stead, and for some time after the cataclysm, they retreated, leaving the world in darkness." Here he kindled his connection with Ionu, the entire room going blank and dark in an instant that elicited little shrieks of delighted terror from several children. When they hushed into a nervous silence, he continued. "But eventually they returned, healed of their wounds, remembering their duty to light the skies and mark the passing of time, day in, day out, and night by night." Gradually his illusory darkness retreated, and the little puppets were burning with solar fire and watery moonlight. He felt a tingle over his shoulder, on his back, where the mark of Ionu lay hidden under his clothes. "But the stars," he continued, and here cold pinpricks of firefly light spangled the air above the children, within arm's reach but incorporeal. "The stars never burned so brightly after Zintila fell, and Syna and Leth continued their dance across the sky."

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

When the story continued with Leth being hurt, Tock directed the puppet to clutch his hands to his chest in an overly exaggerated fashion, lurching as if in pain. It was a bit corny, but it was the only way she could think to express pain. Figuring out how to express emotions through the limited mobility of the puppets' body language was hard. Next she had the puppets flee the stage, and she quickly pulled down the colorful backdrop for the plain black one she'd painted with Satevis. It was lucky that this story matched up somewhat with the other, so she could reuse the same props. When she looked up, she saw it was dark all over. She frowned, rubbing at her eyes, wondering what had happened. It was the middle of the day! When the light came back, the puppets were limp on the stage. They needed to be able to see Tock's hands to move. She quickly flicked her fingers to raise them back up, casting the stranger a distrustful look. He was making her babies glow. She didn't know how he was doing it, but she didn't trust any magic that wasn't her own. For all she knew, this magic trick could hurt her precious puppets. She looked out over the illusionary starlight that floated above the children, and the distrust was replaced with a pang of jealousy. She couldn't do anything like that. Not anything remotely like it. Especially not on a whim, without planning her preparation. All the magic she knew took days, if not weeks to prepare. An Automaton had to be planned out, carefully built, and lovingly Animated. They couldn't be made on a whim. Belatedly she realized the puppets were supposed to be dancing again, and she twirled her fingers above the staged to direct their movements. They danced once more, though compared to the sparkles and the glow, she felt like her performance was seriously lacking.

[Hadrian]

But the story was done, for he certainly wasn't going to recount the entire canon of Syna's mythos. He started clapping, nodding toward the puppet theater. Sometimes hypnotism wasn't necessary; one merely had to know when to do what for the maximum effect. The little children squealed and cheered and clapped and Hadrian took that momentary distraction to make his escape. He could examine the puppets later. The illusion faded as soon as he was out the door and his attention shifted away from it. He didn't like being in situations in which he felt he had little control, and that woman was certainly a monkey wrench thrown into any plan. "Where am I going?" he murmured to himself as he walked.