Clean The Dust, If You Must

[Theodore Muzenni]

63rd Day of Winter, 514

All things considered, Theo's apartment was quite plain, really. Of course, most NHC apartments were like that. When organising housing for an entire population, architects didn't get the creative freedom they may have liked. One door, four walls, and a window. In this Theo was actually quite fortunate, since not everyone was lucky enough to get a window. It was the little things that distinguished his little room from all the others, the things a person only noticed about a place after living in it for a while. The cracks in the ceiling could be traced a thousand different ways, and they made his head spin if he stared up at them after a night of heavy drinking. The back-left leg of his spare chair was slightly too short, and Theo liked the way it distracted his guests. There was a red wine stain on the corner of his mattress from when-
"This place is too dusty, I think," Theo said to no one in particular. Running his finger along the table drew a thin line through the dust. It wasn't the first line, and it wasn't the first time that day he'd voiced the thought.

It had been a busy Winter, and Theo found himself spending less time in his home than usual. A thin layer of dust had coated just about every surface, leaving visible imprints in the places he made regular use of.
How could I let the place get so... Theo didn't finish the thought, instead craning his head out the window to glance at the sun.
"She should be here soo- shyke!," he mused aloud, knocking his head on the window frame. Mentally chastising himself for using such crude language, Theo began to pace slowly across the room, absent-mindedly rubbing his scalp while he did so. He had requested the use of one of the Nitrozian family's slaves to clean his apartment. It wasn't necessarily going to be a 'she', but the cleaning slaves usually were.

Technically speaking, Theo's presence in the apartment was unnecessary. The slaves could let themselves into an apartment, clean, and be gone without the tenant even knowing. Naturally, Theo preferred to stay. Slaves were typically the recipients of the man's pity, but never his trust, and he refused to willingly leave one alone in his apartment. Not that he kept anything in there worth stealing, mind you.
It's a matter of principle, I think. Resigning himself to the wait, Theo sat sullenly in his chair, wishing that he'd brought home a bottle of wine to help pass the time. Unfortunately, he would have to do without.

[Alea Davenport]

Alea was getting used to cleaning. Something inside told her that was a very bad thing. She would have to find a way to get extremely dirty very soon. But not just yet. First she had to earn some Mizas. She was doing something a little different today. Apparently she has impressed her superior with her diligence in learning how to clean a hallway, and also her reduced rebelliousness, which Alea put down to being tired more than anything else. Today, she would be allowed to clean a patron's room.

At first, she was excited; after all, a room was much less space than a hallway. But her glee dimmed as she was given task after task that she had to do in a room, on top of just cleaning the floors. Dusting the surfaces, washing the linens, emptying the chamber pot...it went on and on. If she was lucky, the customer would not be terribly attached to his own linens, and she could put on the clean ones she brought up with her, and wash his old ones later.

She walked to the assigned door and set down her bucket (containing only half the usual amount of water), and basket (containing fresh linens, clean rags, and other sundry items). Then she knocked lightly on the door.

[Theodore Muzenni]

If he hadn't been listening for it, Theo doubted he would have heard the knock. A small part of himself even wondered if he hadn't imagined it, a by-product of his impatience. No, he wasn't crazy.
Not yet, anyway. As he stood Theo took a moment to straighten his appearance. A few flecks of dust scattered as he pat down his clothing, giving rise to a small frown. Crossing his room in a few easy steps put Theo face-to-face with the door, which he promptly opened.

She was quite small, as far as those things went, causing Theo to bend his neck slightly in order to properly evaluate her.
Pretty. For a domestic slave, anyway. You'd think a young girl like her would... no matter, I suppose. Djed was willed through Theo's body, and a mental push expanded his sphere of influence so that it encompassed the young slave.
Let's start with some trust, and throw in a little serenity for good measure. Theo felt his eyes water slightly with the magic's strain, but that was easily ignored. Under his gentle gaze, the slave would feel a sudden spike of the emotions he had decided upon. The sensation would fade just as quickly, but would be sufficient for setting the mood, he thought.
"Brilliant, you're here. The place is a mess, trust me." His greeting was delivered in a friendly tone, djed coating his tongue as he spoke before empowering his final words with hypnotic suggestion. When combined with his earlier conditioning, Theo was confident the girl would be somewhat easier to handle, if only slightly.

Turning on his heel, Theo returned into the room and resumed his earlier position of comfort on his chair, assuming the slave would shut the door on her way in.
"Come now, we must make haste. This dust is depressing, I think." The hypnotist stated enthusiastically, shooting one of his more charming smiles towards the girl.
Just try not to steal anything, he thought dryly.

[Alea Davenport]

Alea's first impression of the man behind the door was an unusually strong one. She was out of practice dealing with so many emotions at once. At first, she felt like she was fishing, which she hadn't had a chance to do in an unbelievably long time. She made a mental note to find a way to do that again. Around the same time, she felt like this man honestly and truly could be her friend. Her throat closed up when she thought of how long it had been, and how few friends she'd truly had in her lifetime. She almost teared up, but out of long-forgotten habit she decided that would be a waste of time, and that she should start taking advantage of her new friendship as soon as possible.

She followed him in, a bit nervous when he mentioned the "mess", but when she saw for herself, it didn't look so bad. Really, the dust was the worst of it. Her own room, back when she'd had a real room, had been haphazardly cluttered with possessions in piles more often than not, back when she'd had possessions. What little there was here seemed neatly organized by comparison. She found herself believing that this particular job might not be too hard after all. Maybe she'd even have time to get to know...whatever his name was.

"I'm Alea," she said cheerfully as she took out a rag. "Alea Davenport," she added, not entirely sure why, "from Denval." It was like her life story was sitting in her throat waiting for the chance to burst forth, so long had it been since she'd had anyone to really talk to. She ran the rag along the nearest surface she could find, wiping the dust onto the floor. The floor was already dirty, and she would have to wash it anyway, so making it more dirty wouldn't hurt anything. Her new friend wouldn't mind. "'Course, Denval's gone now," she muttered in a melancholy tone, her accent slipping back into the nigh-forgotten dialect of that city.

[Theodore Muzenni]

Cheerfully introducing herself as Alea, the slave-woman produced a rag from her person and started her work, pushing dust from the furniture onto the floor. There was a certain lack of efficiency to her technique, not like some of the older slaves Theo had met in the past. In comparison, Theo suspected that even he could have matched the woman's efforts, but the absurd thought of cleaning his own apartment was an amusing one.
Chatty little thing, isn't she? In Theo's experience, most slaves tended to be a solemn lot that carried out their tasks in relative silence.
Though I am partly responsible for this, I think. Alea's willingness to open up could very well be attributed to his influence, but there was no way to know for certain. Hypnotism couldn't make people do something they didn't want to, not really. A piece of Alea that wanted to open up must have been waiting just beneath the surface, and all it had taken was a gentle touch to stir it into action.

She spoke of her home, a place called Denval. Theo had heard the name before, but couldn't remember the significance it held.
Though if I ask, she will most certainly tell me, I think. At the very least, he decided it didn't matter too much. If Alea was telling the truth, it was a place that no longer existed. More than that, the woman was a slave now; her home was Ravok.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Alea. I am Theodore Muzenni, but Theo will suffice, I think." Alea was still within his expanded sphere of influence, which filled the small room quite comfortably.
Let's keep you cleaning. Some enthusiasm, and a little more trust for good measure. Theo's djed pulsed and pushed the emotions onto the woman as she cleaned. A light throbbing appeared in the back of his head. Each application of hypnotism wasn't particularly taxing in and of itself, but the craft demanded multiple applications, and that's when things got slightly more difficult.

"I must say Alea," Theo continued, "your hair is lovely, you certainly do a good job cleaning it, despite its length. I have to keep mine short, you see? I can never get it to do what I say otherwise." Lacing particular phrases with hypnotic suggestion left Theo's tongue tingling slightly in his mouth, but he wasn't finished:
That was a nice compliment I gave you. Some embarrassment and happiness would be appropriate, I think. The throbbing intensified, but was still more of an annoyance than anything else. He chose emotions that he suspected the woman would feel regardless of his interference, hoping to enhance what was already there. That was the trick, he knew. People were a bubbling cauldron of emotion; everything was there, but stronger emotions drowned out the weaker ones. Sure, Theo could have made Alea feel a flash of rage, but it would quickly be snuffed out by her natural emotions. It would require a constant, dangerous reinforcement of the emotion to nurture it to an inferno.
Such an impractical way to work, i think. Theo smiled, curious to see how his magic would be received.

[Alea Davenport]

OOCUnfortunately for Theo, Hypnotism does not grants the victim actual skill

Learning what to call her new friend was so exciting that she gained new motivation, and attacked her work with renewed exuberance. Alea began wiping the surfaces even more vigorously, sending clouds of dust into the air. The faster she wiped the tables, the sooner she would be finished, and then maybe her new friend would want to go fishing together! Besides, it was kind of fun throwing dust around. It looked a little like snow...

Alea was surprised when her gave her the compliment. Not just because slaves were so rarely appreciated--even less so for something outside the scope of their work--but because even before she was a slave, no one had admired her hair (with one very special exception), and for good reason. She briefly wondered if he had a suspicious ulterior motive for commenting on her appearance, but she had never had much cause to venture near the House of Immortal Whatever, and she wasn't particularly interested in that sort of thing. If he made an inappropriate move, she'd pound him into the dirt, and that would be that. Besides, he didn't seem the type.

She coughed lightly, embarrassed for her new friend and his profound ignorance. "Tuuli does my hair. She hates doing it, but they make her, because I'm supposed to be 'presentable', and 'not embarrass the masters,' and all that rot. When I first came here they took all of the tangles out. But I have nothing to do with it."

She had dusted most of the hand- and eye-level surfaces, and now she moved to the windowsill. She cheerfully brushed the dust out the open window with quick strokes of the rag, then shook the rag free of dust when she was finished. Then she bent down to get started on the floor.

She got the vague sense, she wasn't sure from where, that Theo thought she was doing a good job, and she felt pleased, even happy, that her skill had grown, even at a task she did not much care for.

She was in such a good mood, and all the talk about her hair was bringing back some pleasant memories. "I did have an old friend who found my hair very interesting," she said, with a mysterious twinkle in her eye. But she had spent too much time viewing the past through the lens of loss for it to bring her much joy now. A quiet, tired sadness was evident in her voice when she said, "Of course, he's long gone now."

[Theodore Muzenni]

Theo watched wide eyed as Alea threw clouds of dust into the air with every pass of her cleaning rag. He had to wrinkle his nose slightly to resist the tickling temptation of a sneeze.
Well... she's certainly enthusiastic, at least, he thought dryly, less than impressed with the slave's capabilities. Why would the Nitrozian family let someone like her tend to a guest's room? Alea provided Theo with an explanation for her hair, her choice of words taking on a tint of rebellion if he were to be any judge.
She feels comfortable around me, I think. Nitrozian slaves tended to be tight lipped and professional, and Alea was proving to be neither. Her willingness to open up was almost suspicious, like she was pretending to be affected by his hypnotism. Could her nativity be an act?
I'm over thinking this, I think. Pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers, Theo took a couple of moments to reorganise his thoughts.

When he returned his gaze to Alea, she was on her hands and knees, wiping the dust off the floor. Actually, as far as Theo could tell, she was just wiping it around the floor.
By Rhysol, the poor girl is useless. In that moment, he felt a stab of pity for the young slave girl. Clearly, she was well out of her depth. She spoke of her hair again, and of someone else who'd commented on it as Theo had.
A lost lover, perhaps? The grief in her voice suggested as much, he decided. What Theo was left with was a sad young woman rubbing a rag along his dusty floor.
I don't recall my life being so depressing, he thought sullenly and sighed.

"Loss is never easy, I think," Theo said reassuringly, speaking in a slow, comforting voice. Simultaneously, Theo focused his djed and mentally pushed against Alea.
Courage. Happiness. Theo considered his actions selfish; he'd decided that having a sad woman in his room was annoying, so he tried to fix the problem. With a final surge of hypnotism, Theo implanted a thought into the young slave's head:
What am I doing? I shouldn't be bothering this man with my problems.
She would think the thought as if it were her own, but the djed drain left Theo with an irritating headache that pounded against the inside of his skull. Forcing himself to his feet, Theo gathered his things and made for the door.
"I'm sorry Alea, but I'm feeling a tad under the weather, I think. If I'm not back by the time you finish up just make sure you close the door behind you, okay my dear?" The extra hypnotic suggestion flared his pain, but he thought the precaution well worth it. Stepping out without giving Alea a chance to reply, Theo closed the door behind him with a click.
I need a drink, I think.

[Alea Davenport]

Alea felt a surge of disappointment at seeing her friend go. Her movements with the cloth became sluggish and purposeless. I shouldn't be bothering this man with my problems, she thought, forlornly. He's not interested. Then she noticed the peculiar wording, the inconsistency, of her own thought. This man. Not Theo. Then a raw emotional voice that sounded much farther away, as if it were buried deeper in her mind, screamed, Not my friend. Not my friend!

The swirl of emotions in her mind snapped back into equilibrium. She'd almost opened up her whole life story to a complete stranger. What was wrong with her?! Nothing in particular had happened lately, and she hadn't acted that dangerously with anyone else since before Ravok. Before opening up was actually dangerous. She could only conclude that it was some quality about him, something that made him seem more interesting, appealing, trustworthy. He might not even be aware of what he inspired in people (for Alea was sure she couldn't be the only one to fall into such a subtle trap), so he was probably tired of hoards of strangers leaning on him like that. In any case, Alea would have to be more careful not to fall for him--for his tricks!--again in the future.

All of the wide and varied emotional activity in the last few minutes had left Alea feeling drained, and a little sad. She had gathered most of the dust from the floor into a little pile at the center of the room, though she hadn't thought it necessary to crawl under the bed to get every single corner. Who even looked under their bed? Who cared if there were dust mites and mold living there? They weren't hurting anyone. She collected her dust and tossed it out the window with the rest.

Honestly, the floor didn't look that dirty to her anymore. She wasn't sure it needed scrubbing, but she felt like someone would notice if she shirked it entirely. She went the rag and swept it in large, cursory circles around the floor, going as quickly as she could to convince herself she'd covered the whole thing, but trying to finish before she got bored. When she was finished, she did the same thing to the surfaces, accidentally wiping a few specks of dust onto the formerly clean floor. With a grunt of frustration, she warred within herself between leaving it (it wasn't that bad), and cleaning the floor a second time. She decided to wait until she'd finished everything else before she made a choice.

The last thing she could think of to do, from the list she'd been given over a bell ago, was changing the sheets (and she only remembered that by looking at what she'd brought with her). She tore off the old linens and dropped them on the floor for now. Then she pulled out the fresh ones, setting them on the surface of a (mostly) perfectly clean table as she worked out which ones went on first. Luckily, as a slave to the Nitrozians, she had often been required to make the bed, so at least she knew how, in theory, though she could never quite manage to make the sheets lay as flat as they liked, and she was often punished unless another slave covered for her.

Once she had the new sheets more or less where they were supposed to go, she took one more satisfied look around the room. It looked much the same as when she'd come in, just a little less dusty, which she hadn't really noticed in the first place until she'd started wiping it around. She really didn't understand the point of cleaning.

Gathering her things, including the used linens, she left the room, yanking it shut with her foot and letting fate decide whether it latched. She might have checked to be sure, but she was carrying awkward bundles in both arms, and after an exhausting day, both physically and emotionally, she had little energy left to care about the finer duties of her job (e.g. security). Struggling down the stairs, which after a few bells of work was actually harder than going up, she deposited the linens in a laundry area that had direct access to the lake, and took her other supplies to where they belonged.

With that she was finished for the day, and she finally felt like she could relax. And yet, she still felt worse than she had when in Theo's presence. This was extremely frustrating, and wasn't helped by the sting of betrayal she still felt whenever she played their brief interaction over and over in her mind in excruciating detail. She decided she wasn't through with him, even if he was through with her. She might be a slave, but she was Alea Davenport, petch it, and nobody got away with something like that. (She still didn't think he'd done anything on purpose, but she was itching for mischief, and he was the most obvious target.)

She asked the attendant on duty where the man had gone and received an answer of dubious certainty. She wasn't sure why a man who'd been feeling 'under the weather' had gone to a noisy pub instead of a quiet place or a clinic. But she didn't have any better leads, so there couldn't be much harm in stopping by. Worse case scenario, she would give up on her silly games and go to sleep. But first, she'd see what she could find at the Silver Sliver.

[Theodore Muzenni]

The Silver Silver was bustling with activity. Barmaids weaved through a labyrinth of tables and chairs, arms held high as they balanced trays loaded with drinks to eager customers. Chatter and chuckle, murmur and mumble. Noise swelled and moulded with other noise, losing its shape and distinction. The resulting mass of sound blanketed the entire room in it's stuffy embrace. Theo perched atop a wooden stool, hunched over a bar so clean that he could see his reflection in it. Theo had stepped away from the world. He was blind to the warm smiles, and bright eyes. He was deaf to the sound, indistinct though it was. For Theo, there existed only him, and the space he had crafted for himself; a place where he could rest, and recover. With the faintest flicker of movement, a guest had arrived. The forearm was slender, and it looked soft to the touch. It was gone in an instant, leaving behind a beacon of hope, of salvation.

Red. Bright crimsons, rich maroons, it was all there. A new shade would reveal itself depending on how Theo manipulated the wine glass, and he held it up to the light with quiet admiration.
Beautiful, he thought. Within those scarlet depths there would be solace. A release. The hypnotist's hand shook slightly as he manoeuvred the wine in a way that would lure out its latent potential, or so he'd been taught. With every rotation of his wrist it rolled smoothly within the crystal confine. A tentative sniff:
Perfect.
A faint smile crept onto Theo's face as he let the intoxicating perfume wash over him. His mind sorted through the bouquet, searching for hints of the flavour that was to come.
Plums, I think. A casual tilt of the glass sent a portion of its contents flowing into Theo's waiting mouth, splashing excitedly over his tongue.
Oh yes, definitely plums. An earthy symphony of bitter-sweet played frantically over Theo's palette. A long, drawn out sigh escaped his blood-stained lips. In that moment, at least, he was content.

OOCSorry about the delay on this one, work has been brutal the last week or so. Had a couple of people resign so it was chaos just trying to keep the place running. Not the lengthiest post, but should serve as a decent enough scene-changer.

[Alea Davenport]

Alea stalked quickly towards the tavern. She didn't run, as she often did to get around faster. No, somehow in the past few chimes she had worked herself into a broiling anger. She wasn't sure where it had come from, it had just welled up suddenly out of the mass of shifting emotions that Theo had (probably inadvertently,, she had to keep reminding herself) stirred up. Mayeb anger was getting jealous of all the other feelings, and decided it also wanted to come out and play.

Whatever the case, thinking about Theo filled her with unreasoning fury. She wanted revenge on him for making her feel this way. She wanted to pound his face into the dirt. But most of all, she wanted to hold onto this feeling that had been gone so long that its return felt like coming home.

Tragically, Alea remembered exactly why she'd left this anger behind. Too many friends who were no longer her friends, because she couldn't control herself when she got this way.

Well, she may have already written Theo off, giving up on him a a possible friend, but that didn't mean she wanted to fall back into old habits. Maybe this time she could channel her aggression into something a bit more...passive.

She walked into the crowded tavern with an evil grin on her face, which she'd managed to smooth into the normal kind by the time she'd spotted Theo. "There you are!" she said cheerfully, grabbing a stool next to him (out of the grip of an astonishingly drunk patron, who promptly fell to the floor).

OOCI'll deal with your posts if you deal with mine