2017-07-24: Thieving Crows
- Log: Thieving Crows
- Cast: Gwen Whitlock, Isiris Shango'Ra
- Where: Silver Coast
- Date: 7/24/2017
- Summary: Foraging for firewood, Gwen stumbles across the camp of a sullen boy in a field of crows. There, she receives a vague warning: someone is coming for her, and if she's not prepared, she'll be eaten up.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Even here, far beyond the hot sands of the Badlands, it still gets hot. And like the Badlands, it gets cool at night, though the degree by which the air cools is far less drastic. The sky is painted with its colors of dusky blue, purple and rose as the sun sets behind the mountains. The two moons will soon be fully visible, though tonight won't be quite a full moon. Insects are chirping in the grass, and motes of blinking lights dot the wet grass. It'll be a pleasant night to sleep, if the moon doesn't get too bright.
But that's the way Gwen prefers. The open sky, the cool air, and the settling down of the creatures of day. If the weather hadn't lifted earlier, it would have been better to spend it in a saloon, but, for various reasons, she's not drinking. She did, after all, kinda challenge the heir to the throne to arm wrestle her, as well as drunk-hug her while weeping about the king's death.
So, no drinking for her.
Parking her wagon for the night and settling her trusty partner Gulliver with his feed, Gwen sets out into the brush, gathering fallen wood that would work for the campfire she'll have to make. She's already gotten a decent load of wood under her left arm, but with the ground being so moist, it may take a little longer for this wood to start alight without some proper encouragement. "... Ah. Hereee we gooo." Hefting a sizable log with her gloved right arm and examining it, she lifts it above her head-
-only for a centipede to fall on her face.
"... Guess that's enough wood for me," she mumbles, placing the log back down and carefully flicking the centipede off her face.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
There is not much of a difference in the temperature of the cool night desert and the coast, but it is that very drastic turn that makes the desert seem so much more hospitable. A matter of degree and relativity itself, when one scrapes by on the cusp of death by day, even the slightest drop of mercy is ambrosia.
Except when the darkest wind blows.
The exact moment when the air turns is palpable, a thing one can taste on the tip of the tongue. It is uncharacteristically cold for the season, and the birds are all wrong for the nature of it. The harsh, crisp cry of a distant bird is bell-like, but distorted and bent in odd ways by the warbling laughter of crows far closer than the keening of hunters in the dusk.
This thing is different, somehow alien than the rest of it, the strange breeze that cuts across the dewy grass. The birds that distort the sky are not seeable, figments extant from the vagaries of all but the most willful of imaginations. Yet they can be heard all the same, frustratingly present in the suddenly chill breeze. One could search and search, but they could never find them. At least, you wouldn't think so.
Black motes are carried with this wind, a cascade of them falling across the field. Twisting and dancing in the frigid rush, black feathers whirl across the field. They dance around the courier, spinning black and dark like nightfall itself.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen knows that call.
If there ever was an animal that could call Little Twister its home, it was the crow. The speck of a town stood as barely a smattering of boarded up buildings, a few actual houses, a saloon, an Ethos-led church that doubled as an orphanage, and a few businesses that were necessary for any town in the Badlands for Drifters.
These don't seem to be the same as those crows. Those could at least be humored, like any animal with a specific type of social intelligence.
The moment where the air turns is the same moment Gwen's own regard for her environment changes, turning from amused, observant wonder to abrupt caution. "Someone out there?" she asks, peeling back her lips to show a tense smile. She politely dips her hat with her free hand. "... Just a courier passin' through. 'Apologize for the intrusion."
Such a folksy drawl would've had an effect on some stray woodsman, but there's been far more dangerous beings a Drifter could come across, especially in dark times like this.
Or it could be that the centipede bit her. Are the centipedes here as poisonous as the ones in the Badlands? Most likely not.
She'll just hedge her bets and trudge her way back to her campsite. If she can find it.
Well, if that happens, she'll just deal with it when she gets to that point. After all, maybe it's just a friendly visitor.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
The wind tapers off as Gwen speaks into it, the whirling quality of the wind taking a hard shear. Even in its absence, a feather drags impotently on a nearby stoop, tugged at by the residual breeze. It tugs between breaths of air, whistled between the slow pursed lips of something unnamable.
There is not a vocal response to Gwen's apologies, and for a moment it can come as honeyed bit of doubt in the back of a troubled mind that maybe the blackfeather chill was nothing more than a superstition borne on the laughter of nearby blackbirds, something a little less than the imagined dangerous behind the ill omen cast by the encroach of dusk. It's hard to feel the danger of a thing, truly, when it cannot be seen for miles around and the sky is still painted in the same lovely night-etched tapestry the mind left it in.
But then, the mind does have a way of conjuring ills in every shadow.
A harsh voice objects.
The crow sits on the stoop where the feather once dangled, a blue-eyed bird stretching its wing before Gwen. It barks harshly as it does so, turning its head in a corvid gesture of suspicion as it regards the courier. Its motions are quick and hard to track as an avian's might be, and it certainly seems to be objecting to Gwen's behavior.
On closer inspection, the bird seems to shake night off of it as it preens, a smoky black leaking into the air openly. The feather, dislodged from its catch by the crow's landing, twirls in the air between the two. Smoke peels from it as it dances in the stale air between them. The crow continues its admonition, chatter harsh and angry as it spreads indistinct wings in a flutter as the log shifts underneath it.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
How odd.
As the wind slows, Gwen looks over her shoulder, tilting her head at the lone feather. She stops, her gloved right hand raising to itch through her pale red hair, knocking her hat back to hang against the back of her shoulders on a dark cord.
She was clearly seeing things.
Sighing, Gwen adjusts her hold on the bundle of sticks under her left arm and rolls her right shoulder, turning to leave.
*CAW*
The feather has produced a crow. At least, that's the scenario Gwen's mind plays with when she turns back to regard the feathered visitor. Her experience with wildlife directs her to automatically step back a few paces to give the crow some room, but curiosity drives her to stay where she is once she's found a position she's satisfied with, in order to observe the crow. Blue eyes. Don't juvenile crows have blue eyes? Or maybe it's the color of the tinting, darker sky.
She leans in closer for a better look, against her instinct. It wouldn't be the oddest thing she's encountered lately, but it's certainly gotten her interest. "Sorry," the courier replies, under her breath, "I don't speak crow, and I don't have any treats I can give out, or I would."
Talking to animals comes a bit too naturally when a person has spent long enough with a loyal horse as their only means of company for miles around.
A feather dislodges from the crow then, casting black against the air. Her right hand extends towards it, grey blue eyes shining with curiosity, but the traumatic memories of Malevolence drive it right back. "... This is gettin' a bit too creepy for me, little crow. How about we scatter before we get hurt, eh?" Maybe they're someone's pet. "Maybe a little Malevolence got on ya, but I could take you to someone who could fix that right up."
Her voice is the measured, soft cadence used for horses, most likely overshadowed by the cackling calls of the crow itself. "'eerrreee we go. Easy, girl." She eases over to the crow, circling cautiously around the drip of menace to extend her hand to the lone crow.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
At first, it's a lot harder to make out the difference between the whirling mote and the crow, the distortion in the air left by the feather rippling like the surface of a lake on a hot summer day. But when taken at an angular approach, the feather seems to not bear Gwen any particular ill will, floating off into the sky as her presence heats up the air a little. Given this, the distortion lifts ever slightly over the conscientious objector.
To be fair, the feather seems like it might have come from the crow, turning those piercing blue eyes on Gwen suspiciously as she approaches. Those eyes shine warily even in the still air, even as the bird completes an elaborate stretch, furling its wing closer to its body, turning to better allow the odd crane of its neck to place Gwen within eye's view. A light hop from one end of its perch to the other gives the crow a better vantage point, and the crow warks at Gwen loudly when she speaks.
The crow's plumage does not shimmer, or at least when it does, it does not shimmer in the same way a crow's plumage should. The shine of light seems to escape off of the surface of the bird's feathers, and rippling away into a black dust that dissipates around it, almost as if this living thing was carved from that dust. A masterwork painting whose colors are running. The bird stares at Gwen a moment more, then looks around.
Obviously, plainly, the extension of a hand takes precedence in a whole lot of things, and the bird reacts with caution, suspicion, and more caution. A flake of smoke escapes from its head as if a concerned plume of feathers, and then the bird opens its beak halfway, as if readying some more scolding for Gwen. Angrily, it turns its head to squawk at the drifter...
And then avian words explode into more feathers, and more crows.
Birds belt out from the crow's parted beak in an instant, fluttering and pelting and clawing at Gwen until the entire world seems to be black. The sensation is surprisingly painless, more loud and confusing than anything else, filled with the sensory deprivation of a hundred feathers. The saturation is different from even the wind and frigid breeze, something that worms its way into every crevice and crack, if allowed. The sunset is swallowed up by dark rounder and fuller than any night under the moons.
Eventually the crow stops, and the noise and sensation dissipates.
It should, theoretically, be harmless. But unless Gwen manages to get free of the crow's scolding, she will still carry away from the nip a sordidly black taste in the back of her throat. A tightness in the chest. Like the sky is three inches lower than it was before.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Curiosity was a vice rarely allowed in those born and raised in the Badlands. Investigation of something odd could warrant a sting from a deadly scorpion, spider, or snake. or more humiliatingly, a date with a mass of cactus spikes. Gwen, for all she acts like she's a sheltered soul (and in some ways, she still definitely is), has had a few close calls. One does not cross the barren sands without finding danger. But that was Gwen's price, for see the wide open world. She was limited before. Now she's only limited by the sky, time, and her own body.
To someone that had barely even that, it's like coming across buried treasure. And she certainly couldn't stop her desire to see what the world had to offer, whether terrible or beautiful. Or both.
The feather was an oddity, something that could only be explained, if Gwen was forced to explain it, by the concept of Malevolence, even if this didn't quite fit the description. It doesn't feel the same; not the same level of negativity. And the feather is certainly beautiful. If she wasn't certain of its origin, she'd snag it and take to to someone like Emma Hetfield, if just to show as an idle curiosity.
But her attention's drawn more towards the crow. "Hey, it's alright... shhh." She lightly reaches her finger further, to gently offer the tips of her gloved fingers to graze against the soft feathers(?) of the side of its wing. Alarm overwhelms curiosity at the last moment at the evidence of smoke, causing Gwen to draw back, but far too late.
For the world explodes in crows. She cries out and protectively curls halfway in like a pocket knife, covering her head and neck with her gloved hands and shutting her eyes against the mass of talons and feathered bodies. She blindly backs away, step by step, by with no real plan in mind. Protect yourself. Get away. Move. Find shelter. Access damages.
And when the sounds and sensations stop, Gwen stops as well, straightening slowly like a turtle coming out of her shell.
".... ah. I... messed up. I really messed up." she notes with a rasp, licking chapped lips. She doesn't feel technically injured.
She knows better than to trust that judgment. "Just back away. Keep moving. Slowly. Don't panic, Gwen. Easy..."
If whispering to a horse could work, a human could work just as well, especially if it's yourself.
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
It's fine, everything's fine.
The crow squawks, cackling lightly and fluttering its wings, looking at Gwen for all the world like she might be crazy for reacting the way she did. Truthfully, there is no evidence of the tumult that went on only a moment prior--no sign of crack or corvid to justify the guarded stance she takes even now against the crow whose plumage seems to crawl across its body. It continues staring at her, curious as to her behavior, and perhaps more than a little proud for scaring her off with his brutal skills.
It's easy, after a moment, to disregard the sensation as imaginary, a figment of no more import than a passing daydream. An abundance of caution in the badlands is often its own justification. Even a peck could be imagined to be something else entirely? But even then, the crow, for all of its vivid appearance and that personably sharp blue-eyed stare does not seem to be ...
...part of this world, at all.
The sensation is stark and as impersonal as it is dramatic. A chasm lays behind Gwen, as if the entirety of the earth and everything itself was carved out by that pealing flock of crows, her heel venturing into the precipice of nothingness as she backs away. It is a unique feeling, the sudden rush of there simply being nothing under your feet, and the alarm of being subject to a fall that never ends. Reaching the end of the world where everything drops off into nothing is a dramatic experience--
But by the time Gwen can get a look of what around her is gone, there's nothing but more grounds. But even so. doesn't it look a little bit like the path back to the campsite? .... But wasn't it that way? That looks like it could be the direction as well. Suddenly, there is a thousand routes back to the campsite.
But the campsite is empty. Well, empty of everything it used to have in it. Embers crawl up from the fire, stoked by the young child stirring it with a stick quietly. He works industriously, coolly, as if there's nothing else in the world. He toils. He hovers. It's almost like he doesn't notice that the site is now infested with crows, milling about and pecking up things off the ground.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
The world seems to resettle into some semblance of sense for Gwen to relax, prompting the courier to slowly lower her hands to see... a smug-looking crow. Blue-grey eyes blink, her head tilted to the side as the crow looks back at her. She itches her head, and allows herself a laugh. "Y'got me."
If only that was it. But, for all the way the ground in front of her seems to be solid, the area behind her feels like a void, laid uncomfortably against the back of her boots. Turning around reveals nothing but more land, a sight that is about as unnerving as seeing nothing at all, for it's hard to tell which sense she needs to trust. The supernatural eye that was rudely awalened by the Seraph Ragnell's pranks is newborn, and Gwen isn't quite sure whether to discern weird feelings as something it's detected, or a figment of her own paranoia and imagination.
All she could do is walk on, leaving the crow behind. Go to her campsite, gather her things (as well as her wits), and move.
A person could trace her thought pattern as she tries identify one path versus another, her humor serving as an initial shield against alarm. Even she, the courier who has traveled through many parts of Ignas in her five years, gets lost. It's all a matter of using logic to get back to the right area, not falling prey to panic, and possibly making a mistake or two in judgment. Or three. Or four. Five. Six.
It doesn't make any sense. All of these routes look like they could be candidates for the exact path she took. It's not as simple as just 'being lost', it's worse. Gwen knows what 'lost' is like. This is something that defies reason, like coming across the sun rising in a night sky, or a blizzard on a hot desert. When Gwen manages to find the campsite, she takes a moment to sigh and recollect her, turning her head to look around cautiously.
No.
This isn't her campsite. Gulliver would be here. Her cart would be here. Her supplies would be here. All that is here is the crows, a campfire, and a young boy.
"Huh." It's all... strange. Curious. New. There's nothing really that could be done now except just walk in casually, just loud enough to announce yourself in accordance to Badlands campfire etiquette, and see where it just takes her. She'll figure something out.
"I see you got a lot of friends here," Gwen says as a vague introduction, easing herself into the light of the fire like a swimmer dipping their toe into frigid water. "Guess you have better luck with crows than I do." She tries to judge her next actions by the reaction, if any, of the boy. He certainly looks so focused that he may be too engrossed in his work to notice her. "D'you mind," she eventually says, wetting her lips as she tests the words, "if I sit here a spell? That's a nice lookin' fire you got there!"
The friendly smile painted on her lips softens, tempered into something more realistic in the context of the situation at hand. Her voice, likewise, is softer. "... I don't mean you any harm. If I trespassed, I apologize."
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
hop hop.
hop hop hop.
It's quite the peculiar situation. Crows are milling about the campsite, potentially numbering in the hundreds. Not a one of them takes flight, or makes any sound larger than a mild chuffing, as one finds a bug that doesn't cooperate, or another tries to break a pebble that looks like a peanut in half. They hop around with little regard to the newcomer to the campsite.
hop hop hop.
One could truthfully spend hours watching the birds, as each seems to have its own distinct agenda in being here. One is clearly gathering twigs. Another is just trying to keep the embers from the fire from landing on it, without actually having to move out of the way of the breeze where the warmth is landing on it.
If she sits still for long enough, one is probably going to try and take Gwen's bootlaces.
hop hop hop...
The kid is dressed in a single black form fit knitwear, a turtleneck extending from his palms to his belt and chin, exposing very little of his tan complexion. His black hair is messy, but tied back in a tail at the back as he pokes the rod into the flame, repositioning the log over the heat that glows beneath the existing tinder. His eyes are the sort of blue that wouldhave gained any other boy a popularity to write songs about. The color of cornflowers, cast in a painfully haunting glow that never quite leaves the mind. It is hard to remark upon how selene those eyes are until he lifts them and turns them on the newcomer.
It's like the moon cut free of the clouds.
The boy's face is unremarkable, a flat expression drawn on his soft features. He seems as if he is of the age when his jawline is sharpening, hardening. But the cloud he carries on his shoulders make it unecessary. He meets the sea green-eyed drifter with nonchalance, purposefully holding her gaze only for the moment it takes to acknowledge her. Then he cus into the fire again. "You can do what you want," he says. "You couldn't trespass if you wanted. It's not like you can do anything important, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Curiouser and curioser.
'You couldn't trespass if you wanted. It's not like you can do anything important, right?' Gwen chuckles softly at the boy's response, ease visibly flowing into her body posture. "Yeah, yeah. I'm just a courier." Nothing more, nothing less.
There were crows in the distant po-dunk town of Little Twister, but they were still subject to the violence and degradation that plagued most residents of the desert town. They were hardly as animated as these creatures, hopping about without a care in the world. If this was a supernatural event, it's not a completely unpleasant one, excluding the events from earlier. As Gwen eases into a comfortable sitting position by the fire, she stretches out her legs, laying one straight while bending the over to sling her right arm over it.
The boots have some trinkets on them themselves- a few sparkles to add a point of interest to the drab leather. She gently twists the boot, shifting it slightly in an attempt to let one or two beads catch the light of the fire for the benefit of the braver of the mass of crows, her smile shifting with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes as the crow hops closer.
A voice in her head shouts that it'd be better to run. Let the instinct of fear take her away from this strange place. Trust the paranoia roiling her gut and flee to a place where normalcy reigns again.
But it's pleasant here. She could gather her thoughts, then venture out to brave that unknown force. Even if this place is likely connected to that, she'll take this as her way to understand it better.
The wondrous world is big enough for something like this, as well. A thread of unpredictability that made a Drifter remember to appreciate each pattern that allowed them to survive.
"What's your name?" she says, after a comfortable amount of silence. "My name's Gwen Whitlock. Super... er... courier..." The title gets dragged out as the crow tries to drag off with her boot's laces. The courier just watches in amazement. "I think this little fella deserves that."
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
The courier's bootlace will be expertly removed in stunning time, paracord snaking loose of eyelets with an expert eye and a few frustrated pecks. There is the crushing sense that there's not a whole lot of things the crows couldn't take apart and make off with, given a little bit of time absent fight. However, the trophy immediately causes a problem in the group, as several other crows come over to look at what the victor crow is hopping off with. They stop, look at him with heads turned a few degrees to the left or the right. Then they immediately try to take the free ends of the bootlace, to the first's dismay. This causes something of a commotion. It will take a minute or two to sort out. The rest don't much seem to care.
hop hop hop.
The young child rakes the embers, causing glowing motes to fall across the end of the campsite. His manner seems brusque at best, his mind flitting away the moment she asks him a question. "My name isn't important," he says. That word again. "Don't get relaxed," he says, finally. "Or just relax forever, I guess. I don't care. You can stay here for as long as you like. But I wouldn't recommend it."
"It won't turn out well for you, if you do."
The crows, for their part, have worked out a fragile peace treaty concerning the bootlace, which was forged by a bigger crow who came by and took it. Nobody else seems to feel like challenging him, so the lace is slowly making its way to the far side of the clearing. However, while the fighting and fluttering has subsided, Gwen's winsome display of ankled charms has paid out. Absent a trophy to make their life whole, the crows are now starting to build up in number near her crossed legs, looking with means and intention at the charms that dangle from the leathers. Some of them are already beginning to peck at the most exposed measures of her.
She might notice that a crow is sitting next to her, buddy style, watching one of her earrings closely.
And then one tries to jump on her knee the moment her attention is away.
This is going to get worse before it gets better.
"Anyway," the kid continues, paying no attention to the gang thievery going on, "Super courier, what's that even," he grouses, moodily. "Do you just, like, deliver bigger than usual stuff? What if you were asked to deliver a dragon or something. Bet you didn't think of that, did you." He jabs into the fire, causing it to puff up in a bale of white smoke, but he seems to be tough enough to take it without tearing up. After all, he's the one keeping things together over here.
"None of that sounds like an adventure, anyway," the kid decides. "And I'm only interested in adventures. Don't think that, just cus you're cute or whatever, that I'm going to give you any leeway. Just laying around here showing off your stuff to everybody... hmph."
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
Gwen's never really got to see crows up close like this before, be it normal ones, or... whatever these are. They certainly act like normal crows, but something hesitates in Gwen's psyche, not quite ready to fully let down her guard.
And the child's warning only enables that caution further. Gwen laughs nervously, one hand rubbing the the light red hair on the back of her head. "Yeah, I think I came across somethin' kinda dicey on the way here, so I kinda see what'ca mean. Though, how *do* you exit here, anyways? This area, anyway." Maybe the boy is a Seraph, and this is some pocket world that she's fallen into that only they inhabit. It's possible. "I mean, I think I can manage t'figure out how to leave a camp. I've left many camps, so I got lots of experience!" Gwen swings her fist merrily as she proclaims her practice, grinning all the while.
... And of course she'll try to make the kid laugh, whether he's Seraph, human, or something else she doesn't know of just yet. His refusal to say his name is taken at face value; he wouldn't be the first person she's known that hasn't exactly volunteered a true name, for better or worse.
The crow that jumps on Gwen's knee redirects the courier's attention back to it, fog blue eyes looking at the crow's own strange intelligent gaze.
"It's a way to show that I can get a job done. Like, even if they wanted something delivered from the Badlands to Adlehyde, I'd do it! ... As long as there weren't blockades or anythin'. I ain't the sort to do illegal stuff. But I did deliver metal dragon fossils!" Or the funds from them. Also, her ARM is made from one. It counts. "Even if it was a piece of one, they're *heavy*. In cases like those, I gotta charge extra for the rent it'll take for the extra horse and a reinforced cart-" Another crow tugs at the buttons of her right glove, while another tugs on the handkerchief around her neck, perhaps enamoured with the brightly colored fabric.
She seems helpless in the face of all these crows, like someone swamped with kittens climbing and clawing around. "You like adventure stories too? I do to- ow." Off goes one of the buttons on Gwen's right glove, the crow going off with its prize.
Her expression softens at the roundabout mention of the boy's opinion of her, for just a moment. Then, just as a crow leaves with her handkerchief, Gwen squeaks incredulously. "S-showing off?!" One hand goes to her bare neckline with the rush of someone not used to having any parts of themselves exposed, quickly buttoning up the poet's collar of her blouse in a bid to keep any skin underneath from being exposed.
Especially on her right side.
That would be an 'adventure' story she wouldn't want to tell anyone. "I suppose I, er, might have time for a story, y'think? Or you could tell me one, since we seem to like the same things."
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
The courier quickly finds herself colonized by several birds at a pace. They are fast, and not especially inclined to respect personal boundaries. A flash of blue meets a painful mirror--meeting eyes with one of the crows unlids a painfully bright cornflower gaze, harsh and unyielding to look at. It's the sort of look that is hard to peel away from, absent a distraction.
A peck at her boots ought to do it.
Whatever bravado the courier displays finds no purchase in the boy, his eyes dark and focused as he works the fire. Really, Gwen's animated exposition does more to upset the crows than it does the boy's mien, and the sudden movement starts a fight over the charms on her boot. There goes the handkerchief, fluttering away into the sky.
"Stories are just something someone came up with one day and started telling. They don't mean anything, they're not adventures," the boy counters. "You can't be a mega of anything unless you can break some rules. I bet you haven't even had a big score. Everybody just worries about the same things. Like, 'how much is it to rent this' or 'need enough money for that.' There isn't anybody who ever spread a guy's legend because he bought a bunch of stuff. That's the kind of person real adventurers put out of business. I don't know a whole lot, but nobody ever escapes that way."
The boy looks over, his patience a single string in the light.
"What is it that you're so afraid of?"
The crow is tugging insistently at Gwen's boot charms, while the other buddy bird has hopped up onto her shoulder. In somewhat less than buddy fashion, the bird pecks at Gwen's neckline buttons in time to the boy's line of questioning, prying dangerously as she tries to maintain a sense of dignity. It's almost like the bird knows...
NOPE! It was just a clever distraction to get her to drop her guard. The crow actually really wants her earrings.
At this rate, Gwen might not have much left of value on her person by the time the birds have borne out all their interests in her. Let's hope they don't find out if she has a coinpurse.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
A grey blue gaze meets eyes that are alarmingly blue, bewilderingly so. It takes a peck from another crow to dislodge her attention from those unsettling eyes, snapping instead to another, safer distraction.
Which turned out to not be safe at all, as the knot on that handkerchief has been untied, and her precious handkerchief goes bounding away. She has others, thankfully, but that one was particularly nice. "Yeah, but how do y'get to hear about adventures? Not everything is somethin' you can experience yourself. I don't know what it's like to be a young man tendin' a fire in a strange landscape."
A big... score? "Well, yeah, there's always makin' sure y'have enough to keep on journeying. But if I really wanted money and fame, there'd be better ways of doin' it. I just wanted to see the world, and to be a part of it. Delivering things was an easy answer." 'I don't know a whole lot, but nobody ever escapes that way.' Was that his answer to her question?
He was... trying to help her.
Looking at this blunt, sullen young boy, Gwen's loudly cheery expression softens into quiet acknowledgment. She might as well be truthful.
A child wouldn't judge a woman for having a scar.
Maybe telling this one truth would be a better offering than lying about something she doesn't have. Placing her left hand over the space between her neck and her shoulder to point out the area, she says, "I have a nasty scar here. Starts from about here-" --she points to the middle of her neck, then sweeps the hand down her right side-- "Down to the bottom half of my leg. Got it back from when I was a kid, younger than you. I don't care for others to see it. Especially," she says, a smile creeping on her lips, "if they might think I'm just a cute gir- ACK!" The earring goes flying off.
Gwen sighs, shaking her head. "They got me. Pretty smart little guys!"
Well, that moment of seriousness didn't actually last long, did it? There are other secrets she'd rather keep, besides. A scar, in the scheme of things, is hardly something that is difficult to give up, especially when asked about point blank. She gains nothing by lying about it.
"Well," she says, laughing, "If the crows the ones takin' the toll fees, I guess they can keep that stuff. They're pretty neat company, besides. Never seen a crow with eyes that blue before- baby crows, yeah, but they got dark blue eyes."
<Pose Tracker> Isiris Shango'Ra has posed.
"If you don't experience everything, how do you know who you even are?"
The boy puts the poker down, setting it against the borderstones to the flames gently, letting the end grow ember hot. Dusting the soot from his hands, he never actually looks back, the litany of interest the flock of blackbirds maintain more than enough eyes for Gwen to busy herself with.
The birds themselves seem mostly contented, or at least mostly distracted, by what they've already taken from Gwen, shoelaces, earrings, buttons and charms being squabbled over by the group. The overall mood matches the boy's, who doesn't directly cut against most of what the older girl says, even as his hands go to his hips, his eyes tracing out the tongues of flame.
"But that.... the day you got the scar," he starts, interest hitching.
"Wouldn't that be the day you figured out you were really alive?"
His hands slip to his sides, held there and not busying themself with any other mindless task. Watching the fire, the young boy's thread of interest plays out plainly. "Didn't you think...'I should be out there... I should be saving the world?' it's not for anything like fame, or really anything like that. And, a lot of people have wandered the woods forever, never knowing who they could have become, because they spent too much time hiding the only thing that made them real."
His voice is cut in mezza voce, throat shifting vaguely in the firecast light as he puts sound to the thing.
"There's no point in meeting it yet, if you haven't had the chance to become real."
A bird or two flies away into the sky, taking whatever they will. "You should be proud of your pain. It's going to be the only thing you have, soon. He's going to come for you, you know. If you're not real enough... if you're not a person, he will just eat you up. You can't be cute then. Don't you think?"
The boy shakes his head slowly, as Gwen comments on the flock.
"They're not real. Didn't you notice?"
He turns. There is nothing but a black flame burning where his face would be. His words fold on eachother, as if they could be heard in a hundred different orders and still mae the same warped sense.
"I'm not even real."
The world changes with each heartbeat, which grows more painful with each monumental thump in the chest. The first beat, one half of the world slides along a shear line, as if cut like a knife. The second, the ground cracks like glass. The third, the sky begins to fray at the edges, and clouds begin to pour out of it. By the fourth, the boy is folded and tattered, like a weathered poster outside of a saloon advertising the next big star.
One blink, and Gwen will find herself out in the middle of nowhere, by herself.
<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.
'Wouldn't that be the day you figured out you were really alive?' A shot of anger flares in Gwen's chest, brief and hot, before quickly being snuffed out. This was a part of what happens when she told this to people, right? You deal with the consequences.
"Not really. Not then." Gwen turns her gaze downwards and reflects back, her mind cautiously revisiting her scattered memories of that event from so long ago.
It was heavy. The wooden beam that once crushed her small body. Her heart was always weak, always lagging further and further behind the demands of her growing body, but here, it was as if a vise was tightening further on it. Between the heat, the smoke, and the smells of burning skin and flesh-
"The thing I remembered thinking then-" There was something, she remembered. Something... small. She was obviously saved. She wouldn't be here otherwise. "I realized there were kind people in the world." There were kind people, even in a town like Little Twister.
Death still lingered for her after that, like a constant childhood friend. Even if she didn't have the scar, or still had her old family, she'd still die. "Just didn't know what to do with that until I got better." Her heart just wasn't strong enough to do much, no matter how much kindness there was in the world.
It wasn't until she got her ARM that the horizon spread open wide before her, brimming with possibilities. Her scars. both from the fire, and the ones that were done to her, for the sake if giving her a future.
"Ah, so." She gives the not child a secret sort of smile. "This 'him'- he's gonna let me go to let me fatten up a bit more? Eh, forget that analogy, that's kinda creepy." She laughs nervously. "I don't really know what any of this is."
Because none of it's real. Gwen passively lets the crows fly away as they do, keeping her eyes on the fire. "So I guess my time is up here." Her voice grows sad. "Then I'll be meeting your big brother, then, and he won't be as fun to talk to, eh?"
The boy's turned to face her. Gwen's gaze doesn't want to let go from the fire; it wants to ignore what she might see there. No, she needs to look up, for once in her life. The courier steels herself, slowly looking up. It's a futile attempt at bravery- Gwen is still, at heart, a simple courier. She may have faced death more than once, but in each instance, it was like the coming of an old, annoying friend, constantly reminding her of a clock that was quickly ticking down.
She cries out and quickly scoots backwards on her hands and and feet, dislodging whatever crows may still be on her. The world begins to leak like water from shattering glass ball, the painful cracks in the logic of the pocket world disintegrating with each beat of her formerly beleaguered heart. ".... ah...."
Still, he gave her what amounted to a warning. Whatever his goal is, whatever he is, even if he himself is part of the 'Him', Gwen takes in a breath, grits her teeth, and barely manages to croak out a few words.
"Thanks... for telling... me." It was a sort of kindness, and she needs to respond.
And then, it's all gone.
The redhead shifts onto her feet like an unsteady colt.
She needs to get back to her camp, and try to recover.