2021-05-07: And It Will Come

• Cutscene: And It Will Come
• Cast: Ruth Pauling, Gordon (NPC, Wild ARMs 4)
• Where: Halim - Old Town
• Date: 2021-05-07
• Summary: The frontier town of Halim is in peril. Understood to be something like the threat that nearly befell Port Rosalia, the Everstead-Rey company prepares its defense strategy. All the while, a grumpy retired man finds an unfamiliar uninvited ear to relay his troubles to. (This cutscene takes place some hours before 2021-05-08: The Stains of Time!)

The frontier town of Halim found a new cloud of gloom, with a graying sky felt the need to come join the 'fun.' It felt like a morning leading into a day that might end in mourning.

Every time the rain passes through, there's a scramble to test the accumulated rainwater for any toxins. Such is the price paid when the belligerents of the Civil War kept discovering new ways to bring harm and ruin to each other, and made use of them without thinking beyond the immediate tactical benefits of doing so. What should bring relief and renewal from the heavens now only threatens to reinforce the ruin the survivors of Celesti reconcile with.

The reality of life in post-war Celesti territories has never been whether or not they land they live on or that the air they breathe would be clean - but whether it was simply at an 'acceptable' level. No, 'tolerable' was the more popular term. Life on the frontier of a war-blasted land rarely ever passed 'tolerable,' unless one was willing to lower the bar, day by day.

To lower that bar, and huddle under the uncompromising terms of a power seemingly untouched by all but its own environmental realities. Guild Galad invested in the few cities and communities that remained. If nothing else - or as some would say, if anything else - they at least protected their investments. The arable land that remains, the archaeological sites not yet overtaken by the roaming dead...

Halim found itself an uneasy partnership with the Everstead-Rey ARMs and Ammunition company. Its older citizens, the same amount of years out from the ravages of the war as much as anyone else, felt their own personal accomplishments and identities start to crumble in their wake. They've become just another 'investment,' they reasoned, with the Dragon Fossils in the nearby mountains their first and foremost concern.

An 'investment' that has just been threatened with word to expect waves of hostile, diseased wildlife like those that almost reached Port Rosalia. The Old Town of Halim just happened to be the bottleneck. Now that it has that much value, Guild Galad was ready to put forth a front of concern.

That's how Gordon, a retiree too old and infirm to work - but never too old and infirm to struggle to survive - felt as he watched more able-bodied people go about Old Town than he'd ever seen. More than anything, he just wanted to be left alone.

He was a haggard man whose ability to stand straight up was just a convincing lie. His hair long since greyed, a matching beard kept short and neat as one of the few matters of pride he had left. A small white towel hung out the corner of his waist, ready to wipe off the irritating allergy-inducing dust that kept assaulting his face. He'd rather have stayed inside, on a given day.

He was only coaxed out of his own home to yell at an associate of the head foreman of the local Dragon Mines, who themselves had to be present to relay information back to New Town. He wasn't looking forward to hearing all the shouting. All the sounds of war. He helped re-establish this settlement following that, and now it feels like it's come again to knock at his door. Like Guild Galad, somehow, were dragging them into this even as they were their one line of defense.

He'd survive. He'd continue to honor the sacrifice of those who didn't make it to today. Even if the most he or anyone could hope for, it felt, was to live 'tolerably.' He'd do that much, no matter what. That, alone, was an achievement out on the frontier.

A squeaky, worn wooden set of stairs leading up to his cabin only made a 'tolerabe' place for himself to sit, to wipe away his face. He was ready to yell at the next person who passed by. Some hired gun that might yell at him to keep shelter inside.

A growing shadow intruded. He heard the footsteps before he saw who or what, and he scowled underneath his towel.

"Keep moving." He snarled. "I - we - live here and I'm going to sit on my damn doorstep if I please."

"You're frustrated. You're afraid." The voice belonged to a woman who came off almost as tired. "I'm--"

"Yes, you have functional eyes in your head." Gordon removed the towel from his face to look upon the owner of the voice and shadow alike - a woman with pointed ears and clothes that seem more than a little too big on her. "Do I look like Archibald to you?"

She bowed her head, her dull copper hair spilling in front of her face, which nearly obscured her gray eyes. She shook her head once, both gloved hands clasped together in front of her. Her right gave her left a squeeze that did not look gentle. "You look like you need someone to listen to you."

"To listen to me tell you to piss off?" Gordon spat on the ground. "You got the look of a Drifter. You're only here for one thing. Your work, your pay, damn everything else. I don't got work for you. I don't got pay for you. All I got are unkind words, and lady--"

"I'll hear them." She interrupted.

"Lady." Gordon interrupted back. "I've already seen you bother Mathilda, Pick, and Rebecca... and I bet the clothes on my back they didn't have anything for you either."

"They shared their feelings." The elven woman responded, her facial features that of a quiet, detached tranquility broken by a patient smile. "Their fears about the groundwater getting poisoned. Their worries about whether they could still work. Their dread about another live explosive being set off."

"You have time to do that while everyone's running around, yelling about how we're all about to be attacked, just chewing the fat with everyone. And now you're bothering /me/ because--"

"I care."

Gordon looked to her incredulously as she said those words, as she all but invited herself to sit down next to him - to his left. He did not have it in him to protest. His eyes were drawn to the outline of a rifle mostly obscured by a harness and blanket. There was an unease in seeing the shape... in conflict with the blunt, if earnest, words of someone claiming to care.

"I care," she repeated, "that everyone's suffering."

"Welcome to what's left of Celesti." Gordon snorted, as if now becoming more bitterly amused. "Now known as Guild Galad, as far as anyone cares."

"Further than that." The elf smiled a little more, taking her right hand and placing it over her heart, the Granasian rosary around her exposed right forearm rustling. Her composure held before his sarcasm... only breaking eye contact and looking away.

"Pff. There's really nothing farther than them, now," Gordon continued. "They've still got everyone in New Town working on the mines. They figure they're shored up enough with defenses here, they can keep going. A quota that needs fulfilled, or... whatever their excuse." He looked over his shoulder, over yonder. "...And yet they still keep yelling at Pick to get indoors here, stop working, like our own in this part of town doesn't matter."

"But it does." She looked up again. "It should, shouldn't it?"

"Not to them!" Gordon threw his hands up. He let his emotions out. Someone was listening. He was making damn well sure he was heard. "My late friend... his nephews all live and work in New Town. They treat this as an emergency for all of us? That's fine. We're stuck in between, they got everyone defending Old Town? That much is fine too! That's better than some other places get, maybe I shouldn't complain. But I got issues with it!"

"I don't mind if you do." The elf encouraged as he kept going, quietly re-adjusting the fit of her shawl with her right hand before bringing it up to her left shoulder. She looked up towards the skies as he spoke, for a moment, those gray eyes of hers having held a hint of longing.

"But you want me to believe we're going to be under attack by crazed, rabid wildlife and take that at face value?" Gordon swung a hand outward in the air. "I've heard about Port Rosalia, sure - but everyone at New Town? They're almost sitting ducks, if anything - anyone - slips through. I lived through the Civil War! Almost all of us have!"

"Yes," the elf said with a downcast voice within the span of that single word.

"What I'd been trying to tell them... all it'd take is one seismic event from an undetonated warhead." His voice grew more fearful. "We keep finding them, each one's life and death for the entire town - and even if it isn't a biological weapon, it'd take just one." He put up a finger. "One seismic event. The shells they used destroyed entire towns - like Rebecca's. They're still about, buried. Just one seismic event like /that/... they're all running out there scared... and almost everbody who can keep order's up here in Old Town." Gordon once again wipes his head. "I already said, it makes sense they got everyone up here that I know of to keep Old Town safe. The part that's not making Guild Galad the income the Dragon Fossil Mines do. I'm grateful, but..."

"You're frustrated. You're afraid." She echoed her sentiments from the beginning.

"...Yeah. I am." Gordon leaned forward, propping his elbows against his knees. "All of us sacrificed so much to survive to build Halim... reclaim it... it always feels like, we're one overlooked detail by Guild Galad away from losing all of it again. No matter how much they think out every other... it always comes back to how they recoup their 'investment.' We all know the horror stories elsewhere." He looked out to the distance. "All it'd take is one bad day for New Town."

The elf exhaled gently through her nose, but there wasn't a sense that what's there really... left her. Her smile was, nonetheless, genuinely patient and peaceable.

"...The Everstead-Rey people haven't done us too bad yet," Gordon suggeted in the moment that his tone might lighten up, that he's done with his grievances, "but it's a matter of time. If they don't take it out on us, they'll take it out on the people running New Town... who're damn well likely to take it out on us anyway."

"There's so much fear... and unhappiness." The elf was stating the obvious, but yet, she speaks like this fact is one of profound meaning. Of a /feeling/.

"I've a question." Gordon spoke the question. "You're not here to sniff out... traitors, or spies, or saboteurs, are you?"

"No." She replies, meeting his gaze again, though with lidded eyes. "When someone is in such emotional pain... it's good when someone is there, isn't it?" She asks, as if the uncertainty were there. "I like being someone that's... there."

"Ahhh... in which case." The retiree just spat it out. "Then you're here for me when I say I wish Guild Galad would just leave us be." He sighs. "It's... it's not that simple, I know. But wishes? Everyone can wish... and I wish that everyone would leave us be, and... just let us live."

The recipient of these thoughts held a contemplative look on her face as she returned to rubbing her shoulder.

"You got a bum shoulder, huh," Gordon flipped the script. "You sure you can carry that? I've seen the way you slouch while you were... listening," stopping himself from saying 'bothering,' "to everyone else."

"Anything my heart can carry, I can shoulder." She squeezed her left shoulder, a small wince of pain. She smiled through it.

"That's a big damn heart." He laughed, taking the metaphor as a joke. "Really, though... I got a bad back and it takes a lot out of me to pretend I can keep it straight. I've been there. I am there. So--"

"That kind of pain doesn't bother me... it's fine." She started to rise, with a slouch as she took her left hand to the railguard to rise, parting her right from the shoulder. "There's others I'd like to talk to--"

"Here, let me help you," Gordon, having softened since, reached out to help her up despite his own advanced age and frailities - one good turn for another. Just as he touched her gloved hand...

She yelped.

Not in pain, but in shock, and nearly pulled Gordon face forward into the ground.

"Lady! What, whoa, I wasn't--" He was taken aback. By the act, and that growing intensity in her eyes as she brought that hand up to her heart and clutched it.

"Don't touch, I, I..."

A tragedy was averted, on Gordon's end. He didn't stumble to the ground, but boy, his back hated it. A pensive look crossed his face. "...Bad hands, too--"

"They're bad!" The elf exclaimed, and drew both her hands into her overcoat pockets as she turned away from him. "They hurt, they hurt, all they do is..."

"...I got something in my home for--"

"No! It's fine. I'm fine. Y-you're not," she flinched and shook, a bundle of nerves. "I'm sorry. They're... you didn't know, you don't know, it's fine," she took a few hurried steps off down the road, keeping those hands buried. Those hands that hurt... that she did not want to stop and take any sort of 'something' for.

She disengaged with such fervor that the two of them never got around to exchanging names.

Bewildered as he was about how that ended, Gordon stared into the distance after the strange elf woman... and once again felt uneasy looking at the shape of what she held on her back.

There wasn't much more to linger on. Only that he didn't want the day to be spoiled by someone shouting at him to get indoors and shelter in place, after something like that.

As he waited, he wondered what it would've been like for someone like that to have been there during the Civil War.

There were a lot of people in pain then.