Post by Liessel on Apr 2, 2024 13:09:52 GMT -5
Liessel could not help the smile that wanted to spread across her lips. Something about the way that Missus White spoke just then stirred it up within her. But then came a shadow. Did Missus White see her home as it was now, or did she see it as Liessel had always thought it was -- before Giessler?
The smile was gone, only a memory in the moment after it had started, "What of my home do you see?"
"These grew among tamed green, but their light plentiful, and they collected the breaths of many in the world above, and care by your hand." Missus White opened her eyes and found Liessel frowning at her. "I accept your gifts, Liessel Erphale."
The frown eased off, sliding away from her with the soft breath of an exhale and a nod of her head, "Thank you," the young priestess answered. It had been the peace of her garden, then, the warmth and love of what she shared with her friends and not the fear and heartbreak she had harbored for so long, "for accepting them."
Her right hand had drifted up in time with her words, stopping to rest over the beat of her heart.
Adam hovered there, but Liessel remained the center of attention. Easing, pleased, Missus White resettled in the pool, still cloaked as if in dense spidersilk thanks to her white hair and the way it floated on and in the water. "I have been here long, but never have I been above, on the height of the land above us. If I do not have the knowledge you seek, I may yet know others who are more often brushed by those who come and go, in life and in death, by means mundane and magical. They might help you if I cannot. But tell me what you wish to know."
With what Missus White was saying, Liessel's touch rose and brushed over the mark on her forehead. "I appreciate all the aid that you might be able to offer." She said, letting her hand fall to the flap of her bag.
Adam was there, so close beside her. Just the brush of a robe sleeve was enough to remind her, not that she had forgotten. He had just nudged her a moment ago. There was a piece of her, though, a small bit of awareness that was still touched by the incessant wriggling of that little worm within her mind.
Into her bag Liessel slipped her hand again, bringing forth a soggy piece of paper. The ink had smudged quite a bit. But there were characters that could still be read on that white paper with the washed-out pink and blue floral header. "These names that I have written down-- it was supposed, in the document that I had gotten them from, that they had traveled from the world above to what is now Harroway."
Missus White's pink eyes focused for not a full second on the page Liessel produced, before they met her gaze again. "Speak them aloud to me. Should I know them?"
"That is the question," Liessel drew in a breath as she carefully unfolded the paper, "I was hoping to get an answer to. And if you, anything you can tell me about what you remember of those you recall."
With the shadow of Adam at her shoulder he'd be able to see the tight and tiny smudge of those Futhark-like characters she'd written in at various points against the page where the water they'd traveled through hadn't completely obliterated the ink.
The first were "Aesir and Edda Lockeson."
Missus White closed her eyes and inhaled. It looked very much the way she'd done with Liessel's gifts, actually. It was that sort of quieting. She said nothing.
"Anselmet and Mathild Beaman," Liessel continued, reciting the names more from memory than from reading the ruined paper in her hands, "Asmund and Liva Weaverson, " her eyes drifting from the page toward where Missus White was as the white woman settled, and Liessel continued, "Gunnar and Sigrid Reistar -- "
No reaction.
"Ceasar and Claudia Amatus," she continued, a watchful eye on the white woman as more names came:
"Toth Truthseer --"
"Salvus and Fausta Artico --"
And finally, "Alba Amata."
The last name was spoken and Liessel let the hand that held the paper relax, her arm shifting within the thick sleeve of her robe until it was resting at her side.
"Toth Truthseer?" Missus White's question held amusement. "What a fitting name. --Are you testing me for some purpose other than recognition, Sister of Six?"
"No -- I--" Liessel answered, casting a glance toward Adam.
That glance didn't last long. It was a minor slide of her attention away from Missus White, but that attention was swift to return.
Sister of Six.
"If there is some test within these names, it was one designed long before I came to my service."
"I know none of these," the woman in the pool told Liessel thoughtfully. "None are of this house, and none came to me, to my sisters, or to the King and his attendants. If Amrilaine, too, was unfamiliar, and Veleith, the last of his kin, has gone out of reach, there may yet be one more of us--and one more of the sort to have breathed in such names. Tell me: are there more yet you would have me hear?"
Liessel shut her eyes and let her chin drop low for a moment. It was not, exactly, a disappointment. There had been no expectations, but there had been hope.
"Those names were names of The People, and I've no more to offer of them," her chin lifted and she found herself looking to Missus White again, "But I can share with you the names of The Guardians."
The woman nodded slowly. "When you speak their names, do so to the pool at your feet."
Liessel took a second to brush the edges of her robe back away from her legs so she could drop down to a knee there by the water's edge.
She braced herself there, one hand touching the stone beneath her while the other rested on her bent knee, "Aquarren, the storm bringer," she began, "Jostel, the wind walker; Emburu, the fire bringer; Terna, the molder of earth; and Eidole, the mother in our hearts."
"You speak names of giants."
You speak the name of giants.
Liessel felt her nod start but the water rippled, and the motion stopped.
The water rippled and her hands reached out, cupped together, and filled with it. It was clear, so clear that she could see the wrinkles of her palms and the lines that marked the places on her fingers where her joints bent to keep the water from falling away too quickly.
The space surrounding was wide, and lying next to her was the form of a man. He lay with his eyes shut, his skin a sunken pallor of grey, his hair crowning his head in thick matted curls where once something spectacular had sat.
He was close to death. She could feel that well within her heart. The sight, the knowledge of that made her heart ache. The water was brought to his lips, the lips of her king, and let to slowly run down from her fingertips into his mouth, into the slight part through which he barely breathed.
"Do not let go yet, My Lord," she pleaded, "Hang on for just a little longer."
Her words were whispered, meant for his deaf ears alone. She did not know if she could truly reach him, but she had to try.
"Koulm--"
The name came from somewhere behind her, breaking her away from the attention she was giving to the King of Camelot.
--You speak of giants-- Came the voice of Missus White.
Liessel blinked, feeling unsteady, and nodded again, "Yes," She heard herself breathe, hesitating before lifting her eyes to find Missus White there among the gentle waves of her pond, "They are spoken of as Giants in our stories. They were known here, then?"
"I know those names, but they did not come to me. So far as I know, nor did they go to Gwydda, who was my heart-companion above, before we were separated west and east. Do you know the times of which I now speak, young one? They are times that were different for my sisters, and for your folk; ask either and you would have received differing answers as to the shape of the world, and how light fit to the land. Do you know?"
"I have very little knowledge of that time," Liessel answered, the feeling of the words felt more than they were heard in her own ears, "What little I do know comes from stories that I've read, and what little I was able to research before coming to seek your aid."
She stayed low, kneeling there next to the edge of the pool. The water, and the soft glow that seemed to come from everywhere around them, her hand there on the stone that made up the floor of the place -- that feeling wiggling around in the back of her mind --
--Koulm--
Help me. Stay with me.
It was a voice in the back of her mind echoing, asking for something she could not give. But how she had wanted to, how it had broken her heart not to.
The hand she had rested against her knee rose to cover her mouth as she breathed out a shaken breath, and drew in her next as if to stifle a sob.
"I think you sense something," Missus White said softly, her gaze fixed on Liessel's bowed one.
The tears that fell from her eyes when she closed them to breathe out a very softly spoken "Oh," felt hot against her skin. She did not bother wiping them away. They were tears shed for a King.
"There's a woman," Liessel stated after a moment, her eyes resting back on the gentle pool that Missus White occupied.
The water rippled.
"She's tending to the King -- to Arthur. He's -- so close to death. He's barely moving --" Her words started from behind her hand, but that hand lowered after a moment, drifting down as if she were about to lay it lightly against something solid at her side where there was nothing but air. "Her heart is broken, but she is giving him water. She is speaking quietly to him hoping that he will hear her, hoping that he will hold on for just a little longer. -- Koulm."
It was as if Adam had disappeared from all of this, but he had not. Brow tight suddenly as he looked between the woman in the water and Liessel, he appeared at her side on a knee, trying to read anything of Liessel from the side. His hand was on her shoulder, closing there, not to shake her--at least not yet.
"Ahhh--that name I know well." Missus White smiled sadly as she considered Liessel--and her gaze did flick to Adam, who showed her only eyepatch, before she ignored him again. "Koulm is near. I wonder, does she, in turn, dream of you."
Adam had come to her side, Liessel was aware of him in the full sense that her body and mind recognized that he was there. She wanted to turn toward him, to fold against him and hold fast. Something kept her rooted to where she knelt. Something kept her hand planted there on the stone floor. Something kept her eyes on the water.
These weren't just memories.
"She is so close, and she is so sad," Liessel agreed with Missus White, "Her hands move as if they were moved by me. Her words whispered as if they were my own. And this place," At least that part of her had been released to motion. She found herself able to lift her chin to look around the stone-cut room with the pool and woman of white skin within it. Her eyes briefly settled there on the woman before she looked toward Adam there at her side, her tears free flowing still, and then it was back to the woman again, "It is -- I feel I've been here before."
If Koulm did dream of her, what dream was she having?
Liessel was in tears. Adam couldn't help but see. Her tears were joining Missus White's pool.
"What do you sense, child, of where she is?" came Missus White's soft voice.
What did she sense? Liessel let her eyes fall back to the water for a moment.
Hands dipped into the water, bringing some over the head of the fallen King. It was let to dribble gently, wetting bit by bit his brown hair. He breathed still.
She closed her eyes causing some tears to squeeze free by the motion, causing them to catch against the robe she wore as they quickly fell.
Liessel focused, she let her mind open up to the sense she had of the other woman the same way she would have done when looking to bring The Guardians forth. She did not have to work at it for very long, nor very hard. In that place of white stone, soft glow, and a woman of ancient years, Liessel felt the fullness of that presence within the heart of her.
"She is here," The young priestess stated, bringing the hand she wasn't bracing with to rest against her heart, palm flat and fingers splayed, "Right here. This is where I feel her."
When next Liessel opened her eyes, she would find Missus White's face within inches of her own.
No warm breath to warn her.
No slosh of the waves in the pool.
Perhaps Adam's hand on her might have warned her, but whether it did or did not, she looked into wide, swept pink eyes.
It was Adam's hand, his unspoken warning, that brought Liessel to open her eyes. She couldn't move. There was no reflexive jerk backward. That something that had prevented her from turning to Adam for comfort was the same something that prevented her from putting space between herself and Missus White.
That close, she had no choice but to meet that pink eyed gaze. Her young hazel eyes flinched away from that contact for a moment as she blinked more tears free, but it was not a gaze she could ignore with it being so close to her own.
"Sweet Sister," said the woman gently, "you share with me your tears. For whom do you shed them? This lady, Koulm? Her grief need not be yours. She came here for duty, and duty did she fulfill." Missus White reached toward the hand that Liessel held over her heart.
This close, it was clear that the faint lines on her skin were subtle ridges. This close, her skin was not skin like Liessel's. It was bark.
Adam's hand and arm arced in to hold Liessel across the chest, to get in the woman's way. "Let her have a moment," he said quickly--maybe as a cover for the wire-taut awareness that had jumped him to move in the first place.
Bark.
Tree bark.
The details of that filled in as Adam's arm flashed in between her and Missus White, pressing and holding onto her. She had been about to answer the white woman when it happened. Those words were still there, but they were overtaken by the sudden realization of just how close Missus White had gotten, and just how close she had been to touching Liessel.
Reality smacked up against where she had been a moment before, and it felt so strange and alien. "Yes," she gave a nod of agreement with Adam, blinking her eyes to force more unfallen tears to shed, "Please, only just a moment."
"What's this fear?" Missus White whispered--perhaps to Liessel, perhaps to Adam. It was hard to say. "I, too, mourn such faithful ones. Such hearts."
"He is merely concerned," She told Missus White, her words still trembling. Liessel realized then that she didn't know if the woman with pink eyes was aware of Adam's name.
She looked from Missus White to Adam, trying to conjure a small appreciative smile. What made it in the wake of what had shaken her was just a slight little upturn to the corners of her lips.
It had not been too long ago, she recalled, that she had blinded him to keep the touch of something dangerous at bay. Here, he had done the same.
"You do fear," Missus White said slowly, withdrawing her hand. She remained close. "And you do grieve. Perhaps you have heard things that disturbed you. Perhaps you should question the source."
"In my short life I have been given much to fear. I grieve for many and have heard many disturbing things. I carry them all with me, as is my burden of being a Sister." Because she couldn't lie. She couldn't get those words to come forward the way she wanted to. In a place like this, truth could flow like the water that surrounded Missus White.
She settled back slightly, bringing the hand she had been bracing with up to curl around Adam's arm where he held her.
Adam's arm was across her protectively, and his hand tightened--offering comfort, solidarity--on her far shoulder.
The woman in the pool's smile was sad. "I mean, my child, that you fear me."
It was a grasp that she was glad for, just then. His hand tightened against her shoulder, and Liessel gave Missus White a bow of her head, "I must ask your forgiveness for that, great Lady. I do fear, but only because you are unknown to me -- unfamiliar. I came, against my fear, to speak with you -- to make something familiar out of the unfamiliar. Please, forgive a young heart its trepidation."
If Amrilaine's face had a maturing timelessness, Missus White's was something else. Perhaps, here, was the face of immortality. "I admire your courage in coming to me," she said. "That you quaver here shows wisdom, but your heart is familiar to me. Your form pleases me. We might speak more."
Adam would feel Liessel's breath as her chest rose against his arm, and then the release as she let go of it and bowed her head toward Missus White again, "Thank you, wise Lady, it would be a great honor."
Slowly, Adam drew his arm back, but when he did so he left his hand on Liessel's nearer shoulder instead, and stayed very close.
"Come to see me again in three days," Missus White told her. "In three days, we will speak again, and I will know if the Old One I remember lives still. And I will show you, Liessel Erphale, where Koulm walked, and we shall speak of her."
Liessel straightened as Adam withdrew his hand, but she remained kneeling there as she brought her right hand up to touch her forehead, and then her heart, before leveling her hand into the space between herself and Missus White.
"Three days, then, " It was said with a small nod, "would you like me to bring you more apples?"
"From your heart to mine," said Missus White with a sparkle in her eye. "I would accept more fruit grown by your hand, my lovely one. I know not the name your kind would use for the home of the Old One, but when I know if there is life still there, I trust you will decipher the path that you must take to reach it if there is."
That Missus White knew that meaning brought Liessel to smile, a glance thrown toward Adam. He had heard it, too, right? Not many -- if any of the people and beings she had met here knew that meaning without her having to tell them. But, it was a topic that would keep for three days hence, when she would be returning with more fruit in her bag. "If there is life, if the Old One still lives, then the way will be found."