Topic: Redux

Erinalle Dunbridge

Date: 2010-02-27 00:30 EST
(Late December 2009)

Miracles don't happen anymore. The water was choppy, and the boat that carried her back to Rhydin rolled on the sea. Erin had gotten on the small fishing vessel at the dock at her island home on a Sunday. She kissed her husband on the forehead, and set off for Rhydin for what she hoped, would be the last time.

Jewell had died. She had gotten a letter from Ivy in the mail, and hadn't waited to leave. She had few friends that would call her back, but Jewell did. It was hard to pack a bag and resolve to return home.

Home.

The word was something she had mulled and mulled since she left Rhydin permanently the past winter. The last time she had stepped foot on the soil was when? March? April? No, it must have been June. When she turned in her ring, and locked herself from the Baronial manor she had worked so hard for.

It was impossible to know if her friends remained. Lydia was off somewhere, that she knew, somehow. Though they were no longer sisters, and no longer even friends by some standards, there was a bond there. Two people that go through that much? you can't erase that. You can't erase love. It just dries up, compresses, becomes a fossil of the living breathing being it once was. Sometimes, most of the time, no amount of care can repair that.

And perhaps that was why Erin was scared and not excited. That and the place she had left hadn't changed. A woman she called friend and her children had been killed. The world had again taken something from her that she felt was rightfully hers. Rhydin was a thief.

At least it was just for a few days. Only a few.

The winds were cold, and they bit at her arms, at her back. The journey wasn't that long, she remembered, but somehow it always felt longer. Dread made the hours creep.

Erin was as she'd ever been. Small, thin, and now tan. Her fingers calloused from hours of beading, and manipulating wire, Erin had completely lost the pampered clean look of royalty she had entered Rhydin with. Though, in the four years since she stepped through the portal behind the bushes and entered her new home, more had happened than even she could remember.

"'Scuse me, Miss, you really shouldn't be leaning over the rail like that," the porter said to her cheerfully as he passed by on the deck. "The waters are rough, and you're libel to fall in."

"Oh." Erin was awoken from her thoughts, and tried to put together a passable smile before he left her. "Thank you." His back retreated, the blue and white of his uniform shining in the sunlight.

"Don't mind them," a voice came from behind her, "they're used to idiots who haven't ever been on a boat. I can tell you've traveled."

"A bit," Erin replied as she turned to face who she was speaking to. It was an elderly man with grey hair and lines in his face. His smile was partial, and he sat lounged in a deck chair.

"You have a refinement to you, you know, young lady. You can't fool me with those rosy cheeks," the man chuckled. His jacket was plaid and it clashed with the khaki of his pants. Erin smiled in response. "Business or pleasure, then?" His eyes narrowed, and he watched her more closely.

"Neither." There was a darkening in her eyes then, and she turned to look out to sea. "A friend of mine passed?" she paused on the word. "Oh, who am I kidding, she died. She's dead." Her body bent over the rail once more as she tried to get herself closer, then, to the sea.

"You know that's not true," he whispered across the deck. "I can see it in your eyes." Erin turned again, frozen in her place. "They have a tint of--"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Erin's knuckles turned white as she gripped the rail. "My eyes are green." She spoke the words as her ex-mother in law, the queen, had taught her to-- to end conversation.

"I see I've offended you." The man's smile spread until he looked like the cheesier cat. "Good girls like you never did like to own up to their misdeeds. Do they?"

"Uh?" Erin stuttered as she backed up against the rail of the ship. "I don't know what you're talking about. I make jewelry and clothing for a living, and my husband--"

"Doesn't know that you sneak out at night and play in the cemetery, does he? Or that you can ra--"

"That's enough." Erin stomped her foot, eyes pressed together, the heiress in her returning. "Quite enough."

"I thought you'd say that." He smiled wider. "I've been following you, and I have a favor to ask you. A? detour, if you will." The man gripped a cane that was leaning on his chair and started to pull himself up.

"I'm going to miss the funeral?" Erin's protest was weak, but there none-the-less.

"No, no, you can go there first, my dear. I wouldn't deny you that. But? after, you and I are going on a trip." He hobbled to her side, patting her on the shoulder lightly. "Because they burn witches on this boat, and I'm their witch security program." He winked as he left her there on the deck. "Have a good trip home."

Erinalle Dunbridge

Date: 2010-02-27 00:40 EST
(Crosspost with very minimal edits)

There wasn't any fanfare, or great notice, but sometime during the day, a small woman with a deep tan and large Jackie-O sunglasses made her way through the crowds. She was small, and her black hair peeked out from behind the rounded hat with its short black mesh veil. Her body was all curves and angles in the highly designed skirt suit she bought just for this occasion. Only the best fashion seemed appropriate for the memory of her friend, so from the docks to New Haven, to here.

She didn't say anything to anyone, or look up or even stop near the grave, though the magical who remembered her may have been confused with Erin's presence. It had been a long and confusing journey for her, but hearing of the death of her dear friend and all of her children was just more than she could bear without seeing it with her own eyes. The first people to welcome her to Rhydin had been the Ravenlocks and she had shared many nights with Jewell.

She left a wreath made of blue roses and baby's breath near the grave sight and single sunflower for each child's name. Laying it down, her hands shook. She pulled one glove from her fingers and dug them into the dirt for a moment. Closing her eyes, she prayed. Or so it seemed. Her eyes closed, and her concentration solid, those around her disappeared.

The moment passed and her lips pursed. Looking around her again, she shook the feeling from herself. Standing straight, she moved back through the crowd. Back in the shade, under the trees and the tall memorials of Rhydin's past great souls, she paused.

"Jewell, it was nice to call you my friend, my team mate and my mentor. I wish your family safe travels to where you're headed." Erin bowed her head a moment more before turning and disappearing into the fog and shadows that rolled through Rhydin and into this place.

It was hard not to have to stop. To have to sit down and let the emotion roll out of her, but she had the entire trip back for that. Erin wasn't sure she could face anyone else on this sad day, and so she kept moving. It had felt like yesterday that the pair had sat in her old mansion and drank coffee while Jewell was dressed to stalk the West End killer, or that she had hired Jewell to fight on her TDL team almost taking them to the playoffs. That it hadn't been over a year ago that they plotted against Franco, or shared a ring in a Redwin tournament. A sister, a kindred spirit, there were no words to express the loss the universe would feel, has felt.

Once, Erin may have blamed God. She would have railed and thrashed against him as she had when Storm seemed taken from her. But, alas, it seemed pointless now to try and fight this. To fight anything in this awful place. Rhydin took life with no discretion. Sometimes Erin felt better not to have to face that anymore, but today, she felt guilty for abandoning her friends in the mire, only able to return to see them gone?.

Erinalle Dunbridge

Date: 2010-02-27 11:40 EST
(This post and the one following are adapted from live play. Thank you, my dear encourager and bully for helping me write the missing piece)

The docks were full of chatter. It was a gray afternoon, the sky was threatening to open itself and spread its silent white gloom to the world below. Though she had only been in Rhydin a single afternoon, Erin was ready to re-board a ship and abandon this place. She moved through the crowd as if she had a purpose. A year of living in a sea faring town taught her to read the pulse of the piers. Their breaths exhaled longshoremen and sailors, crates and livestock. Each had its own path, its own movements, and Erin easily slid into the cracks, she was the water twisting through the ground, searching for where it belonged.

Pausing at the ship yard, hearing carpenters and ironmen alike grunting and hauling, Erin let herself survey the crowd. It moved around her as if she were a pebble in the bed of a river. Washing over her, to her right and to her left. The docks here were busy during the day, and so much stuff and merchandise moved about that she felt as if she were a guppy being taken along by the sea.

Erin paused for a moment, as a crate sailed by, pressing a hand to another to pull her coat tightly around herself. She tucked some hair under her hat and raised her head, looking at the signs on the shops that lined the "boardwalk" that was more like a thoroughfare.

Spotting the sign that she wanted, she nodded to herself and pushed the door of the ticketing agency open, letting the bell ring as she approached the nicked and beaten counter. It was dark inside, and the ceiling seemed low enough to touch her already short head. She crunched her shoulders so she felt as if she fit, and pressed her palms to the grubby wood of the counter. She just needed her ticket home, and all could be forgotten. The funeral. The man on her boat. Her missed friends, sports, places.

It was a moment of her shuffling feet before the gleam of the bell caught her eye and she chimed it, then, waiting. The man that came from the back had been waiting as well, and eventually, he mused, waiting always pays off. He had a serpentine smile as the sharpest dressed devil on Dockside sidles up towards her.

"Hello there. Been waiting a while for you."

"Have you?" Erin was saucy when she was in Rhydin. She was bratty when she was in Rhydin. She felt more like herself, yes, but also like she was harboring some sort of black ooze inside of her that Rhydin brought to boil.

"A few hours now, and I don't even like the way this place smells." He turns his metallic gaze out into the water, the bustle. This place thrives in a way that reminds him, just a little, of home. "You've been waiting for me, too."

"Well, that's a bit presumptuous, no?" She smirked in that almost flirty way as she pushed off the counter she had been leaning on.

"They are your plans, and all you'll have to do is make a little bargain. You aren't going back Home." He pulls out a cigarette case, opens it, lights it, and takes a drag. He exhales and curly cues of smoke dance before him as he continues. "And before you go all tense and paranoid and...oh, stabby or some other such nonsense, I'm going to tell you that you'll be the person that makes that choice, because there won't be another choice worth making unless you are not the woman my boss thought you were." At last he turns to her, cold golden gaze calm as the grave, calculating, assessing.

"The guy on the boat?" She paused again, thinking, her brow pinching in the middle. "Is he your boss, then? With some favor or offer or whatever?" She looked like a cat backed into a corner, fierce on the outside, whimpering a little on the inside. The man leaned in, charming as the big bad wolf. Knock knock, grandmother.

"I am the guy on the boat." Wrinkles his nose a little, shrugs his shoulder. "I hate it when I have to wear a different guise. This is the only one that ever feels right, but I digress." Another drag from the cigarette. "Do you love him? You know...whats-his-name?" Oh so casually. What a win for the boss to score the name of someone else on his list. So many delicious things were in a name. Magic. Power. Ownership. It's why he never gave his. Nave managed not to look too eager.

"I don't see what that has to do with you." Erin narrowed her eyes as she looked him over. She wasn't stupid, and she knew that you probably shouldn't give the details of your life out to shape shifting deal making suave men you meet on the street. Probably.

"Its something I want you to consider very, very carefully. Love is the single most powerful human emotion. It takes people to heights they had never imagined, plunges them into depths beyond their worst fears, and causes them to do amazing, beautiful, selfless things. At the end of the day, it can be the only question for those who walk the mortal coil. Is there love? Do you love?" Another drag of the cigarette. "If you don't, by all means. Get on the boat, and safe travels to you." Nave waves a little and turns, sauntering away.

"Wait, what are you talking about?" The question-- do you love, it always plagued the girl. Ate at her. Could she love? Did she? Did she care about love? Was she capable of the happy life she had promised herself three times now (and counting). The hook sank deep with that one question, and Erin knew she was vanquished. If she had the presence of mind, she may have said goodbye here-- to who she was before she got on the boat, to what she had before that moment-- but she didn't, not now. The knave caused in her a rebellion, and as it carried itself out, pushing her after him, Erin knew she was bested.

He paused and turned-- dimple settling into his cheek, a tiny mark of triumph. He doesn't bother to hide it, because she's smart enough to know it. The fish is chasing the hook. Now he just has to wiggle it a little.

"I'll tell you a story."

Erinalle Dunbridge

Date: 2010-02-27 15:27 EST
"I'm sure you will." Erin resigned, sighed, deflated. Was it better to be a stupid fish or a smart one? Erin, at that moment, figured it would be better to be stupid. Time and time again she was lured into these traps, these decisions, these situations, and always made the 'right' but costly decisions. Sometimes she blamed it on her appearance, but this time she knew it was a direct result of her misdeeds. That didn't make it any easier to handle. Her face turned red and she leaned against a crate, crossing her legs at the ankle. "Get on with it."

"There was this pretty little thing who got on a boat. ?Went home to her pretty little life. ?Perfect man. ?Perfect house. ?Perfect happiness. ?Everything was?just so." ?Another puff from the cigarette, another careless exhale. ?"Then one day, a very, very bad man found the key to that perfect house, and right inside that perfect happiness. ?He let himself in, poked around where he hadn't been invited, but at that point, it mattered little. ?He was already in. ?It was already done." ?He took a last draw from his smoke and pitched the burning end a few feet away. ?It smoldered for a moment, then its light went out.

"He left poison there, and it rotted from the inside out. Like an apple housing a worm. That pretty little thing with her pretty little life woke up one day to find it destroyed. And that perfect man of hers--oh, whastsisname? He was lost, to that very, very bad man. Took his soul."

"You got one for me?" The explosion of sparks and the smoldering stick struck the craving back. A year without a cigarette, and this man had broken her resolve in moments. She couldn't engage, couldn't speak about the story. Her reaction would be what he wanted, and Erin, Erin hated giving people what they wanted. The knave reached into his pocket, pulled out his cigarette case and handed it to her.

"Life is precious, but fleeting. Souls are forever. And do you know what happens to souls when the bad man comes for them, sweetheart?" He crooned.

"Don't talk to me like a child. I certainly do know what happens to souls." She angrily plucks a cigarette and hands the case back after lighting it. "I can see them." She stared him down. "But you know that."

"Of course I do. But you don't know what he does with them." He tucked the case away, and resumed his arrogant, distant posture. "I don't think you want to." Nave fastened his suit jacket again, taped his right hand on the really lovely rapier that hangs at his right. "Here is the part where I level with you. Any questions before we begin?"

"No. I appreciate frankness, honestly." She tilted her head to the right, the international Erin sign that she was listening. Her right hand went about smoking.

"There is an elegance to the direct that suits me." He smiled then, leonine thing, handsome as could be, really. "Somewhere down the line, the two of you are supposed to be major players in some pretty important stuff. The way it shakes out...Well. As far as I, or anybody, can see, there wouldn't be any way for both of you to make it out alive and
well. If I were you, that's not the part I'd worry about. His soul means something to the man upstairs, and he wants it, but he'd just as soon avoid the whole mess of getting it. Oh, and by the way, I've seen the mess he can make, and it's astonishing how many things get pulled into it. He's a gravitational force. Like the sun. He keeps the worlds turning.

"But it doesn't have to be that way. He doesn't have to suffer. In fact, he can lead a long and wonderful life without you, I'd wager. He can have so many things without you." Nave leans closer and closer to her. "And the things that you can have without him are extraordinary."

"So, you want me not to go home in order to ensure that something that's supposed to happen doesn't happen?" She closed her eyes a moment to think. He was close and it was hard. "Is that what you're saying? And I, knowing that you are probably a liar and a cheat, have no choice but to believe you or risk destroying most of what I care about? This
is where we stand?" Her brows rose. "Cause I think you can drop the oh-so-important sun and moon routine. And greatness? You think I can be bought with greatness? Sir, sacrifice I am good at, but greatness, I am not." She paused again, leaning closer to him now, to try and change the power dynamic. "I will sacrifice my happy life to save his, but I will not pretend to be better for it."

The man shrugged. "Just thought you should know that there are some serious perks to sacrifice. And it's easy. Easiest thing in the world. Instead of going, you stay. Here. So long as he doesn't come looking for you, everything should stay hunky-dory, my dear." Her turmoil was an intoxicant. The demon loved cruelty. He loved pain. He lusted for these things, and they fed him well...but he loved the struggle of mortals, bogged down with their stupid, stupid,
beautiful consciences. They were just like those little dogs that got carried around in purses. Conscience. The ultimate foolish accessory.

"And what are the consequences for me? I don't believe it's that easy. Just doing one thing as opposed to another. With no catches." She was watching him carefully now, the corners of her eyes squinting.

"I don't know beyond what I've been told, at this point. I could guess, but that's a little arrogant, don't you think?" A cold gaze down to her, direct, assessing. "Trying to know the plans of our better angels?"

"Our better angels." She scoffed. "I gave up on that a long time ago, sir."

"I mean, you do have to figure out a way to keep honey bunny from looking for you, and suffer the pain of never seeing your dearest whatsisname ever again. Unless, of course, he's not all that wonderful."

"I think I can handle that." Erin let out a long sigh. "Why me? I mean, of all the people you could come collect on, why me? Now? When I've finally figured it all.." She sighed, shaking her head.

"Maybe that's why." Out comes the cigarette case, and he shakes out a second and offers to share. "Because you think you had it figured out."

"And it's not my fault that his name was in the books. You could think about blaming cutie pie. He might be culpable. Or maybe it's those nights you went out looking for that thing you never quite put down." Wicked little smile, then. He liked to play with kindness. Show it. Take it. Show it. Take it.

Erin stomps out the one she was smoking just so she could light another. "I paid my dues long ago. But, you know you have my number." Then she paused, shaking her head at his comment. "It's not necessarily evil, you know. That." She was defensive now.

Gives her a light, then lights his own. "It's a bit like walking around in a short skirt and fuck-me pumps and complaining about getting groped in a bar, sweetheart. One doesn't equal the other, but one often leads to the other." Takes a long drag. "So how will you do it?" The exhale. The curl of smoke. It did little for him on a chemical level, but it looked so
very cool, didn't it?

"I don't have to tell you." Though she knew, maybe even then. "I probably won't. But I can take care of it." She shuffled her feet then, slowly regressing from women to girl.

"I was just curious. Faking your death would be obvious, but it's been so overdone. Especially around here." Wolfish smile for the Little Thing. This had gone well, and the man upstairs would be pleased. "But if that's the route you choose, it is a classic for a reason."

"And more painful than letting someone's soul disolve in acid." She spit it back at him as she dragged on her cigarette. Sure, she was annoyed, angry, even, but now it felt like he was her only friend in this. And so it was confiding, too, what she was going.

"Have you dissolved a soul in acid?" He looked thoughtful. "I've never actually tried that, and I thought I was a creative bastard. Though admittedly, I do save my creativity for other areas."

"It was a figure of speech. I was likening you to acid." She smirked at him then, that almost flirty look again. "You seem about as deadly." She ashed to the side and looked back. "Other areas?"

"Well thank you. I suppose I am hazardous to touch." Modesty was funny. It showed in that dimple again, and a knowing look to her as he answered her question. Well. Sort of. "You don't live as long as I have without taking up a few hobbies."

"I bet." She smiled as she crushed the cigarette beneath her shoe. "So, tell me, man with no name, I just go out into the city and don't look back, then?"

"And keep him from looking. Keep both of you from looking, if you know what's good for you. That's it." For now. He knew that the man upstairs was interested in what sort of a commodity she might become if left to flourish in Rhydin. On her own, she might eventually be worth more than the both of them together. Maybe, maybe not. The man did enjoy a good wager.

"I've never been good at looking back." She smirked to herself, nostalgic. "Thanks for fucking up my life, mate." She saluted him as she tightened her bag on her back and turned to leave him.

"You're welcome, sweetheart. Good luck." She was going to need it.