GoldenCat/SpiralOfChange032
- - Back to Eighth Movement
- - Back to A Dance of Angels
Of Smiles and Belladonnas
After the arguements and after the show, after the declarations and time to go... Ryshy has a strange feeling as she walks down the halls. Not, of course, the feeling of blood rushing back to parts that have been sat upon for some hours, but... a slightly scratchy feeling where there shouldn't be one, the sound of crinkling paper mostly muffled by her dress, and the feal of a wax seal against her thigh.
Ryshassa: Ryshassa stops as she strides away from the meeting room. Hopefully no one was walking right behind her because the stop was quite abrupt.
What in the world...? '
She feels something stuck to her thigh... inside her kimono. Well that would take some extracting. Not to mentioning wondering how, and WHY it got there.
Ducking into the first empty room she sees, she leans against the wall, lifting her leg out the folds of her kimono. The black-shimmering-bronze fabric falls aside, and she gently extracts what is now, definitely, a note.
She reads it.
- It's a simple short note requesting her presence after dinner in a certain room, signed not with a name but a caricature of a largeheaded, small bodied Gennadi drooling and pressing his hand to the paper.
Ryshassa: Should she laugh, or sigh? That was the question that rose to Ryshassa's mind. Quickly she folds the paper up and slips it into her kimono sleeve.
After dinner, hmm...? Not that she had anything better to do. Especially after a dinner that would likely be by her lonesome, if Rain would not join her.
Hours pass... meals are had... chores given. And Ryshassa arrives at the door of the "certain room" so noted. Her kimono now a crimson shade, embroidered with nightshade, her hair bound more simply in an upswept twist.
A healer garbed in poison? Perhaps Gennadi would appreciate the irony.
Gennadi: The door falls open at her breath, before she even considered opening it, and apparently before her host was ready. Gennadi himself is garbed in almost nothing at all, a towel elegantly monogrammed with the holysword crest loosely tied about his hips as he shakes the water from gliterring golden hair.
Ryshassa: Ryshassa, being the polite and proper woman she is, blurts out in dismay, "I'm sorry!" It was one thing seeing a patient near-naked, if it were necessary for her healing duties, but this is ...different.
She closes the door quickly and her muffled voice filters past it. "I can wait."
Gennadi: He blinks. "Oh. You don't have to wait out there, you know... Damned woman, acting as if it was you that made the mistake." The sounds of assorted thunks, scrapes, and a slightly worrisome heated yowl are all muffled by the door before he opens it, properly attired and as irritatingly perfect as usual. "I apologize for the wait.... and I suppose this talk's going to be difficult enough without you busy looking everywhere but where you want to."
Ryshassa: "Which means you think I want to be looking at you?" Ryshassa's slender eyebrows raise, as finally, with Gennadi dashingly attired, she re-enters the room. It's not an insult, but people did tend to conveniently forget she is both married and devoted, at times.
Once inside, she folds her crimson-sheathed arms in front of her, and asks, "Is this a brief matter, or should I be sitting down?" She didn't mean to be terse, but somehow she was... the note had surprised her, and surprises were either wonderful or terrible.
Gennadi: "Sit. Wherever you like. If there's anything you'd like to relax you, you have but to ask." He closes the door, an almost polite look along her body, appreciative of the symbolism and leering when appropriate. "AS for what makes me think it, everybody looks, if only to remind themselves of how they have it better. In the absence of context, devotion and oaths mean little."
Ryshassa: "True enough," is all Ryshy has to say about that, not wanting to expound at the moment about her thoughts on fidelity. She finds for herself a seat suitably plush and comfortable to weather whatever it is Gennadi might want to say.
"Tea would be nice, if you have it. Otherwise, I think I will be fine."
Gennadi: He busies himself with the ritual of making tea, soon passing over an elegantly shaped porcelain cup. He sits down himself, pondering how to say it and for once, dispensing with the flash and flair. "There are two things you need to know. One is that I need your help in a certain matter regarding the Deathlords. I tell you now in the case something happens along the way to winlandia, and my plans are foiled." He takes a deep breath. "I need you to map my mind for me."
Ryshassa: She does not respond straight away, as the implication of what Gennadi is asking her settles in. "And you would do this knowing it would grant me access to your innermost thoughts and memories, if only until I find a way to 'record' and store it?"
"I could find a way to accomplish this, given some time." Normally she might have poked at him a bit about his paranoia. But against the Deathlords, even she would be paranoid. In fact... if she could find a way to do the same for herself...
Gennadi: "The issue is simple, dear Ryshy. There are very dangerous implications to what I've learned, and I fear I may wind up discussing them with a Deathlady to get the truth... or simply due to her lusts." He smiles mirthlessly. "As entertaining as the sound of being fucked by the Lover Clad in the Raiment of Tears is, what I cannot do is let her fuck the important part of me up here." He taps his temple. "There's no one else I suspect can accomplish it, and no one else, oddly enough, that I can trust."
Ryshassa: "You are probably right. I don't know I would trust any other in our Circle with such a task. Even so, I am honored by your trust." This Ryshassa says genuinely, and without hesitation, before pausing for a long, slow sip of her tea.
"It will be done, some way or another. If you can stomach the thought that it is something I have never done before, and thus you will be a little bit of an... experiment."
"So then, what is the second bit of news? I hope it is nothing unfortunate to do with my husband..." Her countenance darkens subtly with the thought.
Gennadi: "No, not quite. One of the things that worries me about this particular issue is an issue of the past. Have you seen my arguements with young Alexander?"
Ryshassa: Not quite?
Ryshassa answers the question at hand, though, shaking her head. "I'm not quite sure what you are referring to. I've rarely witnessed you and the Prince together outside of large meetings like this last one."
Gennadi: "Suffice to say there is a disagreement on the proper nature of the Golden Age. I prefer it ended. As did my former self." He pauses a moment to let that sink in. "I suppose I could apologize, but I don't think it would make any difference at this point, and I'm not sure I wasn't right... but I killed you, once upon a time."
Ryshassa: Ryshassa looks... bewildered at first. As if think she heard Gennadi wrong. Or perhaps heard him right and severely wishes she heard him wrong.
Could that be true? The memories of the Caduceus were increasingly vague, as Sophia's final moments approached; not a direct feed into Sophia's mind, but a recording. An impression, perhaps, of what the past had been from the perspective of an automaton.
Perhaps Sophia had not wanted it to be clear. In any case, there was very little she could say or do now about it. "You killed me," she repeats, slowly, wondering if what she feels now is anything like Cael felt when he'd found out Lonan killed Bastian.
"So how does this particular revelation from the past affect your worries today?"
Gennadi: "I don't believe I personally had my hands around your throat... my memories aren't encyclopedic on the issue, of course. But... I suppose, in a way, it's best I just take credit. What I did, Ryshy, was not murder you, but to murder an Age. I was, once upon a time, in another life, the man who arranged the massacre of the lords of Creation."
Ryshassa: "I see." Well, Ryshassa had little choice but to take that as a matter of fact. She certainly wouldn't know any better. "So then you inadvertently pushed my husband's incarnation in that age long gone to join your cause. Or perhaps deliberately? I suppose we cannot really know."
Inwardly, she is somewhat relieved that it is indirect. Alexsei, she knows, would not be pleased either way, but uncertainty would likely stay his hand.
"If that's the case, then your former self had a hand in killing a great deal of us Sunchosen. Mmm..." She swirls the half drank tea in her cup, musing over its steam. Despite the gravity of such a revelation, she does not seem perturbed... somewhat sad, perhaps, and pensive, but not perturbed.
"Is this another case of you wishing to be honest as insurance? Or is there more to it than that?"
Gennadi: "I felt it was best if I told you now, rather than for you to stumble upon some repressed and horribly vivid memory of that particular moment in history. The other issue, of course, is that now that I've stepped into the public eye, we may be finding Solars who, perhaps justly, want to murder me in return."
Ryshassa: "I do not know whether the past will repeat itself," Ryshassa says, still thoughtfully. She downs the rest of her tea. "But I do not yet see any indication why I should turn on you because of what the past has wrought."
"I prefer not to judge by such things. Perhaps I share the sentiment of my own progenitor... I wish to see the best in people. I wish that I would not have to do war, or shed blood by my own hands, for peace to prevail."
"On the other hand," Ryshassa adds, with a heavy sigh. "I do not know that I can afford, in this age, to to be so naive."
"Though... I am curious. What is it about the so called Golden Age did you think was best to be rid of? If I read you correctly, I do not think your past self did it in malice. Which is why I think that if you were ever inclined to kill me, it would be for a cause you deem greater than my individual life."
Gennadi: "The brighter the flame, the more it burns. It was judged that one day, the golden flame would burn too high, and take Creation to the ash-heap."
Ryshassa: "Hmm." A sudden tinge of amusement quirks Ryshassa's mouth. "I never thought I'd realize that you are advocating moderation. Too much of a good thing..."
She shakes her head though, letting a more solemn expression return. "I suppose I can live with that knowledge." Her double meaning is intentional. "So, between mind-mapping and shocking revelations, have you anything else for me I should know?"
Gennadi: "Well, I suppose you'll be lad to know my game of ogling you to watch you jump is over. Beyond that, you're free to return to your life." He smiles. "It was fun while it lasted."
Ryshassa: "Ha, ha. I am glad I could amuse you." Ryshassa wonders suddenly exactly what he might be ogling; wasn't as if her kimono typically accentuated anything of note. Glancing down briefly, she smooths down her obi and then rests down her teacup.
"Well, we'll be seeing a great deal of each other for the next few days at least. So I should return to my own traveling preparations and you to yours. Assuming you even need them," she quips.
Rising fluidly to her feet, the healer bows, respectfully as always. "Until tomorrow," she says, and makes her way to the door, and to a night of much speculation.
- - Back to Eighth Movement
- - Back to A Dance of Angels
