{ pfsb } by the fireside

[for_tradition]

A fireside – the proper kind, with the scent and crackle of flames as they transmogrify the passive energy of wood into heat and light – is something one just really can't have without wood to burn. 

The swimming fish are an added bonus, but really don't lend much to the ambience beyond novelty. 

It's very pleasant to sit by this fireside, real or magicked up as it might be, while ferociously taking notes. The warm, flickering light of the flames reflects off Abigail Pent's smooth brown hair and the silk of her skirts – the rich brown of excellent milk chocolate, struck through with gold – and illuminates her neat, slightly cramped handwriting. So engrossed is she that when the waitrat arrives with her ordered tea, she doesn't notice until the creature gives a polite half-cough, half-squeak.

Glancing up, she peers myopically at the proffered tea set. (She is wearing two sets of spectacles, but forgotten to put either over her eyes. One sits lightly on her hair, the other hangs around her neck off a cord of brown silk.)

"That doesn't look right," she tells the waitrat. It certainly is tea, but the stunted white pot and small, handle-less cups don't look at all like the bone china she'd expected.

She looks about, searching – ah. Getting to her feet in a rustle of fabric, she accepts the tray from the waitrat and makes her way over to the table she'd spotted, where a tall, slim young man has received a bone china tea service and plate of iced biscuits. "Pardon me," Abigail says, smiling as she approaches him. "I believe our orders were switched."

Comments

[for_tradition]

"Well, he isn't someone I'd call social."

She tips cream into her tea and swirls it in with the silver spoon, then taps the spoon clean against the edge of the cup's mouth and lifts her tea for a sip. "And he's always been a bit too concerned with the righteousness of the Eighth... another iced biscuit?"

She offers the plate out with a smile.

[lightamidchaos]

He knows that neither Harrow nor Gideon thinks highly of the man. Listening to Lady Pent, Lan Wangji wonders for a moment if it is similar to how he knows others have regarded him-- unsocial, cold, unfeeling, overly concerned with discipline. The once-perfect disciple of Lan.

He tries not to let the complexity of his emotions wash over and drown him at the thought, and pushes it aside.

"Thank you," he says, accepting. It is not excessive to have only two, he thinks. "He was not the cause of your ... state..., was he?"

[for_tradition]

"No," she tells him, smiling and pleased as he takes a second biscuit, though she's watching him closely. "The Eighth has their biases, but not against my House. Silas and Colum even came to our dinner party."

Abigail sets the plate down and considers him with the frank appraisal of a societal equal and the warmth of the egregious busybody with an over-active maternal instinct. "You seem concerned, Hanguang-jun. Why is that?"

[lightamidchaos]

This man and - he does not know the name, but suspects Colum must be Octakiseron's cavalier - had attended a dinner party and still he is considered not social? Lan Wangji despairs of himself for an instant, and in the next is blindsided by her question.

He hastily sets the little cake down on his own plate and stares helplessly at her. "I - I was only thinking, that what you say of him does not sound unfamiliar."

[for_tradition]

"No?" Abigail asks, encouragingly.

"In what way?"

[lightamidchaos]

"I am not especially social," he admits, unsure what else to do. It isn't gossip if one is speaking of one's own self, surely. "Among other things. I do not wish to trouble you, Lady Pent. I apologize, for the distraction of my poor self-control."

[for_tradition]

"Why, Hanguang-jun," she says, smiling but no less sympathetic for it, understanding striking like a match. "No apologies are necessary at all. I hardly know you well enough to say, but simply the fact that you have enough self-awareness to be concerned that you might be like Silas Octakiseron suggests to me that you are like him in only the most superficial ways."

[lightamidchaos]

"You are gracious, and kind," he murmurs.

[for_tradition]

"Both of those and more, I hope," she says, smiling back at him.

"And it's not that Silas is a bad person, exactly. The Eight's methods are a little... well... they find it beneficial to instill a sense of, shall we say, personal distance. And Silas is still very young, and under far more pressure than he has realized, I'm sorry to say."

[lightamidchaos]

"I am not familiar with the Eighth's methods," he tells her. "As for pressure --"

It slowly begins to sink in, finally. How the heirs of all the Houses were assembled at Canaan House. Lady Pent describing herself as a scion of her House. The tragic loss of the children of the Fourth.

His mouth snaps shut.

[for_tradition]

She looks at him, inquisitive. "Hanguang-jun?"

[lightamidchaos]

"I would not wish to trouble you," he murmurs. "If by asking I do so, I apologize. Did you... meet your end at Canaan House?"

[for_tradition]

“You do have good information,” she murmurs. “I suppose you must have heard it from the Ninth; I’d heard they were here. Yes,” she continues, more briskly.

“At Canaan House, in pursuit of Lyctorhood. Murdered summarily by…”

Her words drift off and shakes her head. “You know, I still can’t remember.”

[lightamidchaos]

At 'I'd heard they were here," something about the way he holds himself relaxes, infinitesimally.

"I am sorry," he says, as gently as he can. "It is not uncommon, not to recall, from what I have seen."

[for_tradition]

“Ah,” she says, seeing the way his shoulders soften. “Yes. We can discuss them later. And you’re right, of course: violent death has a way of sending the soul scurrying into the River, and not always with much memory intact. But I was discussing the Eighth,” she continues, brisk.

“They are soul-siphoners. A dangerous and tasteless practice, if you ask me.”

[lightamidchaos]

The gentle cast to his expression shifts to polite interest, and then into complete incomprehension.

"Soul-siphoners?"

[for_tradition]

"You see it most clearly with an Eighth necromancer and their cavalier," she tells him. "The necromancer... oh, what's the best way to put this? Dismisses the soul, then leverages the power which rushes into the empty vessel left behind."

[lightamidchaos]

He stares at her in horrified disbelief.

"They separate a person's spirit from the body and force a possession?"

[for_tradition]

"Not a possession," Abigail says, firmly. "If the spirit has wandered that far, and something... else... has taken its place – well, that would be hideously dangerous. But it's a nasty business all told."

[lightamidchaos]

He shakes his head, forcefully disagreeing with her. "If the spirit has been driven from the body and another power enters in its place, creating a demonic entity from a living human, how is that not a possession?"

[for_tradition]

"I suppose it depends on your definition of possession," Abigail says, sipping thoughtfully at her tea.

"In this case – usually – nothing sentient takes the place of the cavalier's soul. It is pure thanergy."

[lightamidchaos]

"Usually," he points out. "But even so, that is - you are saying that they remove the person's spirit and use the body as a vessel for the resentful energy created by such a violation. As though a person were no more than a spiritual tool, or at best a beast. It is abhorrent."

[for_tradition]

Abigail smiles at him, warm and maternal.

"You see?" she says. "You are nothing like Silas Octakiseron."

[lightamidchaos]

Lan Wangji is struck speechless by the kindness in her smile, the gentle assurance of her observation.

His ears flush pink.

[for_tradition]

Abigail smiles the smile of a woman who has spent the better part of the last decade foxing two children-turned preteens-turned teens.

"How are those biscuits?" she asks, to give him a way out.