Closed for Obuzeti

[Kismets_Paramour]

“Shit!”

The flatiron went sailing through the air and crashed to the unforgivable porcelain tiled ground, the sound echoing off the bathroom walls.

“Ummm….” Tears blurred my vision and I sucked the burned tip of my finger into my mouth.

Hopping around on one foot because of a rouge boot and a stubbed toe, which lead to me reaching out towards the sink and grazing the side of my pointer finger against my degree flatiron wasn’t the way my mornings normally started. Today was just one of those days and to make matters worse I was running behind and adding to the stress of my morning.

“Seriously?” From this angle it looked like the ceramic plate on my flatiron was cracked and I scrunched up my face in annoyance as I picked up the hair tool and confirmed its handicap state. “I swear…” I was on the verge of more cursing but collected myself with a deep breath and unplugged the iron from the wall and set it to the side to safely cool off.

Looking at my reflecting in the mirror I tried to comb my fingers through the frizzy mess that was my hair in a hopes that it would calm down. It didn’t and I cursed the early rains and fluctuation weather patterns. Rainy and 75 today, tomorrow a breezy 42 and a weekend drenched in sun with high chances of afternoon showers. Muttering I pulled my hair back, braided it and coiled it neatly into a tight bun. Checking my minimal makeup in the mirror as turned off the bathroom light, remembering at the last moment my charcoal single-button wool jacket by Hugo Boss folded near the door so I wouldn’t forget it.

The ground gave way wetly under foot as I stepped from the bathroom into what should have been my bedroom. Confusion and shock warred with each other as I stood in the shadow of a thatched roof building that opened to crowed square made makeshift market. My nose wrinkled at the foul stench of too many bodies and livestock crammed into a small area and I dreaded looking down, strongly suspecting that I was in a mud puddle that may be more unknown then mud. I expected there to be more noise but everything was still, like a movie paused as people gawked in my direction.

At first I didn’t think anything of it, years had passed since I had last been here but it was always the same. I was a ghost and not one ever saw me, felt me or heard me, so it never dawned on me that it was ME that everyone was looking at. Until the pointing, a young boy crying and an elderly woman shouting about demons. Voices rose and everything started moving all at once and I shuffled back, my black oxfords dragging in the mud, slashing up the leg of my matching suit trousers as I retreated from the sudden commotion.

I had never felt fear in any of my other visits, dreams or otherwise but that had been before, when I was invisible and wasn’t being called a demon.

“I’m not a demon.” I assured the crowd as I slowly raised my hands, a show of what I hoped to be non-threatening.

 

[Obuzeti]

Riordan hums as Anridda trots, passing the time of the ride with his sixth hundredth verse of lonely wives and eager daughters. The Green Legion to the south had invented more of them than he had ever believed, but career soldiers have only two hobbies, so it is said: bitching and boasting. He'd found them equally adept in both, and had learned a great deal of unwholesome yarn. The borders held firm, though Tullyson's men were getting impatient over staring across the border and perhaps hoping the elves to do something besides be reclusive. They were shit out of luck on that account. Whatever their business was these days, they were encapsulated by it.

The growing hubbub of Twr Gvald - one more aimless blotch of thatch on the countryside - took his attention, then, as a puffing man-at-arms jogged out from the rickety palisade about it and waved him down as he passed on the road beside. Riordan's heels settled Anridda to a stand, as he gestured the man to speak, though what business this little hamlet had with him he knew not.

"Beggin' pardon, Milord," he pants, pointing back into the village with a liver-spotted hand, "There's some kind of wench from the Gods know where walked in and speaking Devil's tongue. Dressed in something we've never seen. Kenneth's got her guarded - and ye've got the coil, so mayhaps ye -"

"Fair enough," Riordan says with a roll of his eyes where the aged minuteman can't see it. "I'll have a look to this business. 'Tis owed, is it not?"

"Aye," the man-at-arms replies, brightening at the thought that his bothering some lordly traveler might be in order with the way of things, which immediately puts Riordan in a mood for petty mischief. The red coil of a sorcerer, displayed openly, means that they're open for hire, and may be contracted or levied to a town's doings for a day provided they have no magician of their own, but it's a fool that does so against their will, and a fool he has here. "Right this way then, lord-eagle, we've got her in the square."

Riordan's fixed smile melts off his face at the unintended slur. Mischief it is, then. He follows the old man back into the village.

The sight there is a woman of youngish age and some kind of clean fabric he doesn't recognize, backed up against a thatch wall by three separate nasty billhooks pointed at her by grim-faced peasants. The rust on the blades makes him warier than the edges themselves, because untested men do stupid things. "Sirrahs," he says with a fair nod, and dismounts. A click of his tongue sends Anridda to the nearest hitching post - probably the only one in the village - and he turns to face the strange woman.

Admittedly, it might be a little intimidating, having a stranger in a thick black gambeson, mail, and riding leather approach you while you're held at spearpoint, so the first thing he does is reach out and touch the nearest billhook's metal point, and hums a single bar -

/ dun riding mare, towards the morn gallop far /

- and the polearm continues onward, dragging its wielder with it under irresistible force. It bonks into the next spearman and pushes him over, then the third, knocking them all akilter and smacking into a fence and promptly grinds its way into it, course set undeniably for the east and the still-rising sun.

"The only thing I'm absolutely certain of is that you're a long way from a friendly shore, stranger," Riordan says, settling his thumbs in the hook of his belt - conspicuously away from the heavy blade belted at his side. "So if you'll tell me where that is, I can inform this lot what embassy rights they're violating and move you right along."

He can't really do full-on friendly at the moment, not without provoking further dispute with the raised ire of the hamlet, so he settles for mildly interested, brown eyes fixed on hers, ignoring the hubbub of the villagers terrified by the self-piloted weapon currently doing its best to knock over the fence.

 

[Kismets_Paramour]

​​It seemed the villagers didn't know what to do with me, the gathering breaking into smaller groups or wandering off already interested. It was curious to me that the vocal elderly woman who had been so quick to name her a demon was among the first to drift back and continue with her life.

When it became apparent that I was in no real danger, the machete weapons merely pointed at me for their own comfort I causally shuffled back slowly. Exaggerating my movements as I leaned against a sturdy post. "Lovely weather we're having, isn't?" I charmingly asked, using my best smile to hopefully charm the now tensed armed men.

Right- no more talking.

In the silence that followed I took in the scene before me, absorbing each and every detail and comparing it to previous visits. At first there seemed to be little difference, nearly any at all if I removed my sudden arrival from the equation. Eyes still darted in my direction and suspiciously large groups of villagers ventured by as if by chance but their lingering stares and slowed pace gave them aw​​ay. Ats the rumor mill of my arrive reaches its farthest claim, the groups dwindle in size and sooner then I would have expected, the weighted glares also abated until I was ignored by most but not in the least by the men holding me at pointed guard.

As the village fell back into it normal rhythm I returned to my observance. I had expected the tension I saw between the villagers to have relaxed once I was no longer the target and point of fascination. Yet it kept the smiled from reaching the eyes for those she saw, shoulders taunt with fear- an emotional guess on my part but it was the same hunched set I had seen on dozens of children growing up. It had truly been years since I had last dreamed of this place and not once could I recall there being a heavy fog of something weighting the people down.

I opened my mouth, risking the possible backlash from my guardsmen but the question fell silent as a flurry of movement announced the newest arrival to my line of sight. Unlike the guards before me, this new man commanded attention effortlessly, his presence powerful and magnetic to a devastating effect. It was impossible not to follow him with my eyes, a part of me laugh at the idea that his clothing and armor made him look intimidation. While the rest of my mind acknowledged the prowling grace this man executed, a fluidity that I understood only came from years of practice and physical awareness.

As he approached I defiantly squared my shoulders and lifted my chin. This was my death, this village wasn't his home but it was possibly under his care and he would be the one to sign the warrant against my life.
​​
Yet as quickly as I had fitted this man into his role, something magical happened. He touched the nearest blade and brushed it away, and away and away and away... Taking with it the collected guards set to watch me and into the nearby fence.
​​
Wide eyed and mouth slacked in outright amazement I turned back to the singing man, closing my mouth shut so I didn't look at simple minded as I was feeling at the moment.

That was magic.

"You have no idea." I agreed, my eyes darting to the sound of the curved blade to break through the fence. In truth I was using the magiced machete to avoid answer the other half of the question, the where I came from part and pretending to be more involved with what was going on with it then with the man before me. ​"Might as well claim I come from the sun or the dark side of the moon,' I said throwing my arms uselessly in the air. "For that's as likely of a story as the truth." I answered the best way I could, I was a horrible liar and in the few seconds that I gained 'watching' the flying blade and hadn't been able to come up with anything more believable. Plus, I had a feeling that claiming I was dreaming and this was a fictional world I had created as a child to combat my loneliness wasn't the way to go. Unless I liked the idea of being stoned to death by the masses. "Is there possibly a scenario​ where you just let me go and we part in good faith?" I tried using my work smile again hoping to get a better response then I had from the guards. After years of working as a manager for a popular chain of classy hotels I had perfected the hostess smile and I laid it on thick for the man I was praying was my savior.

 

[Obuzeti]

Riordan offers a half-smile, taking in the stranger at a glance. Her clothes are even stranger at a close glance - fine-machined seams and fitting, but flimsy and thin, unable to offer any serious protection against the cold or wet. Her shoes are likewise luxurious but weakly-heeled for heavy travel, without the heavy, replaceable sole or padding that would make long hikes palatable, let alone grip on a rocky slope. She very much seems a displaced diplomat; the mud tracks up one leg of her breeches (breeches for women, and not made for riding, he notes) but not the other, and hasn't had time to dry. She didn't walk through the mud to get here, and no clothing of that quality would be found in this rural hamlet.

Portal, then. Just what he wanted in life: another sorcerer's cast-off problem. "You can just say you pissed off a sorcerer and be done with it," Riordan says, sardonic. "Instead of being mysterious and dramatic. You're not from here - you're not from anywhere near here, and you look consummately unprepared for the road you would have taken to get here. Per se, portal, or astral jaunt, or shadow door, or any other of a dozen go-away-from-here spells that I could name. Come on then, or you get their tender mercies instead of mine."

He turns to the village alderman and nods, no longer caring to hide his exasperation. In the background, the magicked billhook keeps sliding further along, dragging along a very determined militiaman and his two friends attempting to hold it down - the spectacle keeps drawing the alderman's eyes in nervous little flicks. "I'll take care of her," Riordan says, perfectly polite. "I hope this solves your predicament, lord alderman."

"Ah - " the alderman starts.

"Farewell," Riordan interrupts, blunt, then turns and makes his way over to the strange woman. He jerks his head towards the perimeter of the village, clicks his tongue to send his his horse cantering in that direction alongside them, and starts heading that way, the pleasantly genial expression on his face clearing a path faster than any dark scowl could have. "Do you have a more serious answer, strange lady, or do you need an audience for more jests?"

With his luck, she's probably important enough that just dropping her off in the middle of nowhere or putting her in the stockade will result in a diplomatic incident and angry envoys, war threats and generalized chestbeating by more pampered poufs. Might as well head off that trouble now and see her to - wherever she's from. The style and cut of clothing is completely unfamiliar to him, he can't even really count the stitch. Was it magic-made?