while you were looking the other way, while you had your eyes closed

[motherspider.livejournal.com]

*Esmerelda has been, by her own measure, remarkably patient with Dearborn throughout their thirty-something years of marriage. He is gone nine months out of the year, sometimes disappearing totally from her radar only to pop back into the manor itself spattered with blood or with some ridiculous and obscure wound and some beast's carcass to match. Of course, these bits of plunder do the best of their business; heaven knows someone has to kill unicorns, as dutiful virgins for plucking tail hairs are in awfully short supply and they are in steady an unrelenting demand for wand construction. And the blood goes for hundreds of galleons a pint, and goblins are unsurprisingly fond of the meat itself, and--well, he doesn't go gallivanting off to various foreign backwaters for no good reason.

But now is not the time. The various cut-rate wandmakers and shady potioneers can go emptyhanded for now; their son honestly thinks he's going to be wed to that thing--that girlshaped beast--that horrible succubus--she will suck him dry and that will be the very end, the final and terrible period at the bottom of the Rosier name. It's not something she takes lightly and it's something he shouldn't either, but all of her owls have gotten in response has been silence and, on the occasion of the third howler, an only slightly bloody chest full of goblin-made jewelry.

She has him now, though. She keeps a close eye on his itineraries and knows that he'll finally be passing through a real town with inns this morning if he hasn't slept in it the previous night. If he doesn't floo her from one of the inns, the last howler threatened, he may suddenly find himself removed from his genitals late some evening should he choose to return to the Estate.

When the fire in the hearth finally--finally--turns green, she rises from behind her desk, leaving her correspondence behind to stand, unamused and arms crossed, before it.*

It's about time.

Comments

[fatherfarther.livejournal.com]

*It is only a real town with inns in a relative sense. It's more of a hamlet, so thoroughly accustomed to being crushed under various lordlings or Dark Wizards or new experimental governments that even the buildings themselves look hunched. The inn itself serves something a bit like Firewhisky in jam jars and, in what appear to be lidless tomato cans, something clear that smells like flowers and burns like poison. Even Dearborn isn't entirely sure what it is, and he has an encyclopedic and comprehensive knowledge of such things. But he's on his fourth, now, and in one more he's fairly certain he'll solve the puzzle.

In truth Dearborn's most comfortable in backwaters like these, and always has been despite his upbringing. He and Druella were raised in a handsome manor home with every conceivable luxury--well, within reason, the Rosiers had never bothered with such ludicrous fripperies as white peacocks, being neither so respectable as to be able to get away with it nor so gauche as to attempt and fail. But in truth as he's grown older he's cared about such things less and less, and continues to play the game when he is at home only for Esmerelda's benefit--and, presumably, Evan's.

Still, he doesn't appreciate when it intrudes into his other interests more than absolutely necessary. Esmerelda is more than competent, she is a damned miracle, and he is accustomed to her simply taking care of things while he's away, not writing him letter after hysterical letter. And Howlers, that had been inconvenient considering the compromising position he'd been in with those sisters in that--well, had it really been a barn? And what is this little flowery drink--

In any case, he's ignored her long enough: the threat to the genitals is not a joke, at least he knows her well enough for that. It is with an elaborately patient expression that he rests his hands on the inn's decaying mantlepiece and pokes his head into the flames. This hearth is old, and the connection is bad, but after awhile her image appears and he summons a smile.*

You wrote, dear?