hwithind

[hwithind]

More reference:

from the character intro

It is not just the shape-changing, you understand. As dark falls, and you remember the stories, the sun disappears, and the air grows cold, and you can see the shadows moving in the trees, and you know you will be a flash of brilliant white among them, and the wood is full of teeth and branches and claws and eyes— Something wraps tight and cold around your heart, steals your breath, makes you tremble, makes you feel fragile and hunted and terrified— It is not you. Some nights the fear fades after a few dreadful minutes, and when you have calmed your heart you wander as deer do, browsing among the leaves, following the stream or rambling along faint paths to a salt lick. Your night vision’s not bad, and your hearing is incredible. You can run and jump so much more quickly and nimbly on four legs than on two. It’s almost peaceful, some nights. But some nights, you are hunted. By humans, by beasts—it’s all the same to you. You run, and you find that as horrible and frightening as this existence is, it is your life and you do not want to die. (this is me.)

By the end of the afternoon Elaine has laid out clothes, breakfast, and school things for the morning, so that she will perhaps be able to catch an hour or so of sleep. She has felt more and more anxious and jittery as the day has progressed...

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FOUND IT

PLOTTY THINGS

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She accepts this with a tiny nod: Harrison certainly looked as though he had no intention of crossing Daisy. She intends to hold quite still until Daisy lets go, but a tiny shudder runs down her spine at the thought of being in a closed space with them. Close quarters, no quick exit, and that wolf-smell filling the air...

“N-no,” she says as firmly as she can, “I can--I, I’ll be fine.” She’ll walk. It’s not far, and she would walk a lot farther to avoid that. She leans away slightly, not enough that it might seem offensive--that is absolutely the last thing she wants to do right now--but just enough to see if she’ll be allowed to go.

“Good. Like I said, Harrison won’t bother you from now on.” Daisy still doesn’t remove her arm. “You ok to get home? I would offer you a ride, but then you’d have to sit in a car with those idiots.” She wasn’t about to make Ellie do that. Not after what just happened. “I can kick ‘em out though, make ‘em walk home.” She’s certainly mad enough, and they wouldn’t dare cross her, not when she could tell her mother what they did. Their punishment would be much worse than a long walk home.

She didn’t miss Ellie’s line of questioning, trying to figure out why Harrison wouldn’t bother her. What the exchange was between the two. But… well, it was hard to explain something like that to someone who didn’t know the rules for wolves.

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{x, x, x, x}

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She slowly pushes the door open, just wide enough to step through. As she expected, Jehanne is settling into her chair by the fire, eyes drifting shut. Elaine keeps a hand on the door until it has closed without a sound, then looks around the small kitchen. Those who were on duty during the night have gone to bed now that the sun is rising, and the main kitchen is not yet so busy as to spill over into the small kitchen; there is only a boy by the ovens, a maid stirring up the second fire, and the sound of a someone rattling around the larder counting cheeses. Elaine winds her way around the edge of the room, taking a handful of almonds from a basket on the table and a dipper of water from the pail. She tilts her head to see if the bread looks to be done soon, but she can’t quite tell. She looks questioningly at the boy minding the oven.

When Ben arrives at the castle the first light of day is just beginning to break, though the castle kitchens are already abuzz with the sounds of cooking. The banging of pots and pans and the chatter of the maids as they help prepare the food. Ben doesn’t like the place already, the noise worse than a faire because at least at a faire he could go sit in the wagons when he got overwhelmed. This was an entirely different sort of chaos, the kind that just barely keeps from exploding. Thankfully, the chatelaine sends Ben off to the smaller kitchen. The one with less staff and less chaos. It’s much better suited to Ben. He’s almost immediately put to work minding the bread, told that if he let it burn it would come out of his pay.

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spotted stag Luttrell Psalter, England ca. 1325-1340.

British Library, Add 42130, fol. 296r

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Soooo I did that thing again, where I think to myself, “Gosh, classes are starting and I have a really heavy load, I oughta take a Tumblr break for the first week of school” and then completely neglect to let anybody know before disappearing.

I am sorry.

I’ll be back on here, eh, maybe mid-week next week? Although I’ll be slower than I have been.

In addition, I've been playing Ellie with...basically just one person? And that's the only person her muse seems to be present with. So I'm going to call this a semi-hiatus. I'll keep up the threads I already have going, but if you want me, jump in my askbox here or over at wasntthereyesterday.

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She stands then and offers him a hand up--both hands, actually. He seems to be thinking, so she doesn't speak, not wanting to interrupt his train of thought. Often over the few weeks that she has known him, she has come to appreciate Ben's quiet. There are some people who don't feel the need to make conversation when they are around someone else, who don't find it necessary to fill the space between two people with noise in order to prove that they are really there, who can maintain a companionable silence. She is like this, and has been quietly pleased to find that she is not the only one. It's nice to be not alone and yet not overwhelmed with navigating a conversation. So she gives him a little smile and turns toward the line of trees and home.

The bullies have always been something Ben has needed to deal with, always been something he’s dealt with. That doesn’t mean he would ever want anyone else to deal with it, especially not someone like Ellie. He looks over at her, pulling himself into a sitting position with a groan. No cracked or broken ribs, he knows what those feel like, just bruises. Those would heal just fine. “I’d like that.” Somewhere quiet away from his mother that would fuss over him and his father that was just as likely to add to the bruises as he was to throw a bag of frozen peas at him. Sometimes he wonders what it would be like to not have to worry about any of that. To know that if he went home his parents would both be worried and he wouldn’t have to worry about what his dad might do to his mom. That didn’t happen often, but it did sometimes. But these are all things he doesn’t ever want to tell Ellie.

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Her ears angle towards the boy, but she makes no other move. He is a very young person, so it does not seem likely that he is accompanied by a rifle or dogs, and he is being careful about approaching. When his hand comes up, she lowers her head a little, watching him with interest.

Will blinks, small mouth dropping open as he stares. Unhearing—his ears not yet Old enough for such things, he takes a small step forward, hand slowly rising both in greeting and caution.

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Reblog if your muse had a bad childhood

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Elaine drifts down the deserted back hallway to the smallest of Castle Orgueilleuse's kitchens. She doesn't want to see anyone unless she must; last night was a full moon, and she is exhausted. Although she was too weary to think about eating when she first returned to the castle, slipping in postern door just after sunrise, she knows from experience that she will shortly be ravenously hungry. Father's chatelaine is taking on new staff for the winter, she remembers, but most of those will be working in the great kitchen or elsewhere in the household. At this hour, only a few people should be in the small kitchen, and of course Jehanne the night cook, who probably never sleeps but alternates napping by the fire with flitting about the kitchens terrorizing her underlings. It should be simple enough for Elaine to slip into the small kitchen, find something to eat, and slip off to somewhere quiet for the day.

Ben stares up at the castle with trepidation. Sure, you ask him to dance in front of a fair full of people and he was fine; but the idea of having to actually… talk to people… interact with someone he didn’t know and didn’t trust… well that’s less than appealing. Ben would take dancing over that any day. But he didn’t really have a choice, the winter snows having trapped the troupe in this small castle village. As he heads up to the castle for his first day working in the kitchens, he can’t help but wonder if this wouldn’t be just like home. With bullies and people who sneer at him because of his chosen profession. It wouldn’t be the first time that people in another village did that, but this time he wouldn’t have the troupe to back him up or protect him.

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lastoftheoldones answered:

[Meme]

"Oh…Oh, hello. Sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you deer-lady.”

The doe stills when she hears someone approach, but relaxes and flicks an ear at the voice, curious. Hello. What are you?

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The tips of her ears turn red when she realizes she was talking out loud, but she tags along after the woman, wipes off her bare feet on the bottom stair, and cautiously climbs the steps. "Me? Not cruel, but--maybe not always kind, either." Probably not powerful enough to be either one properly, not in the way people in stories are, she reflects.

She wavers in the doorway, looking in to see what the cottage was like inside. Homes reflect the people that live in them, don't they? Both, the woman said. "Are, is that why--?" She gestures to the folded blanket she's still holding.

Adelise cannot help but smile at the way the girl speaks her thoughts out loud. “If I am honest, I am both kinds. Cruel and kind.” She starts to walk towards the cottage. “It depends on the other person really.” She walks up the stairs, sliding off her boots in their spot by the door. “So tell me little one, are you cruel or are you kind?” She looks back towards Ellie. 

She studies the girl as she waits for her answer, watching carefully. It’s not as if she didn’t already know that the young girl was a kind soul, or that a curse like that was far too easy to take advantage of. She has every right to be wary.

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"Sad is important. When I'm sad, I get hugs. Or ice cream. Does your Mommy and Dad get you ice cream? Katy's dad won't let her have any 'cos he says it's not good for you."

     “It is not important.”