Completed Curiouser Curiosities

[Autumn Rose]

Winter the 88th, 519 AV

Late Night

The night was quiet, an odd thing for the Red Lantern. Almost always, there was some level of activity, especially with the Lhavitians’ odd sleep schedule, but not so tonight. The Azure Festival had been in full swing through the night, and one by one, the denizens of the brothel had brought clients home. But the Festival had not begun to wind down until late in the night, and everyone in the Lantern now was sleeping after an exhausting night of passion. If anyone was paying attention to time, they would have realized it was early morning of the next day, but that mattered little.

Autumn was haunting the halls, occasionally ducking inside of rooms to see who and what was there. Early in the night, when Gweneveh had returned with a man, Autumn had made herself scarce when the clothes started dropping quickly. Gweneveh was a woman who could put most others to shame with her beauty, and tonight, she had played her looks to their strongest effect. Her dress had been simple but still managed to accentuate her strongest features, but what was perhaps the most alluring was the mask she had decided on.

It was black with a constellation painted around the eyes, one Autumn knew due to its mention by the sailors aboard the Mary, a constellation named Zintila’s Fall. Those who lived life on the open ocean had a greater understanding and appreciation of the stars than anyone Autumn had ever met. Her knowledge had grown considerably in her time at sea. While the constellation spoke of sorrow, the sorrow of a Goddess falling from goddesshood, the mask itself wore the expression much more heavily. There was a detail in the way the eyes were shaped. Two tears ran down the left cheek; one, down the right, all three fashioned from the same material that the mask was made of making them difficult to see unless an observer was looking closely.

Gweneveh had no problems getting people to look closer, and she had played the mask to its fullest effect. Autumn didn’t know how, but her Gweneveh’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. The rest of her face, what of it that could be seen behind the mask, her lips and eyes, wore sorrow so heavily it couldn’t be missed. It was a ploy to garner more attention, to be sad in the middle of celebration, and it had worked. One of her favorite customers, one who felt a need to be a hero, had seen her and recognized her, and she allowed him to play his part of rescuer. He comforted her, and she brought him home.

And then Autumn had left the room and wandered aimlessly. When something piqued her interest, she sidled delicately through the walls, checking on the denizens and patrons of her fine establishment, and, finding them satisfied and often exhausted, left them to their slumber.

Down on the first floor, an open door drew her, its lack of secrecy inviting. As she drifted over the bodies tangled together and studied them, she realized an odd thing. They all had their clothes still on. Well, all of them but Hassin. He never seemed to wear anything. Once, Autumn had seen an article of clothing on the man, and it was so out of place that she found it disturbing, not that he hadn’t worn it well. But all of his partners for the night, another man and two women, still wore their clothing. Autumn recognized Saoirse and the other man as they both lived and worked in the Lantern as well. They hadn’t slept together, just slumbered in each other’s presence. It was curious, for sure, not the usual outcome in a place such as this. All four were draped across each other, body pressed against body, hands grasping greedily but gently at the exquisite rise and fall of flesh. They looked happy.

Seeing that everyone in her brothel was content, Autumn was about to leave when she recognized the customer. Her!

Once before, Autumn had seen this woman in the Red Lantern when she was trying to find a place to hide her necklace, and the stranger had a cart with her, a miraculous cart with cauldron that changed what went into it. Darting out into the hallway, Autumn blinked down to an often unoccupied room, in search of what she was certain would be waiting.

[Autumn Rose]

Autumn blinked through the door, and there it was. Her eyes danced over the sign at the top of the cart, reading the familiar name again and again and again. Curiosities and Lost Things. It was a peddler’s cart with doors on the sides that opened to reveal shelves and drawers and jars and vials filled with ad odd assortment of bits and pieces of things, some mundane and some miraculous. As it had been the day Autumn had discovered it, the doors were open, but unlike that day, the little cart had lost its wonder.

The first time, there had been an aura about it, nothing tangible but a sense of hope, a yearning for the betterment of the world and those in it through the many things the cart contained. But this, whatever lay before her, this was different. The oddities that were strewn throughout the carts shelves meticulously placed and labeled were falling apart. This was most evident in the living things. Jars of insects and spiders were dead or so deep in the act of dying that they were indistinguishable from those already passed. Nothing living remained so. Dust had gathered on some of the jars that had spent too long untouched and unopened. The bright white of the teeth and bones had lost their shine, lost their luster. The colored wax of the many candles present were faded, some so much that they were practically gray with only a hint as to what they might have been before. Even the many jars of dirt and rock gathered from varied sources all looked the same.

Warily, Autumn approached the cart, wondering what had the power to take such bright hope and smother it so wholly. As she neared, she felt a sense of something more powerful than dread, more potent than despair. It was sorrow, and it seemed to spill out of the cart and flood the room around it. Perhaps being a ghost made her more attuned to the energies exuded by Curiosities and Lost Things. Perhaps as a ghost she was safe from whatever this thing contained. Ghost or not, Autumn approached it cautiously, and the feeling only built more as she neared.

Death was not kind on those who lived it, but it did make them stronger for having survived it, more resourceful for having weathered its many challenges. Hope was perhaps the ultimate strength any spirit could wield, and Autumn drew on what little she had. Something, a memory from her first encounter with this shop, leapt to mind, and Autumn blinked to the cart’s side, ignoring the warnings her soul told her of.

There was one shelf where the most wondrous and valuable things the cart had to offer were stored, and on it, the last time Autumn had seen the cart, was perhaps the most remarkable part of the cart. It had been labeled simply, Bottled Laughter, and it was exactly that, laughter in a couple dozen different voices, each with their own timbre, each with their own reaction to joy. Scanning the shelf, she found the bottle, but a new label had been put over the old one. The hand it was written in was not light and airy as it had been before. It was full of the same sense of sorrow, more heavy-handed with ink pooling where its writer had not been able to move on.


The world is out of real laughter. I meant to refill it, but the laughter I gathered left it empty.


Autumn’s spirit fell at this. This was her fault. She was the one who had used it last when she’d greedily dumped the entire contents into the cauldron. Her necklace had ended up in that, and the joy that laughter had contained now allowed it to store her happy memories.

But it wasn’t the lack of laughter that made the cart sorrowful. The lack of joy brought indifference, not sadness. No. Something here was actually exuding sorrow, and Autumn set her eyes to the cart’s contents to try to discover what could be causing it. Nothing appeared particularly dire, exceedingly haunted, so Autumn let the feeling guide her. As her soul moved closer and closer to the source of sadness, she felt it weigh her down more and more until finally she was upon it.

The thing itself didn’t look like anything that would bring about such an all-encompassing mourning. It was a new vial of soulmist labeled Soulmist (made by Deshira Craven). The name meant nothing to Autumn. The only Cravens she knew were Madara and Madeira, and Moritz and Amelie and Allister. Another scrap of paper lay underneath the bottle, a folded letter. Gathering her mist together, she focused it into her fingertip and urged it to press against the world around her. It was generally the best she could do, a simple push, but it was enough. Her finger reached out to the vial, and it slid backward off the letter. Another push against the paper opened it, and Autumn’s eyes wandered over the letter written in the same steady hand as all the labels.


In a recent trip to Alvadas, I decided to replenish my stores of soulmist after the last vial I had went missing. When I arrived at Craven Manor, I found myself in greater fortune than I’d expected. It turns out that the Cravens have a catalog of soulmist from their greatest practitioners, a library of soulmist from those who could make it to last. I wasn’t familiar with their history, but Madame Madara Craven educated me on how significant some of those names were.

Some were from the very beginnings of their legacy, from when the Craven name had meant nothing until those individuals had made it matter. Some were patriarchs and matriarchs that had bolstered that reputation to make it the name it is today and anchored it in the rough patches when spiritists were thought either unnecessary or evil. But there was one name that Madara breathed. No, she prayed it, as if the woman it belonged to was a Goddess. One name. Deshira.

If history is to be believed, it was Deshira who was key in the creation of the Sealed Grounds beneath Alvadas and the salvation of the city from whatever lurked in its depths. She had masterminded the plan, and though it was carried out by a dozen or more of the Craven’s most accomplished spiritists, she was there by their side when Seals were placed. The thing that necessitated the Grounds sensed what they were doing and came to stop them. In a final desperate act, Deshira sacrificed herself, securing the final Seal with her death and trapping the unnatural thing within. Madara said Deshira had made this soulmist for their library just days before the Seals were placed. I get a vague sense from the aura around the soulmist that Deshira knew what these Seals would cost. It wasn’t so much desperation that surrounded the vials but resignation. She knew. And yet she still went forward. A prime example as to the resilience and courage of humankind.

They had ten vials of hers on hand, but each one might have been their most valued possession. I had to part with a hefty sum of coin, several trinkets and ingredients that weren’t easy to come by, and a nearly immeasurable number of favors that were most difficult to achieve to obtain just a single vial of it. But I have a vast knowledge and am owed favors by some very powerful people. It wasn’t beyond my scope. I get what I want. Favors are a currency I have long traded in. I got the vial!


That last line was written victoriously. There was pride in it, but an addition to the letter was written, this time in the same heavy hand that had made the new label for the bottle of laughter. The victory was gone, and it had been replaced by the weight of the sorrow, the same sorrow the soulmist had been made with.


Any price was a price too steep to pay for this, no matter how astounding its creator, no matter how miraculous its properties. It carried the same weight Deshira had carried with her in her final foray into the Sealed Grounds. It carried her resignation, her sorrow, her knowledge of her end and that she’d be leaving this world behind.

It is a potent weight, the heaviest I have ever had to bear, and the vial doesn’t contain it, not completely. It permeates, permeates everything. The living creatures were the first to feel it. Sorrow has a catastrophic effect on life. The creatures, though provided with everything they needed to survive, just stopped. They stopped everything. First, they stopped eating, then they stopped moving. Eventually, they just stopped existing. They gave up on life itself and passed away with every provision within their reach.

But this sorrow was enough to reach into the existence of even inanimate things, leeching the life from them. These objects aged, faster than I’ve ever seen anything age before. Dust gathered on them, as if they were disintegrating and gathering their own dust themselves, and color faded away as if they had spent a century in the Syna’s light.

And me. I felt it. And so did my brother. His usual joy faded. His sarcasm, usually lighthearted, took on a bitter air. I tried at first to ignore it, but that was foolishness on my part. To act as if a thing doesn’t exist does not stop it from being so. I tried to pour all my happiness and joy out against it and found it to be the superior tide. I drowned, and so did my brother. He left me under the pretense of seeking out more favors, but I knew it was to escape this weight.

I am at a loss. I have considered throwing it away, but I am worried what it would do wherever it ended up. Something must be done, but I dare not do it myself and I dare not force it on another. No one should have to bear this and definitely not alone.


Autumn stared at the letter, then up at the vial. Something must be done. She stared for a while longer, but no solution presented itself. She had weathered sorrow and weathered it long. She could weather this, but there was no sense in it if it didn’t bring her results. Turning her back on the mist and the cart, on Curiosities and Lost Things, she drifted back through many walls until she was watching over the cart’s owner once more.

There was no contentment in her eyes, despite human contact. Her eyes were creased, heavy with the wait for a solution to the weight of sorrow. Though she was surrounded, Autumn had the sense she was alone. No one understood what it was she had, what she was facing. With a cart like Curiosities and Lost Things, the woman should have been full of wonder. But wonder was long gone.

There was too much sorrow in the world, and Autumn was tired of it. She was tired of having lost Maro, only to find him, only to find out he was lost to her again. She was tired of watching others suffer. But she had weathered sorrow, and she could weather it again. She could, and she would. Leaving a frigid but gentle kiss on the woman’s head, Autumn left the room, in search of sorrow and something to stop it.

[Autumn Rose]

There were things that she knew carried hope and happiness, reminders of her friends, and things that carried sorrow. If she could find enough of the former, perhaps it could outdo the sorrow of the others, but the first thing she needed to do was gather the sources of sadness.

Deshira’s soulmist would have to go for sure. There was nothing to do about the sorrow that Maro brought, but that was hers and hers alone to bear. Autumn was stronger than most. One had to be to exist a half century in death. But there were other reminders of sorrow. Gweneveh’s mask was one. Autumn much preferred it when her friend wore a smile, so the mask was going to go. Those were the major things, but there were other bits, too, like the lock of Candace’s jet-black hair Autumn had collected from the child the night the girl had been on death’s doorstep at the Catholicon. That was a night Autumn often revisited in the wakeful nightmares of memory.

But it carried with it hope, too. Candace had survived with the help of Madeira, a vial of soulmist, and Autumn’s possession. Perhaps more than sadness and fear, it represented the hope and happiness that Candace’s young life brought, especially in the surviving of such a disease. It wasn’t the only lock of hair Autumn had tucked away. There was another, this one auburn. When Gweneveh had had her hair trimmed, Autumn had ferreted away a small curl of the hair before it could be swept away. These things she kept stored under Gweneveh’s bed. She’d have to brave the room and hope her roommate and her company weren’t still at it.

On her gentle passage through the halls, she wondered if what little she had would be enough to combat the sorrow of the things she meant to pit them against. Would Gweneveh’s friendship and love for those she held dear be enough to stave off her self-made image of sorrow? Would the joy and hope little Candace’s life brought be enough to stop the sorrow Deshira’s mist brought in it being made with the knowledge of her impending fate? Fortunately, Autumn didn’t have long to consider this, because she might have given up had she thought about it too long. Instead, she reached Gweneveh’s room before she came up with an answer and breezed through the wall.

Thankfully, Gweneveh and her lover were finished, though by the looks of things, just barely. Both were still breathing heavily, exhausted in the aftermath of their pleasure, but here, there was nothing but the look of contentment. This was how things should be. Gweneveh could play sorrow well, but Autumn never wanted her to truly feel it, not in its heaviest, wearying form. Without a sound, Autumn drifted beneath the bed and found the two locks of hair where they were safely tucked away. The two bodies in the bed above her pressed closer to each other at the advent of the chill Autumn brought with her, but Autumn knew Gweneveh and her partner didn’t mind.

Concentrating mist into each palm, she projected a long, steady push outward, trapping the hair between her hands and lifting it slowly to the where she found the mask lying in the center of a pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. She dropped them on to the velvet inner lining of the mask, then summoned more mist together to pinch the strap that had held the mask in place. Slowly, hairbreadth by hairsbreadth, Autumn dragged the mask across the floor, out of the room, down the hall, down the stairs, and back down the first-floor hall to the room where Curiosities and Lost Things waited for her.

The cauldron was there as it had always been, though its usual happy roil was subdued to the slow simmer of an overly-thick, too long cooked stew. Bubbles slowly rose from the surface, built until they could build no more, and burst. Even it was affected by the weight of Deshira’s mist.

Autumn lifted the mask and tipped the two locks of hair out of it into the liquid. The slow building bubble of the thick liquid seemed to pick up speed at the addition of the locks of hair, losing some of its viscosity. Autumn cast her eyes around the room. She needed something more to add to offset what else she was going to be putting in. Nothing caught her eye, and with a sigh, Autumn dropped the mask in, too. A quick blink had her next to the cart, and with a concentrated effort, Autumn pressed mist down into her palms, then outward in a push to pinch the vial of Deshira’s mist between them.

Perhaps her earlier efforts of transporting things from her room had weakened her more than she cared to admit. Perhaps Deshira’s mist had more power than Autumn wanted to think about. Whatever it was, it was heavy, and Autumn nearly dropped it on three separate occasions. She had to set the vial down multiple times, and the trip across the room took ten chimes. The longer Deshira’s mist was near her, the drearier Autumn felt, the more she felt ready to give in to the sense of doom. When she reached the cauldron side and popped the stopper, the sensation built into an overwhelming force, and Autumn’s soul shrank into itself. In her time, Deshira must have been a terrifying force to behold, and the woman must have had a commanding presence, especially where ghosts were concerned. Slowly, Autumn pressed back against Deshira’s oppressive force, finally giving her enough power to hoist the vial and tip its contents into Curiosities’s cauldron.

The force didn’t dissipate immediately, but it did lessen. At its lessening, Autumn saw something she hadn’t before, something else she could add to the cauldron. The candles now had some of their color returning, and she saw one that matched the green of Candace’s eyes. In less than a chime, it had been added to the pot, and Autumn placed her materialized hands with projected mists in the palms around a large wooden spoon and stirred the cauldron. When she was satisfied everything was mixed, she sat back and waited, lifting her necklace up as another brave idea came to mind.

[Autumn Rose]

Her hand reached for a bead on the necklace on her neck, one specific one, the necklace that had been changed by this very cauldron and cart to be a force of joy. It may have been her most treasured memory. Rain and thunder and darkness. And in the midst of it, her and Maro. As her hand closed around the bead, she was dragged into the memory, reliving it in every vivid detail as it had happened those several years ago. Everything happened as it had, but Autumn was waiting for one part in particular. It happened as they stepped outside.

Rain and thunder and darkness. Those were the things that ruled the night, but Autumn and Maro’s traipsing through the rain was lit occasionally by the flashes of lightning.

Autumn was dancing, something she had often done in her living days, and Maro was doing his best impression of the same around her feet, prancing about on four paws, splashing in puddles, and leaping in the air to bite at the unending rain. Whenever lightning flashed, Maro’s narrow muzzle pointed at the sky and barked defiance at the thunder that followed.

It was a ridiculous notion, that he could be as powerful as a storm, but he defied it anyhow. Autumn could only shake her head and laugh as scrawny little Maro hurled his challenge at Zulrav. Half of her laughter was for him. Half of it was reserved for Zulrav, her own defiance at his ineptitude to soak her. Maro felt invincible. Autumn was invincible. Rain falling from the sky coursed meaningless through her body to scatter on the ground below.

In that moment, with Maro at her side, Autumn knew she was invulnerable. She was as infinite and unchanging as the dark. Sure, lightning could flash, and the day could dawn, but always, light went out, and darkness returned. She was the dark. She was the night, and as long as Maro was by her side, the world couldn’t touch her. Life was birthed and blossomed, but always, it returned to death. Autumn had removed herself from that. As long as she chose, she was infinite. With Maro, she was more.

Another flash of lightning lit the world. Maro barked.

Autumn tore herself away from the memory, but the laughter that had been on her lips there was still on them in the here and the now. In the small room, the sound seemed amplified, echoing to build on itself and battle back the sorrow of the eminent passing of Deshira Craven. As the sound spread through the room, the glass of the vial of Bottled Laughter trembled, sensing the laughter nearby. This only brought more laughter, bubbling sometimes out of Autumn’s lips and sometimes out of her chest before it could even make it to its appropriate channel. Quickly, Autumn unstoppered the bottle and laughed until she could laugh no more, until the laughter had lost its meaning, and when she was done, she replaced the stopper.

Bottled Laughter shimmered with a sourceless light and trembled, as if it were full to the brim and about to burst, shattering and scattering its contents back into the world. Though she had no laughter left, Autumn smiled as she placed the bottle back where it belonged on the cart on the shelf reserved for its most valued items. Oppressive sorrow tried to rise up out of Curiosities’ cauldron, but Laughter trembled. The force within beat back this new change until the room and the cauldron and cart and its contents were all exactly as Autumn had remembered them from the first time around.

Autumn spent the next several bells painstakingly peeling off and crossing out the new label on Bottled Laughter and writing a new message beneath it. Her own chaotic and untrained mists were nearly not enough to control the quill that she wrote the message with, but write it she did. In the end, it looked like a child had written it, with smudges and smears everywhere, ink spots gathering, and letters sloppily formed and dissimilar in size. But Autumn was proud of herself and sat back, waiting for dawn to come and Curiosities’ owner to see what she had done.

[Autumn Rose]

She awoke, facing the rising to the next day with terror as she had done for every day since she had realized the power and the weight of Deshira’s soulmist. Purposely, she had chosen a room last night that was far from where she had left her cart. Distance helped but only so much. She had still felt the weight of it, even in the encouraging and fun-loving company of the three Lantern workers. Saoirse had been particularly fun and bright, her youth only further driving her positive outlook on life, but even youth and their particular brand of fun and joy had not been enough to keep the sorrow at bay. Even their joy faded as the night went on, and in exhaustion, the four of them had fallen asleep.

Still, even though their company wasn’t enough to give her joy, she enjoyed it. She had always enjoyed the company of people, though she always felt they were so different from her. Something about the way she went through life made her unique, gave her a different perspective, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t revel in the way others saw the world. Perhaps that was why she so enjoyed others’ company. She wandered the world, collecting things, and these new perspectives were just one more treasure for her to hoard.

Removing Saoirse’s arm from her waist, she sat up and stretched, then brushed her short blonde hair out of her face, blinking against the brilliant late winter sun as it spilled through the east-facing window.

And froze.

Something was different. Something was… No, nothing was wrong. And that was wrong. Someone had found the vial of mist!

Exploding to her feet, she ran out into the hall, not caring that she had disturbed her sleeping companions, and sprinted down to the room where she had left her cart. The oppressive force was gone. She stepped in to search for the vial and saw it drained lying empty next to the cauldron, and as she stepped toward it, she felt the familiar draining power that it possessed emanating from Curiosities’ cauldron. However, despite its presence, it was weak, nothing like it had been before, so she stared down into the receding fluid to witness the thing coming into existence and eating away the sorrow of the mist.

She turned back to the cart, noticing the tremoring bottle on the central shelf. Lifting the bottle to her ear, she smiled as the faint sound of Autumn’s laughter made its way through the glass and smiled even broader at Autumn’s note.


Laughter is infinite. You just gotta know where to look.


Taking up two scraps of paper, she wrote something hurriedly on them, retrieved the contents of cauldron, and placed the labels on it. Then, cleaning the cauldron and closing up the cart, she left, leaving Autumn’s cauldron mixture behind in the center of the room.

***

Ambrosia emerged from the wall from where she had been watching the woman and looked at the results of what she had mixed together. Surprisingly, it was completely changed from its original form. It was a jar full of different-colored, glowing beads, and in the depths of each one shone the familiar lights of the constellation Zintila’s Fall. There were two labels. The first on the front read simply Borrowed Life. The second seemed to be instructions.


For ghosts. Eat one gem. Though only for a short while, life will be yours again. Use them wisely.


For several chimes, Autumn stared at the jar, awestruck and terrified. There was so much potential, for both good and bad, and she couldn’t decide if she wanted to try one or not. Still, it was a gift, and at the very least, she would keep it, hiding it away from curious, living eyes. Tremulous hands reached out and took up the jar, spiriting it away to Gweneveh’s closet, where Autumn hid all of her things.

[Autumn Rose]

Grades!

Autumn

Skills

● Materialization +1


● Soulmist Projection +2

Lores
● Constellation: Zintila's Fall
● Sailors know the stars
● Curiosities and Lost Things: Owned by a short-haired blonde woman
● Curiosities and Lost Things: Had a vial of Deshira Craven's soulmist
● Deshira's Mist: Carries a heavy sense of doom and sorrow
● Hope: The ultimate weapon of a ghost
● Deshira Craven: Key in the creation of Alvadas' Sealed Grounds
● Curiosities and Lost Things: Its owner has a brother
● Materialization: Pulling back mist for a gentler touch
● Autumn: Refilled Bottled Laughter using good memories of Maro
● Borrowed Life: Can make a ghost living for a short time

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