Closed Wright is Left(ing) [Philomena]

[Liminal]

51 Winter, 512 AV

The letter arrived at Philomena's office via a courier in the employ of the Sailors' Guild. The young man was polite, but had essentially no information to provide about the letter, save that he had been instructed to entrust it to no one except Professor Lefting herself. The letter itself was written in a hand that was elegant, but a bit shaky. Dear Professor Lefting, It's been a long time since I've spoken to you -- probably too long. Life has a way of getting away from us, I suppose. At any rate, as you may have heard, I'll be leaving Zeltiva soon, and I don't know if I'll be returning. I'd like very much to speak with you before I do. Come up to my house -- we'll have tea, real tea, not that horrible kelp stuff they try to pass off as tea in the Old Quarter shops. Do come soon, and don't leave an old woman waitiing. Cordially, Captain Charm Wright. The letter was carefully sealed with the immediately recognizable stylized "W" that was Charm's personal seal. It bore no other markings or enclosures.

[Philomena]

The courier did not have long to wait. He arrived in the mid-day, and waited patiently in Dr. Lefting's office. She stumbled in only a few minutes later. She looked terrible. Her left hand was wrapped tightly in gauze, and her face was drawn and pale, a mixture of the worry visible in her brow, and the lack of sleep visible in her eyes. She entered, quickly, and looked, found the courier's eyes, "They told me you were waiting for me?" The statement was, of course, patently stupid, but she looked like she couldn't manage much more. The courier delivered the letter, and Minnie stared at it still shut, with a wrinkled brow.

"Does it... did madame ask for a reply?"

"A reply, or, a visit, I think, Doctor."

She sighed, and nodded. She tried gingerly to pinch the envelope in her bound hand, but when she then tugged at the seal to open it with her free hand, the gauze offered insufficient traction, and the letter popped from her hands to the floor. The man bent, blushing and picked it up.

Minnie blushed, mumbled, "Would you... could you... open the seal.."

"Yes ma'am," he opened it delicately, being sure to display his unwillingness to read the contents, and handed it to Minnie. Minnie took it in her good hand, and scanned the letter quickly. Her face contorted a moment, her brow wrinkling with something... concern? Sorrow? Fear?

"Very well... very well. Yes. I will go... let me see..."

She bent to her desk, and pulled a wax tablet from under a pile of books. She flipped it open awkwardly, and scanned it - it was a schedule. Then she nodded.

"Yes... yes very well... I'll go visit her now..."

-----

The road to Charm's house was not a short one, and Minnie walked, her satchel at her side, her left hand in a heavy mitten, and her right tucked inside her battered mackintosh. She pulled a scarf around her head, then circled her face with it, leaving only her mouth revealed. The first half of the way had been through the city, and while the little stretch of white, empty wood and field that stood below Wright Manor let the wind blow keener on her, she preferred it. There was a solitude to it, the sound of the wind, the bleak sorrow of the nude trees, the stone of the Wright House coming up toward her. She had been here last years before, and it had been summer then. There was a certain poignancy to the house in winter, its solitude and high, peaked gables giving it a look like a ship on a solitary white sea. She came through the gates, and up the steps to the front door, where she opened it, pulled the bell-rope. And waited, probably not long. In a better moment, she likely would have thought to unwrap the scarf at least. This was not, for her, a better moment.

[Liminal]

The door was quickly opened by a footman, a tall, dignified man in a formal coat. He seemed to already know who Philomena was, for he was immediately ushering her in, offering to take her coat, and leading her down the long, marble-floored hallway to the study. Inside the study, the light was much dimmer. There were no windows, and the flickering oil lights gave the room a rich yellow cast. The walls were lined with books – the whole collection must have cost thousands upon thousands of mizas. There was a fire in the fireplace, which was flanked by two leather armchairs. In one of them sat an old woman, her hair long since gone white, her face creased with age and salt. This, of course, was Captain Charm Wright, she who had summoned Philomena here. In front of her was a small table with a tray, on which sat an elegant porcelain teapot and two cups. "Ah, Doctor Lefting!" The voice was powerful but cracked, a combination of strength and years. "Please, come and sit down. Tea? It's the good stuff, as promised, imported from Eyktol at the special request of a woman who's too old to spend her few remaining days drinking swill." "How are you?" It was an innocuous enough question, but the searching look in the Captain's eye seemed to indicate that she was looking for a real answer, not simply a social nicety. "I've been terribly busy with getting ready to run off to my near-certain doom, but that's less exciting than you might think. I want to hear about you."

[Philomena]

Minnie surrendered her coat only gingerly, her hat only hesitantly, and her scarf only clumsily. Proceeding on down the hall toward Charm's office, she took a deep breath, and smelled the scent... of tea. No gloom after all is too thick for tea, is it? Her mouth... it did not quite smile at this, but it perhaps softened a bit. She took her spectacles off and very carefully wiped them on the gauze of her bandaged hand, then setting them back on went into the office.

She scanned the walls with a certain surreptitious pleasure - first simply for the lust-inducing pleasure of walls of books, and then, one must confess, for the subtle but present little prides of a very old woman - she sought out the spine of her own work. But, before she coudl get so far, she blushed, recollecting herself, and looked to the chairs - books were the best of friends, but they were also the most patient, and humans became, on the contrary, somewhat testy if one did not stop to acknowledge them on entering a room. She nodded with a smile that would have been simply polite, had her eyes not belied exhaustion, and fell into quite possibly the least graceful curtsy within the borders of Zeltiva, a sort creaking, angular bend, and an extension of the limp, damp skirts of a tartan jumper.

Her mind clearly raced through the multitude of titles she could possibly use to address her old acquaintance. First name? No, too informal, not for the great Charm Wright! Councilor Wright? No... that seemed stuffy.

"Captain Wright, it has been... a long time, I was..." she hesitated uncomfortably, but not impolitely, "I was, I can say, very happy to be able to see you before you go."

"How are you?" the old woman offered in return, "I've been terribly busy with getting ready to run off to my near-certain doom, but that's less exciting than you might think. I want to hear about you."

At this Minnie hesitated, but smile weakly, "Oh, I'm fine, you know. I don't know what an old woman could say about her life that would be more interesting than your life must be this season, Captain."

She pulled herself, as she said this, into the second armchair, sitting in it stiffly. Partly, this was a matter of consequence - given the doctor's diminuitive stature, most furniture was just slightly unsuited to her. Her legs dangled over the armchair's edge, reaching the floor only if she pointed the toes, and the only way for her to sit back into luxuriant softness of the back would be to bend somewhere around the middle of the back to meet it, or to scoot back so that her knees were on the cushion as well, and her legs stuck straight out before her like a resting lord who's lost his ottoman. At home, she likely would have relented to one of the two of these. But in the house of the Great Charm Wright? this things felt verboten.

Even aside from this, though, she looked uncomfortable. Physically on the one hand - she was unused to working around her injured hand, and had leaned on it harder than she ought pulling herself into the chair, a fact perhaps discernible by the perceptive, as she let out a sharp intake of breath, and bit the interior of her lower lip just slightly. Emotionally, moreso. She looked at the other woman, with the frank and submissive manor of a servant looking at a brave and benevolent mistress. This was habitual for her, and almost certainly familiar to the sharp eyed old captain. But there was more in her face, than this. Worry? Pity, perhaps.

"Your... your preparations go well, I hope?" a strain crept into her voice, saying this. Minnie Lefting was a woman of many skills. Clearly concealing her emotions from those she loved was still not one she had developed.

[Liminal]

"Minnie Lefting!" The words were sharp, even reproachful, and they cut through the air like a series of blades. "Minnie Lefting, I am too old for this. You don't get to call yourself an old woman when I'm sitting here and I could be your mother, you don't get to tell me you're fine when you're clearly in pain, and for the gods' sake, you don't get to sit there scrunching and shrinking, rather than pulling up an ottoman. There's one behind the chair, and I'll thank you to use it." Immediately, her face grew kind. "Doctor, I called you here because I have something important to tell you, perhaps even something important to give you, and because I'd like to see a friendly face before I vanish off the face of this world. I haven't time for polite demurrals. When I ask you about yourself, at my age, and in my position, it's because I really want to know." She gestured toward the tray. "So pour yourself a cup of tea, pull up the ottoman, and tell me what's actually on your mind. What's troubling you? What have you been up to? How goes your life? I've been thinking about mine for long enough, and though I'll tell you more about it before long, let's start with you, shall we?"

[Philomena]

Minnie does not start, she cringes. It is not a personal reaction, it has little to do with the captain herself - it is instinctual, it is the gesture of a child waiting to be struck, it makes her face look both younger and older, like a sort of wizened dwarf. IT is not flattering. She regathers the face, quickly. and composes it into something else - it would be, perhaps, horror at herself if she felt better. As it stands, she can manage only mild embarrassment. When one does not see a friend for too long, one forgets things - with the Old Captain Wright, it is easy to forget her sharpness over wasted time, the sharpness of a woman who has dealt with crisis and storm, in the glowing light of her more habitual soft-spoken kindness. She pulls herself heavily from the chair and goes around the back, without a word, and pulls the ottoman around. She settles at first stiffly into the back of the chair, the model of a right angle, her hands placed in her lap, over her bag - that last, that is at least familiar to anyone who knows her. The satchel, that is where she keeps her books, and books, she does not part form her body, after all, when she is not at home. They must be kept close. And beyond this, there is an element of the security blanket to it, an element that perhaps she would never confess to herself, but that is apparent in the clutch of her fingers on the bag's body.

"You will forgive me, captain, I know, for you always have. A woman grows used to withdrawing, I suppose. But I know you ask sincerely, captain. Very well then. I have been unwell. I am not so old as you, perhaps, but then, I have not been so much of a soul, and I think captain, that your greatness gives you a certain vitality," she smiles at the woman, meaning it as compliment, if a rather clumsy one, "IT has... been a difficult winter for me. A lonely one perhaps. And then, there is..." her voice tightens a bit and she stops speaking. As her words rolled from her slightly quivering lips, she curled in the chair, unconsciously perhaps, until she rested half on her side, her legs curled up inside her skirt, her arms pulled tight around her narrow, pudgy ribs. She tries to speak but fails, and finally simply pulls out the bandaged hand, and gingerly unwraps it.

The wound on the back is ugly, but not enormous, a deep nick in her palm, stitched neatly shut. But around it the skin of her palm was swollen, and the horrid purple-black of slow, steady decay. It was the size of a miza, now, the circle of oozing, pussed flesh. It smelled simultaneously of rot and spirits and cheap distillation of violet. IT had been bungled early, perhaps, but was well tended now, it seemed, the yellow stain of iodine surrounding it, the cut as clean as could be expected. But the infection was not relenting. It looked, perhaps, a few months old.

Minnie said the words very, very softly, "Blood poisoning. I... I have been doing my... my best with it. I have gone to the infirmary, though there are many there sicker than I am, of course, these days. It has been... about two weeks. They treat it, they are so terribly gentle with it. But, it is this plague. I think there is little to be done, to be honest. It is my fault, I know this, I know... I need to sleep. I need to rest. I can't. I lie in bed, and I stare at it, and my mind crawls over the smell of the blankets, of the floors, of the tailor shop, I feel, like..." she is crying, just slightly now, just the little bit of leaking fear. Weeping is unattractive on her, her face grows swollen and red to go with the purple sleep-bruising beneath her eyes, with the slack exhaustion of her skin. "I... I did not come to complain. I did not. But the captain will... will, I hope, not be too sorry she asked."

She shudders slightly, the wounded hand laying limp on the arm of the chair. Her eyes pore over it with a barely-repressed brain-sickness shimmering in her pupils.

[Liminal]

Throughout the process of settling herself, Charm said nothing, only looked at Philomena with gentleness. When the wound on her hand was revealed, Charm drew in a quick breath, and then clucked her tongue. "Ah, so that's it. It makes sense now, especially since that's what finally got our friend Hannah. Here, you need some of this." The old woman grasped a chain that hung around her neck. She pulled it up to reveal a small crystal vial, which she then clasped in her hand. "Rak'keli's Tears. Or at least, that's what Amalasi called it when she gave it to me, the last time I was in Mura. It was at a celebration back in 500, when I was still head of the Guild, and when I still had plenty of acquaintances from my time on the Nyka route. Anyway, I have no idea what the stuff actually is, or what the process is for making it, but I can tell you one thing -- it's the best thing I've ever seen or heard of for cuts and wounds. I've only a tiny amount left -- nowhere near enough to be useful at any of the infirmaries, but enough to fix you up, I think." Before Philomena could make any protest, Charm was out of her seat and pouring a small amount of the liquid from the vial on the injury. The substance was perfectly clear, and smelled slightly of nutmeg. It evaporated almost instantly upon contact, but still Philomena could feel a tingling, a sort of vibration of both her body and soul. "That should do it. It usually does," Charm said, returning the vial to the chain around her neck and sitting back down. "Might take a few days, but you'll be good as new. I can't have you dying on me, Minnie Lefting." She took a deep drink from her teacup, which was made of pale blue china, decorated with a single red bird. "Anyhow, I've nothing interesting to say about myself, but I wondered if you might want to talk about Kena."

[Philomena]

There is something almost upsetting about having one's truly severe problems solved so easily by someone else, a tension unaided by the marked contrast in style - Minnie, with the romantic sensibilities of the mediocre poet, and Charm with the brass tacks practicality of an accomplished ship's captain. It is not to say Minnie is not grateful - simply that she is confused, and perhaps a touch ashamed - she had come in making such a deal of something that was, apparenty, so simple to repair. Her lips twitch, to stop the old captain, but she is not as spry as the elderly woman, and before she can protest, the business is done. The drops are applied. Her hand twitches and pulses with life. That, as they say, is that. She looks at the wound with mistrust a moment, and blushes, and begins to wrap it slowly with the linen bandage, the ceremonial quality of the action gone, now. The whole process makes her feel like a spoiled child.

A better soul than her would have, now, unburdened the other half of her troubled mind - the troubling is still there, the externalized worry very apparent in her eyes, next to the tussling of dissolution of the internalized terror at her hand. She looks at Charm, and there is something like... fear. Or pity. Or even, perhaps if one digs a bit, if one is used to the gnomic little face of the woman, just the barest edges of anger, these all some separate thread from her hand. They thicken and coagulate a bit, as the old captain speaks on, as she wishes Minnie's long life, as she states that she has nothing to say about herself. A less coward soul would perhaps have boiled over, for though Minnie suppresses the little percolating bubbles of feeling, they don't quite disappear.

And in Minnie's defense, Charm pulls out the trump card, she pulls out the topic which Minnie cannot resist. Yes, yes, the confusion of the frightened child suddenly healed stays. Yes, the little cocktail of fear and pity and anger, they do not disappear. But these become insignificant behind the shivering intense desire, almost lust, of the scholar for her quarry. She sits up, pulling her feet underneath her hips, and her hand opens the flap of the satchel, quietly drawing out the wooden frame of a wax tablet, flipping it open, drawing out a stylus.

"Your... " her voice almost launches into a pleasantry, almost plays the polite and casual that one is expected to play, almost defaults to the posture of hiding passion in order to decrease the discomfiture of those around one. But though one forgets things about Charm Wright, one remembers them quickly. Posturing, even for the sake of tact, is no kindness towards the old captain. Her voice regresses, just perceptibly, into the lower canting quality of her childhood accent, a rough edged street pidgin, a sure sign that she is present and unguarded and vulnerable to the situation.

"Captain, I... I canny imagine you truly wonder if I would. I imagine y'know with a sairtanty that I would, whenever the cap'n might grant t' me th'pleasure of her memory. Though... perhaps, too..." the irritation underneath, that pity-anger, perhaps seeps in for just a moment, "Perhaps the captain might... have different priorities in thinkin' me uninterested in hearing 'bout her own affairs apart from her sister, too. What she might think tedious, an old pedant like me might think more interesting than the cap'n 'spects."

Her hands, in the minuscule hand that all her writing appears in, so small as to be almost a religious practice, writes two column headers on the clean wax tablet: 'Kenabelle Wright', and 'Charm Wright'.

[Liminal]

Charm Wright laughed – not meanly or sarcastically, but a silvery note of friendship. She had once had a beautiful laugh, and though age had cracked and scarred it, all the years combined hadn’t extinguished it altogether.

”Always the scholar, Professor Lefting. Hannah would be pleased. I wonder, did you ever know how proud she was of you? You were her prize student, and you gave some much-needed meaning to her last years.”

The captain gave a more thoughtful smile. ”And, I suppose, even though it’s Kena’s story and not mine, it does come back around to me eventually. Or maybe it’s just one story, with more than one character. I don’t know. Kena was the writer and the philosopher, not me. Anyway, be patient with an old woman, especially if I hit on things you already know. The gods know you probably can repeat my life back to me better than I can.”

The old woman took another sip of her tea. The study was bathed in the scent of steeping leaves and leather books.

”It took me a long time to forgive Josephine Helm. Some days, I’m not sure that I ever really did.”

It was an odd beginning, and Charm seemed to know it, for she quickly went on.

”Kena was a lot of the things everyone says about her – brilliant, brave, poetic, beautiful. But she wasn’t perfection incarnate, and one of the things she wasn’t so good at was telling when someone had ulterior motives. She was an amazing captain, but you know, if she’d lived long enough, they’d have tried to make her Senior Member, and I hope she would have had the sense to say no, because politics weren’t her strong suit. Fact is, it’s one of the only areas in which I can say with confidence that I was always better than her.”

This brought a meager chuckle across the woman’s lips. ”Anyway, you may be aware of this, but the 440s were a time of tremendous tension in the Guild. You have to understand that part of the Guild thought the highest priority was trade, commerce, the expansion of wealth. The other part saw themselves as more explorers, pioneers, the great doers of the post-catastrophic age. That’s one of the reasons that Timothy de Octans was so popular. He pulled off all these feats of exploration – sailing the short route to Mura, charting the eastern coastline, figuring out how to get around Rockward Island up and up to the Suvan. But every single one of them also made the Guild money. Adding the Suvan route especially brought in an unbelievable amount of cash.”

Her teacup was empty now, and she refilled it from the kettle. ”Anyway, Captain Helm was one of the second group, at least in theory. She was trying to gain leverage any way she could, and when Kena, in one of her many suicidal moments, sailed all the way to Sunberth alone, it was Helm’s idea to make her a full member, rather than just an associate, or some kind of higher-up apprentice. It was, to her, a triumph of the spirit of exploration, not just of money-grubbing, and making Kena a full member was a way of holding her up as some kind of icon for the cause.”

Charm shrugged. ”That part was probably harmless enough, and there wasn’t any denying that Kena had a genius for sailing. But this was after Helm’s idea that the Guild was going to try and circumnavigate the whole of Mizahar. Half the Guild was ready to revolt. We were already trading with everyone from Novallas to Syliras, and what good would going further do? There was nothing past Novallas except ice and wolves, and nothing across the Faleyk except Myrians and Death’s Own Island. We weren’t going to pick up any new trading partners, so why go through all the prodigious expense and trouble?”

The old captain narrowed her eyes. ”Do you know, she pitched this idea as far back as 430, and no one went for it, and then all of a sudden a few years later, the University – the University – wanted to commission a voyage to do it? A lot of the Guild members thought Helm had gone behind their backs to suggest the idea to our old rivals – and I’ve seen Helm’s notes, and I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what happened. Helm almost lost the Senior Membership over the whole scandal.”

Again, she shrugged her bony shoulders. ”I don’t blame her, really. Politics is a messy business. But what angers me is that she didn’t have the courage of her convictions. Finally, the actual building of the Seafarer starts, and it’s nothing but problems. The shipwrights had to use different materials than they were used to, just because of how big the thing was. We lost a ship in Novallas in 448, and that got people wondering whether the Seafarer could make it all the way across the Talderan coast.”

Her lips puckered with disgust. ”That’s when Helm panicked. If the expedition failed, it meant a crushing loss to her philosophical position, and almost certainly the end of her influence. She got scared, and that’s when she decided that, no matter what the rest of the Administrative Committee said, she was not, not, not going to approve Timothy de Octans as captain of the expedition. I’ve seen the minutes of those meetings, and they’re as ugly as sin. She needed to have an out, a convenient excuse if the expedition failed, and she was going to get one, even if it meant retiring personally, and taking de Octans off the water. Eventually, the rest of the Committee went along with her – I think the fact that her retirement was included in the deal helped win them over – and together, they sold the University on it. The only issue remaining was that they needed someone to nail to the mast and take over the captaincy, and they decided that, since my sister was already a sort of symbol of pure exploration, they might as well sacrifice her.”

Charm’s voice was shaking now, and she had set her teacup back on the tray. ”Timothy de Octans was a grown man, someone who had captained a series of difficult expeditions, who had essentially been training his entire life for this. My sister was a prodigy, but still barely more than a child. And they sent her off anyway, not as the cartographer she'd aspired to be, but with the full weight of the city on her, and she never came back.”

A wave of her gnarled hand. ”No, my big secret isn’t that Kena was some kind of impostor or changeling. But my sister, my confidante, the Kenabelle Wright who I’d known and loved – she didn’t come back. What came back was a broken soul occupying her body, and though she was still brilliant and brave and poetic and beautiful, though she could, at least for a while, play the hero and show kindness to even the most contemptible, she was never all right again. Not even mostly right.”

[Philomena]

There is, at first, a certain embarrassment in Minnie Lefting's face. Charm's gentleness in contrast to her awkwardness gives her both the comfort of being against all odds, understood, and the sorrow of returning so poor a gift in the form of social intercourse. But this is short-lived, now, for Charm begins that most sacred of things: a story.

Minnie reaches forward, ever so quietly, almost like a child stealing sweets, as the story begins, pouring herself a cup of tea. She had not until now. Partly this was an embarrassment at accepting a gift she is unlikely to ever have the wealth to properly return. Partly it was distraction. But then, there is something about the sound of a story and the scent of warm tea, that makes pouring the one in the ears inspire a comfortable, urgent desire to pour the other past the lips. She makes her tea with a hand used to a teapot, but she fills the cup almost half full of cream before pouring the tea itself, the sure mark of the habitual kelp tea drinker, the subconsciousness of poverty driving one to preserve the gold of the tea by indulging the rich silver of the fresh cream. She sips the tea, and exhales, very slowly. Sips again. Writes notes. Listens, above all listens.

The honest friend of Philomena Lefting would do her no service to ignore her many, glaring faults. Minnie is a collection of the contradictions born of mislearned skills and half-stunted growths of the mind. But listening! In this she has a skill, a great skill, perhaps born of her very faults. Her dissociative tendencies with the realities of her own present leave her mind and soul open to being inhabited by a recited character or idea. Her utter incompetence at regulating emotions toward those she trusts and admires leaves her a perfect sounding board to the attentive speaker. Minnie Lefting, as audience, almost subconsciously frees the storytelling from the back and forth of artifice necessary to pierce the defenses of the listener, for stories intrinsically disarm her so completely, that her sincerity asks nothing from the storyteller but sincerity in return, bathing in the strength of the teller's convictions. Minnie's listening can transform even bare narration into the sacred space of received recollection - this makes it a very selfish gift, but nonetheless, a very real one.

There is the hand of the scholar in her listening as well. As the story progresses, though Minnie never removes her eyes from the old captain's, her hand scrawls fine, miniature marks down the page of her wax tablet, in quick, orderly succession - they are not messy, so much as possessing an unfamiliar, foreign quality, a sort of personal shorthand. The very delicacy of the marks almost grants them a certain grace, a certain reflective quality - the wax is dipped lighter and deeper in a contrapuntal rhythm to the contours of the story.

But this scholarliness, eventually, is subsumed by the child-listener in her, and eventually, the stylus slows, and goes slack in her hand. She sets it down and takes her teacup up again, with a shivering grip, to drink. The steam fogs her spectacles, and she removes and wipes them with a quiet absence that is, almost, graceful, but for the aimlessness of her half-blinded eyes, staring only generally at the smear of color that marks Charm's face, until the glasses return to their home.

With a story about the Wright sisters, there is more than simply the listener's intensity in Minnie. In a way at once both painfully sincere, and perhaps a touch queer, even wrong, her eyes, and then, as Charm reaches the breathing point of the story, her voice are filled with more than the academics fascination, or the hero-worshippers admiration: her voice has the queer, vibrating power of love. She speaks, in response, not the way one should talk about a heroine, a 'great woman', but more as one might speak of a tragically dead sister, or a lost, once intimate childhood friend. IT is the love of a child who once declared that the idea of the Wright's was her childhood substitute for a family. The shivering intensity of it is increased, because the words she speaks are in a canting, iambic verse:

"My hands, that drove a tiller straight,
And rounded distant capes --
My heart that grappled with a plague,
That wrenched a ship from wrecking wave,
But could not stand against the guilt
Of living, to come home."

The verse is unfamiliar to anyone but Minnie herself - it is her own verse, and it slips from her mouth to her lips with the guileless murmur of long-kept secrets. And then she speaks, slightly more firmly, but still ever so quietly,

"I... it would be untrue for me to say I have never suspected. But then, the evidence... there is so little of your sister's writing that is in the public record from before the Circumnavigation, and to make an unfounded theory, I would... I would feel no better than the gossips that wrote all the codswallop anti-guild tracts in the 490's, with their nonsense about the 'Mad Captain of the Empty House', and all, and... I will confess... it felt private. Like a family secret, though... I... I feel presumptuous saying that, now, I'm not in the family, after all. I... I am sorry, Charm." she speaks the name, the bare unadorned first name, and it has a sort of bell-tolling quality to it, from her. IT is the first time she has ever called the woman simply by her given name, "I am sorry. I am sorry that... that you had to carry this alone, so terribly long."

And then, she makes a very peculiar gesture. Her hand, sets down her stylus, and the with the shy innocent presumption of the socially incompetent, it rises, crosses the space between the two chairs, and, if the lady allows it, very softly touches the older woman's face. Her fingers are very small and only delicately stroke the surface of the woman's cheek, just with the gentle pressure of queer sincerity. Then, she draws the hand back, and lays the back of her wrist on the arm of her chair, the pale, delicate skin of the interior of it open to the room, the hand laid open and receptive in the gap between their chair, in front of the tea-set, neither requesting nor demanding. It is, of course, an undeniably uncanny, even invasive gesture, some bastard stepchild of the gesture of the mother stroking an infant's cheek. And then again, it is queer and uncanny because it is in its odd way, powerful. The face is to human kindness, what the lips is to desire - it is where it is first expressed on the one hand, and where one receives the intimate consummation of the emotion, on the other. Touching the face is an act of assertion, a space where all interactions must be either sacred or blasphemous - but then the line between the sacred and the blasphemous is decided not by the man, but by the god. Some people would recoil from the gesture. Some would be upset. Some would laugh cruelly at it. IT is a barometer, in its way, of the emotional vulnerability of the recipient. Some, some few, would simply accept it for what it is, perhaps.