Placeholder Cashmere or Calvary -- The Same

[Philomena]

Winter 52, 512 AV
Wright Manor, Zeltiva
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The snow, for once, was slow and fat and wet, the faintest of breaths having carried a great herd of snow-clouds down the pass to corral them temperately between the mountains and the sea, where the rested now, to play themselves out. Minnie had the collar of her Mackintosh turned up, and an old quilt layered underneath it. She made some token effort at tucking the quilt down, so as to appear respectable, but it trailed out the bottom nonetheless, one corner of it occasionally dancing against the slush-muddy flagstones.

Her bad hand awkwardly held the coat shut, and the other was inside her bag, in took wooly, poorly knit gloves, the fingers gently caressing the surface of her wooden keybox. Her boots felt sloppy on her feet, the sodden leather soles squelching softly as she walked, and her glasses were being impossible, drawing heavy snowflakes onto the lenses with a frequency that made her try walking without them for a moment, until she promptly stumbled over a stray dog, and tripped, catching herself painfully on her one good hand. She wore the glasses after that.

"If I met Rak'kelli, I don't know if I'd ask her to cure this plague for me, or give me my damned eyesight back," she muttered under her breath.

It was early, still, the pale fingers of dawn still interlocked with the fading hand of night. The streets here, away from the docks, were mostly empty. Minnie walked down the straight hill-street that led to Wright Manor - it was close enough now she could see the gardens, the trees fat and rich with creamy dollops of new, heavy snow. Minnie loved the way that heavy snow clung to each tendril of branch - she knew the gardeners must hate it, for some of the trees of the gardens were delicate, some not really suited to the Zeltivan climate, kept alive by care and ingenuity alone. The weight of all that snow was liable to snap branches off of a delicate cherry tree or a hoary old willow. Minnie wondered, in the nonsensical way that the mind flies to the irrelevant in times of great turmoil, if the gardeners went out in the storm specifically to brush the snow off of some of the trees. But then, wouldn't they get colder? The way that one felt warmer half buried in snow than lying atop a pile of it.

For the umpteenth time on the trip, she worried whether the housekeeper would be up yet. She wasn't going to do a full inventory of the house - that would come, but not today, not when she was catching the staff, perhaps, unawares. Today, she only… well, if she confessed it honestly to herself, she simply wanted to walk through the halls and gardens of Wright Manor. To make a pilgrimage. She would take notes, of a certainty, and she would keep her eyes open, and she would try to do something useful. And she would spend some time in the office, list the contents of the documents, hopefully come up with a bibliographical notation schema for the books. Perhaps begin to come up with some idea of how big the task of document storage and preservation and, Qalaya forbid, restoration would be. But even there, even in the office, she confessed to herself, she wanted to find a way for the servants to grow used to her? To forget her? And to sit, simply sit. Servants had always been second hand, the idea of them was somewhat foreign, even repulsive to her. She wished to think of them as simply scholars like her, preserving, rather than books, gardens, bits of furniture, rug patterns, painted walls, tidy floors. She found herself curious if Kena had kept the house tidy? The whole myth of sailors as being tidy folks, she'd had disproved so many times she paid it no heed. Surely, at sea, tidiness was an important business, but then, so was, more than likely, chastity under most conditions, and it certainly didn't stop the sailors from reverting to an alternate state upon kissing mother earth. She had read that Kena was tidy, but then, she'd read almost every conceivable virtue being ascribed to Kena in the various hagiographies over the years, and had learned that, perhaps, there was some element of the desires of the author in these, rather than a slavish devotion to truth.

And now, she stood at the gates. And she felt a chill in her heart. She had the key of course, but… suddenly, she was shy to use it, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, her jealous protectiveness of the house's contents made her want to not be seen entering the gate, particularly under her own powers. She was eminently sure that Charm had checked carefully the legality of her ability to protect the house, but then, the University had enough power to, perhaps, bend law in the right circumstances. Minnie's reputation was fairly good from a scholar's standpoints but her… personal irregularities could perhaps give an over-zealous regent 'just cause' to have her rights to such an important set of artifacts stripped. Minnie was no lawyer, and could not afford one if she needed one, really, and her past had taught her anything but a great trust in the vagaries of the legal process. She would prefer to work as she had worked as a child - under the protection of obscurity and scorn. Then, there was simply the fact that she did not know just what would happen if the servants saw a strange woman wandering up the path. She did not think she would be injured or even attacked, but Minnie's heart avoided conflict and uncomfortable conversations as much as possible. And then… there was something of the terror of the worshipper about her too, something about the finality of stepping into the Wright house and not seeing the ghost she'd dreamt into its halls. And so, like pranksters, hopeful scholars, and just the curious in the distant past, she left the keys in her bag, and quietly, quietly rang the bell, hoping that perhaps, somewhere, there was a subtler postern gate through which she could be admitted.

[Liminal]

The bell rang, its chime louder in the frosted air than it had any right to be. For at least a full minute, there was no sound except the drawn-out dying of the bell. Then, there was a shuffling of footsteps, boots on gravel, coming closer until finally a figure emerged from behind a juniper close to the gate.

It was a woman, perhaps in her forties, dressed in a groundskeeper's togs. There was dirt on her knees, and a trowel in her left hand. She did not seem to recognize Minnie.

"Greetings. Do you have business at the Manor?"

It was a rote question, delivered flatly. She had obviously asked the question dozens upon dozens of times. It was likely she expected no useful answer. Who, after all, actually had business at the Manor? Other than the grounds- and housekeepers -- and Charm, of course, who had a key and wouldn't be ringing the bell -- there were only a handful of craftspeople who could claim to have been let into the Manor in the past four decades. When the shingles on the roof came loose in a storm, or when the hinges on the great front door needed replacing, a specialist was sometimes called in to fix them, but that was it. Tours were not allowed, researchers were turned away, and curiosity-seekers were quickly dismissed, as Kenabelle's idiosyncratic will specified.

Minnie would know all this, of course, and perhaps had even seen others ring the bell and be summarily shooed off. This time was different, but it seemed that if Charm had mentioned to her that Minnie would be coming by, she had also mentioned that the Professor had the key and wouldn't need to be admitted.

[Philomena]

Minnie blushed, flustered. The woman's practiced detatchment made her feel summarily young. She simply stared, gob-smacked at the woman for a moment.

//Minnie Lefting! You damend, petching fool, wake up! Oh petch-a-fish, way to make an intelligent first impression, you idiot...//

She coughed, then, and reached into her bag, touching the key box. Its finely finished surface gave her a needed boost of confidence, however small.

"Erm... yes, I... is there... is there a better..."

//No, no, Minnie, stop a moment. She wants to know if you're allowed in. Take the key out. That's it, dear, that's it...//

She fumbled the box open, and took out the key Charm had designated for the house, "I'm sorry, I... Charm... Captain Wright... she gave me this, only..."

She blushed harder now, but managed to meet the housekeeper's eyes.

"I was hoping... perhaps... is there a quieter entrance than this? Here on the open street, I... it would be better to not have people watching me pass in and out, and come badgering me with questions. Did... the Lady have a postern somewhere, or something? I'll gladly go around..."