Ravenloft: Prisoners of the Mist

Within the swirling Mist (IC) => Biographies => Topic started by: of clover and thistle on May 21, 2020, 10:20:09 PM

Title: THE MATCHBOX CONCERTO
Post by: of clover and thistle on May 21, 2020, 10:20:09 PM
Few things are consistent in the City of Lights, of Dementileu; the Blooming Rose is always lonely, tobacco is always in vogue, and the humidity is nearly enough to drown a man on land. Moisture choked summer breezes with a disgusting humidity, that carried the rank of unwashed bodies and expensive perfumes into one horrible marriage to be thrust onto the senses. The winter wasn't better, instead providing an inescapable wet cold that cut through second-hand coats and fine fur mantles alike. As autumn came around the bend the rain fall persisted for days at a time. For the less fortunate of the Ourvrier, this would mean wet socks both outside and in, with water flooding curbs and leaking into living rooms through cracks in the walls.

The 'Employment Offices', was really more of a tongue-in-cheek saying in the Ouvrier, it was just one of the old Government Provisions Offices that'd been condemned and cleared out. Mildew assaulted the nose upon entry, followed up by droplets of water from the roof, and closed by the greasy film of dust that wrapped itself over everything. One floor, one room, a leaky window, and sparse furniture, which was more than what was needed. Labor organization is all about who you know, and how you hustle; a game of managing the un-managed into the employ of those with deep-pockets. Half of it was schmoozing around expensive bars to find aristocrats with too much money and bad accountant. The other was on the streets of the Ouvrier, checking in on him and her with the old, "how's the wife, how's the kids, how's the job?" chorus.

Some things called for an office, like written and private correspondence. It also made for a quiet place to sit and smoke that was slightly drier than the curb. Autumn's rain pelted against the dingy glass of the window, sending a cool sigh of air into the hot musk of the room. Marceline Reyer liked the rain;she liked the way it sounded against her office window, the way it felt against her face when she walked in the morning, and the way it tasted, if you drank it from your hands. She liked it enough that she didn't mind when her office routinely flooded in the fall, and kept spare socks in her desk for her visitor's trouble.

"Uh.. madamoiselle Reyer...?"

A young man occupied one of the empty chairs, he looked like if an ox had shed it's horns and shed its hooves. Fresh, second hand clothes sat in awkward stiffness on his barrel chest. If he learned how to scowl, he might make an intimidating door-man. Marceline reached across the desk to collect the ale stained sheet of paper to review the man's credentials. Employed six months on the docks, moving shipments. Deliveries via cart from Edrigan to Marchand for eight. Only four weeks with the shipwright union, and less than that working carpentry jobs. The organizer slowly looked up over the file.

"Says at the bottom here, you're looking for something with city maintenance? ...Gardening?" She poised her question casually, trying not to stare at his oafish fingers and determine how he might tend to flowers with them. "Oui, madamoiselle Reyer. I like the earth, getting soil on my hands. Its a good kind've filthy to be."

The earnest color of his voice reminded her of juniper bushes in their flowering season. "You're a strong man. What about those cart deliveries? It's paying enough to make your ends, don't know if you'll get the same working in the gardens." The young man licked his lips underneath his unruly beard, his face betraying little. "Well I, I could be very good at it. And those wagons've been feeling a little off, lately. The rain and all, heh, making the ah," he swallowed uncomfortably. "Making the, wheels, kind've funny." "All the wheels are funny. This is Port-a-Lucine."

Reyer leaned back in her old creaky seat, trying to put distance between her and the stubborn ox at the other side of the desk. This was a good, strong man, he worked with mild to no complaints, and came from a similar cut of cloth. There were no shortage of his type in Port-a-Lucine, and fortunately there was no shortage of labor either. Gardening though, that was child's work, or something for frailer, meeker people. There could be an opportunity at the Opera house in Savant, but he would spend the next winter paying off the suit they'd make him wear. She picked at patches of dry skin on her chin. "What happened with the shipwrights? That's close to home, and the conditions aren't so rough."

"It's my hands, they get stiff and ache like heated rods. Can't use my fingers proper and... Listen, I swear to you, I'm not shamming it. Halans say it's some kind've, tendon injury. Just can't manage them little nails like I used to."

As he rambled his excuses, the color of his voice expanded in the office like ivy consumes the wall of a house. It was a comfortable color, familiar in its own way, though not because she had any personal familiarity to it. Not like that shade of green the Ezrites keep up in their ruined cathedral, this was something recognizable, and earthy.

"There's... Edrigan. I got somebody in Edrigan, could be they need a hand with their harvest this year." "Edrigan? All the way up that way? Farming's... Well.. How's the pay? I got to feed the missus, she's eating for two now." "It's decent," Reyer replied as she pulled out a sheet of paper and began to write. "Not as much as you're making now with deliveries, though." The document is slid against the greasy dust-film of the desk.

The young man took the sheet into his meaty claws carefully, squinting at the chicken scratch scrawled across the paper. His face fell with pensive consideration. "Not very much, is it..." As he agonized over his career, the existence of time and its passing occurred to the woman, and she checked a pocket watch. "Think about it. If you want my advice, stick out the deliveries, you'll make more taking those crops into the city than you will sowing them in the field." Water sloshed under her chair as she stood up in the small pond that had begun to grow under her desk. "I'll, talk it over with the missus." When the young man rose, Reyer found herself craning her neck back to keep eye contact. She forgot he was younger than her. The pitter patter of rain against the window brought her back to focus, and from there, she remembered the time again. "Yeah, whatever. Just get going, I got another few meets to catch."

The ox of a man bowed his head, muttered his thanks mixed with his farewells, and excused himself into the Autumn rain. From there, the juniper color of his voice began to ebb from the bleak musk of the room, blended out by the grey of the rain. Dread started to settle somewhere deep within the young woman's belly, its source inexplicable and its stay indeterminate.
Title: Re: THE MATCHBOX CONCERTO
Post by: of clover and thistle on May 30, 2020, 04:02:15 AM
The Foucault family deals mostly in furs traded from the Mordentish people from the south. Julian Foucault, head of the house old wasn't young enough to be brash with his money, but hadn't gotten old enough to be disillusioned with gambling. He had sired three children, two married, the eldest expecting his first, which they were hoping to be a boy to carry on the household name. Rene Foucault, his wife, was a woman who covered her ferocity under the numbers and accounting for the company; she much preferred business than the trite expected of the wife of a Count's son. This bitterness had left her passion solely in her logistics for the company, leaving the bed of Julian and Rene Foucault cold, perhaps leading to the reasons as to how Julian found himself at a seedy bar in Marchand.

A rowdy tavern, filled with bawdy tales and rapacious laughter, pints of ale clattering together to celebrate a drunkards toast. While most may argue this is hardly the venue for well-to-do business men, the truth of the matter is that all good business deals are done over tables sticky with ale and sweat.

"Listen, buddy, moniseur Julian," Marceline spoke slowly, struggling to pronounce her slurred vowels through the messy color of the room. Her fingers slither across the dubious surface of the shared table, and perch themselves comfortably on mister Foucault's arm. She had convinced him to check his coat at the door (which no doubt he wouldn't remember to retrieve by the time she was finished with him), and for all his money and heavy velvet fineries, he could dissolve into the crowd of sweaty, rowdy men if she lost track of him. Ale filled Julian's face with a rosey glow to compliment his loose smile. "Marceline... Marceline, I, I don't even know if..." He laughed* and shook his head.

"It sounds like a good idea... But we'd need a warehouse... and tradesmen, the licensing..." Julian trailed off into his next pint of amber beer. "Juliaaan... Listen, ouais? Listen, I'm just saying, I'm -just-, saying, if you opened up a, refining, situation, for those furs here in the city. See I know some girls, know their way 'round a stitch, and I got some boys, mhm, they know how to treat a mink fur, ouais?" Reyer honeyed her words, and leaned forward on the table in a particular fashion that beckoned more attention than her proposal. "Mmhm... my wife, did enjoy that sample you sent me..." his concession came absently as his mind wandered. "But, no. It's much too risky."

"Mhm, mhm... listen you already got a licensing for your operation in the south, it ain't hard to get them shuffled, and I mean, we're talking about building your -legacy- here, makin' the Foucault a house hold name. Something to pass on to the youngi-- Cousette!"

Cousette Farriere was a pretty young woman; her work as a laundress indoors kept her skin pale like the wheat of her hair. Big, blue eyes were shaped like tea-cup saucers, with a smile that rivaled even seasoned enchanters with its charm, Cousette was a once-in-a-life-time woman, hidden in the slums of Port-a-Lucine. Even her voice was unique; it carried a color like the blue found on fine porcelain that deepened and brightened when she sang. Cousette was a lamp light in a wretched place; it was no wonder that she was ever followed with attention, as moths follow flames. "Marsi, Marsi, Marsi... You didn't tell me you had good taste in men!"

She helped herself to their table crowded with dirty dishware, stealing the lordling Julian's pint from his hands to drink from, while he was busy drinking in her presence. Marceline, however, was already immune to her friend's charm, and the bitter jealousy that crept up in her stomach that came along in her wake. "Mmhm, this one's hitched, Cosy. Tryin' to talk him into movin' his business here to the big city."  Cousette chanced a sneaky smile toward the man, sizing him up from the otherside of her mug. "OoOooh? Well, if you're staying, you -have- to see me perform at the Muse. I'm going to be doing a number with the house band and, it's going to be my debute!"  Reyer added to the weight of Cousette's attention as she re-assessed the lordling, now out numbered in gender. There was something to be said about the way Cousette could wrap a man around her finger with just a smile.

"Ahem, yes, I, erm, excuse me, madamoiselle, but you seem to have me at a disadvantage. Can you introduce us, Marceline?" Julian was eager to trade up to the deluxe model of Ouvrier. That knot of dread shifted itself in her belly, but she was sensible enough to ignore it. Dutifully, she went on with the introductions, facilitating what would no doubt prove to be poor ideas.

From there, Reyer's part in the conversation was over. She drank from her ale and let the colors of their voices mix together with the rest of the palate of the bar, making for an ugly, murky haze. They must have hit it off as, at some point during the conversation, she noted a sudden absence of Julian's silver band around his ring finger, and the particular angle Cousette's smile as she pretended to not notice. Some unhappy marriage of guilt, jealousy, and disdain wrestled inside her stomach, but it wasn't a disturbance that couldn't be settled with a few more gulps of ale. After all, now the deal was as sure as summer's rain. The wheels of commerce would keep turning, with or without her encouragement.


In the small hours of the morning, Marceline escaped the murky haze of the tavern, out into the dreary quiet of Marchand. Drink had made her gait uncertain, but routine made her direction sure. Even with the keg she'd filled her belly with,dread continued to knot itself in her jaw and stomach. The source of this would reveal itself in the heavy, coppery scent of blood caught in the harbor's sigh. Turning a corner on the street, her intoxicated march home was paused by the scene of a wreckage. A cart, or at least, it used to be a cart, now slanted forward at a dramatic angle, it's wheels snapped from the weight forced upon faulty spokes. Split crates weep vegetables and jagged splinters of wood onto the cobbles, occupying most of the street.

Underneath it all was a twitching silhouette of an ox of a man, as if a bull had shed his horns and hooves for a shirt and trousers. Marceline struggled with her tongue as she tried to make sense of what bits were mashed up tomatoes and what was smashed flesh. He couldn't be dead, she reasoned, no, dead people don't move, he was still moving, twitching. She chanced a step closer to the wreckage, and the young would be gardener, tilted his head up to look at her. A large wooden splinter, roughly the size of a palm sized spade protruded from his throat, seeping a dark color of blood she didn't know could exist.

At first she thought it a trick of the eyes, maybe it was tomato paste, or juice, it was terribly bright, and dead people don't move. They don't twitch their fingers, or tremble, or gurgle, They don't touch at their neck, at their wounds, with the tentative exploration of an infant, or grasp at the thing that killed them, like it was a hand that could be bargained with. It shouldn'tve come as the surprise that it did.

burn it down
This is Port-a-Lucine, after all. The wheels are always funny.