Post by Gweneviere Rousseau on May 27, 2011 20:52:27 GMT -5
Clemence Rousseau was dying. Like a champ, he clung to the thinning string he called life, obdurate to the bitter end. With every breath he drew came a mouthful of blood and spittle. In his final hours, he lay confined to his bed, barely able to move. Though many years spanned her future, his young daughter Gweneviere sat dutifully by his bedside, clasping his hands and praying to whichever god would listen. Obviously, they were all otherwise occupied. Or, perhaps, they didn't see fit to extend their almighty hands and tap Clemence on the shoulder. Smack him with their magical health canes.
As he passed in and out of consciousness, Clemence carried on a conversation with little Gwen. In sleeping, he would dream of her future, of everything he'd raised her to become. In waking, he would mutter whatever the sight of her face elicited from the recesses of his crumbling mind.
"You haven't eaten," he observed once, gaze sweeping over Gwen's slender frame. She'd always been petite, standing no taller than five feet, two inches, but she looked nowhere near malnourished, despite the fact that her father had been incapacitated and unable to provided for her. Her build was athletic, laced with wiry muscle from activities best kept withheld from her father's attention.
"I eat when you sleep, Papa," Gwen reminded him patiently.
Lie.
She hunted when he slept.
Satisfied with this answer, Clemence nodded off. Then he shook himself awake with another question. "How are things in the city these days?"
Ballistar is crumbling, Gwen thought. The people are hungry for war. All we need is one hungry wolf or vampyr - hell, even a fish - to wander across our borders, and the forced peace is history. The gods may very well have to wipe our entire race off the island. But never mind that. You just drink your soup and take your medicine. She shrugged. "Good, I 'spose."
"Have you made any new friends?"
Gwen's brow furrowed.
Touchy subject.
Recalling the past few years of her life left a bitter taste in her mouth. The other girls her age were more into braiding hair and playing with dolls. The boys fooled around with their fathers' spears, proclaiming it would be them to reignite the war and salvage the human race from the wreckage it had become. Gwen couldn't find her niche with any of them.
But there was one boy. At least four years her senior, he was tall and strong, but shy. He kept to the shadows mostly, but Gwen had spotted him, creeping deftly about as though he exploded from the womb and immediately started jumping across rooftops.
"Not as of yet," she replied carefully, at length. "But there's one potential, if I ever find the time to talk to him."
Smiling faintly, Clemence patted her hand. "That's my daughter," he muttered, as though only half aware he were speaking. "Always the socialite."
No doubt he thought of the time when that statement held true. Before he'd suffered the injuries that left him bed-ridden. Back before Gwen had reached the age of seven and the final year of the war went out with a bang that rocked her universe. Back before she'd been forced to grow up and take care of her father as a young girl. Before she was fourteen and watching him die. She'd been a playful kid back then. She could laugh and sprint and dance and twirl with the rest of them. She could crack jokes and play cute. The neighborhood loved her.
Now, all they knew was the girl swiping their food on occasion for the sake of survival.
These were the thoughts bounding around her head as she drifted off to sleep.
Hours later, she woke to the sound of a hysterical coughing fit. Her father had spewed blood and mucus across his front and was doubled over in bed. Scrambling to her feet, Gwen leaned across the sheets and pressed the back of her hand to her father's forehead. Touching it burnt her skin.
Soaking a wash cloth, she laid it on her father's forehead. Then, after she'd changed him into a fresh shirt and adjusted his blankets, she gave him explicit instructions to stay where he was and scurried out the door.
She navigated the ropes stringing Ballistar together as a spider would its own web. The rigging was familiar to the touch. She hastened to fetch the local medicine man - or rather, the only man she could afford to pay - and guided him back down to her house. Then she threw him before her father and bid him assess the man.
Minutes of chin-stroking and "Mhm"ing passed, then the medicine man cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, little girl," he began.
"Gweneviere," she corrected.
"I can't treat your father. There are other men with other drugs, but they are far too expensive for either your or my budgets. The knife wound in his thigh has been infected, and I don't have the tools or the training it treat it properly. I can, however, sedate your father to prolong his death."
A lightbulb clicked on in Gwen's head. A plan.
"How long can you prolong it?"
"Eight months at the least," the medicine man replied. "A year at the most. But he'll be comatose for the entirety of it. He'll have to be fed in liquids and you won't be able to converse with him."
"That's just fine." Gwen rushed to her father's bureau to fetch the man some payment. "Eight months is all I need. And it's better that he not know where I am or what I'm up to."
The medicine man titled his head to the side, his eyes narrowing to slits. "Up to?" he echoed.
Palming the coins from the bureau, Gwen turned to him. "Will this be enough for the drug?" she demanded crisply, "And for you to feed my farther until he passes away?"
Leaning over, the medicine man studied the coins in Gwen's hand. It was her father's entire life savings, but of course, he didn't know that. "More than enough. Is that all I have to do to earn it? Give you the drug and feed your father?"
"Yes." She held the coins out to him. Then, growing wary, recoiled, folding her fingers over the money. "But don't you dare think of grabbing this money and splitting. I know how to throw knives and handle bows. If you split, I'll cut you open and feed you to a particularly nasty breed of Shrake."
Medicine Man's adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "Sounds like a fair deal." He swiped the coins from her fist, replacing it with a vial of pale green liquid. "Pour the whole thing into a glass of water - or mead; any liquid'll do - and make sure he drinks every last drop. After that, it'll be seconds before he drops."
Rushing to prepare the medicine, Gwen worked through the plan in her head. Once her father was asleep, she needed to know exactly where she was heading, and she couldn't delay a second. She had to know who her competition was, she had to locate her chosen mentor, and she had to train. Filling a glass with mead, Gwen emptied the vial into it, stirred it up, and took it over to her father. She stroked his face to rouse him from his slumber.
"Daddy?" she said softly. "I'm gonna have to put you to sleep for a while. Okay?"
The 39-year-old veteran, still young, by Wynthian standards, nodded feverishly. Then, when his daughter raised the cup to his lips, he clasped her wrist. "You look so like your mother."
It was true. Gwen's heart-shaped face, her light green eyes, her smooth, peach skin, her small mouth, her rosy cheeks, and her wavy, dirty-blond hair were all her mother's. She was a dead ringer for the older woman.
Yet her stomach clenched at the thought of her parent.
"We may look alike, but I'm nothing like her." Gwen swallowed to prevent her voice from shaking with emotion. "I would never abandon you like she did."
It must have required a herculean effort, but Clemence shook his head. "No. You listen to me. You're exactly like her, because you have the strength to do what is necessary. Your mother loves me. I told her, all those years ago, that she couldn't let me hold her back. You were the one who didn't want to let me go." He choked, gasped for breath, and continued. "But you have to promise me that once I'm gone, you'll go back to her, because she's all you have left, and you two were meant for each other."
Pausing to think, Gwen then nodded. "Okay. I will."
Lie.
She pressed the glass to her father's mouth. "Bottom's up."
Once he'd drunk it all, Clemence released all his breath in one go and collapsed against his pillow, his eyes sliding closed. Gwen took one second to plant a kiss on his cheek, then she blinked back the tears threatening to overtake her and strode out of the house, snatching a fistful of knives from the table on her way.
To the town square, she climbed. The square was nestled at the base of Eris' temple. In the center of the square was a post, and nailed to that post was a list. A list of contending champions for the human race. A crowd had gathered around it, mulling about and chattering excitedly.
They all cleared a path when a single one of Gwen's blades whizzed past them, sticking straight into the center of the list.
Blinking and startled, the crowd looked around for the thrower of the knife.
With her chin raised every so slightly, Gwen strode into the throng's center, stopping short before the list. Two teenage boys, chuckling and punching each other as though sharing a private joke, moved to obstruct her path. They nodded to each other, then turned on her. Gwen smirked.
"You guys've got some serious balls, challenging a little girl in public."
The afternoon sun glinted off her eye.
"But you won't have them much longer."
She fisted another blade.
FACE CLAIM :: Chloe Grace Moretz (iluffhurrr)
ALIAS :: Robin
EXPERIENCE :: LONGER THAN YOUR MOTHER </threeyears>
CHARACTERS :: Mel & Andy
HOW YOU FOUND US :: Admin referral, nubs.
HOW ARE YOU DOING? DEAR CHEATER, YOU'VE BEEN PWNED. SINCERELY, ADMIN EM.
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