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Post by Briar on Nov 16, 2021 18:26:09 GMT -6
It was a young man with honey-colored hair. He wore a sleeveless blue doublet with gold embroidery over a loose white shirt, and trim pants of a fine velvety material. He was not tall, not for a human; his face was pale with fine-boned features, blue-green eyes framed by copper lashes. Briar felt his breath catch. The boy in Briar's memories had been much shorter, with the rounded cheeks of a child, but --
But then the young man smiled, and that brief spark of hope evaporated. It was a cruel smile, his gaze sweeping over Briar like a bored cat who had cornered its quarry. A relation to the boy he was looking for, then -- there was too much resemblance between them to be anything else -- but nothing more.
The young man arched a brow. "Not going to say anything? Usually this is the part where they beg for mercy."
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Post by Briar on Nov 16, 2021 18:27:07 GMT -6
He glanced down again at where the dragon -- his dragon -- had Yeo-reum pinned to the ground. Yeo-reum glowered up at him and snarled, but the sound was cut short as the dragon dug its claws deeper into Yeo-reum's hide. The Tat-lung's breath went harsh with pain, and Briar’s chest clenched at the sound of it.
He had to do something. They might kill Yeo-reum if he didn't, and even if Briar could transport the corpse, he didn’t have the money to pay for a revival.
-Please,- he signed. There was no guarantee that the young man before him even understood sign language, but he had to try. At the very least, his effort to communicate might be recognized. -We didn’t mean any harm. Please let him go.-
For a long and agonizing moment, nothing happened. The young man merely stared at him as if weighing something in his mind.
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Post by Briar on Nov 16, 2021 18:28:17 GMT -6
But then he inclined his head, and -- perhaps Briar was imagining it, but he thought he saw the hint of a smile on the young man’s face.
“No harm, you say. Then why are you here? You can’t possibly be lost. The borders of the property are walled in. You must have understood that this place belonged to someone.” As he spoke, the young man closed in, eyes bright with something that Briar couldn’t put a name to. It made his pulse quicken with the same anticipatory dread that had accompanied his ‘chats’ with the mistress of his old household, conversations that had been painfully one-sided even before the loss of his tongue.
He couldn’t tell the truth. He understood that much. The truth would damn them just as surely as if Briar didn't say anything at all. But Briar had never had a talent for lying.
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Post by Briar on Nov 16, 2021 18:28:32 GMT -6
-We were lost,- he signed. It was all he could come up with. His fingers felt slow, clumsy. Sign hadn’t been his first language, and he had little enough opportunity for conversation with it until now. It was a struggle to recall the gestures, to put them in the correct order. Perhaps he wasn’t signing what he meant to sign. He had no way of knowing, beyond watching for the young man’s response. He had understood Briar’s first attempt, so he must have been familiar with it -- maybe more so than Briar himself.
-We…- Again Briar faltered, glancing at Yeo-reum. The fight had mostly gone out of the Tat-lung, though his eyes still burned with rage. It must have been eating at him, that he was so powerless against the beast that held him down. Briar swallowed hard. -We aren’t familiar with this area. We thought we could ask for directions.-
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Post by Briar on Nov 16, 2021 18:28:44 GMT -6
“That’s a lie,” said the young man lightly. Briar’s gaze snapped up to his face. The young man was still smiling -- wider now, if anything -- and his tone was casual, offhand, as if he were merely making a bland remark about pleasant weather. But that glimmer in his gaze remained, and now he took another step closer. He was by now uncomfortably near, such that Briar had no choice but to tilt his head back to look up at him. Instinct, or the habit of long practice, urged him to fix his own gaze on the fine leather of the young man’s boots instead. Briar didn’t know what would be more dangerous: the impudence of eye contact or the risk of taking his eyes off the young man’s face.
-It’s the truth,- he signed.
“No,” said the young man. “It’s not. And I don’t think you’re going to come up with anything better, are you?”
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Post by Briar on Nov 16, 2021 18:29:27 GMT -6
Briar had looked away after all as he’d signed his words, but now there were fingers at his chin, wrenching his gaze up forcefully back to the smiling features of the young man in blue. The young man inclined his head, turning Briar’s face this way and that, and made a considering hum. This close, the intensity of his scrutiny was uncomfortable in a way that it hadn’t been at a distance, and Briar looked to his shoulder instead, only to find that it was occupied by a small pale creature who was studying him with an equally unreadable look. And then, as suddenly as he had been grabbed, Briar found himself let go; at the same time, the greenish dragon eased off from Yeo-reum, pacing to take its place at the young man’s side as he strode away, back towards the house looming in the distance.
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Post by Briar on Nov 16, 2021 18:30:00 GMT -6
Yeo-reum stood, moving gingerly, too prideful to hiss in pain but still nonetheless visibly worse for wear. “You know,” the young man said, “I’m in a good mood today, and things have been a little dull around here lately. Tell you what, I’ll keep you. Maybe it’ll be charming to have a living servant. You can make yourself useful, can’t you?”
Briar blinked.
He wasn’t following -- no, he couldn’t have heard that right. The young man had turned away from him, so he couldn’t sign a response, but --
“Aren’t you coming?” The young man turned, both brows raised this time.
-But…- Briar stared at him, at a loss for words. -Why?-
“Didn’t you hear me? It’s been boring around here." The young man gave a little shrug, momentarily unsettling the creature on his shoulders. "Of course, if you’d both rather die, I suppose that can be arranged.”
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Post by Briar on Nov 16, 2021 18:30:29 GMT -6
The little pale creature flinched, while the green dragon advanced on them once more, slow enough that Briar knew it was a threat. He had seen how fast it could move when it meant business. Yeo-reum growled, but the sound was without strength, and beneath it Briar could hear a terrible rasping wheeze.
-No,- he said. -I… I know how to tend a garden.- Trying to lie hadn’t done him any good the first time, and… And, he was realizing slowly, if this really was the master of the house, then this was a better turn of luck than he had dared hope for. If… If this was really happening, then he would have an excuse to stay -- an opportunity to move around not only within the property, but within the walls of the house itself, and possibly even the tower.
It was almost too good to be true.
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Post by Briar on Dec 2, 2021 15:13:48 GMT -6
“Then come.”
The young man did not turn to face the house again, but gestured with one hand -- and there was a strange sort of pressure, and their surroundings blurred a moment before resolving into something else. Briar blinked, half disbelieving; behind the young man was now the entrance to an expansive mansion, constructed in an old and once-elegant style. Briar looked back behind him, and saw the distant treeline. Yeo-reum did hiss now, a sharp sound of surprise and displeasure.
“Don’t be so provincial about it,” the young man drawled. “I merely saved us the trouble of walking here.” He walked up the steps, with the dragon staying behind, watching Briar and Yeo-reum with guarded yellow-green eyes.
Briar repressed a shudder, and wondered at exactly what kind of circumstance he had found himself in. The young man had looked human, but… It occurred to him then that he had underestimated how little he knew about the people who lived here.
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Post by Briar on Dec 2, 2021 15:14:04 GMT -6
But it was too late to turn back now, and even if the option had been available to him, he wouldn’t have taken it.
Yeo-reum tried to take a step toward Briar, but Briar gestured at him to stay. Yeo-reum was tense with worry, and it felt cruel to leave him here with the same beast that had left him in such a sorry state, but the less he moved around, the better. His wounds were still bleeding freely, and Briar didn’t know when he would be allowed to tend to the Tat-lung.
He followed the young man up the stairs, and past the doors that opened of their own accord.
They emerged into a grand foyer. It should have been welcoming, illuminated by the midday sun through the vaulted windows lining the walls, but the interior was stark and austere. There was no furniture, only an iron-wrought chandelier that hung from the ceiling, and a grand staircase that led upward to the second floor.
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Post by Briar on Dec 2, 2021 15:14:15 GMT -6
The young man’s footsteps echoed through the room. “This way to the gardens,” he said, rounding a corner. Briar’s own bare feet were silent as he followed.
They passed through an even larger, emptier room before emerging from a door at the back of the mansion, into a surprisingly well-maintained garden. The beds were laid out in neat grids, the plants within them trim and healthy. It was immediately clear that this was a garden for function, rather than the mostly-decorative one he had tended before. There was no pond, no dainty path with romantic prospects; no small gazebos beneath which a lady might take her afternoon tea with her friends.
He noted with some alarm that he recognized some of the plants -- the same ones his mistress had brought in, and ordered him to raise in secret.
“Interesting,” said the young man. “You’re familiar with these?”
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Post by Briar on Dec 2, 2021 15:14:33 GMT -6
Briar realized too late that he had given himself away. -I know some herbs. For medicine,- he signed.
“And for poison.” There was a long pause, before the young man chuckled. “Well, that saves me the trouble of teaching you how to care for them.”
Briar thought that the young man might interrogate him further, but instead he merely took Briar through the gardens, pointing out this or that species that required more specific care. The young man understood the plants with greater intimacy than Briar had expected, and indeed at times his knowledge surpassed Briar’s own.
-Did you plant these yourself?-
“Not all of them,” the young man replied. “This collection was the work of generations of my family, though I’ve contributed a few of the more recent crossbreeds.” He plucked a flower from a vine and inspected it, then burned it to ash with a small gout of summoned flame. “The results have mostly been disappointing, but you never know when these things might come in handy.”
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Post by Briar on Dec 2, 2021 15:16:42 GMT -6
Once they had taken a tour through the gardens, the young man led him back into the house, through a narrow hall, and then a short set of stairs leading down to the servants’ quarters -- a long room with bare stone walls, filled with bunks. Storage chests lay at the foot of each, cobwebs trailing off from most of them; a layer of dust blanketed everything. The young man ran his finger along the top of one such chest and said, “Hmm.”
The creature on his shoulders sneezed.
’Maybe it’ll be charming to have a living servant,’ the young man had said.
He had thought it strange that the young man was showing him through the house himself, rather than calling a senior servant to do it, but now it became clear that there were none to be called. He didn't want to think about what had happened to the other servants, or how long ago it had been since this room was last used.
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Post by Briar on Dec 2, 2021 15:18:26 GMT -6
Clearly there had been other servants once, but even then, the room felt more like a prison than anything else. The windows were small and high, and the sconces built into the walls were empty. Still, it was a place to sleep, attached to the rest of the house, and once it was clean, in some ways it would be nicer than the storage shack he had bedded down in at his former master’s estate.
“I think that’s everything,” the young man said. The creature on his shoulders buzzed its wings, and the young man blinked, before thumping a closed fist into the open palm of his other hand. “Ah, that’s right, you would need to eat, wouldn’t you? The kitchens are this way.”
He swept back up the stairs and into the main hall, where he paused to think for a moment before leading them down a different direction.
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Post by Briar on Dec 2, 2021 15:18:43 GMT -6
They passed first through a dining hall, where the long table lay bare and covered with dust, before emerging into a spacious kitchen dominated by a stonework hearth. The fire was unlit, and Briar could make out more cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling.
“You can make use of the facilities as you like, though if there’s anything missing, I’m afraid you’ll have to make up the lack yourself.”
The kitchen wasn’t quite so neglected as the servants’ quarters, but it was clear that it hadn’t seen use in quite some time. It wasn’t just a lack of servants; it really looked as if the mansion had no other occupants, aside from the one serving as Briar’s guide. -Who else lives here?- Briar signed.
The young man glanced at him. “Myself, and my familiar.” He gestured to the creature sitting on his shoulder, who blinked at Briar. “A few of my creatures -- you’ve met Avander.” Briar could only presume that this was the dragon that had been set upon Yeo-reum.
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