My Other Characters

Keep up with my plethora of GW2 alts, if you are so inclined.

[mishellsmenagerie]

uhm so i just read Siraj's journal on GW2 RP and i think it was the most amazing thing I've ever read in my life ever and i just wanted to let you know i'll stop being creepy now bye

Gosh, I haven't been on tumblr in ages, but thank you for this. I truly did some of my best writing in those days.

[spideysasss]

Reblog this if you are a RP blog.

[mishellsmenagerie]

A Hard Lesson Learned: Andor

"Hey there, big guy."

Andor turned toward the voice out of twenty years of habit; as one of the tallest men in Hoelbrak he answered to that kind of address as readily as his name.  It was only when he belatedly processed the sultry purr in the woman's voice and put it together with her heated gaze that his damnably slow mind caught up and recognized her intent.  He turned back to his ale immediately, but it was too late.

"Oh, he's shy," said the woman, and gave a husky laugh.

Andor bristled at that, and turned to face her again, holding back his sudden surge of temper.  Shy?  He'd just broken a Son of Svanir's spine over his knee.  Shy.  He gave the woman what he hoped was an icy enough stare.  She was somewhere in her twenties, if he had to guess, though her face was lightly crosshatched with scars.  Brown hair, yellow eyes.  Wolf's eyes.  Something in him responded to those eyes, but it was muffled, the feeble stirring of a man buried under an avalanche.

"What do you want?" he asked her.

That husky laugh again.  "Oh, and surly too.  My favorite.  Makes me want to crack you open like a nine-foot walnut and see what kind of meat's inside."

Andor cursed the sluggish pace of his thoughts.  He'd never been unusually bright, and head trauma had done nothing to improve upon that.  He wanted to say something clever and cutting, something that would shame her into leaving him alone.  But his mind was as blank as fresh snow.

"Go away," he finally managed.  "I don't want to talk."  After a moment he softened it with, "Sorry."  In case she was more vulnerable than she let on.  He turned to his drink once again, and he could feel her admiring his profile.

"Aww," she said.  "Don't wanna talk?  That's a crying shame.  I'm sure a battered old cuss like you has all kinds of stories to tell."

He turned to her, sharply this time.  "You want to hear a story?"

"Mmm, I'd love to," she said.  "But first, what's your name?"

"Andor Twiceborn," he said.

"Twiceborn?"

"That's the story I'm going to tell you."

"I'm Berit," she said.  "Berit Lastlaugh.  Let's hear your twice-born story."  She settled in like a child at a moot, but he wasn't planning to tell the long version.  He'd told that version so many times he was sure everyone in Hoelbrak had heard it already.

"I was a callow, thoughtless, lazy man," he said to her, his gaze steady.  "I went into a cave.  The cave collapsed.  A mysterious old woman helped me from the rubble and disappeared.  I believe she was a Spirit.  I decided to devote my life to the Spirits of the Wild after that and do only what was right.  And so I started my life anew."

The woman sat for a moment longer, as though waiting for more.  Then she made a fetching little pout of disappointment, and ran a fingertip along the edge of her ale mug.  Andor's eyes were drawn to the movement; he swiftly quelled the images that it called up in his mind.  He moved his eyes back to hers, making his expression as flat and chill as he could manage.

"I have promised my life to Rebekka Six-Howls," he said.  "She is my wife.  We have two daughters."

"Rebekka Frostheart, don't you mean?" Berit said in a slightly teasing tone.  "The skaald?  That's what they call her now.  Doesn't sound like anyone I'd want to be married to."

"A promise is a promise," Andor said.  "Before the spirits called me I was careless with that promise, but I know better now.  Rebekka is my partner and the mother of my children.  My past, my future."

"Those children," said Berit.  "How old are they?"

Andor stopped.  Stared.  He felt two things simultaneously: a hot flush of shame at his own hesitation, and something else, a qualm, something about the color of the woman's eyes.  Something she'd said before.  A bell was ringing in the back of his mind, but he couldn't place it.

"Fourteen," he said.  "Halle will be fourteen on Wintersday.  Tresse turned eleven in the summer."

Berit smirked at him.  Something about his answer -- or his hesitation -- had pleased her.  "They're practically grown women," she said.  "They don't need you.  Surely you're allowed to have a little... adventure now and then.  If your wife has such a cold heart."

"Eleven is not grown.  And when they are a hundred and eleven they will still be my daughters, and Rebekka will still be their mother."

"And I'd lay gold down that she still won't have put out for you."

Andor leapt to his feet and kicked the woman's bar stool out from under her.  He shouldn't have felt a rush of satisfaction at the startled sound of pain she made as she toppled backward onto the floor, but he did.  His skin felt hot all over with rage; he took deep shaky breaths through pinched nostrils.

"If you want to fight me," he said, "I will fight you.  But that is the only way I will touch you.  And you will lose."

Berit narrowed her eyes at him, then stood slowly, dusting herself off.  "She was right," Berit said, and spat scornfully on the ground near his feet.  "You're not a man at all anymore."

"She--"  Andor stopped, blinked, feeling as though ice water had been poured over him.  "You know her."

Yellow eyes.  Lastlaugh.  Not wolf.  Leopard.  Stealthy, laughing leopard.  Sent to mock him.  And he had failed the test by getting angry.

"Yes, I know her," said Berit, standing tall and throwing back her shoulders.  "I know her well.  And she trusts me.  Trusted me enough to try to remind you who you really were.  That you used to be alive, before you died in that cave.  This was your last chance, Wolfwing.  And you blew it."  With that, she gave a haughty toss of her head and slunk away, her steps as quiet as the Spirit who walked with her.

Andor stood by the bar, abandoned by anger, feeling lost.  He lifted his left hand, stared at it.  The sun had finally browned the white band where the highwaymen had stolen his wedding ring.  This was his punishment for his weakness.  Andor Wolfwing could have bested the lot of them.  Twiceborn was an old man, and weak. 

Of course Rebekka no longer loved him; he was no longer her equal.  The realization hit him harder than all the stone that had trapped him two years ago.  Or was it three?

He was not going to win her back with roses and devotion.  He would have to find another way.  Even if it meant walking into the mouth of Jormag itself.

[mishellsmenagerie]

No right no wrong you're selling a song, a name Whisper game

If the real thing don't do the trick You better make up something quick

[mishellsmenagerie]

[mishellsmenagerie]

A Hard Lesson Learned: Raze

"Can you get it?" he said to her, trying to keep his tone playful.  He held one end of a string, the other tied snugly around the midsection of a terrified rabbit.  "C'mon, pounce!  Nice.  Warm.  Crunchy.  Mmmmm." Reave sat in the leaf-strewn grass like a blot of ink from some careless Priory scholar's pen.  Her fur was just like her dead mother's, may the harpy's soul be forever tormented, but Raze could see his own stamp on the cub's scrawny frame and in those uncertain eyes, green as two slices of lime. "C'mon, let's see those teeth.  Grrrrrrr!" Reave hesitantly pulled her lips back from her pearly-new fangs, and gave Raze a half-hearted growl.  Raze's heart sank.  You couldn't train a cub to have different feelings.  And she was too young to fake it.  They were going to make her a scrapper, or worse, come up with some new version of Raze's old fahrar and toss her in there.

"What's the matter?" Raze asked, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice.  "Don't you want to play?" Reave didn't answer, though she could have, if she'd wanted to.  That always surprised humans, whose pitiful offspring went a year or more as nothing other than dead weight.  Reave had said her first word at five months, and she could make mostly-intelligible sentences now if the mood struck her.  It hadn't yet, today. 

"What are you so worried about?" snarled Maul suddenly, making the rabbit scramble futilely to flee and Raze himself jump a full three inches back where he sat.  Reave started to laugh, a high-pitched, helpless, delighted sound that bubbled out of her like hot water from a spring.  Raze fought the smile that tugged at the corners of his own mouth, and turned to glare at Maul. "Quiet, woman," he barked.  "This is not your concern." "I'm just saying," she grumbled.  "You can't make a cub into something she's not.  I've seen enough cubs to know that." "And what exactly," said Raze in a low, threatening growl, "are you saying my offspring is not?  A hunter?  A fighter?  A slagging charr?  Should I have given her to a human wet nurse instead?" "Times have changed," said Maul with a shrug.  "There's all kinds of ways to be a charr." "What do you know about the times, old woman?  I've just finished growing up in them.  Not ten years ago they decided I was worthless and locked me in a basement for -- slag, I don't even know, I think it was a week -- as my last chance, and the only way I got out alive was by figuring out how to be a more savage bastard than the bastard who put me in there.  Is that what you want for Reave?  Or would you rather her spend her life rooting around in scrapyards like a furry vulture?" "Ten years ago," Maul repeated calmly.  "That may not seem like long to us, but ten years ago we weren't fighting dragons alongside humans.  That's changing us.  There's charr in the Priory copying old scrolls all day.  There's cubs growing up in Lion's Arch with their sire and dam, cubs who don't even know what a war band is."  It was hard to tell from Maul's tone whether she approved or disapproved; she always just sounded sort of bored. "It's bullshit!" snapped Raze.  Reave cringed, ears flattening against her head, and began to make a low mewling sound.  It twisted Raze's insides, but he ignored it.  "It's going to be the end of us, if we keep it up.  The old ways have made us the most powerful race in Tyria, and when the dragons are gone and the humans turn on us again, we're going to need that edge.  That strength.  If Reave can't fit into that world, then she deserves to be a scrapper.  What the bloody slag is wrong with half my people, studying human culture as though there's anything to be learned from it?  Look at them now. Look what's left of them.  Is that what we want?  Is that where we're headed now?  Is that what I survived for?"  "Don't cwy," said a tiny voice. Raze looked down, startled, and realized he'd accidentally let the rabbit go, and that he could barely see the little inkblot of a cub through the moisture that had welled up in his eyes.  A wave of shame washed over him -- he heard her dam's voice, contemptuous as she held him down.  You going to cry, runt?  I ought to rip out those leaking eyes.  If you were blind, they'd kick you out of the 'band.  We'd be better off.   "I'm not crying!" he roared at Reave, and she flattened almost completely to the ground.  But she kept creeping toward him, the way she ought to have stalked the rabbit, fluffy black tail lashing back and forth. "Are so." 

Raze watched her with a mix of fury and bafflement.  "Get away," he snapped.  But he had no right to order her around.  He wasn't her superior officer; he wasn't anything to her.  Just her interfering sire, trying to cheat the system, trying to save his substandard offspring from the fate she deserved, and why?  Because his warband hadn't beaten the weakness out of him, only taught him to hide it better.

He leaned down almost nose to nose with the cub, letting out a low growl.  She trembled all over, eyes wide, but she didn't back off.  Instead she reached up a paw to touch his muzzle.  Raze went still, ears going limp.

"Look at that," said Maul.  "And you're ready to call your cub a coward because she wouldn't kill a tied-up rabbit.  What kind of courage does it take to hurt something that can't run away from you?"

"The kind her mother had," said Raze, still looking into Reave's eyes.  She didn't look away.

[mishellsmenagerie]

A Hard Lesson Learned: Verica

Mother,

I know that Father is angry over the choices I have made, but I have received his message and I am as contrite as I can be.  I am not the same girl who left his house in the spring of '25.  Surely he has heard that my husband and I helped the Vigil slay a dragon?  And even if my sin of disobedience is unforgivable, surely he is a reasonable enough man not to punish a blameless unborn child, especially one whose tiny heart beats with Beran blood? 

The man I remember was stern but righteous.  I loved him despite his sternness because I knew that he was harsh in the name of virtue.  With time and great effort I begin see how he meant well in trying to keep me from my husband, and why he could not show the slightest mercy toward me until I gave up a man he saw as harmful to my well-being.  But there is no virtue in keeping a baby from its grandfather.  It did not choose its mother, nor its father, and should not be made to pay for the sins or deficiencies of either.

I believe that you could soften him on the subject, especially given how you have stood by him this past year at great cost to our own relationship.  You have earned the right to speak your mind, I think, and there was never a more important time to do so.  I will need your experience and your advice.  What if I have trouble feeding it?  What if I don't know how to get it to sleep?  You've raised three children, and I feel there is so much you could do to ease my mind.

By all the love I know you still bear me, I beg of you to convince Father to end this petty feud and accept me once again as his daughter and a member of his house.  I believe you would both be so proud of me, if you could see how I have grown.  And Mother, if it is a girl, we plan to name her after you.

All my love,

Veri

---

The above letter, addressed to Lady Sarah Beran, sits in the Moores' mailbox unopened, marked RETURN TO SENDER.

[faded-perception]

[mishellsmenagerie]

Dead Drops 34 Co 26

Did you see me?

[mishellsmenagerie]

Dead Drops 33 Co 26

Armadillo -- I'm going to be at TF7 tonight.  I'll be wearing a white rose.  There's a one-way mirror on the south wall that the higher-ups sometimes use for covert observation.  Thought these facts might be of interest to you. -- Snow Owl

O - You've asked me to go directly against orders.  Consider this a formal warning.  If you do it again, I am going to ask to be replaced on this assignment. - A

Armadillo -- I didn't ask you to do anything.  I have no idea what you're talking about. -- Snow Owl

[mishellsmenagerie]

[mishellsmenagerie]

[bookmania]

[mishellsmenagerie]

(( This actually goes beautifully with the Couperin piece listed for her under #soundtrack ))

[mishellsmenagerie]

A Hard Lesson Learned: Eihann

His growing collection of gunshot scars was what made this game of hide and seek decidedly less fun than most.  During combat training you need to trust me,  she said, because then I'm your ally.  But during stealth training I'm your enemy.  That is rule one of this game.  Every time you forget that, you get sloppy.  And most enemies, if they spot you, won't aim for your leg.

He preferred combat practice.  He was good at it, and although he was no tender sapling, somehow her choice of compliments always managed to be just the sort of thing to make him glow with embarrassed pleasure.  Half the time he thought she might be flirting with him, and on rare occasions he glimpsed a kind of vulnerability in her, as though she sought his approval as well.  Or maybe not.  She was impossible to read.

Eihann stopped suddenly, and Garavain stopped too.  She was as taut and still as a deer; if she'd had the ears to match, they'd have been turning this way and that with the intensity of her listening.  He held his breath.  After a moment, Eihann changed direction and continued.  So did he.

The Lightbringer was good at keeping other Dreamers out of her thoughts and feelings.  She'd built a wall there, and had taught him to do the same.  Any attempt to pry past it met with an overwhelming burst of every emotion at once, a sort of psychic white noise that sent him reeling back, mentally blinded and deafened.  So he was forced to try and read her by the subtleties of her posture and voice and movement and facial expression.  On the rare occasions when she'd dropped her defenses for a split second and his mind had brushed hers, it had left him feeling strangely rattled.

Suddenly Eihann doubled back, heading almost directly toward him.  He adjusted his own path, easing off tangentially so that she would miss him, trying not to panic himself into making even the smallest sound.  He moved more carefully, not less, since the distance between them was shrinking.

And then suddenly she was gone.  Garavain held still.  She'd shadowstepped; all he had to do was wait and keep his eyes open until he could see where she'd ended up.  Slowly he turned, his eyes scouring the forest on all sides of him, including behind.  But he didn't see her.

The urge to move was almost unbearable.  But the last two times he'd done that, he'd been rewarded with a bullet in the thigh.  He knew now to hold still until he spotted her again.  If she was facing his direction now, she was much less likely to find him if he wasn't moving.  He held his breath and waited.  And was rewarded.  He caught a fleeting glimpse of her, still far off and away to his left, slipping into a shadowy thicket.

Carefully, he began to advance.  He was losing her, but he tried not to panic.  Slow and steady.  If he kept in this direction, he would get closer, whether he could see her right now or not.  Slow and steady.

But he still couldn't see her.  That was good, he reassured himself.  It meant she likely couldn't see him, either.  Right?

And then suddenly, like the lash of a whip to his psyche, he felt her.  A sudden surprise and terror, and pain.  Ah thorns!  The Court.  His fear mixed with anger; this was not how he'd wanted to be proven right.  Heart pounding, he raced through the forest toward her, drawing his daggers.  He heard a sharp crack and--

--fell face first into the leaves, his left thigh one throbbing mass of white-hot pain.  Golden sap flowed from the superficial wound as he rolled to his side. Lightbringer Eihann sauntered toward him, her long coat flaring picturesquely.  She winked and blew on the muzzle of her pistol with lips as plump and green as a sour apple.

"You forgot Rule One," she said, approaching to loom over him where he lay on the ground.

"I thought you were in danger!" Garavain growled.

"The enemy doesn't always play fair," said the Lightbringer, all the merriment gone from her violet eyes.  She knelt next to him, pulling bandages from a pocket inside her coat. "Especially when she's losing.  You'd better be really glad we're friends."

With friends like these...  Garavain thought, lifting his hands from his wound to give Eihann access.

...you'll go far, she finished for him as she bandaged, her touch on his mind like the insistent, rough tongue of a mother cat.  But only if you trust them.

I do trust you, he returned.  That's what got me into trouble.  He tried to show her what he'd felt, how frightened he'd been, but she closed off to him.

"Then trust me when I tell you not to trust me," she said.  She stood up, turning away from him.  "Go back to the Grove, get yourself healed.  And then we'll try this once more, without quite so much feeling."

[mishellsmenagerie]

An almost literally half-assed nod to NaNo

(( I'm inspired by my GW2 acquaintances who are doing IC tumbls this month.  It made me wish I'd done one yesterday so I could join in.  But then I realized something kind of interesting: I have 15 alts, and there are 30 days in November.  So I'm going to do my own weird version of things and post something for each of my characters, one on every even-numbered day. 

I'd sort of like to do them all along a particular theme, though, so I'd like to throw that out to anyone who reads/enjoys this tumblr.  What theme should I use to write about each of my alts in turn this month?  Send me an Ask with a question to answer, or a scenario to put them in, or whatever you like!  I'll pick my favorite before the end of the day.))

[thesunrisesdespiteyou]

forgive me...

(( Just in case there is one person left in this universe who doesn’t know… I’ve just signed with a literary agent.  This is the last time I’ll mention it, I swear.  But holy cow after the year I’ve had it feels good to have a win on this massive of a scale. ))

[elhieroglyph]