#eihann

[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]

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]

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]

Dead Drops 27 Co 26

Owl -- There's been a problem.  Crow's agent was apprehended before she could make further contact with Sparkfly. --Armadillo

Who apprehended her? -- Snow Owl

~~

It was us, wasn't it.  -- Snow Owl

O -- That's an affirmative. -- A

Bloody thorns, Armie, this is exactly what I was afraid of.  If we don't let the rest of the Order know, we're going to keep tripping over them.  Can you get them to let her go somehow? -- Snow Owl

Owl -- They've already let her go, in several pieces.  Let's hope Crow has a backup plan. -- Armadillo

[mishellsmenagerie]

The Truth About Caedhan, Part 2

((See #the truth OP for explanation))

I didn't have to wait long, and I didn't have to go after him.  Whatever misgivings I'd had about his shy, blushing awkwardness disappeared the moment I saw him making a beeline for me at the Hidden Shelter.  I hadn't even summoned him.  He wasn't shy in any way that was going to hold him back, that was for certain.  He already had a report for me; I invited him into a tent so that we could speak freely, by which I mean, so I could mess with his head a little.  You never really know a person until you put him under stress.

There is one really, really easy way to stress out a sapling, and that's by striking provocative poses, making smoldering eye contact, laying on the innuendo thick as cream-cheese frosting.  They react in any number of ways, any of which can be illuminating.  Some show contempt; you can almost watch the respect drain out of them as their mouths twist in distaste.  They dismiss you, which you can use to your advantage.  Then some will return the banter in kind, either with or without any serious intent; those types dismiss you in a different way.  Oh, but my favorite are the ones who react as Caedhan did, blushing and freezing up and then desperately trying to hide it.  It positively makes me tingle.  Can't get enough of it.  It makes them so sloppy; they fall open like little books.

That said, for an overstimulated sapling, my new Initiate was remarkably good at holding back his thoughts from me, and I think that got me even more excited.  Not excited like that, girls, come on.  I'm a professional.  I mean he was looking better and better as a potential Agent.  You think I protest too much?  Well then, I won't argue about it if it makes the story more interesting.

Anyhow, it seems that Destiny's Edge had behaved like children and had a public quarrel in Lion's Arch that ended with Caithe declaring the attempt at reconciliation at failure and Eir Stegalkin babbling something about having a great idea of how to fix everything.  Because Eir Stegalkin was always the best at fixing things, right?  As for the Dawn blooms, the only one who'd made any kind of impression on him was the female -- why am I not surprised?  I'm sure it had nothing to do with her being pink and scantily clad -- and his general impression of her was that she was a disaster waiting to happen.  Overenthusiastic, eager for a fight, and the Dawniest of all Dawn blooms: stars in her eyes, head stuffed with dreams, talking about how the group needed a name and so forth.

A name, hm?  Were they considering themselves some sort of guild already, I wondered?  If so, it seemed they'd embraced Caedhan as part of the enterprise without batting an eye, which was as cherry a development as I could ever have hoped for, even if I'd meticulously planned the whole thing.  Maybe I had, subconsciously.  I'm a woman of many layers.  I won't argue it, if it makes the story more interesting.

[mishellsmenagerie]