zelda byrne

@zelda-byrne

regret nothing

22 posts

jericho-chapman

Jericho shrugged. "Eh. Way I see it is: anyone smart enough to run from those folks is sound enough to be trusted." It was an extension from 'an enemy of my enemy is my friend' - in Jericho's mind, 'if the people I don't trust, don't trust you -- you're probably trustworthy.'

"And I'd say lean into it. You know half the people on our side of the veil are super curious about the other side. Send out a flyer or something, saying you're leaking the secret Veilsalve or something."

That drew a genuine laugh from her, which was rare. She loved to laugh, of course, it was just that the stale humor in this fucking place usually prevented it. But Jericho -- Jericho was fresh. "That's an excellent fucking idea," she said. "A salve that helps you blend in with the Veiled Ones, eye drops that make you see the goddess."

Eden blinked, a bit surprised by the ease with which zelda spoke of her own demise. Yeah, she'd definitely left after knocking and being ignored on Zelda's doorstep. whenever the old woman died, she'd probably do the same. she just hadn't thought about it. "Your funeral will be a very pungent affair." Eden murmured, mostly because it was the first thought that came to mind when she pictured the smell wafting towards the door. "But I promise to attend regardless."

Zelda snorted in laughter. "How kind of you. Look, if my casket stinks, sprinkle some goddamn herbs around it, would you? And then get them to bury it quick, I don't need some drawn-out thing." It was a morbid topic, but she didn't really mind. She wasn't saddened by her own death; after all, it wasn't something she herself would have to go through, was it? The dying part, yes, but after that? Nothing. Peace.

Or -- perhaps -- damnation, for having displeased the Cailleach.

She dismissed that as quickly as it came.

"Belief is, at its core." And belief was powerful. It seemed obvious then, that power could be inherent too. Mac huffed an amused breath, nodding good-naturedly at the first question, though the second caused him to sour, the laughter gone hollow and cold. "It's a favor," he countered, prickling as he resumed his shallow guard. "She's my sister." Though, of course, Zelda knew that already, and it had not quelled her desire to probe. "Devotion--" Devotion is love. Loyalty must be shown. Cormac turned his head, eyes catching on the shore through the window. "Do you have something for the cramps or no?"

Zelda waved her hand and rolled her eyes. "Can it, kid. I don't need a lecture. Was just saying, princess can pick up her own tinctures. Nothing's stopping her." She turned to the cabinets above her work bench and began to rifle through the bottles, which were rarely organized.

Mac frowned, eyes elsewhere, cast downward and away from the sharp edges that comprised Zelda. "Some power in inherent," he challenged, but he was always more soft-spoken than Brigid, whose tongue was silk and serpent in one. Regardless, the discomfort of her words stirred him, spurred him into some sort of aimless movement, so he cleared his throat and pushed off the wall. "I came for medicine," he clarified, as though that could steer them away from heresy. "Something for cramps?" For his sister, for whom he endlessly did her bidding.

"Is it inherent?" she asked, not really aiming to do or mean anything in particular. "Most come here for medicine. Cramps? Yours?" She raised an eyebrow. She knew it was likely for Brigid, and added, "Why do you do her bidding, hm?"

Eden didn't know what to say about someone saying the words veiled one with quite that tone. There was an urge to call it disrespectful, but did she really care? She pushed past it, deciding to ignore it.

"fine." she said, instead. "I will." After all, Zelda was a reliable customer. Always traded fairly for eggs. It wasn't worth annoying her, especially not when Eden was the only one trading eggs anymore, and Zelda was one of the few people who preferred to talk to her over her mama. Zelda was her customer. Eden couldn't lose her.

"You really don't think people would find you for days?" she asked, after a moment. "I know you don't live with anybody, but don't you get a lot of visitors?" Eden popped by on occasion for medicines and tinctures. if the whole town did, surely Zelda had a lot of traffic in there.

Zelda tilted her head to the side as if to allow that -- to say that yes, people visited a lot, when they needed things. "Well, if a customer comes knocking and no one answers, they usually walk away rather than come inside. I suppose at some point the smell would grow strong enough it'd reach the porch, though, and then someone might enter to find out if there are rotting vegetables in my fridge or something. Of course, they'd find -- me."

jericho-chapman

Jericho nodded his appreciation. It was one of the quirks of Ridge Harbor, and - though Jericho didn't love to admit it - one of the benefits that the steeped-in religion brought to the town. People looked for ways to trade and barter; if they could swap a skill for a good, they would. And if they couldn't, more often than not they'd offer it free and look for a favor later.

"Oh, yeah," he said enthusiastically. "Not only will I come back, I'm about two seconds from smacking people across the head and then sending them to you so they can get your magic remedies themselves."

Zelda smiled, genuinely pleased with that. "Ah, so you're spreading the good word?" she asked. "I will say, it's difficult to drum up a new customer base in a town you've lived in for fifty years where the average person is either a nutjob and hates you, or is skeptical of you because of your former association with the nutjobs."

"Okay, okay," Eve conceded, a lopsided smile, "Cop-act dropped." She pulled her lips between her teeth. She weighed her options, wanting to give into what felt like an intensive advance from Zelda or to keep people away from her. Eve decided on the former hissed out a sigh, "So, okay, if I were interested in something a little more than a...reenactment and I promise not to bug you anymore about the whole spooky murder thing?"

Zelda raised an eyebrow. She didn't want to come on too strong -- never did. She had to act unaffected, uninterested. And yet, she also wanted to bring Eve over to her house. Right now. "Then I'd say how about you come have some tea? Or whiskey. Or whatever you'd like. I can brew up just about anything. For a non-cop."

For a moment, the threat spooked eden. There was a part of her that would always take stuff like that to heart. No matter how long she'd been away from the veiled, she still had the marks on her heart, if not her hand.

But she was pretty sure Zelda was joking. And if she wasn't, she was pretty sure Zelda wasn't well-liked enough by the twelve or the goddess to have the suggestion hold water. "As if." she scoffed, pretending to be unfazed. "They'll take you first. You're much more annoying." a pause, perfunctory. "dude."

"I don't think the veiled one," she said it with some scorn, certainly disrespect, "cares all that much about being 'annoying.' It wants fresh blood. I'm old and stale, I'll die of natural causes sooner or later and no one will find me for days." But she felt strangely guilty, because Eden was a bit gullible, and Zelda did feel bad about what had happened to Carly -- not that she knew what that thing was. "But really. Stop calling me dude."

jericho-chapman

Jericho shrugged. "Mostly I just call him 'Bastard' when I see him." The crowd was beginning to disperse in a real way, with faithful and faithless once again separating from each other. Ridge Harbor was a strange place, to be sure - especially when only a murder regularly brought all the people together.

"Oh," Jericho said, memory striking him. "How's that table holding up for you?" A few weeks prior, he had leveled an uneven leg of Zelda's workstation. "That rub you gave me was perfect - two days and the aches in my hand were gone. I forgot to swing by to thank you for it."

"Table's doing great, no more wobbles at all," Zelda said, genuinely grateful for the work he'd done in exchange for the ointment. She liked to pretend she could do everything herself, but she did have limits. She had never quite been a handyman. "I'm glad. You'll come back if the pain returns? I'm sure I'll have something for you to fix by then."

"Oh, I'm sure," Eve huffed out in a laugh, fighting the urge to fold, appear small and docile. She hated being flustered, it wasn't productive, brought her brain to a screeching halt - distracted her from what she was really trying to do which was puzzle out a killer.

"Reenact?" Eve repeated, her voice tightening ever-so-slightly. Maybe it was self-indulgent, given the fact she truly doubted that Zelda was the one behind this all - she felt like she could be some kind of mastermind secretly, but not really a murderous sort. Eve combed her fingers, rather unsuccessfully, through her hair and gave a raise of her brows, "Zelda - look - come on." An exasperated laugh slipped free, "You're making it really hard to try to pretend to interrogate you."

"Then quit pretending," Zelda said, acting unaffected, though in truth Eve was very attractive, and she wanted to just -- close the distance between them, to have her right now. Not that that would be appropriate. "You know I didn't do shit. Let's move on. Play cop is boring."

At first, he laughed -- a small, half-formed sound, easily mistaken for a breath. But the speculation stifled the ability for more. It faded, as unfortunate as all untimely deaths. "To what end?" Cormac shifted, fingers toying with the broken belt loop on his jeans, eyes steadier than the rabbit heart he concealed, which thrummed in his chest. "For what benefit?"

Zelda waved a hand as if to say she didn't know, and she didn't particularly care. "Who knows? Perhaps to sow discomfort. Distrust. That's how power stays in power, after all -- you know that, yes?" She didn't know if he did; she didn't know if anyone around here knew that.

"Do you now?" Ruth mused, and it wasn't much of a question. It didn't surprise Ruth to hear Zelda's comments. She enjoyed a callous demeanor to fit her strange reputation. But Ruth had taught three of the Brady children, and hadn't found any of them to be sticky. They were quite lovely, in fact. So, though she'd long thought the woman not worth her time, Ruth gave into this response. Besides, her mind was, frankly, elsewhere. "Is there some anticipation of this being a serial event?" She found herself asking. What had Zelda overheard in her dealings? What did she know? And whom else might she know something about?

Ruth was really not the person Zelda wanted to be speaking to, but there wasn't much by way of entertainment in her life, and she grew tired of peering at the same dusty books and walls. From time to time it was good to stir up some drama, yes? And given their history of being with the same woman — she and Ruth had some drama in common already, certainly. "There are always copycats," she said easily. "So even if the real culprit doesn't step forward again to do the deed, someone else may take up the mantle."

Still snorted in soft agreement. "They all cough with their mouths open," she added. "I heard someone bitching that they gave half the schoolhouse croup this time last year." Which was to say that Still didn't think people would disagree with Zelda, even if they'd pretend to outwardly. Children were arrows in the hands of warriors, after all, or so was said of them. Sticky was closer to the truth, Still thought. "Did you know the guy that died?" She asked, tugging at a loose bit of skin at the edge of her thumb nail.

"Yes, though I can't complain about the croup outbreak — I made a fortune on it," Zelda said. In truth she did not charge nearly as much as she should — or could — for her medicine. She charged enough that she could live, and that was that. But she would never want anyone to know that she gave discounts to nearly everyone who came into the apothecary, just as her mother had done. She needed to keep up an image.

"No, I didn't know him personally," she said. "You?"

jericho-chapman

Like everyone else, Jericho had found his way to the town center when all the commotion had started. While certainly startling, it was almost par for the course with these fucking weirdos in town. They would "investigate," they would say "it's a sign from allmother" (or whatever they called her), and then everyone would be expected to carry on with their days as if someone hadn't been ritualistically murdered in the town square.

Alas. What was there to do?

"I dunno," he replied, scratching the back of his head. "Half my income is from the Brady bunch breaking hinges and shit around their house. If you really wanna do good, grab Margaret's kid. She always brings him to the tavern and lets him run rampant while she gets piss drunk. And she's mean about it, too."

"I'll drink to that," Zelda said with a laugh. "Alright then, we'll do that. Let's give up Margaret's — what's his name? Bingo? Bono? — and keep the Bradys." She'd always liked Jericho's vibe, and though they weren't close, she found herself drawn to the way he was an outsider just like her. For awhile, she'd expected him to leave the way he'd come — she remembered that fateful attempted concert a decade prior, though she personally had hoped for the performance to go on. But now, he was still here and she was, well, also still here. Him, a wanderer and her, someone who'd never really been anywhere else.

Eve did not think she held any puritanical beliefs, why would she? She didn't have any gods, she didn't align with the belief of any Veiled One or a Christian god that some people back from her hometown seemed to believe was meant to save them but there was something about Zelda that made her impassably nervous.

"You're really something, Zelda," Eve barked a laugh and then gave a raise of her brow as if to further question the other woman's line of thinking, "Depends on how good an artist you are, I mean - that's good evidence, right? Proves where you were in a way."

"I'm an excellent artist," Zelda said, though she was nothing of the sort. Her art was in her mixtures, the potions that she could conjure to bring together different forces of nature in just the right combination that they would accomplish something near to a miracle. With a pencil or a paintbrush, she'd never been gifted. "But perhaps it'd be better for me to simply reenact the scene." The flirtation was half-hearted, but she may as well. Eve was beautiful, and Zelda had wanted to wrap her fingers into that thick hair from the moment she'd seen it. And yet it was true that she did not trust her.

Cormac stifled a smile, knowing that finding humor in this was unbecoming. Despite the unknown, they were certain of only two things: either it was a sign from the Cailleach, or it was not. Either felt grave in its own way, and so he wasn't sure which way to hope. "A proper washing might be of greater benefit," he said instead, offering a smile that was less genuine. "Or is being a bit sticky worth such punishment?"

"Spoken like someone who's never had one of the Bradys in their shop, touching all of the tinctures and bottles," Zelda said, sounding every bit the old curmudgeon she'd always been destined to become. "If you're volunteering to take them to the river for a good wash, be my guest. But whatever I say, it has no bearing on what happens." She waved a hand. "This is all just... smoke and mirrors, I'm sure." She wasn't sure if she believed that entirely, but she had to keep up the outward appearance of it regardless.

Eden was waiting in the square. For the twelve to appear, for her mother, she couldn't be quite certain. For something to happen. The voice near her shoulder was surprising, but she snickered at the words, unbidden. "dude." She tried to chastise, but it came out weak. The Brady family were Ridge Harbor's beekeepers, of course they would be sticky. but who hadn't been grabbed by one of their little fingers and ran to the river to wash?

"Don't tell my mom you said that. She loves those kids." She loved all kids, in a way Eden appreciated but didn't quite understand. "That was funny, though."

Zelda snorted rudely. "Call me 'dude' again and I'll be sure to offer you up next as a sacrifice," she said. Eden was always a strange figure to have around, and Zelda never knew what to do with her. If she didn't rely on the Fishers for eggs, she'd avoid the whole lot of them. Though now, well, with Carly gone, it was a bit easier — and she pretended that her heart didn't twist with a bit of concern for her old lover, no matter how long it's been.

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