Restless Soul - The New Adventures of Niamh & Looch Options

[PhonAntiPhon]

A Word To The Wise:
This story continues directly on from the end of what was the final tale: 21/09/13 - "From Darkness" - HERE. For anyone reading this who isn't familiar with the adventures of a certain Bosmer, a little background reading might help - (check my sig, or the link above) - for those of you who are, well it's nice to be back.
And yes, I *know* it's not Cyrodiil, but it will be, we just have to get there, be patient...
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-RESTLESS SOUL-
.I.

A soft lambency filled the apartment, from outside and far below the muted hum of early morning traffic filtered in through a half-open window. Lucinda awoke slowly, lay for a time under the covers, her head resting on the soft pillow, staring up at the smooth white ceiling. Beside her the woman from the night before slept peacefully on, her breathing slow and regular.

She'd said her name was Niamh E., just that and nothing more. She was the singer in one of the bands that played at weekends down at the waterfront bars. Luciana herself had worked in a grill bar on the front and had seen her about from time-to-time, had even stopped in Gracy's on the way home to hear her band once. Not really her thing, a bit too punky but none too shabby nevertheless. She had found the woman herself though more than a little intriguing; all tight leathers and colourful hair woven with red linen strips; piercings and heavy black makeup completed her look.

She'd come across as sassy onstage, giving hecklers and fans alike as good as they gave her, all the time following whisky with whisky, cigarette with cigarette. By the last song she'd stripped to her bra and knickers, skinny body jerking and weaving to the jittery beat of the music, hair lank about her face and shoulders, her liberally tattooed porcelain skin running with silvery sweat. As the final chords jangled out she was laughing and bouncing, dark eyes glinting under the stage lights, her body a blur as she spun around and around, arms stretched out, screaming at the top of her voice before finally collapsing onto the stage and crawling off on hands and knees to cheers and whistles and applause from the crowd. Lucinda remembered how jealous she had felt of Niamh's energy and life and how she had wished, and did still, that she too could be more like her.

Lucinda was not naturally attracted to women, but even she'd had to admit to herself that there was undoubtedly something about Niamh, she was a force of nature for sure and mysterious also, somehow, not just her manner or her looks on stage but, something, there was something about her that Lucinda could not quite place her finger upon; a look or an expression that betrayed something deeper maybe. Life moved on however, her job changed to another part of town and with it came a relationship with a guy who seemed - as they always do - to be The One.

He was not, as it turned out, and six months later she found herself single and alone, feeling sorry for herself in her apartment on the the tenth floor of a low rent block on N- Street. It was already dark and she had perhaps had a little too much wine when she found her thoughts turning once again to a certain mysterious and intriguing woman, in a band, on the waterfront.

-x-

So she found herself once again in Gracy's, standing at the bar sipping a gin and tonic and watching a whirlwind of life spin and dance across the stage and thinking, "why am I here? For the life? For the energy? Or for her..." in truth she did not know, but regardless clapped and cheered with the rest as once more, quivering with nervous energy, the real reason for her coming out crawled from the stage, a strange and spindly thing, dripping wet in dark underwear.

The performance over, the rest of the band left the stage and the audience drifted back to their seats and into their booths. A growing sussuration of whispered conversation and piped songs replaced the live music of only a few moments earlier. Around her the long bar began to fill up and Lucinda, still on her first drink and rapidly feeling more and more out of place and alone despite the crowded space, finished up and turned to go, placing the empty glass on the counter.

"Buy me drink?" Came a voice directly behind her. Lucinda froze, her blood draining into her feet. Heart hammering, she turned around. She was standing there, right there. Nodding her head slightly, she raised an eyebrow at Lucinda. "Hi, I'm Niamh E., just that." Lucinda froze for a moment. "Whu..." She said, her mind working furiously. Niamh chuckled, chewing at the silver ring that passed through her lower lip. Turning to the bar, she signalled the barman. "Whisky." She looked at Lucinda, grinned again. "She'll have the same, so she will."
The drinks duly arrived, and Lucinda numbly handed over the money. "Keep the change." She croaked when the barman brought back a handful of coins. "You have a voice, then." Said Niamh with a smile. "Don't mind if I do..." So saying she pocketed the change.

Niamh's long black hair was tied up in a high ponytail, and Lucinda could now see it was shot through with streaks of dark red and burgundy. "You have a name?" Niamh turned to face Lucinda as she asked, and it occurred to the latter later that it was quite possible that she had genuinely expected her to not actually have one. "Lucinda." She replied. "...Lucy for short."

Just for a moment, something passed behind Niamh's big chestnut eyes. "Lucy." She repeated the name slowly, turning it over in her mouth as if it reminded her of something. Then she blinked and gave a brief little half-smile; raising her glass she said, "I'll call ya Lucy, then." Lucy nodded. "If you like." Niamh paused, her glass halfway to her lips, regarded the other from under furrowed brows. "I might, at that..." Lucy felt herself blush.

-x-

It was impossible not to get on with Niamh. It was like fighting with some inexorable maelstrom; no matter how hard you struggled, you just kept getting drawn in. Not that Lucy was doing a great deal of struggling mind, on the contrary, another whisky later and Lucy, who had already had two glasses of red wine before leaving the flat, found herself close in a booth with Niamh, who seemed almost totally untouched by what she had drunk, and regarded the other woman across the table with wry amusement as Lucy flubbed her words and giggled behind her hands.

Back in the present, Lucy smiled, and cast a glance to her side at Niamh's still sleeping form. From out of the window the street down below had grown busier and the room was definitely lighter. Never mind, she was content. Closing her eyes she let her mind drift back to the evening before, it already seemed so far away.
One thing she did remember was that, before the evening got a little... hazy, she had sat and looked at Niamh as they talked, taking her in, as if wanting to record every detail of that first time they had met, as if it were the first time she had ever met anyone.

They'd downed the first shot in one, in silence, and Lucy had somehow ended up paying for another and Niamh had again taken the change. Lucy, feeling like some awkward teenager on a first date instead of a thirty-five year old divorcee, stumbled over further introductions and obvious questions about Niamh's band. Somewhere along the way though the answers and the conversation drifted away to be replaced by a silence that seemed to enclose the two of them in a comfortable isolating sphere and cut off all sound, leaving only vision and that, it felt to Lucy, was enhanced, somehow.

Niamh's face was long and angular, yet somehow delicate, "elfin" might have been the way to describe it; full lips and a small nose and two widely-set eyes, large and chestnut coloured, set in deep and shadowed sockets. Within the pupils though there was depth, like they were two unfathomable pools. Her eyes were captivating and seemed to drag Lucinda's attention back to them every time she moved her own gaze away. Around her left eye a horseshoe of multicoloured circles had been tattooed, with a small blue star just beneath. Her ears seemed overly large in comparison to her head, and they were heavily pierced through with rings; in addition to these there was a ring in her lip and another through her nostril, they were all thick bands of silver, and she was constantly chewing at the one in her lip.

Lucinda remembered that her gaze had looped lazily downwards, past Niamh's mouth; her lips, coated in black lipstick, moving silently it seemed to Lucy as she spoke, and down over her shoulders. It occurred to her now, here in bed with sobriety once more crystallising her thoughts, that the other woman had been watching her, Lucy, looking at her, all the time...
Niamh had been wearing some kind of tight black leather affair that left little to the imagination, it was unzipped to just below her chest and left her long, slender yet surprisingly muscular-looking arms bare - (and she was indeed, as Lucy was to find out later, considerably stronger and more sinewy than she seemed) - her skin was porcelain white, and unmarked but for numerous swirling tattoos of many colours, consisting, it turned out, exclusively of various shapes; circles and squares, stars and crescents. The effect was to make it seem like she was wearing some kind of dazzle camouflage, like the ships that Lucy had read about had been painted with in the war. Later, in the flat, it had been difficult to keep track of her movements, or perhaps that had just been the whisky.

"...another." The sound of the bar and its occupants crashed back in on Lucy. Feeling as if she were falling forwards, she snapped suddenly upright on the seat. Niamh waited patiently for her to compose herself, her head cocked on one side, long fingers steepled before her, the nails painted a deep black. "I said, get us another, I have to pee." Except Lucy heard it as: "...Ai harv t'pee..." Niamh's accent had a curious Gaelic quality to it, neither Scottish nor Irish, but some strange mixture of both. There was an odd sing-song quality to it also, a kind of underlying musicality present in every word she said. It was a little weird but rather pleasant at the same time - (a lot like Niamh herself, Lucinda thought). "Whisky?" Asked Lucy. Niamh winked. "Aye, that's my drink." She got up from the table but then paused, looking at Lucy with that same curious half-smile, and again Lucinda had the oddest feeling that Niamh recognised her somehow. After a moment Niamh said, "Don't worry, you're doin' just fine." So saying she leant quickly across the table and kissed Lucy once on the lips, before moving off and away, smoothly disappearing into the crowd.

Lucy raised her fingers to her mouth, the impression of Niamh's lips fading only slowly. Her touch, her closeness at that moment, her scent; cinnamon and sweat, whisky and something... exotic; Lucy took a deep breath, her heart was beating way too fast and for a moment she felt sure that the other woman had drugged her. "She's clearly not your type." Said her stern inner voice. "You've paid for the drinks all night and now she's poisoned you! walk away Lucy..." Nevertheless she found herself at the bar once more, and her second thoughts grumbled into silence, ignored for the moment at least.

It was very late by now and the bar, though still certainly lively, was nowhere near as full as it had been previously in the evening, and as such Lucy was able to get herself served fairly quickly. "I see you've got something goin' there with Niamh." Said the barman as he came over and took her order. He was a large man with a green mohican, a wide nose and a wider mouth, his name tag identified him as Boris. Lucy smiled and shrugged in a kind of "Maybe, sort of" way. "This is it." She thought. "This is where he tells me she's no good." Deep in her mind, her inner Lucinda sat up and grinned smuggly. Boris poured the drinks and waved away her money when she offered it. "Nah, keep it, it's on me. She'll fleece you that girl will, and you'll still love her for it." He raised a stubby finger. "Word to the wise though, be careful with 'er, she's more fragile than she looks, is Niamh." Lucy raised an eyebrow, squinting slightly from the whisky she'd drunk. "How do you mean? " Boris looked around him, then leant forward conspiratorially. "Just that she's been through a lot, that's all. Acts all tough and brash she does but she ain't as hard as she thinks that she is, I know." He pointed a finger at himself. "I've been like a father to 'er these past few years..." Lucy wanted to ask more, and it seemed Boris was about tell her something further, but other customers had by then arrived and, with a final glance at her and a brisk nod, he left to serve them.

Lucy was, as far as was possible given her increasing level of inebriation, somewhat more thoughtful when she returned to the booth. Niamh had already returned, and was slouched nonchalantly on one of the bench seats, toying with the silver ring that pierced her nostril. As Lucy sat down and passed her the whisky, Niamh gestured with her chin to the barman. "Boris collared you, did he?" She asked. "Yeah, he did..." She paused for a moment, took a sip of whisky. "He said, um..." It was her fourth or fifth of the night and the words in her head came only reluctantly to her lips. "I know what old Boris says." Interjected Niamh. "Now though, now's not the time for serious talk."

"What... is it now the time for?" Asked Lucy, suddenly breathless, her voice catching in her throat. Very deliberately Niamh drained her glass and placed it on the table. She licked her lips and stared directly at the other woman. "Well," she said, her curiously accented voice lilting musically, "I suppose we'll just have to see, won't we?"

-x-

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Jul 22 2015, 11:36 PM

[PhonAntiPhon]

-INTERLUDE-

Far to the east, a harsh wind was blowing up the craggy slopes of the valus Mountains. These steep and often inaccessible peaks ranged down the eastern side of Cyrodiil's border with neighboring Morrowind, effectively providing a natural fortification that separated the two provinces one from the other.

Little life was to be found amongst the smooth fascias and fractured granite of the range, and what vegetation there was clung, scrubby and hunched, close in to the rock face, or could be found huddling, as if for warmth, in sheltered nooks and crannies.

From the peaks that formed the northern section of the range a traveller, should they find themselves amongst them, could look down upon the city of Cheydinhal, nestled in the mountain foothills and bisected by the glittering Corbolo River, and to the north of it Lake Arrius, sitting betwixt the northernmost boundary of the Valus, and the eastern limit of the Jerrals, the range guarding the northern borders of the Imperial Province from the harsh tundra of Skyrim.

Somewhat to the north and east of the lake, far up amidst the jagged peaks at the very limit of the Valus range, was a house. Outwardly it was unassuming enough, a two-storey dwelling sturdily constructed against the elements, its windows small and shuttered against the bitter upslope wind that flung, when it had a mind to, flurries of snow against the weathered stone that, roughly rendered, made up the bulk of the dwelling's construction.

Outwardly then, unassuming enough.
Inside however the building appeared to consist of an unmeasurable space, vast and dimly light with a nebulous, pale lambency that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere in equal measure. Should one be disposed to enter the building through the heavy oak door, one would perhaps turn around and note that from the inside both the door and the windows to either side of it were no longer visible. Indeed the internal view of the building's walls was that of a flat and featureless barrier, grey coloured, as if an impression of stone had been created more to delineate the boundary of the space within the walls, than to actually provide a formal and concrete structure.

It would have become very soon apparent to any observer that the space within the house was certainly in no need of physical boundaries and in fact had quite probably no requirement for any boundaries at all. Had that observer been able to tear their attention away from the unplumbed enormity of the void above and beyond their immediate environs though, they would have found themselves within what appeared to be an area roughly analogous to that of a study or a drawing room.

This region, approximately twenty feet square in real terms, was delineated with drapes and heavy tapestries. A large, antique-looking rug lay upon what seemed for all the world to be an oak floor richly stained and varnished. Comfy chairs and furniture lay round about the room and paintings and a map of Cyrodiil appeared to be hanging in the spaces between the drapes, suspended as it were in mid-air.
The incongruity of this so-called room was further enhanced by the presence of a roaring fire in an elaborately-decorated fireplace, whose brick chimney disappeared upwards for some tens of feet until it was lost, fading into empty air. In front of this fireplace, and abutting the hearth was a low table, covered with a green cloth, on top of which was a crystal ball of not inconsiderable size, filled with what appeared to be languidly rotating white and grey clouds. This crystal was suspended by arcane means between two brass rings, the top one hovering unattached above the lower where it rested upon the cloth-covered table.

In a plain-looking wooden chair next to the table, lit for the moment only by the flickering yellow and orange light from the fire, sat a female figure, she hunched over the crystal ball as if peering into it, although on closer viewing it could be seen that her eyes were closed and her plump, soft lips - painted a bright crimson - were moving rapidly as if she were reciting a spell, or an incantation of some kind.

Presently she stopped and sat upright against the straight wooden back of the chair. Fully lit now both by the fire and by the ambient glow within the surrounding space which appeared, since her attention had removed itself from the scrying ball, to have brightened somewhat, she could be observed to be a woman of perhaps forty summers with dark eyes and porcelain-white skin and hair, midnight black, falling in thick tresses round large pointed ears and about her shoulders.She was tapping her teeth with a long finger tipped with a wicked-looking crimson-painted nail, a thoughtful epression upon her smooth features.

Presently she stood up, revealing herself to be tall and slim, though not without curves which were accentuated by a plunging dress of black velvet, split high at the thigh and gathered on the ground about her feet. From the slit in the dress emerged a long, slender leg, upon the thigh of which was strapped an elaborately-hilted dagger, held in an intricately designed and tooled leather sheath.

She was silent a moment longer before she spoke to herself, it seemed, her voice low and rich, and husky.
"Aah, so ye've ritern'd hae ye, Niamh..."
Her dark eyes widened and glittered, and a half-smile flickered briefly across her lips.
"Cas gan choinne na n-imeachtai..." (an unexpected turn of events) Her voice assumed a thoughtful air. "Ne'ermynd, we shall see how thus plaiz owt."

She turned and headed to the very edge of the pseudo-room.
"Gan choinne go deimhin..." (unexpected indeed) She said, her voice louder now, then; "Kynnaeis! Where ar ye? Cum heeyar gurl...!"

From out of the pitch darkness there emerged, shuffling, a girl of not more than eighteen summers. She was elven, or at least of Elven Kind, and her skin was pale though, unlike her mistress', it was clammy and sallow, its paleness a result of lack of food and sunlight and of the drugs with which Beldanne kept her in thrall. Her straw-colored hair hung greasily down her back and she was skinny and fragile-looking, her frame covered by nothing more than a loose, shapeless shift of light cotton.
She stopped in front Beldanne and turned her head up to look at the witch with dead grey eyes.

"Kynnaeis..." Sighed Beldanne, and reaching out a long-fingered hand she gently cupped the girl's chin. "Soch a prittee wun ye ar, Kynnaeis."
The Elven girl was silent, merely staring up the older woman, her eyes unblinking and her expression unchanging.
Beldanne laughed softly, a harsh sound.
"Wull, anois caithfidh tu ag obair ar do choinneail." (now you must work for your keep) She said. "Send th' Sparroes, Kynnaeis, send thum tae west an' tae sooth, tul thum tai luik fer the Aos Si - Th' Spiorad..."

She gave the girl's chin a firm squeeze and pushed her away, sending her stumbling back out into the darkness to blindly do her bidding.
Once she had gone, Beldanne the Witch turned again towards the scrying ball and stared down into it, an expression of deep consideration on her long, pale face, lit as it was by the flickering fire.

-x-

This post has been edited by PhonAntiPhon: Nov 10 2016, 09:47 AM