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]

-WHAT NOT TO EAT-

Lucy drew herself further into the rough cave between the tree roots, her back pressed tight against the damp soil that formed the rear wall. With a quiet sigh she stared miserably out at the patch of sky that was all that she could see from her vantage point.

It was grey, the sky; everything was grey and it was raining, raining in a desultory, spiteful fashion; the sort of rain that made everything wet and yet hardly felt like it touched you when it hit you.
"More of a mist, really..." She muttered to herself, and then winced, her hands going to her belly.

Earlier in the day, Niamh had been leading her at a punishing pace through the forest, south, and slowly eastwards as well. Their journey had been made largely in silence and with Lucy stumbling along behind the Elf, struggling as best she could to keep up with the other woman. They had traveled for maybe three hours before, to Lucy's immense relief, Niamh had called a brief halt at a point not a hundred yards from where Lucy now sat, hidden and miserable.

They'd drunk a little water, and they'd been some talk - mostly from Niamh - about the route she was planning on taking, little of it had meant anything to Lucy however and pretty soon she'd zoned out, Niamh's heavy accent becoming muffled and seemingly distant as more pressing concerns began to make themselves known to Lucy.

Chief among these, even more so than the aching in her feet, was the void in her belly. So it was that as Niamh, having finished whatever she had been saying, stood and padded off through the trees to cast about the trail ahead, Lucy, looking around herself saw, not far from where she was seated a bush looking for all the world like a redcurrant bush; and ripe with fruit also.

By the time that Niamh returned from scouting out the path, Lucy had all but plucked the bush clean of berries, and was finishing up by licking the bitter red juice off of her fingers. There had been shouting, Niamh had made some very concise and frank comments with regards to Lucy's commonsense when it came to feasting on unknown berries, something that she should not ever have done in her own world, let alone in this one.

Niamh had further pointed out that the bush that Lucy had so efficiently and comprehensively demolished was a Comberry bush. Comberries were the chief ingredient of Comberry Brandy as well as some very potent elixirs. There was a reason why they were never eaten straight from the bush. Lucy, now terrified that she had survived being attacked by Daedra, transported to another world, and almost assaulted by an Orc, only to suffer a horrible death, poisoned by her own stupidity, asked Niamh if she was going to die.

"Nay." Replied the Elf. "Buit ye'll fill lyke ye ar."

And so she did, roughly a half hour later. Crouched behind the very tree among whose roots she now uncomfortably nestled, her body had violently and repeatedly expelled the berries and what little else her stomach contained, from both ends, over a period of roughly two hours. In fairness to Niamh, she had had the good grace to leave Lucy be whilst the latter purged herself of the Comberries, all the while cursing in a choked and gargling voice the country, the sky, her bad fortune and Niamh herself, who, it must be said, showed great restraint in remaining calm particularly when, as Lucy would have been the first to admit, it was her (Lucy's) own fault entirely.

Once she had finished, and had cleaned herself up with some leaves that Niamh had assured her were safe, Lucy had gingerly stood, pulling up her recently acquired leather trousers as she did so. Niamh had handed her a cup of water and had watched critically as Lucy drank.

"Wull," she said at length, "an' let tha' b'a lessyn tai ye, eh?" She shook her head and frowned, though not unkindly. "Ye hae go' a lotte tae lurn, Lucy, an' ye nid tae thynke afore ye dae stoopid stuff lyke tha' awreet?"
Lucy, feeling wretched and even more hungry and uncomfortable than before, had hung her head. "I'm sorry." She said quietly. "I'm not making this any easier am I?"
"Luik atte me." Said Niamh, and Lucy had meekly complied. Reaching forward, Niamh had taken Lucy's hands in hers and squeezed them tightly. "Jes lette me gyde ye, k? An' ye'll b'fyne."

Having made their peace, and with a suitably contrite Lucy acknowledging that she had learned a valuable lesson, tempered by Niamh's revelation that upon awakening in Lucy's world, she had nearly died from drinking an entire bottle of vodka in one sitting, thinking it was similar to a much weaker spirit that she had previously been partial to in Cyrodiil. It had ended very badly. Both of them had chuckled, and the last of the tension had dissipated.

It had been agreed, as the day was edging towards mid afternoon and the dusk came early in the season they were in, that they should make camp more-or-less where they were, albeit on the opposite side of the tree from the consequences of Lucy's unfortunate experience. Niamh has espied a small hollow or cave beneath the tree and had directed Lucy into it.

"Stai theyaa." She'd said, handing Lucy a small flask of water. "Ai'll be bak wi' sum prawpa fud suin 'nuff, k? Dinnae eat nuffin'!!"

And so here she was, huddled in the gathering gloom amongst the roots and creeping things, her belly aching and grumbling, and the smell of her body sharp and sour in her nostrils. With no sense of time, she had no idea how long Niamh had been away, and with nothing to do but dwell on her own stupidity and watch the endless blanket of grey clouds flow thickly across the sky from one side of the cave mouth to the other, it had not been long before anxiety and no small amount of paranoia had set in.

What if Niamh had finally got fed up and left her after all? What if she'd died? What if Something Else found her before Niamh did? She had tried repeatedly and with decreasing success to banish these thoughts from her mind, but ultimately to no avail. It felt like Niamh had been gone for hours, and it was very definitely getting darker now.
What to do?

Suddenly, she caught her breath, from outside it seemed that there had been...
No, she was certain she had heard, a surreptitious sound; something stealthily creeping beyond the mouth of the cave. Eyes saucer-wide, she huddled as far back against the damp soil as she could, never taking her eyes off the opening above her.

-x-