Quincunx

Brother Thibault flexed his fingers slowly, half-closing his hand, and smiled. The poultice was working well, and soon his fingers would be nimble enough to again handle a skin in treatment. Although nothing could make his arms strong once more to stretch or scrape skins, and treading in the lye pits was the task of a novice, perhaps he could return to the workshop to powder skins and cut pages. Thoughts of the murder slipped from his mind as he thanked and blessed Brother Mathieu, then turned his steps towards the vellum workshop. On the path, though, the foundling Good Bennet (kept childish by his father's sin) rushed up to tower over him. "Fadda Ti'bo!" he boomed, "stay here!" "What's this, child?" inquired Brother Thibault as the foundling blocked his way. The old monk flinched when Good Bennet laid heavy hands on his shoulders and cried, "Don't go to God. Stay here!" Brother Thibault's face went pale at the blasphemy--"God is here, child. God is everywhere!" he exclaimed. Good Bennet looked upwards in fear. Fear? From this child who knew the Most Merciful and did not flinch before the Most Terrible? "God got Fadda Admo! Make Fadda Admo come back. Make God go home." --and Brother Thibault understood. "Hush, child. No one will take you away from us. Why, it would take three of us just to lift you." He stopped, chilled by his words, and wondered even as he soothed Good Bennet's fears. There were only a few strong strangers, but a much larger number of pairs of people who could carry a body. No one was safe, alone. "Child, I will prove to you that you are safe. Walk with me awhile. I will take you to the vellum workshop and you can crush the dry bones for our powder." "Not allowed." "Today you will be allowed! We monks can't take all of God's good works for ourselves," Brother Thibault finished with a nod. Good Bennet trailed uneasily behind the old monk as they continued along the path to the workshop, and the pair were admitted where neither one could seperately enter.

Brother Thibault slowed after Brother Alcott had passed him, thinking to turn and deliver a blessing onto him, a man of the abbey and a copyist, closest to the deceased and possibly also in danger--but the brother, so scrupulously polite, did not stop. His footsteps echoed in the corridor for a few moments after he left, covering Brother Thibault's surprise. Why, this murder had everyone neglecting their duties! He continued to the scriptorium and confronted the head copyist, who concealed a frown and the accounts page on which he had been writing. "Where is the page poor Brother Adelmo had been illuminating?" asked Brother Thibault. The head copyist stepped down from his stool and walked to a desk away from the doorway, dark with age. He touched his inkstained fingers to the wood. "It had been lying here when I saw it last--the minium dries so slowly. Everyone knew not to touch it for at least a day," he wondered aloud. "It's missing? You let a page of three autumns' ago cowskin go missing?" Onto that dreadful vellum, from the year I was training the new vellum maker, you wasted minium? he silently added. "The librarians might have taken it," mused the head copyist. Brother Thibault spun around before the evil thoughts could reach his mind. For the second time in as many days, he retreated to his cell with spite in his heart, and so agitated that he could not think in Latin: Sire Pere, qui es en caeus, sanctifiez soit li tuens nons; avigne le tuens regnes. . . After forty-one repetitions, a servant came into the room with clean cloths and a clay jar of prepared bryony. Careful not to interrupt, he squatted by Brother Thibault and applied the poultices to his hands while the old monk completed his allotments of prayers. He rose, but Brother Thibault beckoned to him. "Stay awhile," said Brother Thibault, "the prayer has cleared my mind. You are not obliged to this, but would you join me in another prayer, this one for the first innocent to be killed?" The servant started back in fear. "Another?!" "Yes, child. . .the first died on the paths outside of this monastery. Pray for him as you would pray for any lost soul whose name you never knew." ooc: Accusing Brother Rhys.

Brother Thibault joined the cluster of monks on the path, nervous copyists for the most part. Brother Caire kept looking over his shoulder back at the scriptorium, and wondered aloud, "We scribes have no reasons to go to the hillsides, we do not gather wild herbs or herd the sheep or work the fields." "That is not always true, brother," Brother Rhys replied. "I had come out here to tend to the garden and remind myself that life still flourishes in these walls. See, even the servants in the graveyard are finding solace in the digging, trees and grass, life everlasting." He indicated Francis and the others, shoveling steadily, and Brother Gulzar looking between the cluster of monks and the servants. "You would not go to the mountainside so soon after you arrived, not after losing your brother monk to the same fate! No, he wasn't killed out there. . .he could have been taken from anywhere," concluded Brother Caire, again looking around. Brother Thibault shook his head. "It would take a strong man to carry a body from here to the mountain, brother, and I am not that man any longer. We serve God with our minds, not our bodies. But these visitors, oh yes, they are strong." He pretended not to notice both monks' outraged looks and the sudden end of muttering amongst the rest of the circle. "What about that furtive Roman? Whose business sent him here? What of that woman, yes that woman, who visits for Adrian and claims to be his sister? And Brother Phillps tells me that he expects even more horses to be stabled in the next days!" "Brother," ventured one of the resident monks, bowing his head deferentially, "I fear that you are just spreading tales--" "It's not tales, it's truth!" Brother Thibault retorted, pointing his gnarled finger. "If I told tales I'd be telling them against those librarians, but they couldn't have done it!" He folded his arms defiantly across his chest and, since no one dared challenge his age, marched off to the scriptorium without even his daily visit to the vellum workshops.

Brothers Thomas and Joseph, briefly united by the weight of unsaid words, knelt in the chapel without acknowledging one another by sight. Their rosary beads flicked in unconscious agreement, with Brother Joseph leading by the time it would have taken to say "Our Father" aloud, and Brother Thomas silent in the refrain. Their devotions sang together unclogged by voices, upwards from memories of Adelmo the man, Brother Adelmo the questioning spirit, towards heaven. . . The creaking of failing flesh was enough to break the thread. Brother Thibault stepped carefully up to the rail and sank into place beside them. "I can trust you two, my children, not to carry tales," he whispered, "but I felt the evil come into this abbey and mistook it for my own sin. That is the Lord's cross to bear--mine is to keep this evil from spreading further." He glowered at Brother Thomas (smart enough to hide his smarts), "It's a repentance for having ignored the sign God sent me. As I confess this freely in you, I humbly request your aid in my repentance." With a firm grip, Brother Joseph (he didn't know him, but God would) lifted Brother Thibault to his feet and escorted him to the door of the chapel, then returned to the rail and tried to follow the rosary once more, focused wholly on each bead. Face firm, the old monk shuffled along the paths to the blacksmithy. Brother Phillips (God's hand in all things) scraped the edge of a blade with a slashed file, drawing out a series of jaw-grinding squeaks while murmuring a prayer. Slowly the shrieks of the metal faded and the keen edge of a broadsword appeared, tempered with the blessing of Saint George. He set down the good file and blade, stopped reciting, and wordlessly held out his hand. "No hide-scraping knives today, brother," corrected Brother Thibault. "Just tell me how many horses that need re-shoeing have come with the visitors, and how many visitors you saw in total." Brother Phillips held up the proper number of fingers, then returned to the recital and sharpening of the blade. The metal spit sparks as Brother Thibault wandered away, towards a knot of furtive and chattering monks clustered on the flagstones.

Brother Thibault brooded over the stack of the Dauphin's vellum as the sole unoccupied copyist conferred with one of the fish-lipped librarians. As he feared, the perfect pages left the scriptorium still blank, tucked under the librarian's arm and fated for God only knew which works, if the librarian wouldn't even bring it to the scriptorium. The Dauphin had given that flock of kids, black and speckled, to the monastery in exchange for a future Book of Hours, which would now not be copied onto his vellum. Librarians! Literate and not much else-- He muttered an apology to the copyist, already busy again with an account-book of ink and pigment and vellum, and shuffled out of the door after Brother Adrian (modesty is a virtue--in a woman), returning to his cell. While going to one's private quarters was unusual at this time of day, and drew some curious glances, no one dared to chide the old man for it. Regardless of his knees, he knelt on the cold stone by the windowsill, in the hope of dragging himself to his feet later: I have been weak, o Lord. Not one but two of the cardinal sins had touched my heart today, goaded it against my brothers. Give strength to my confessor, o Lord, so that he may help me cleanse these sins--and grant me strength as well. These strangers have stirred up the dust of the wicked world, coming here, and I fear that worse may come. . . For the rest of the hour he stayed there, not from faintness of the body, but of the spirit.

Brother Thibault chuckled. "A fine dinner indeed. Do give it a bit of. . .extra blessing," he said, with a pious nod, and Brother Mathias nodded just as gravely. Sometimes, the dietary limitations needed to be set aside--strictly in the presence of guests on secular business, of course. "Send Francis to my cell with the poultice when you have time," he added, and shuffled towards the vellum workshops. Felipe stopped scrubbing at the flagstones well before Brother Thibault came near, and received a blessing as his robes remained free of flying dust. Once he passed, the novice resumed scrubbing his brush over the path with youthful vigor. One of the younger brothers, by the abbot's command, stood at the door of the workshops and asked, politely, what Brother Thibault wanted. He gnawed over the matter silently, with the reek of quicklime standing betwen them, then said simply, "The Dauphin's kidskin." Brother Thibault heard the whispered conference once the younger brother went inside, and mourned--but after a few minutes, he returned with a narrow stack of bone-white vellum. "You. . .finished it," he rasped, and turned quickly to hold the pages up to the light and away from his tears. The vellum was perfect; no pouncing-dust came off when he raised it, there were no lighter spots from careless scraping, the nap was even from careful stretching of the original skin, it was altogether a finer work than Brother Thibault had created in the past five years. He composed his face and turned back to the young monk, handing back the sheets and adding, "Forgive an old man's curiosity. . ." (Vanity. He would need to pray) ". . .I came here to take some samples to the scriptorium. The visiting brothers might have brought their own, they might not." With his new burden, Brother Thibault took the most direct path back to the abbey--Brother Rhys (some holier-than-thou White Monk) could see him and the vellum, but was preoccupied with speaking to a captive servant about the careless pile of bryony. He inclined his head before the altar, for God forgave an old man his knees outside of the hours devoted to prayer, and rested for a moment before continuing to the murmuring scriptorium. Brother Thibault moved in front of Brother Alcott's desk and waited. Brother Alcott (cared more for the words than the page, phff) paused in his copying and recitation to sharpen his quill; the old monk cleared his throat and spoke quietly, "Brother, do you know at which desks the visitors will be working?" "Visitors?" repeated Brother Alcott, glancing over at Brother Caire (Brown Monk, blunt as a cudgel) and the empty desks in that row. "Newly arrived, brother. They must not have been escorted to the scriptorium yet," Brother Thibault answered in a voice that could be heard in all the room, "if they have even met one of our own scholars at all. I have brought extra vellum before they have required it, now which one of you keeps records of the quills and inkpots?"

. . .Amen. Brother Thibault unclasped his tremulous hands and folded them on the rail, waiting for one of the novices to come to his aid. One came and gently supported the feeble brother by his elbows--"Lord be praised," thought Brother Thibault, remembering the last novice who had tried to grasp him by the wrist, notwithstanding his frail body. His shoulder still ached, and the careless novice, what-was-his-name, Felipe, hadn't finished his ten days of additional vespers yet. He'd have to have a talk with the willsome lad, for all the good it did-- He shuffled out into the thin sunshine, walking as directly as possible towards the gardens, squinting short-sightedly at the stones in the path. At the border between lawn and garden, Brothers Mathias (a good countryman) and Gulzar (some Crusader's good work) knelt but not piously, with a small pile of uprooted vines lying between them. Brother Thibault changed course and stepped in between them, and they ceased quarreling immediately. He nodded and grinned openly at the sign of respect for one's elders. "Good, my children. . .Prayer can do much, but my old hands need some earthly assistance," Brother Thibault said, holding out one gnarled hand. "Would you be so kind as to recommend a remedy?" "Taminier," Brother Mathias replied in an instant. He turned back to Brother Gulzar and explained, with a strained-yet-patient tone, "Bryony, in a poultice." "Bryony?!" muttered Brother Gulzar. "You want that? I have spent hours pulling his bryony out of my lawn--" "My children, you should not need to hear a sermon on the values of poverty and good-will!" His voice was raspy but just as loud as theirs and the spot of temper could be easily heard across the lawn. Two of the newly arrived visitors exchanged raised eyebrows.

Brother Thibault of Limoges Old, lined, and liver-spotted, with a few wisps of grey hair clinging to the base of his skull. Once a skilled maker and restorer of vellum, his eyesight and mind have both gone a little soft, and the abbot has assigned him to duties away from the documents. As a result, he divides his time between pestering the current generation of scholars and bestowing blessings on anyone who strikes his fancy.

I will not be taking any character which I wrote about previously. That post is now free pickings for anyone who needs a starting point. (And I confess that was my intention to begin with. )

Not the abbot, I can't plot on the fly. For that matter, I can barely plot at all. The plotters would plot rings around me in LARP. I was less of a pawn than a horseshoes stake. (Note: Being someone who forces interaction with other players gets you involved in other people's plots. This is your only warning.) The image of the fishing monk grows brighter in my mind, with a slightly sunburnt tonsure and a comfortable spot in the grass, a wooden bucket nearby with water and the day's catch: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name (swish, plunk! goes the fishing line), thy kingdom come. . .

So many characters to choose from! The weekly damsel-in-distress, or her understudy the evil spider-woman, bouffants and shellaced beehive hairdos, jealousy and dreams and strained relations with the male hierarchy. Set-makers who cannibalize other shows' discarded props, costumers that moved west from the Dust Bowl and know how to make one garment cover the entire season, makeup artists who tipple the cheap cologne in between takes, with scripts in their pockets that get placed daily on the director's chair. The network censor who spends too much time inspecting the costumes as worn, a reinstated casualty of the Hollywood blacklist, a one-time rising star. The primitive synthesizer artist who is obsessed with getting his dreadful snippets of electronic music into the show. The abbot, royal bastard and power-broker, forced into the monastery after his false pedigree was discovered at court. The confessor, perhaps a baner who guards people by granting them absolution for their suspicions, he who hears the suspicions and sins of all the monks. A scrivener monk who conceals a heretical chapter of the Bible in the black borders of a single illuminated page, and restless young assistants whose spelling quirks helped make English the bewildering thing it is today. A lowborn chorister, barely literate, whose full-throated voice can carry from the chapel to the outbuildings when he sings. Beekeeper and candle-maker whose face is permanently covered in welts from a beeswax allergy, vine workers from the countryside and their overseer the vintner who pays them for rich foods forbidden to the clergy, the monk at the pond who uses the casts of his fishing pole in lieu of a rosary.

Vahktang -- Lye soap. Ashes, animal fat (perhaps pressed vegetable oil if we're being very strict), boiling kettle, dreadful smell. Cleanliness next to godliness, etc etc. Celes -- Oh dear, I'd forgotten about Attack of the Atomic Space Werewolves. No spaceships, if I can help it. Tanuchan -- I will step outside of my comfort zone and commit!

Ooo Ooo Ooo! Can I be the guy who holds up all the BAFF! POW! KAWHAM! cards?!

In the darkened laboratory of the rejuvenation clinic, past the legal consultation rooms and the superficial surgery robots, Rajiv picked the barcoded sample out of the vacuum tube. He shook his hair out of his eyes before pushing the sample through a low-intensity laser curtain set into the lid of a waist-high glass tank. Inside the tank, the sample container sank into an opaque slurry of nutrient fluid and nanobots, and opened at an unnoticed signal while Rajiv set the timer atop the incubator. He walked over to the sink, chose a pop-top can of preserved sweet potato curry from the cabinet above it, pried off the top, and added water before returning to the incubator and setting it on the lid to cook. Inside the slurry, the nanobots generated heat scurrying among the particles of themselves and nutrients, dragging molecules to and fro as they rebuilt a single body from the mingled DNA. Rajiv had time to eat the curry and think about defrosting a dessert he'd hidden in the sample freezer before the timer beeped. He twisted two clamps set onto the edges of the lid as a new, quicker countdown appeared on the timer and lifted the lid out of the irradiation ring in which it was mounted. A pair of feet and one ankle barely showed above the surface of the slurry. Rajiv plunged his hands through the antiseptic layer, grabbed hold of the ankles, and pulled the body out of the tank; the upper legs rose up all at once as they unfolded, then the torso passed into the higher-pressure atmosphere, then shoulders and neck came out together, last the arms and head as slurry poured out of the body's nose and mouth. He lay her facedown on a hospital bed to recover and settled the lid back in place, programming the incubator to reset and putting Mister Luc's sample in the time-release above the laser curtain. The timer beeped again, and Rajiv touched the new body gently on the shoulder. No response. "Hey," he tried, "wake up." Still nothing. He frowned and went back to the cabinet above the sink, shook his hair out of the way and put on his headset. Slowly he picked his way through the menus, finger tapping on the fresh body's shoulder, until he found her incomplete file. "Tzim. . ." he tried again, "hey, fem, are you there? You free on Friday night?" That one never failed to get a reaction from the lady rejuvenates--sometimes it was even yes. Not this time, though. He pushed her onto her side and she stared back at him, alive but unresponsive. After many minutes in the menus, and pausing to drop Mister Luc's sample into the readied incubator, he connected his headset directly with Michelle's for two-way speechless communication. "'Chelle? You busy?" Michelle shut off the music on her headset but still waved her pen in time with it while the clinic's teenaged flunkies picked up Mister Luc's lifeless body by wrists and ankles, and spoke without moving her lips, "I've got a cleanup out here but no customers waiting, what's the matter, honey?" "Tell Recycling to save the body. I got a dud." She snapped her fingers at the flunkies, pointed her pen towards the spare hospital bed, and told her headset to fetch information from Rajiv's headset. The form for Ludmila's child displayed. "She ain't got insurance, right?" Rajiv confirmed, "so go wake her up and make sure there's a lawyer standing by so she don't get any ideas about a refund." She groaned and signaled again to the flunkies, who scooped up the body from the bed and shuffled down the hallway toward the recycling bins. "No. . .You're right, no insurance, we don't have to rejuvenate her again, but she's not going to wake up. Yes, I know that we'll both be in trouble if her family wants to sue--sugar, I know! I'll fix it so nobody sues," Michelle continued, twirling the pen faster than usual. "Just finish the rejuvenation, get her clothed and out here." "Got a problem with that, 'Chelle," Rajiv said. He flicked at his headset and turned on the external microphone. "I'll pick up the robe and show you," he said aloud, and Michelle heard the fresh eighteen-year-old body gasp, then scream and sob like an infant. "She's a total dud. Ain't nothing left to be fixed." He turned off the microphone. "I know you're good, but you can't make nothing out of nothing, and I'm--oof! . . .she kicked me, but I got her dressed--I'm gonna make sure I'm too sick to work for at least a week. And if she kicks me again I will be. Sending her out to you." Rajiv shut off the connection. Michelle disregarded the headset and buried her face in her hands. "'Milla. . ." she sighed to herself, "if it takes me the rest of my life, I am going to get you back for this. . ." --end chapter one--

I hesitate to criticize this poem, especially with your post that says it stings you as though it were freshly written, Tattered. Take this with several grains of salt and perhaps a year of distance from the time you wrote it: The lines and rough couplets are all powerful images, and nothing is out of order, but the entire poem does tumble together and dilute a bit until it hits the first question mark. Space between lines would insert too much time. Maybe, although I realize that the lack of punctuation in the first half is a conscious choice, there needs to be a few full stops in it? I have great difficulty pointing at a spot in the first six lines and saying, "Yes. A full stop must go here," but perhaps the lines about the body could be cordoned off with punctuation, and certainly "I've spent all this life digging holes and jumping in them" is strong enough to be the beginning of a new sentence.

(in a parody of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups commercials) How does Tzimfemme eat a Toffifee candy? (Tzimfemme snatches the plastic tray out of the box, holds it vertically in front of her face, and starts flicking the backside of the tray very precisely. Each time she flicks her finger against a hemisphere, the tray crumples and pops its attached candy into her mouth. She moves the tray like a typewriter carriage return and drops the empty packaging onto the table.) How does Rydia eat a Toffifee candy? (Rydia holds one candy delicately between thumb and forefinger, then bites it precisely down the middle. The camera lingers on the bitten cross-section of candy while she chews and swallows, then she eats the second half with the same care.) How does Minta eat a Toffifee candy? (Minta turns the candy sideways and bites the little circle of chocolate off of the top, then slurps the nougat out of the caramel shell, licks the hazelnut thoroughly before dislodging it with her tongue and spitting it away, then chomps on the caramel shell.) How do YOU eat your Toffifee?

I saw #2 & #3 while I was visiting Starlight's family for Christmas. He didn't understand why I was so interested, or the appeal of a wax cola bottle. Does a Stewart's drive-in with ice cream and root beer floats count for #23? It didn't specify "movie theater".

I've been putting off reading this--the large blocks of text without spaces in between clashed with the names in front of each block of conversation--part novel, part movie script, it confused my eyes. Tonight I just plunged in and found a good read, but it does take a bit of an effort to pick up, and entertaining stories shouldn't be something you have to dedicate yourself to reading. The chunks read like episodes of a television show, with all the background handily put into the first post and nothing but action thereafter, with "tune in next week" foreshadowing at the end of many posts. "Jane" always makes me think of Edgar Rice Burroughs and this puts me in a B-movie frame of mind, so I picture one of those action series on the newer networks as I read (but for the love of all that's holy, don't use clips from the video game for your CGI *coughcough*). There isn't enough of the story arc yet to make a season, and probably not quite enough for a two-hour special either, so I'll disagree with Wyvern that the plot doesn't have to have gone somewhere yet. I'll probably post again later once more of the story arc has been revealed.

Internet Explorer 6, default skin (I like warm colors), no "Posted" hyperlink.

also ooc: Agreed. Playing a flute in the Pen gets some odd results sometimes.

Zadown, you can't confuse us more than Impostor did with his split and conjoined translated Russian proverbs: "if you spit in the well. . .don't expect it to fly back out again" was the only one which even approached sense. I'll try to find that post on the old Archmage boards and pray I don't have to pry it out of the middle of a flame war.

Katzaniel, as your post stands, you've succumbed to a common form of Internet hubris and punishment--pick at someone's spelling or grammar and invariably something will be wrong with yours. [EDIT: "Particularily"? Edit will be removed when original post is corrected.] I wouldn't worry too much about expressions sounding strange in English, Sweetcherrie. Right now, I'm in a mixed gaming guild that has members from all corners of Europe, and a lot of statements get translated right before they're typed, or not at all, and yet they still make sense. It's true that the words won't seem as rich and full of meaning to you, but to readers who have never even heard the expression before, it will still make a good image--we may need the underlying moral explained, that's all.

"Minta, get down from there or I'll translocate you!" The neato necro gnomie girl stuck out her tongue at Starlight far below. "Can't, am outta range," she reported gleefully. She wound her feet firmly into the bunting and flipped upside-down to look at the auction. A couple of non-undeads and a half-cat were haggling over a folder, not very interesting--until she thought of how useful it could be to own something that made papers vanish. Bad report cards, candy wrappers from other people's candies, subpoenas, ghost-controlling papers, other paper mage stuff, homework assignments. . .TONS of possibilites! "FORTY-ONE!" she shrilled, and held out her hands as an Almost Dragonic Brand Semi-Sharp Ninja Twinkle Star bounced harmlessly off of her nose. ZAP Starlight flipped the translocation spell so that Minta landed upright and in front of him; the twinkle star fell into her hair, and Starlight took that to polish and give to Rydia. "Why do you always have to bid more than what you have to bid? It doesn't make sense!" he scolded her. Minta sulked, again. "We're going now," he said, picking her up and unwinding the scrap of translocated bunting from her feet before walking to the next booth. Minta squirmed in midair but didn't get put down.

Rydia snaps open a tiny, shiny green sparkly purse, lifts it up to her eye and looks in the margins, and sighs, "This would be the one place where you have to use earned geld. . .Now to find whoever translocated me out of the shinymaze! Minta! Come on, we're going. . .Minta?!". . .

Well, that's very kind of you, Wyvern, but I didn't end up voting for myself because I preferred that entry over. . .there. . . (Tzimfemme stares at Wyvern, then his entry ((at which she is pointing)), then at the results, and wonders whether impartiality is as useful as it's rumored to be.)