northclifflogs | [open] a homecoming

The colourful covered wagon and its eccentric driver should be a familiar sight to long-time residents of Northcliff Pass; Tuo nearly always pays a visit to the village during the festival season, though this year he is a bit early due to renewed tension at the border between Cliffside and Black Rock. (Will there be war again? Who even knows.)

It took him exactly one sleepless night plagued by vivid nightmares and the appearance of a ghostly phantasm above his hammock to understand why the everyone he’s bumped into so far looks as though all of life’s joy has been sapped from their eyes.

Now, as the late autumn sun hangs perilously low on the horizon, Tuo is at work affixing small charms and wards to the perimeter of his camp; small clusters of herb and animal bone and some church iconography bound together by twine, which he fastens both to shallow posts in the earth, and to the entrance to his wagon. On a nearby perch, his magpie Alvi sits preening his flight feathers.

Even with the infestation of ghosts drawing most of the town's energy away from thought of the festivals--or even much in the way of rumors--word's still gotten round that Tuo's back, back early.

It can't be him, Vervain had thought when he'd caught word in passing from the folk streaming through the chapel, day and night. Can it?

He'd asked an old widow who was half-sweet on him next she came to beg a blessing: The fellow who's come back--Tuo, who is he?

Strange pale foreigner, puppeteer, storyteller--oh, Ver's heart had leaped to his throat and lodged there with recognition. He'd blessed the widow with more than his usual fervor and begged directions out of her and now--

Now here he is, drawn to the wagon by sounds of someone busy outside it. He grounds his walking stick a good twenty feet away from where Tuo's at work, swallowing a moment's unaccustomed shyness.

"Tuo...? Is it really you?"

His camp is near enough to foot traffic in and out of the village that the sound of someone approaching him through the autumn foliage doesn’t immediately cause Tuo to look up from his work. It’s only when Alvi rustles his feathers and lets out a questioning ‘caw’ to his right that he glances to the side, and discovers that the passer-by is in fact a visitor.

He notices the blindfold and guide stick first, and then a priest’s cassock, but then:

“Tuo...? Is it really you?”

Now that is a familiar form of address, out of place among the usual greetings he receives from these villagers after being out of their company for some time. Tuo allows himself to smile and make an artless gesture with one hand, before recognizing the futility of both, and then instead takes a few deer-like steps towards his guest through the foliage. “You sound as though you scarce believe it, my friend,” he replies, allowing his voice to carry across the space between them, and adds wryly, “Should I be wary of selkies in the river bed, as well as ghosts in the woods?”

Yet the closer he comes, the better his eyes can take in his visitor, and at last he slows to a stop, startled into silence. No, it couldn’t be him—and yet enough years have come and gone for a little boy from a little village to grow into a man, and for that man to experience all manner of tragedies. “...Vervain Gardener,” he says aloud, wonderingly.

If there were any doubt in Ver's mind about the identity of Northcliff Pass' itinerant storyteller, it vanishes the instant Tuo replies. Not just the voice but the words, the entire demeanor--even after so long there's only one person that could be.

Ver's entire face lights up with that recognition. "It is you--we thought you were dead!"

Where someone else might put an edge of resentment into the words, why didn't you tell us you were leaving, Ver has nothing of the sort; only an unfeigned delight to have been wrong. "Gram even read rites for you; you wouldn't believe how vexed she was--"

He stops himself abruptly with a hand to his mouth; this is absolutely too much to be putting on someone in a years-delayed reunion. "...We missed you," I missed you, he finishes, hushed.

In rush the waves of guilt, which Tuo knows will ebb once enough time has passed. That is true of all feelings, of course, but this one in particular is his least favourite. (It is in his nature to nurture friendships, just as it is his obligation to abandon them. He has never relished being at crossed purposes with his destiny.)

“Did she really,” he answers, his voice faint and wistful, and smiles. For a brief moment the memories overtake him, before he comes back to himself and takes a few steps nearer to Vervain. “I thought she’d have found my absence to be a blessed respite,” he goes on, determined not to become melancholic. “I wonder what she would say about our reunion here, of all places.”

(His eyes linger on the blindfold, but it is too soon to ask, too soon to wonder.)

"Truly, she did," Vervain says, and saying it, loses a little of the awestruck boy in favor of the solemn young priest he can sometimes be. "You were the only one around she had to argue with; she'd missed it."

It wasn't something Gram ever said to him outright, but he wasn't unobservant of the woman who'd raised him, nor what the rest of 'Thwaite said of their parson. She was woven too tight in the little town's fabric to be truly an outsider any longer, but they knew even so something in her was separate from them. Refined in a way they weren't. Different, without being wrong.

Much the same way Tuo had been. Was it any wonder the priest and the peregrine ended up at cheerful odds?

Ver clears his throat and gives a little shake of his head, smiling sheepishly to cover for his woolgathering. "I think she'd tell me I have to take up where she left off," he adds, finishing the thought. "Though I don't hold a candle to her and I'd rather listen to your stories anyway. So maybe I don't send word back to her about this."

A joke, that.

Humour is quite the versatile tool: the most effective at cutting the tension from an unexpected reunion, or deflecting serious inquiries away from one's secrets. Tuo has used it for both purposes, although with friends, always with care and tenderness. If he must lie to them (and he must), then he will do so gently if he has a choice.

He laughs, all lightness and whimsy, and remarks, "You've developed a rebel's spirit since I last saw you. An intriguing quality, for a priest." The homespun robes speak for themselves, nearly as much as the fabric that is folded carefully across Vervain's eyes. "Is that why you've so far from 'Thwaite, to this little corner of Maireglenne?"

Kit has barely crossed the threshold of his own house when he's greeted by a tall obstruction who wraps him in a tight, needy hug.

He drops his travel pack to the ground and kicks the door shut the rest of the way with his foot, and is quick to wrap both arms snug around Ben without further explanation. Suffice it to say, he's noticed the spooks.

After a moment he draws back enough to get a look at his lover's face, smoothing some hair back from his eyes. "You hurt?" he asks quietly.

Pressing his face into Kit's neck, Ben is reluctant to step back, though he shakes his head in answer. "I hate them," he says plainly, "but. At least I'm not the only one who does."

Lowering his hands to grasp Kit's, he gives them a little tug to bring him over by the fire. "How was your trip?"

Well at least Ben has something in common with the neighbours now.

He allows himself to be led closer to their modest hearth, bag forgotten by the door for the moment. There's nothing in there that won't keep until morning anyway, and certainly nothing that he would prioritize over the man in front of him. "Not bad," he answers, "it was good work, decent pay. Still not sure why some guy in Cliffside wanted a carpenter from up the mountain, but it's enough coin to get us through the winter months."

He peels his gloves off and, flexing his fingers, holds them out towards the fire, thawing some of the chill that has worked its way deep into his bones. He gives Ben an askance look. "How long has all this--" and Ben should definitely know what that means, "--been going on?"

Kit will no doubt be delighted that Ben has made one (1) friend, or at least something like one, in the form of a similarly surly and taciturn individual who has nonetheless helped him out once or twice at his own behest.

Ben draws him to sit on the floor by the fire, a few comfortable pillows strewn about, his usual cold weather nesting spot. "About a week," he murmurs, "it only really happens at night, but... it happens all night." He gives a full-body shudder and leans against Kit with a little sigh.
"It's horrible."

They’ve had years of this, settling down comfortably before the fire with tea and coffee, the curtains drawn for privacy while they enjoy each other’s company. The circumstances are usually far less disturbing, even when the past comes to call on them. At least their normal unwelcome visitors are flesh and blood, and can die as easily as the next man. How is he supposed to kill a ghost?

Kit shifts on the pillows and slips his fingers absently through Ben’s loose hair, massaging the nape of his neck in silence; it’s the only comfort he can offer. “They just show up?” he muses aloud quietly, watching the fire. “They haven’t hurt anyone?” Physically, at any rate.

"No," Ben confirms, only to, a few moments later, concede, "...not me, anyway." That basically means everyone, right?

With Kit seated, he adjusts himself to lie on his side, his head on his partner's knee where his hair can be stroked more easily. "They walk right through the walls. You hear people shouting all night, caught off-guard."

It’s everyone that matters.

(That’s not strictly speaking true, although adding Lance to that category comes with its own set of complications.)

He adjusts the pillows around Ben as he settles in like a house cat who rightfully expects his every whim to be catered to—and given the world turned itself upside down when Kit left Ben alone in the village, doting upon him like this is really the least he can do. With the pillows sorted Kit returns his fingers to Ben’s dark hair and smooths a few errant locks back behind his ear.

“That’s fucked up.” He watches the embers burning around the base of a log now mostly rendered to ash, and grimaces. “Someone’s got to deal with it soon, before people start looking for someone to blame.”

Translation: before their neighbours start a literal witch hunt.

[open] a homecoming

Tuo

[open] late afternoon on the outskirts of the town near Sands Creek

hai!!

yooooo

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Kit

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tmw I thought it was ur tag but it was actually mine, oops

Emery

Pippa