Gun Show in the Library with the Rifle | Day 4 - Morning/Day | Open

[subtleserenity]

[Scenario A: Only those who have had previous positive interactions with Zoe, please!]

A person can only spend so much time staring at books she can't read before the urge to do something that feels marginally more meaningful - and physical - takes over. Lights had said the Keeper wasn't there anymore, and Mason had confirmed he'd gone walking out in the world some time ago. The questions of where and why and for how long eat at her. The not knowing seems almost as bad as knowing might. If she is only going to have herself, limited as her memories of who she is are, for another few days, she wants to know it.

She has those she would think to call on. Ones that seem ready enough to go looking, too. She has a few ideas about where to look - the Keeper's bedroom - and how to do it, but a part of her knows that one head can hold only so many thoughts on where to stash a diary, date book, or whatever else the white creature in her dreams and nightmares uses to plan his schedule.

The library is her domain now, or as near to it as can be said. She begins to search for her allies, thoughts of a brigade scouring the Keeper's bedroom in her head. There might not be that many, but she'd take what she could get. When she happens upon one, her greeting is simple: "Goin' huntin' for things we ain't meant to have. Interested in comin'?"


[Scenario B: Anyone who would like to have Zoe prod at their possession form like the possession prodder that she is can tag into this one!]

The library is enormous and its inhabitants and transient visitors scattered. Even with a focused intent, her gaze is drawn to the myriad objects and books the Keeper has in his possession. She has yet to grow tired of her returned senses, though she's learned to curb her apparent enthusiasm since her initial exploration of the shelves in the Hearth Room. Still, a particularly interesting book, statue, or other item may pull at her to go touch, smell, experience it. Her stance from the first day remains: If it's a person and they don't like it, they're welcome to say as much.


[Scenario C: Anyone who would like to have Zoe approach them as a person can tag into this one!]

As for anyone physically there for her to see, she nods politely at them. Potential allies lurk in the most unassuming of bodies sometimes, after all. Her gaze is calculating on these ones, searching out hostility before she approaches. She has no desire to start a fight. That would be counterproductive when she's seeking extra pairs of willing eyes and hands. Her greeting is more weary for those she does not know, but it's still friendly enough: "You find anything you can read in here, I'll find a hat to eat. Reckon the Keeper's the finest linguist in the 'verse or don't get to readin' but a fraction of what he steals."

Her stance is guarded, arms crossed over her bare chest and head cocked to one side. Her polished body shines faintly in the library's lights, and the smell of gunpowder hangs heavy in the air around her.

Comments

Scenario C

[inseine]

A man-beast, covered in wildly striped hair and absolutely disinterested in the unending sea of unreadable literature, paces near one of the largest library shelves.

Tirelessly he has spent the past four days prowling up and down the House corridors. There are two sorts of creatures he seeks: First, those who will join his efforts to organize the Keeper's things, preferably individuals that he can recall as members of the Inner or Outer Guard; and second, those rulebreakers and displaced Things who have abandoned their stations and contributed to the chaotic atmosphere in the halls. If he does not have the manpower or the means to round the disordered Things and set them back to their tasks, he shall at least keep a running list in his mental filing cabinet of what sort of creature he is dealing with. The Guard must be ever-vigilant, even though -- or rather because -- Master remains mysteriously absent.

This morning, the acrid and intoxicatingly familiar stench of Gunpowder lured him to the Library. At the sound of that firm, almost feminine greeting, he raises his ruffed head and flashes a toothy, terse grin.

This one. She is what brought him here, he notes with a pronounced twitch of his nose, with that thick gunpowder cloud she carries with her. He recognizes her vaguely. That could be either good or bad for the gunpowder girl, depending: the only scents and faces he remembers belongs to either other Guardsmen, or to creatures he once herded when he was put to task.

"Unlikely." His proud voice probes like a sharp growl, abrupt and sudden, from the corner of his stretched lips. He gazes at Gunpowder Girl steadily. "You are asking the wrong Beast. I do not read. I've got no use for that."

[subtleserenity]

The tiger man is familiar after a fashion, though she can't place why. Some vague sense that they've met before prickles at the back of her mind. Such things, like most, have no substance, the ghost of fingers along her spine. He is an unknown, a willfully ignorant unknown so very proud of his station. Everything about that makes her straighten her back, and square her shoulders. She keeps her expression carefully neutral, though, not returning the smile.

"No use for knowledge and intelligence, sir?" she asks, the title coming naturally. "Most people'd question a man stalkin' a library if he ain't got cause to look in on the inhabitants."

The library clerk's commentary about the kingdom of books has stuck with her to an extent. She is the 'ambassador,' after all. "What're you doin' if it ain't lookin' for somethin' to read?"

[inseine]

The terse grin stretches into a pinch, his sharp eyes taking on a new meaning. Her directness appeals to him. She is not a girl to beat around the bush; a rare thing, among confused and delusional changelings. He watches her intently through half-lidded eyes.

"Hunting," he says smoothly, and the gold in his irises twinkle with a secret, savage light. There is a chuckle hidden somewhere beyond that indifferent expression. He offers no further explanation than that. He rakes an extended claw along a shelf within reach, pauses, and plucks out a volume at random. He pinches it between two fingers like it were a filthy rag covered in feces and vomit, and sets the book down on a nearby table. He leafs through it at about arm's length, leafing through it and glancing hard at the symbols written there as if to test himself.

"You mistake me. I make plenty use of intelligence. And I am a quick enough learner," he explains firmly. "But I cannot recall being taught to read." He raises his square jaw and his chin to the girl, his shoulders squared. "What business does a Guard-Beast--" his cold stare and pregnant pause seems to add silently, or you?-- "got with books?"

[subtleserenity]

She can't recall being taught to read, either. The thought that she may have paged through a book from her own world without knowing it for her own illiteracy is sobering. Still, the alternative is giving up on finding something of who she might have been, or at least what her culture was before this world. They've had their freedom all of four days by her reckoning. That's not nearly enough to abandon hope.

"Somethin' to wile away a long shift, sir," she suggests, tone light, companionable. "Most folk don't take to standin' around guardin' nothin' so well. Keeper ain't here. What're you lookin' after?" The question this time is sharp, challenging. She lifts her chin to match his, but she does not go beyond, only mirrors. He is a proud beast, she can tell, and she has her own pride. Something about his stance, his tone, grates at her, but he's offered little more than light condescension. It's nothing that would warrant her scorn. Yet. "Seems Mason can keep us in well enough. Reckon that means he can keep anyone he wants out.

"Way I see, a man goes out huntin' for three things: Food, loot, and criminals. You hungry for somethin', Stripe?"

[inseine]

"Apparently so," confirms the Beast blithely. Several things come to mind. Hungry for clarity. Hungry for familiarity, for order in this mess of a house. He voices none of that. He slams the incomprehensible book shut and pushes it aside, then turns to face the girl fully. He studies her closely, his arms slowly folding and clasping across his chest.

"You," he says instead.

That would probably worry any creature that is susceptible to the maws of a formidable man-beast. Guns such as this girl are unlikely to have this worry. He resumes in a low and swift tone,

"You are a Guard, then?" If it were not for his ominous golden stare, he would sound like he is not speaking to the girl at all, but rather to the empty space just in front of his massive square jaw. "I recognize your scent. Have we worked together before? Well! Never mind that, never mind that--"

A military stiffness returns to his shoulders, and he raises his head to peer at her unreadably through his wild bangs.

"Master may be Out, but I was not under the impression that our responsibilities end with that."

[subtleserenity]

"Allow me to correct that impression, sir," she replies, her features devoid of fear, "the Keeper ain't no master of mine. Nor yours. A thief in the night don't deserve that kinda respect."

What terror does a rifle have of a beast? It's only the one that wields it who should tread lightly. Again, she mirrors his posture. Her silver eyes watch him, heavily lidded to hide any flash of anger or annoyance.

At once, she is both drawn to and repulsed by the tiger. She senses structure, hierarchy, and purpose in him. As a soldier, she thinks, those are things she should have, things that make the world run smoothly and win battles. But there's a greater purpose she yearns for beyond maintenance. Stripe seems to want to keep things as they are, not establish an order that is right.

"Can't say if we worked together, Stripe, but wouldn't surprise me. Think the Keeper kept me at his side. Seemed nice at the time"- she supposes apathy as an object is nice, anyway -"but wakin' up from a dream and thinkin' on it turns it nightmare. Maybe you ain't reached that point yet."

[inseine]

The beast's eyebrows float up. He is not sure what he was expecting, but it was not quite this sort of attitude, with the way she spoke of the Master so disrespectfully. Not from someone kept at Master's side for all these long years, however long it has been since they have kept this house in good working order.

"Or I don't have any mad ideas about my station in this world. Or my importance."

Slowly his lip curls into a grimace colored with a smack of derision, his lower lip curling beneath his protruding fangs. The sporting grin (one would be hard-pressed to call a tiger's grin 'friendly') is long gone and replaced by a chilly, stony wrinkle around his muzzle.

For Gun Show, it is a nightmare to spend a lifetime in servitude. For Mutton Chops, it is more accurate to say that the chaos around the house, these 'awakenings' and stirring memories and new feelings, are the nightmare, and not his service to a greater authority. He has no grand delusions that there is more to his life than his work and the hunt, and he has no raging ambition to open his mind to the possibility of something else when the very idea disturbs him so much.

"Come now and tell me. What is wrong with doing what you were made for?"

[subtleserenity]

As with Mason's and the peacocks' admonishments about the Keeper and minding him, the beast's cold countenance stirs rebellion in her. He represents something she cannot abide, though what that is, she can't say. Service is a noble calling. There is no shame in it.

Even if his loyalties do not align with hers, she can sense a fellow soldier, a fellow fighter. It is little comfort, though. This talk of stations makes her bristle. Who is he to tell her where her station is? He is not her commander, her general. Their only camaraderie was likely forced when they were both insensible to it.

"A gun's made to kill, sir," she replies. "Not many folk'd appreciate me shootin' 'em full of holes without cause. And runnin' off from where they woke ain't cause enough." She squares her jaw before continuing. "No delusions about my importance, though, sir. I'm nothin' but a gun. Might not turn the tides of history, but I can change the course of a few lives. I mean to do that if I can.

"And tell me, sir, what were you made for before you were this?" She gestures to his body rigidly. "Keeper crafted us for his needs, not the ones we mighta been meant for, near as I can tell."