Saoirse + Máire // A Voyage Across the Sea
Who: Saoirse and Máire
When: Jan 10th or thereabouts
Where: Mummer's Quarter
Ratings & Warnings: None.
Suffice it to say it had been a long week for Máire Luíseach.
Really it had started with Roya, a petite, if tempermental Chestnut belonging to this or that noblewoman; Roya, who'd developed an outsized attitude problem after developing an equally outsized hoof abscess. Roya, whose owner had her nose too high in the air to let some gypsy upstart tend to her horse already had a groom -- an older man, completely homegrown -- named Douglas, and it was Douglas who got kicked through the stall -- resoundingly -- twice before Máire decided to step in. Of course then he'd really gotten the ball rolling as the mare quieted under her touch with a simple, offhand comment Máire hadn't been able to shake all week.
"Tha's jus' not natural, it 'in't," he'd said, through the fat of a split lip, and since then she'd seen tricolored eyes blinking back from reflective surfaces more times than not; wore the marks of her hands up to the elbows even when they went without use. It was troubling, inconvenient; not for the first time she neatly packed her bags in the two rooms she occupied on the third floor above one of the local taverns and thought about where, exactly, might be next to go.
Then there'd been the massacre. Walking through the hold was like looking at a destroyed spiderweb: everywhere that links had been, connecting this person to that, the edges were torn and frayed, threads of feeling between real people who had truly existed which were now just vacancies; holes whose edges felt sharp and uncomfortable because everywhere there was fear, terror, grief. Máire had lifelong experience in filtering out the emotional creep that accompanied a gift like empathy, but, for some reason, these were harder to filter: as the adage went, misery loved company. She hadn't exactly taken the time to examine life in Tyrol collectively until Caelus Stark -- of all people -- had the nerve to call her a bitch, well-protected by a distance of at least a mile and the pages of his ledger.
It was only after resisting the urge to strangle him that it occured to Máire that she couldn't recall the last time she'd laughed, and with this in mind, the brunette and Ara set out on a slow walk through the quarters without any particular destination. Still, she wasn't surprised to find the firepit which Saoirse and her companions gathered around every night like they were all back on the road, and didn't stop the puppy from bounding forward to beg scraps from any of the troupe. Without further adieu the girl in the forest green cloak found her blonde friend and settled down in the circle. She'd traveled with them once, hadn't she? It felt far away, now.
"Tell me a story," she asked, by way of greeting, "and don't put me in it."
Saoirse didn’t look up from her work as Máire took a seat. The neat row of stitches continued to form under her hands as part of the most sedate and calming chore Saoirse ever took part in. Sewing was not a frenetic activity, one had to sit and take one’s time to ensure it was done right, especially with costumes on a stage, more so with the costumes one wore every day. Ira’s adventures over the New Year period had managed to tear the tunic he’d worn in several places. Somehow, Saoirse had managed not to ask how. She knew Ira was mixed up in things that were nothing to do with the troupe, and by instinct knew she didn’t want her nose anywhere near it.
“A story is it?” The question came lightly. Saoirse was no empath, and could not really boast a solid judge about mood or attitude in people that came to her. On a stage it went without saying; a crowd was easier to read than an individual. She did, however, know stress and misery when she saw it.Máire’s tension turned the air hard. “Ye’ve heard most of ‘em by now, Fair One, so y’have.”
Another row of stitching done, Saoirse’s green eyes lifted, and she set the darning work in her lap. “Why not do one wit’ me, eh? Y’know the Voyage o’ Bran, aye.”
"You're a better storyteller than I am," replied the equerry, fixing her gaze on the neat row of stitches Saoirse was working through in someone's ruined tunic. She was relieved her friend -- if Saoirse could be called that -- hadn't chosen to pry, and smiled just slightly at the nickname the mummer bestowed on her in response.
It was better than being half-horse by miles. "I know it," Máire added, resting an elbow on her knee and dropping her chin into a waiting palm as she cast a glimpse around the rest of the fire. It had been simpler when this had been her life. Gypsies had a built in respect for legends and they tended to be highly superstitious; around them, the only thing that made her uncomfortable was the knowledge that this particular crowd couldn't keep secrets to save their lives, and that Tyrol wasn't a safe place to have the kind of secret she had. Bran had made it from Ireland to the lands beyond the sea; the creatures who dwelt there were said to be her distant ancestors.
Not something to think about right now. It was just a story, a way to listen to the cadence of someone else's voice for a while while Máire silenced all her own inner murmurs. "... But you'll start, won't you?"
"That I will." It was customary for the troupe leader to start the first tale of the evening, and as Máire's arrival had been timely, it seemed as right a moment as any to make a beginning. "Pick yersel' a pew an' a bit of broth from the pot, aye." Perhaps fortuitously, the food on the fire had been put together from stored vegetables, and the only part of a life that had gone into it was a little chicken stock. The legends often said that the Fair Folk weren't large fans of meat, but Saoirse had never confirmed the fact either way. One day, she mused, she should probably ask Máire.
It would be fine to start the tale quietly between the two of them. The troupe had sharp ears, and no doubt would gravitate their way once they realised what they'd begun. Saoirse balled up Ira's tunic and tossed it carelessly aside to free up her hands. The boy was filthy; he would neither notice nor care as long as the hole was gone. With a mouthful of mead to loosen Saoirse's vocal chords, the sing-song tale began:
"'Twas fifty quatrains the woman from unknown lands sang on the floor of the house, to Bran, son of Febal, when the royal house was full of Kings who knew not whence the woman had come, since the ramparts were closed.
This is the beginning of the story. One day, in the neighbourhood of his stronghold, Bran went about alone when he heard music behind him. As often as he looked back, 'twas still behind him the music was. At last he fell asleep at the music, such was its sweetness. When he awoke from his sleep, he saw close by him a branch of silver with white blossoms, nor was it easy to distinguish its bloom from that branch. Bran took the branch in his hand to his royal house. When the hosts were in the royal house, they beheld a woman in strange raiment on the floor of the house. 'Twas then she sang the fifty quatrains to Bran, while the Host heard her, and all beheld the woman.
And she said..."
With the scene set, the rolling poem continued, Saoirse's voice softened of its traditional harsh notes as the roll and sway took her.
Unaware of Saorise's conclusions, Máire went and got a bowl of the soup -- it'd be rude to decline, and anyway, she was a lousy cook. Gypsy fare was still better than anything the equerry could have thrown together. Máire's meals, left to her own devices, tended to exist of their individual, original components: such as bread and an apple for breakfast (often on the way out the door, resisting the urge to scowl at the rising sun). She settled back down, stretching one leg out in front of her and folding the other up, and then it was time to listen, sipping occasionally albeit silently at the broth. Saoirse carried them easily through the woman's song, explaining what lay beyond the sea; but after that, as Bran set out to cross those waters, it was Máire who adopted the voice of Manannan.
The psychopomp was an old sea deity, associated with the Tuatha Dé Danann; briefly, she wondered what had happened to him -- whether or not he'd given up on bringing others through the mists to retire with the rest of his kin. It wasn't part of the story, at least, and in a clear, if perhaps performance-shy voice, Máire began to speak his stanzas:
"Bran deems it a marvellous beauty,
In his coracle across the clear sea:
While to me in my chariot from afar
It is a flowery plain on which he rides about..."
Technically Saoirse had been asked to avoid stories with characters of the Fair Folk in, but associations, she'd figured, were safe enough. She could have picked a tale of love, but it wasn't so much the topic du jour, given Máire's gloomy mein. She could have picked a tale of war, but those were usually reserved for when blooded males made up the bulk of their audience. Máire was neither of those things, although she'd held her fair share of swords in Saoirse's time. The Voyage of Bran spoke of discovering wonders, of locating a wondrous land far away from the pain and suffering of their dirtier world, where the streets were paved with peace, and the peoples lived in comfort and content - and the destruction of it. It was similar, in a way, to the Christian bible, but Saoirse had been taught that their people looked upon the arrival of the Catholic church in the same way as their Adam and Eve had fallen to the serpent's manipulative evil. Where intolerance stood, men fell. Perhaps that was the mood that Máire carried with her tonight; the weight of the world.
Well, it was all good and dandy to fantasise over it, but here it was her turn to speak again:
"For Collbran's son great was the folly
To lift his hand against age,
Without any one casting a wave of pure water
Over Nechtan, Collbran's son."
By then, of course, the other gypsies had picked up other parts of the rest of the tale, largely sparing Máire from further recitation, and it wound up with Bran's departure, never to be seen or heard from again. Hopefully he'd been welcomed back into the undying lands with open arms; it was, of course, impossible to say for sure. Soup finished, Máire sat back on her elbows, eyes on the fire.
"Do you think he made it back?" She asked, absently.
"Aye, sure he did," Saoirse replied, reclaiming her seat by the fire. "The ladies said they couldn't do wi'out his presence, na, didn't they? All he had to do was wheedle his way in, like, and they'd sulk fer a year or two and then forgive him. Silly girls." She reached forward to ladle out a little broth for herself, and sat sipping it from the bowl. "Y'thinkin' of headin' homewards, Máire? It's a fair trek, aye."
"Silly," she echoed, shaking her head as she sat back on her palms. Máire tilted her chin back to look up at the stars, in no particular hurry to hold the conversation at rapid pace. The sky was surprisingly clear. "I've thought about it," she admitted then. In truth, she'd done more than thought: her bags were nearly packed; leaving could happen in very short order. "It's not a very safe place, is it, with so many people dying all the time ..." The equerry trailed off and then shrugged. "I don't really have a home, anyway," she said. "It'd just be the road again."
"Better on the road, perhaps," the gypsy echoed, "but fer a woman on 'er own - even you, Fair One - it's no safer, no, not a bit. Like as not the Inquisition'd haul yer up on it if yer left Balfour." Saoirse paused to drink from her bowl. "Why doncher move out of where y'are and pop down here wi' us fer a wee bit," she suggested. "Lots of babble and flack where you are, an' livin' alone's never good, aye." Truthfully Saoirse could do with the company herself. For all that the gypsies surrounded her by day and eve, an empty house echoed more than an empty wagon, and it was all she could do not to pull her own hair out at the dead, dry silence of it. "Might not help any wi' the dyin' na," she reasoned. "But at least yer'd be wi' people who understand who you are."
With people who understand who you are.
Máire went quiet, considering that for a moment. There were only two possibilities: Saoirse didn't know what she was, and couldn't, in which case a housemate meant nothing more than dealing with the troupe's boisterous behavior -- nothing new, really; Saoirse did know, and kept the secret in her own way, however haphazardly, in which case there was nothing to be done. And in its own way, it hurt to live alone; it felt strange to not have and be connected to a family...
Still, she hesitated: another round of Other-murders could have brought the pitchforks right to her friend's doorstep. "... Are you sure?"
Saoirse didn't have confirmation about Máire's true identity, but over the years the brunette had let slip a number of things that seemed a little bizarre for the average traveler to know. Saoirse's dad had privately voiced his suspicions, Saoirse had held onto them. Some said the Irish always recognised the Fair Folk for what they were; something in the blood perhaps. "Only if yer want, like," she said. "It's fair noisy here, so ye might not get the peace yer used to..."
"I live above a tavern," she noted, with some amusement. That probably wasn't on the very bottom of a list of peaceful environments, but it certainly wasn't at the top of them, either.
"Well then," said the gypsy, letting a note of finality seep into her voice. "I guess it's all up t'you then. Have a maund about it, like, and let me know."
When: Jan 10th or thereabouts
Where: Mummer's Quarter
Ratings & Warnings: None.
Suffice it to say it had been a long week for Máire Luíseach.
Really it had started with Roya, a petite, if tempermental Chestnut belonging to this or that noblewoman; Roya, who'd developed an outsized attitude problem after developing an equally outsized hoof abscess. Roya, whose owner had her nose too high in the air to let some gypsy upstart tend to her horse already had a groom -- an older man, completely homegrown -- named Douglas, and it was Douglas who got kicked through the stall -- resoundingly -- twice before Máire decided to step in. Of course then he'd really gotten the ball rolling as the mare quieted under her touch with a simple, offhand comment Máire hadn't been able to shake all week.
"Tha's jus' not natural, it 'in't," he'd said, through the fat of a split lip, and since then she'd seen tricolored eyes blinking back from reflective surfaces more times than not; wore the marks of her hands up to the elbows even when they went without use. It was troubling, inconvenient; not for the first time she neatly packed her bags in the two rooms she occupied on the third floor above one of the local taverns and thought about where, exactly, might be next to go.
Then there'd been the massacre. Walking through the hold was like looking at a destroyed spiderweb: everywhere that links had been, connecting this person to that, the edges were torn and frayed, threads of feeling between real people who had truly existed which were now just vacancies; holes whose edges felt sharp and uncomfortable because everywhere there was fear, terror, grief. Máire had lifelong experience in filtering out the emotional creep that accompanied a gift like empathy, but, for some reason, these were harder to filter: as the adage went, misery loved company. She hadn't exactly taken the time to examine life in Tyrol collectively until Caelus Stark -- of all people -- had the nerve to call her a bitch, well-protected by a distance of at least a mile and the pages of his ledger.
It was only after resisting the urge to strangle him that it occured to Máire that she couldn't recall the last time she'd laughed, and with this in mind, the brunette and Ara set out on a slow walk through the quarters without any particular destination. Still, she wasn't surprised to find the firepit which Saoirse and her companions gathered around every night like they were all back on the road, and didn't stop the puppy from bounding forward to beg scraps from any of the troupe. Without further adieu the girl in the forest green cloak found her blonde friend and settled down in the circle. She'd traveled with them once, hadn't she? It felt far away, now.
"Tell me a story," she asked, by way of greeting, "and don't put me in it."
Saoirse didn’t look up from her work as Máire took a seat. The neat row of stitches continued to form under her hands as part of the most sedate and calming chore Saoirse ever took part in. Sewing was not a frenetic activity, one had to sit and take one’s time to ensure it was done right, especially with costumes on a stage, more so with the costumes one wore every day. Ira’s adventures over the New Year period had managed to tear the tunic he’d worn in several places. Somehow, Saoirse had managed not to ask how. She knew Ira was mixed up in things that were nothing to do with the troupe, and by instinct knew she didn’t want her nose anywhere near it.
“A story is it?” The question came lightly. Saoirse was no empath, and could not really boast a solid judge about mood or attitude in people that came to her. On a stage it went without saying; a crowd was easier to read than an individual. She did, however, know stress and misery when she saw it.Máire’s tension turned the air hard. “Ye’ve heard most of ‘em by now, Fair One, so y’have.”
Another row of stitching done, Saoirse’s green eyes lifted, and she set the darning work in her lap. “Why not do one wit’ me, eh? Y’know the Voyage o’ Bran, aye.”
"You're a better storyteller than I am," replied the equerry, fixing her gaze on the neat row of stitches Saoirse was working through in someone's ruined tunic. She was relieved her friend -- if Saoirse could be called that -- hadn't chosen to pry, and smiled just slightly at the nickname the mummer bestowed on her in response.
It was better than being half-horse by miles. "I know it," Máire added, resting an elbow on her knee and dropping her chin into a waiting palm as she cast a glimpse around the rest of the fire. It had been simpler when this had been her life. Gypsies had a built in respect for legends and they tended to be highly superstitious; around them, the only thing that made her uncomfortable was the knowledge that this particular crowd couldn't keep secrets to save their lives, and that Tyrol wasn't a safe place to have the kind of secret she had. Bran had made it from Ireland to the lands beyond the sea; the creatures who dwelt there were said to be her distant ancestors.
Not something to think about right now. It was just a story, a way to listen to the cadence of someone else's voice for a while while Máire silenced all her own inner murmurs. "... But you'll start, won't you?"
"That I will." It was customary for the troupe leader to start the first tale of the evening, and as Máire's arrival had been timely, it seemed as right a moment as any to make a beginning. "Pick yersel' a pew an' a bit of broth from the pot, aye." Perhaps fortuitously, the food on the fire had been put together from stored vegetables, and the only part of a life that had gone into it was a little chicken stock. The legends often said that the Fair Folk weren't large fans of meat, but Saoirse had never confirmed the fact either way. One day, she mused, she should probably ask Máire.
It would be fine to start the tale quietly between the two of them. The troupe had sharp ears, and no doubt would gravitate their way once they realised what they'd begun. Saoirse balled up Ira's tunic and tossed it carelessly aside to free up her hands. The boy was filthy; he would neither notice nor care as long as the hole was gone. With a mouthful of mead to loosen Saoirse's vocal chords, the sing-song tale began:
"'Twas fifty quatrains the woman from unknown lands sang on the floor of the house, to Bran, son of Febal, when the royal house was full of Kings who knew not whence the woman had come, since the ramparts were closed.
This is the beginning of the story. One day, in the neighbourhood of his stronghold, Bran went about alone when he heard music behind him. As often as he looked back, 'twas still behind him the music was. At last he fell asleep at the music, such was its sweetness. When he awoke from his sleep, he saw close by him a branch of silver with white blossoms, nor was it easy to distinguish its bloom from that branch. Bran took the branch in his hand to his royal house. When the hosts were in the royal house, they beheld a woman in strange raiment on the floor of the house. 'Twas then she sang the fifty quatrains to Bran, while the Host heard her, and all beheld the woman.
And she said..."
With the scene set, the rolling poem continued, Saoirse's voice softened of its traditional harsh notes as the roll and sway took her.
Unaware of Saorise's conclusions, Máire went and got a bowl of the soup -- it'd be rude to decline, and anyway, she was a lousy cook. Gypsy fare was still better than anything the equerry could have thrown together. Máire's meals, left to her own devices, tended to exist of their individual, original components: such as bread and an apple for breakfast (often on the way out the door, resisting the urge to scowl at the rising sun). She settled back down, stretching one leg out in front of her and folding the other up, and then it was time to listen, sipping occasionally albeit silently at the broth. Saoirse carried them easily through the woman's song, explaining what lay beyond the sea; but after that, as Bran set out to cross those waters, it was Máire who adopted the voice of Manannan.
The psychopomp was an old sea deity, associated with the Tuatha Dé Danann; briefly, she wondered what had happened to him -- whether or not he'd given up on bringing others through the mists to retire with the rest of his kin. It wasn't part of the story, at least, and in a clear, if perhaps performance-shy voice, Máire began to speak his stanzas:
"Bran deems it a marvellous beauty,
In his coracle across the clear sea:
While to me in my chariot from afar
It is a flowery plain on which he rides about..."
Technically Saoirse had been asked to avoid stories with characters of the Fair Folk in, but associations, she'd figured, were safe enough. She could have picked a tale of love, but it wasn't so much the topic du jour, given Máire's gloomy mein. She could have picked a tale of war, but those were usually reserved for when blooded males made up the bulk of their audience. Máire was neither of those things, although she'd held her fair share of swords in Saoirse's time. The Voyage of Bran spoke of discovering wonders, of locating a wondrous land far away from the pain and suffering of their dirtier world, where the streets were paved with peace, and the peoples lived in comfort and content - and the destruction of it. It was similar, in a way, to the Christian bible, but Saoirse had been taught that their people looked upon the arrival of the Catholic church in the same way as their Adam and Eve had fallen to the serpent's manipulative evil. Where intolerance stood, men fell. Perhaps that was the mood that Máire carried with her tonight; the weight of the world.
Well, it was all good and dandy to fantasise over it, but here it was her turn to speak again:
"For Collbran's son great was the folly
To lift his hand against age,
Without any one casting a wave of pure water
Over Nechtan, Collbran's son."
By then, of course, the other gypsies had picked up other parts of the rest of the tale, largely sparing Máire from further recitation, and it wound up with Bran's departure, never to be seen or heard from again. Hopefully he'd been welcomed back into the undying lands with open arms; it was, of course, impossible to say for sure. Soup finished, Máire sat back on her elbows, eyes on the fire.
"Do you think he made it back?" She asked, absently.
"Aye, sure he did," Saoirse replied, reclaiming her seat by the fire. "The ladies said they couldn't do wi'out his presence, na, didn't they? All he had to do was wheedle his way in, like, and they'd sulk fer a year or two and then forgive him. Silly girls." She reached forward to ladle out a little broth for herself, and sat sipping it from the bowl. "Y'thinkin' of headin' homewards, Máire? It's a fair trek, aye."
"Silly," she echoed, shaking her head as she sat back on her palms. Máire tilted her chin back to look up at the stars, in no particular hurry to hold the conversation at rapid pace. The sky was surprisingly clear. "I've thought about it," she admitted then. In truth, she'd done more than thought: her bags were nearly packed; leaving could happen in very short order. "It's not a very safe place, is it, with so many people dying all the time ..." The equerry trailed off and then shrugged. "I don't really have a home, anyway," she said. "It'd just be the road again."
"Better on the road, perhaps," the gypsy echoed, "but fer a woman on 'er own - even you, Fair One - it's no safer, no, not a bit. Like as not the Inquisition'd haul yer up on it if yer left Balfour." Saoirse paused to drink from her bowl. "Why doncher move out of where y'are and pop down here wi' us fer a wee bit," she suggested. "Lots of babble and flack where you are, an' livin' alone's never good, aye." Truthfully Saoirse could do with the company herself. For all that the gypsies surrounded her by day and eve, an empty house echoed more than an empty wagon, and it was all she could do not to pull her own hair out at the dead, dry silence of it. "Might not help any wi' the dyin' na," she reasoned. "But at least yer'd be wi' people who understand who you are."
With people who understand who you are.
Máire went quiet, considering that for a moment. There were only two possibilities: Saoirse didn't know what she was, and couldn't, in which case a housemate meant nothing more than dealing with the troupe's boisterous behavior -- nothing new, really; Saoirse did know, and kept the secret in her own way, however haphazardly, in which case there was nothing to be done. And in its own way, it hurt to live alone; it felt strange to not have and be connected to a family...
Still, she hesitated: another round of Other-murders could have brought the pitchforks right to her friend's doorstep. "... Are you sure?"
Saoirse didn't have confirmation about Máire's true identity, but over the years the brunette had let slip a number of things that seemed a little bizarre for the average traveler to know. Saoirse's dad had privately voiced his suspicions, Saoirse had held onto them. Some said the Irish always recognised the Fair Folk for what they were; something in the blood perhaps. "Only if yer want, like," she said. "It's fair noisy here, so ye might not get the peace yer used to..."
"I live above a tavern," she noted, with some amusement. That probably wasn't on the very bottom of a list of peaceful environments, but it certainly wasn't at the top of them, either.
"Well then," said the gypsy, letting a note of finality seep into her voice. "I guess it's all up t'you then. Have a maund about it, like, and let me know."