Atlantic Roleplay Community Boards

[Mircea Cneajna]

---

Night, dark, cold, alone, the girl pulled her knees tight under her chin as much to fend off fear as the cold of the graveyard. She did not know how long she had been there; there was no where for her to go, her mother was here, her father laid to rest next to her. The plague she heard them whisper, she did not know what that meant. She did know the people of her village near Vesper burned her house and chased her away creaming that she was a carrier. It was her fault she thought, tears streaming down her cheeks leaving tracks of mud where they passed. In the deepening night the girl curled into a tight ball even burrowing into the freshly turned dirt of her mothers grave to keep the cold night air at bay. Days and nights passed, she made little journeys to the docks in the late evening hoping to find a stray morsel of food. Her trips were met with hostility; many times she was chased from the populace of the wharf. They hated her, and she hated them. The cure for the plague never reached her village outside the city and the rich people seemed to act as if curing the wealthy was their only duty. She heard people talk on the streets; she listened sifting through the trash of the local tavern.

The spirits in the graveyard were her family now. Many tried to scare her; others seemed not to notice her presence at all. Night after night she slept there beside her parents’ graves. When she woke each morning her day began with flower gathering, flowers for her mother’s grave, flowers for her father’s grave the rest of day was spent with the only thing she had rescued from the raging inferno that was once her house, Dolly. Dolly had helped her find a book in her explorations it had a skull on it, the words though were nothing she had ever seen and though she tried she was never sure she was reading them right. As she struggled with the words one early evening she noticed the spirits of the graveyard seemed to be unusually active. Tracing symbols in the dirt she saw in the book a man startled her from her concentration. He was tall and dark, well dressed. Slinking back from the grave expecting the usual welcome she found by big people. A well thrown rotten apple or sometimes even swatting at her with a switch to make her go away. They hated her and she hated them, the people of Vesper. To her surprise he looked on her kindly. She tried to smooth her tattered robe, but even smooth the days and nights in the weather left her looking like little more than walking mound of dirt with feet. The man even spoke to her, not with a hiss or foul words but with a keen interest in her book. She relaxed a little as the man looked at her book stating he could teach her to read it and if she were very good at it and studied hard one day she could speak to her mother again. This little tidbit enthralled her, the mans kindness enamored her so she did her best to be good. Sir as she came to call him walked her through the headstones coming to one he had determined to be her grandmother he instructed the girl to dig into the earth and find the skull of her grandmother, mindfully telling her that she would have to wait to speak to her mother she had not been gone long, but her grandmother was surely ready to converse with her. After some digging with help from Sir she found the skull, her eyes lit up as she began to quickly babble to the skull and then looked confused to Sir when it did not speak back. In the few short hours after dusk she listened to Sirs instructions, he took her to his home showing her books and bubbling things. Some colorful, some that wreaked of a stench she had not encountered even amongst the newly deceased. Sir taught her a few tricks being most impressed with the young girl’s ability to pick up on minute details and will to succeed.

The two were caught in the midst of their play by a beautiful lady, stunning and dark, with a quick move the girl moved behind Sir timidly, listening as they converse. She seemed a little displeased to see the child in her home but when Sir was done speaking and after many rules of where not to go and what not to touch and who not to speak to the lovely lady relaxed and spoke of which rooms to put the young one in while she studied under Sirs watchful eye. Sir stepped aside leaving the girl out in the open, he placed a hand on her shoulder and said "This is my wife Reminiscence you obey her as you would me and things will be fine for you here, Reminiscence this is Mircea".
_________________