1. Venla Thiel

    Open What grows out of mud

    The moment her boots left the threshold of the cell, she felt it. Her pulse kicked hard and fast, suddenly loud in her own ears, and every nerve in her body lit up at once like she'd stepped out of cold water into blazing sun. Oh. It flooded back into her like breath into a drowning body...
  2. Venla Thiel

    Open What grows out of mud

    She barely had time to feel the door yield under her hands before there was a body in front of her, blonde braid and a hesitant smile, a voice already halfway into her name. "Oh... you must be Venla." Who is this? She hadn't braced for a stranger, had expected an empty corridor. She stopped...
  3. Venla Thiel

    Open What grows out of mud

    The letter shook in her hands as she read it. Magnar's blunt, familiar scrawl, I'm coming to Astenvale, sister, and you're going to tell me why Willard says you've been writing home about Drachenberg when you've not set foot near Drachenberg at all! Something in Venla went still and cold. It...
  4. Venla Thiel

    Open What grows out of mud

    Your family's involved now. No. That rose up fast and certain, cutting clean through the fog she'd been sitting in. "They're not," she said, "They're not involved, Willard. I made sure of that." She had lied to them clean, because that was the one thing Venla could do for them, to keep them...
  5. Venla Thiel

    Open What grows out of mud

    Your mother, turned into a living effigy... "Don't," she said and it came out rougher than she meant. She pressed the heel of her hand briefly to her eye, breathed. "Don't put my mam in it, Willard. Please." "I'm not brave," she said, low, not turning to face him, the words coming out flat and...
  6. Venla Thiel

    Open What grows out of mud

    'You can come and go as is your wont, on the condition that you don't attempt to leave the monastery grounds, and that you return to your room by nightfall.' "Right." Same door. Same lock they'll want her back behind before nightfall. Not somewhere with a window that opened instead of one...
  7. Venla Thiel

    Private The Boar King

    “Tender?” A little color found her cheeks. “No,” she said, perhaps a little too quickly. “Nothing tender. Just ribs, apparently.” Venla’s mouth twitched, the smallest smile at the corner of her mouth before she tucked it away. Though she tried to hide it by looking down at the breakfast in...
  8. Venla Thiel

    Open What grows out of mud

    She hadn't thought about kissing him. Hadn't thought about anything like that, not once, not in these days of this cell and all the screaming going round in her skull. Something in her recoiled a little now that it was said out loud, gentle as he'd made it. Felt wrong to want a thing like that...
  9. Venla Thiel

    Open What grows out of mud

    "No" It came out too fast, too sharp with her own guilt. She heard how sharp she'd sounded a second ago, and something in her almost, almost, wanted to let it sit there and see what he did with it. "No, Willard, that's not... I'm not disappointed." But something in her wanted to laugh, or maybe...
  10. Venla Thiel

    Open What grows out of mud

    Course it's him. She felt the hand on her shoulder and didn't have it in her to keep pretending sleep. So she just turned over, plain as that, and there he was. "Willard." her voice cacked, because two days alone with a moss patch and her own worst thoughts had worn her down to something...
  11. Venla Thiel

    Open What grows out of mud

    The moss glowed the same color it had glowed for four hours now. Venla was fairly sure of that. She lay on her back on the bunk, hands folded over her stomach like a woman laid out for a wake. She watched the patch of it on the ceiling. Pale green, sort of sick looking, the kind of glow that...
  12. Venla Thiel

    Private A Bitter Pill

    Recovering well. Something in Venla's chest unknotted. She cleared her throat once, looked at the floor, looked back up. "That's good. Thank you." She held that. It was the only thing said in this room tonight that had mattered. When the bravery was mentioned she said nothing. Looked at a point...
  13. Venla Thiel

    Private A Bitter Pill

    Her eyes didn't move from Helena's. No heat in them. Just a kind of tired recognition. Venla had men and woman explain the world to her that way her whole life. Small words, small pictures, because surely the girl pouring the ale can't hold anything bigger than that. "A drunk who wants his...
  14. Venla Thiel

    Private A Bitter Pill

    You clean up your damn mess. Fair enough. She pushed herself up from the cot. Every muscle protested. The stitched wounds pulled, burned along her arms. Her body felt like something that had been dropped down a mountainside. Venla reached for the folded clothes and pulled the clean linen shirt...
  15. Venla Thiel

    Private A Bitter Pill

    Venla watched the black corruption on the floor. Watched it bubble. Change. Become something else. Something almost harmless. The sight unsettled her more than she expected. The thing had been inside her moments ago. In her blood. Truth be told, she was too tired to care much more. It was out of...
  16. Venla Thiel

    Private A Bitter Pill

    The scrape of iron. The rattle of keys. Venla saw them enter without rising from the cot. For a moment her eyes lingered on the basin. The clean cloth. The healer's tools. Such ordinary things. A few hours ago she had stood in the center of a maelstrom while the world came apart around her. It...
  17. Venla Thiel

    Private A Bitter Pill

    "Your actions have consequences far beyond our Order." Yes. She knew that. "I understand" she said. And she did. That was the uncomplicated part. She had known it before Helena said it and she would know it long after and the knowing of it was not the hard part. Consequences was like...
  18. Venla Thiel

    Private A Bitter Pill

    She heard Helena's boots before she heard her voice. Her eyes came up slowly. The hollowness in them that the Captain had noted earlier had not filled in the interim. The runes along the bars and brickwork pressed against her in a way that the body could not name. Only the constant awareness of...
  19. Venla Thiel

    Private The Boar King

    “Oh…” she said softly, almost to herself. “There you are.” Her eyes lifted to him at once as the door opened, careful and quick, taking only what was plain to see. The way he stood in the doorway. The way he had dressed like a man trying not to admit he needed help dressing. The cuirass held in...
  20. Venla Thiel

    Open The more I see, the less I know for sure.

    "Should you survive this, you will answer before the Captains what happened here today." Venla looked at the squire for a long moment. For a heartbeat, something almost like amusement flickered across her face. Not warmth. Not mockery either. Oh how small people sound when they’re trying to...
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