Venla Thiel
Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire
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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 didn't so much light a room, ghost moss it was called. She figured it grew on the stone because nothing else would. They had in in cellars too.
She'd counted the threads of it once. Forty-one. Counted them twice more to be sure, got thirty-nine and forty-three, and decided the moss was cheating. "You're not even good company," she said to it. The moss didn't answer, on the account of being moss. Back home she'd have been up already, sleeves rolled. She wondered if she'd ever get to be that ordinary again. Wondered it plainly, the way you wonder whether a batch of ale that's turned is worth trying to save or better off tipped out and started fresh...
Light came in through the high window, a narrow slot near the ceiling, barred, too small for a body but not too small for the world to get through in pieces. That was the strange cruelty of it. A dark cell she could have understood. Perhaps could have made a kind of peace with, the way you make peace with a cellar. But this one let her see everything. Her own hands. The straw. Nothing here would let her stop looking at what she'd become. And the sounds came in with the light. The world went on not needing her. It had gone on fine, she supposed, in the days she'd been locked in here, and it would go on fine tomorrow, and the day after, mornings opening and closing over the space where she used to fit into.
Somewhere out past the wall, some ordinary morning going on the way mornings did. Someone's joke landing, someone else's answering laugh, quick and easy and gone. A dog, maybe. A woman's voice raised half a note in mock complaint and then dropping back into warmth. Small sounds. The sounds of people who still got to have days. Venla lay very still and listened to it like it was a foreign language. She didn't know these people outside, but she knew the shape of it. Mornings at the tavern, or her father's brewhouse. Door propped for the heat, someone always ribbing someone else over something gone wrong. Her own voice in it more often than not, quick with a joke. Because a joke was easier than admitting the work was hard.
She turned her face from the window toward the moss instead. The moss, at least, didn't remind her of anything she'd lost. The resentment didn't come all at once. It came the way a bad smell arrives into a house. Slow and from somewhere you can't quite place, until suddenly it's all you can smell and you can't remember a time before it. Turned it on herself first, because that felt like the honest place to start.
At first she'd only been sorry. Sorry the way you're sorry for a dropped plate, for a burnt bread, for a word you can't call back. But sorry couldn't fill four walls forever, and somewhere in the second day... or what she reckoned was the second day, sorry started curdling.
Venla had been good. Not in the showy way that got written into songs ... but the way that mattered in a small village in a big world. She'd never once turned a wanderer away from the tavern door without at least a heel of bread in his hand. She'd sat up three nights running with old Maren when her chest went bad, spooning broth into her because there was nobody else left to do it. She'd broken up more fights than she'd started, talked down more angry men, given fair measure even when she could've watered the ale. Twenty-some years of being the sort of woman people trusted to hold their coin, mind their children, keep their secrets.
I didn't ask for this thing in me.
She hadn't. Nobody had sat her down and asked if she'd like a vast something living in her blood, waking when it pleased, wearing her hands to do what it wanted done. She'd wanted a good harvest, a fair price for the barley, maybe a husband who didn't drink so much. That was the whole of what she'd asked from her life, and instead she'd gotten this. That wasn't fair.
She let herself think it, just once, just there in the quiet: this isn't fair.
And Venla thought of all the kindness like a ledger now, bitterly. Years of small deposits, faithfully made, and then one terrible afternoon that had emptied the whole account and left her owing instead. As if none of the good had ever happened.
A cell.
A locked door.
A stone room and a patch of moss for company, and knights who looked at her like she was something that needed containing rather than a woman.
I have been kind my whole life, she thought, fierce and close to tears, and it has bought me exactly nothing.
She sat up slow, the straw crackling under her, and looked at the door with the attention of someone who'd gotten a lot of stubborn things open in her life using nothing but hands and her own stubbornness. Some habits didn't need magic. The tray slot. That was something. Big enough for a hand, maybe an arm if she really committed to it and didn't mind the scrape... She was up before she'd properly decided to be, her steps quiet on the stone, moving toward the door. No handle on her side, she knew that already. Venla got down on her knees at the tray slot and put her eye to it. She saw nothing but a slice of dim corridor and the edge of a torch bracket, and reached her arm through to the elbow, fingers stretching, feeling blind along the outer face of the door for a latch, a bolt, anything she might work loose with patience alone.
She was still crouched there, arm through the slot to the shoulder now, cheek pressed against the door, straining after some hasp could feel but not quite reach... when she heard the boots. Her heart went up hard into her throat. She pulled her arm back so fast she scraped her elbow raw on the slot's edge and would not feel it till later. Venla was up off her knees in one scramble, no grace to it at all. Three steps to the bunk. She dropped onto it harder than she meant to. Facing the wall, back to the door, and yanked her breathing into something long and slow.
OCC: Please DM me before replying to this thread with what you have in mind for your character and where you’d like the thread to go. I’m not really looking for a cosy slice of life thread where our characters simply hang, and chat about their day ( for obvious reasons).
She'd counted the threads of it once. Forty-one. Counted them twice more to be sure, got thirty-nine and forty-three, and decided the moss was cheating. "You're not even good company," she said to it. The moss didn't answer, on the account of being moss. Back home she'd have been up already, sleeves rolled. She wondered if she'd ever get to be that ordinary again. Wondered it plainly, the way you wonder whether a batch of ale that's turned is worth trying to save or better off tipped out and started fresh...
Light came in through the high window, a narrow slot near the ceiling, barred, too small for a body but not too small for the world to get through in pieces. That was the strange cruelty of it. A dark cell she could have understood. Perhaps could have made a kind of peace with, the way you make peace with a cellar. But this one let her see everything. Her own hands. The straw. Nothing here would let her stop looking at what she'd become. And the sounds came in with the light. The world went on not needing her. It had gone on fine, she supposed, in the days she'd been locked in here, and it would go on fine tomorrow, and the day after, mornings opening and closing over the space where she used to fit into.
Somewhere out past the wall, some ordinary morning going on the way mornings did. Someone's joke landing, someone else's answering laugh, quick and easy and gone. A dog, maybe. A woman's voice raised half a note in mock complaint and then dropping back into warmth. Small sounds. The sounds of people who still got to have days. Venla lay very still and listened to it like it was a foreign language. She didn't know these people outside, but she knew the shape of it. Mornings at the tavern, or her father's brewhouse. Door propped for the heat, someone always ribbing someone else over something gone wrong. Her own voice in it more often than not, quick with a joke. Because a joke was easier than admitting the work was hard.
She turned her face from the window toward the moss instead. The moss, at least, didn't remind her of anything she'd lost. The resentment didn't come all at once. It came the way a bad smell arrives into a house. Slow and from somewhere you can't quite place, until suddenly it's all you can smell and you can't remember a time before it. Turned it on herself first, because that felt like the honest place to start.
At first she'd only been sorry. Sorry the way you're sorry for a dropped plate, for a burnt bread, for a word you can't call back. But sorry couldn't fill four walls forever, and somewhere in the second day... or what she reckoned was the second day, sorry started curdling.
Venla had been good. Not in the showy way that got written into songs ... but the way that mattered in a small village in a big world. She'd never once turned a wanderer away from the tavern door without at least a heel of bread in his hand. She'd sat up three nights running with old Maren when her chest went bad, spooning broth into her because there was nobody else left to do it. She'd broken up more fights than she'd started, talked down more angry men, given fair measure even when she could've watered the ale. Twenty-some years of being the sort of woman people trusted to hold their coin, mind their children, keep their secrets.
I didn't ask for this thing in me.
She hadn't. Nobody had sat her down and asked if she'd like a vast something living in her blood, waking when it pleased, wearing her hands to do what it wanted done. She'd wanted a good harvest, a fair price for the barley, maybe a husband who didn't drink so much. That was the whole of what she'd asked from her life, and instead she'd gotten this. That wasn't fair.
She let herself think it, just once, just there in the quiet: this isn't fair.
And Venla thought of all the kindness like a ledger now, bitterly. Years of small deposits, faithfully made, and then one terrible afternoon that had emptied the whole account and left her owing instead. As if none of the good had ever happened.
A cell.
A locked door.
A stone room and a patch of moss for company, and knights who looked at her like she was something that needed containing rather than a woman.
I have been kind my whole life, she thought, fierce and close to tears, and it has bought me exactly nothing.
She sat up slow, the straw crackling under her, and looked at the door with the attention of someone who'd gotten a lot of stubborn things open in her life using nothing but hands and her own stubbornness. Some habits didn't need magic. The tray slot. That was something. Big enough for a hand, maybe an arm if she really committed to it and didn't mind the scrape... She was up before she'd properly decided to be, her steps quiet on the stone, moving toward the door. No handle on her side, she knew that already. Venla got down on her knees at the tray slot and put her eye to it. She saw nothing but a slice of dim corridor and the edge of a torch bracket, and reached her arm through to the elbow, fingers stretching, feeling blind along the outer face of the door for a latch, a bolt, anything she might work loose with patience alone.
She was still crouched there, arm through the slot to the shoulder now, cheek pressed against the door, straining after some hasp could feel but not quite reach... when she heard the boots. Her heart went up hard into her throat. She pulled her arm back so fast she scraped her elbow raw on the slot's edge and would not feel it till later. Venla was up off her knees in one scramble, no grace to it at all. Three steps to the bunk. She dropped onto it harder than she meant to. Facing the wall, back to the door, and yanked her breathing into something long and slow.
OCC: Please DM me before replying to this thread with what you have in mind for your character and where you’d like the thread to go. I’m not really looking for a cosy slice of life thread where our characters simply hang, and chat about their day ( for obvious reasons).
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