conall. orfhlaith.

This series was originally begun on July 2nd, 2015.

'Conall'
She lives in the hills. They call her a witch. They chased her from their village long ago; that pitiful cluster of mud-daubed hovels by the river. Or perhaps it was her mother they chased, with stones and woodcutter's axes, and her still a babe at breast.

No matter. The hills are where she lives now, in a squat stone hut built against the shelter of a cliff-face. She has a goat. She has a garden. She has, as of the winter past, a guest or a tenant of sorts: a wolf-man, a half-wild creature, an unfortunate bastard of some unholy union of man and beast. As much an outcast as she. As reviled, as hated, as feared. Stumbled to her door in the midst of a ferocious storm, wounded, half-delirious, most of the way dead. She didn't quite nurse him back to health, but she gave him some salves and poultices; maybe a potion. Let him stay until he was well enough to walk, move, leave.

Except he didn't leave. He built a shambling wooden lean-to against the outer wall of her house. And she let him stay again. He lives in there now, sleeping on dried straw and cured animal hides. Tends her garden, planting potatoes and cabbages beside the rarer herbs she cultivates, though he seems to eat nothing but meat. Hunts too, bringing back game from deeper in the forests, higher on the slopes. Shadows her sometimes on those rare occasions she ventures out of the hills to trade with the lowlanders. Her spells and her potions in return for tools, belongings, implements.

Their existence is a simple, quiet, unremarkable one. They speak little to each other; less to anyone else, for there is no one else. There are few -- none, perhaps -- who would wish them well, but for the most part they are left alone by those who would wish them harm.

--

Solstice morn. Mist lingering still on these green hills, which will be buried in snow come winter. A nip in the air and the ground wet and soft from the rainstorm last night.

The wolf is two inches sunken in mud, roughshod boots spread wide for balance in the garden. He digs at a stubborn tangle of potatoes. They come out of the ground at last, black with dirt, and he straightens with a grunt. Looks into the distance. Frowns.

"Someone's coming," he says.

Órfhlaith
In the days of her mother's mother, there were murmurs of something called The Church. The people her grandmother had been raised among thought its teachings far stranger than the traditions they'd known since childhood; they mostly ignored it. But by her mother's generation, there were mass conversions. Arguments. By the time she was conceived, there was open fear and hatred of anything counter to The Church's teachings. The children of people who had once scoffed at this nonsense were trying so hard to be 'good', but according to the rules of this new religion, being good meant that you could not suffer a woman such as her mother to live.

Her grandmother, wizened but still living, warned her mother while these men were still meeting, talking, drinking, those talks about how someone ought to do something. And they prepared. When it was full dark, they slipped from the hut their bloodline had lived in for generations and took to the hills and the woods. The axes and stones were already coming, the men carrying them and throwing them seeming like shadows far more demonic than anything alluded to in their book, which none of them could read.

They killed her grandmother. As the story goes, this is the part where details begin to get left out. She knows that she was a perfect baby, silent and watchful, knowing that she must not cry -- or simply not thinking there was any reason to. One of the things she knows, even today, is that death is never an ending, and the spirits of the ancestors follow their children, and grandchildren, and so on through the ages. But there is no detail to the story here: her mother not wanting to speak of her own mother's death. Her mother not wanting to give hints as to where this village was, in case her child should ever think to go back there, find her way to her birthplace.

What she knows is that they traveled very far, where even the accent and parts of the language were different. But they stayed in the hills, away from villages. To get to them from the nearest village took hours, mostly uphill, over terrain rugged with rocks and roots alike. Her mother built the house, slowly, and without help. It took years to go from a basic shelter to what there is now. These are her own earliest memories: naked, toddling through the already flourishing and expanding garden, sniffing and tasting things, while her mother worked on the house. Arms bare, wearing pants instead of a dress, sweating, black hair stuck to her brow.

She remembers eating blackberries, unbothered by the brambles that scratched at her tender arms, and though her face was sticky with deep purple juices, she would hug her mother's leg until she was lifted, and kissed, and set back down again.

The first time she remembers crying was because they went down to the lowlands, and her mother changed. Looked like a stranger, her body sacked in a dress, her hair covered. She made her daughter wear shoes, and the walk was unbearably long, and it was a hot, miserable, bitter day. People stared and she hid, though she stubbornly would not cry in front of real strangers. The walk back was just as long, but it was better: for much of it, her mother let her hold the end of the rope tied around the baby goat, its coat dark grey and its legs and forehead black. She was deeply in love.

Her mother taught her magic later. It began with the greatest secret: marks on a page forming sounds, those sounds coming together and having meaning. She learned later that the magic was not in the paper or ink: the marks could be made in the dirt, could be carved with a knife, could even be drawn in the air where only the spirits could read them. She could form them in her mind and hold them. It was a secret, though. No one trusted magic, and everyone knew that reading and writing were suspicious, if not done by priests.

--

She has lived her entire life here. Even now that her mother is... gone. She stays. This is a life she's chosen, after one trial or another, some opportunity turned away from. She does not want to live in the lowlands, become one of the people in those towns. She rather viciously dislikes them. Her eyes are never warm when she goes down there. More often than not, people come to her if they want something. They know now that she lives up there; she may as well be the woman their parents spoke of. Black hair, blue eyes. Witch. They would know no difference, one woman to the next. She likes to force them to make a pilgrimage that they must keep secret.

On the rare occasions that she goes down to them, it is often to collect the debts they owe her. This is why now, she has a little cart that the goat can pull. He is still plugging along, stubborn as she is. He carries her meal and bolts of cloth up the hills.

--

Last winter, something struck her door. And then fell. It was silent for a time, and then there was moaning. Delirious moaning, the sort that's hard to pretend at. Didn't even understand some of what he said, an unknown language. So she came out. And she hooked her arms around his ankles and dragged him, blood streaking, into her home, near the fire, where she saw that he was not a man. It startled her, made her step back, but then step closer, peering at him with greater intent.

Poured snowmelt into his mouth. Stripped him naked to find the source of his bleeding. Covered it with clean cloths. Later, she changed those bandages, but this time she placed large leaves, soaked in a brew of her own making, over the wound. He made a low sound in his throat as the numbing sensation worked through him. He went silent as the bandages went back on. She poured more snowmelt into his mouth, watching instinct make him swallow.

And so it went for some time, til he began to wake. Til he began to try and open his swollen-shut eyes, peering at her as she would feed him. Everything dried, none of it meat. And so it went until he was walking, moving, giving him whatever rough little name he has or receiving some other rough little name from her, at least in mind. Winter crept on, and she never spoke of him leaving. He usually slept by her fire, or slipped out into the snow of his own accord. Each time, she was never sure if he was going to return.

But he kept returning. And then, in springtime, built himself a shelter without asking, without suggesting. One day he was simply working on it, poorly, and then he began to sleep in there. Another day she found him digging in her garden, and she spoke sharply to him, warningly, but he was not stealing: he was planting. And then he left again, but now she knew he was coming back, and when he did, he was carrying rabbits. Which she had eaten before, because her mother could trap them, but this was one talent she'd never taken to. They ate the meat together in her hut, beside the fire, speaking not at all.

The next time she went to the lowlands, she realized several minutes in that she was being shadowed. Not attended, not walked with. He was in the trees. She never glanced his way, for if he was in another form, her attention might unravel his magic. Or disrespect it. Or scare him off.

--

Since that day, she does not expect him to leave even when he is gone for days. She mixed up a plaster better than mud when a hole started leaking rain into his shelter, left it outside for him in a clay bowl. She harvests and boils the potatoes he planted, seasoning them with herbs. They live quietly.

The year creeps onward, growing warmer, sunnier, drier. Still, there's mud on the ground from a month of heavy rain. He digs in the garden, attacking potatoes because he does not have her gift with the land, cannot coax them. And she is sitting on a stone under the shade of a tree, stripping the leaves from a heavy-ribbed plant, tossing the spines into one basket, the leaves into another. She is wearing what she usually wears, when not in town: a plain, undyed shift, with her arms bare, her legs bare from the knee down. Her hair is loose and wild. Her feet and ankles are muddy. Her eyes are bright when he pauses, and finds she is already looking at him.

He speaks, and she tips her head slightly, then turns it in the direction he was staring. Then she returns to her work.

"Do they mean ill?"

'Conall'
It is hard land: sloping, full of stones. But it is good land, or good enough at least to sustain her. There is water in the hills. The rain falls clean, only turns to mud when it hits the earth. Or the wolf. He never bathes, bestial thing that he is. Only grows muddy when it rains, and when the mud dries and flakes off into dust, it takes with it a layer of grime.

Stinks, most days. But it's a wild, musky, earthy sort of stink -- and vigorous, healthy, as his wounds healed and he became strong again. Not the sour stench of the villagers but the smell of an untamed animal. Smells like that now, leaning on the crude backhoe he'd assaulted those potatoes with. Lifts his chin and narrows his eyes and sniffs, delicately and several in quick succession, in the direction of that faraway figure trudging up the hill.

"Never mean well," he says, pessimistically but perhaps accurately. Wades heavily through mud, avoiding the delicate rows of the late-spring plantings just now coming to seed. Sets the tool against the moss-laced side of her hut, then takes up the long-handled axe with which they split the firewood. Keeps it flush against his leg, gripped near the end of the haft.

"Only keep the truce if they want something," he adds. "I count two. No, three. They carry one."
She can see them now. Apparitions in the fog. Two carrying a third. Two men, underfed, roughly clothed as the wolf, carrying a woman sideways between them. Struggling up the steep, stony hill. Wolf strides to the edge of the garden to face them, big and brutish, dirty, wild eyed. Roughspun shirt unlaced -- the leather lacing broke long ago -- and roughspun trousers voluminous and gathered inelegantly at the waist with a length of braided rope.

Órfhlaith
She shrugs at that, continues her work: he's not lying. The best she can ever hope for is neutral. Or needing something from her. It's been a lifetime since that night chase into the woods, axes and stones. It's been years since she's heard mention of that story. She will never forget, though. It would be like forgetting that fire burns, knives cut.

The last leaves and ribs, at least for now, fall into their baskets. She brushes her hands off on her shift and rises as he picks his way through the garden. She is heading for the open door to the hut when she spies him picking up the axe. Looks at the axe but not at him, and says nothing. She is going inside, wordless. When she comes back out, she is wearing a long, deep gray robe over her shift. Covers her arms, covers her long and thin legs. Her still-muddy feet poke out a little from beneath the hem. She is putting an apron as she walks out again, tying it off behind her neck and back.

She thinks, from what he says, that she will need to roll up her sleeves. She waits to do that. But the three are coming up towards her home, and she steps forward, walking towards the path that is invisible to those who do not live here: everyone who comes to see her thinks there is no path, just grass, just earth and rock. It is not a well-used, beaten-down walkway. It never will be.

But she passes the wolf-man, calmly, and walks out to meet the three, her arms before her stomach, her hands tucked into their opposite sleeves. Stands there and faces the two men carrying the woman, and says nothing.

This is the sort of rude behavior that makes people unable to trust her.

'Conall'
Wolf isn't brandishing the axe. Yet. Doesn't have it over his sizeable shoulder. Doesn't have it up in hand. Has it held low. Has it held ready, nonetheless. Position he holds it in lets him whip it out with such momentum. With little warning at all.

He growls as the witch passes him. Not at her. Not even at the strangers. Growls at the situation; the uncertainty of it. But he stays where he is. Doesn't advance.

The three continue to trudge up the hill. It is a long way, particularly when one doesn't take that well-hidden path, trodden by trial and error and the hard experience of a lifetime. Presently they do make it, though: coming to a stop a stone's throw away. Two panting, weary, worn men. One woman, unconscious, deathly white, but without visible wound or blood. Behind her, the witch hears the wolf sniffing the air again. He doesn't smell blood either.

One of the strangers calls:

"Are you the witching woman?"

The other is silent, breathing hard, staring balefully.

Órfhlaith
The axe he's holding is one that the witch he lives with can heft, and use to split wood.

But the witch he lives with dragged his body, larger than his body is now, into her hut in the dead of winter. And she's such a skinny thing. Stronger than she looks. In one way or another.
All of which is to say: the axe he holds is a woodsman's. It is no mere hatchet.

--

She looks at the woman, as the men stare, and say stupid things. She turns slowly to look at the one who spoke.

"I am myself," she says. Looks at the woman again, and unfolds her hands from her robe's sleeves, walking directly towards them. She reaches forward, touching the cheek of the woman with the backs of her fingers.

"What has befallen her?"

'Conall'
Even as she walks forward she can feel tension thickening the air. The one who spoke -- taller, fairer -- taking an unconsidered step back. The silent one, dark of head and beard, tightening his hands to taut fists. When she reaches forward, he erupts:

"Don't you touch her--!"

and takes such a violent step forward that the wolf behind her matches it, axe swinging up. But the fairhaired man checks his friend; cries out, "Hold, Thomas, I cannot carry her alone!"

And so the dark one -- Thomas, as it were -- holds. And so the wolf too halts, snarling low in his throat. And so, if she wishes, her fingers touch the woman's cheek. Icy cold.

Thomas is pale with rage. Spits when he speaks, tongue thick with anger:

"Is it not obvious? She has been witched. Your work or the work of your ilk, no doubt."

"She is my sister," adds his friend, "and Thomas's wife. Three nights before she walked and woke and spoke, sure as you or I. Two days before she woke feverish, muttered words none could decipher. Stumbled about as though drunk and laughed at nothing at all. When night fell she sank into this wakeless sleep. We could not rouse her. The priest attended her. Called her cursed, said she must be purged with water or -- or fire.

"If she is cursed, then -- " he hesitates; has the good grace or the wisdom not to accuse her directly, " -- then perhaps you know the nature of its doing and undoing. Perhaps you could lift it. Please, I beg of you. My sister is sweet and gentle. She does not deserve what has befallen her."

Órfhlaith
witch @ 10:37PM
[int: lateral thinker + occult: witchcraft]
Roll: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

'Conall'
[well, the peasant dudes seem to have this much right: the woman does seem to be bewitched somehow. more specifically, she seems to be blocked away by powerful magic: as though her spirit or consciousness has been decoupled somehow from her body and entombed within. the same barrier that keeps her away prevents Órfhlaith from divining who/what did this, though, or how to easily undo it.]

Órfhlaith
For a moment there, things get very tense indeed. A wolf at her back lifts an axe, all but snarling. The witch pauses her hand, but only for as long as it takes for Thomas to remember that he doesn't want the woman to drop to the ground.

The witch, for her part, is straight-backed but calm. She steps forward again, touches the woman's cheek in truth, now. Feels that icy cold, as Thomas reveals himself: the raw nerve, the terror, the desperation. He speaks of her 'ilk', not quite knowing that there are few if any like her anywhere he may dream of, and her hand slowly moves away. She observes the woman as her brother speaks. And then she steps away, and back.

"Her soul is not lost," she says, first of all. "Bring her in," she goes on, turning toward her hut, "and lay her down. You will have to wait outside."

'Conall'
Again the husband bristles: "I will not leave her alone in your clutches -- "

"Thomas, be silent! Would you have her sleep forever? What choice have we?"

Thomas falls silent -- surprised and then fuming, a muscle taut in his jaw. Stubbornly he refuses to walk forward, but it proves little enough barrier. The wolf approaches them and lifts the unconscious woman as swiftly and easily as he might a sack of those potatoes he's forever digging from the ground. Follows in the witch's wake, silent and glowering, sending a distrustful glance over his shoulder at the men as he goes. Thomas trails in his wake halfway through the garden before his brother-in-law pulls him back.

Since he built his shabby lean-to, the wolf has rarely darkened the witch's hut. He enters now, stooping to get in the low door. Sets the woman by the fire, near to where he himself lay not so many months before. Crouches, then, balanced on the balls of his feet with his back hunched, shoulders hulking. Tilts his head to study the woman's pallid face. Pretty enough girl. Fair like her brother. Only mildly pockmarked. Might even still have most her teeth.

The wolf lifts his eyes to the witch. Beastly, nameless thing: she has her own name for him, for he's never given her one to call him by. Perhaps he doesn't have one at all.

"Shall I wait outside as well?"

Órfhlaith
The witch and the man who is not a man walk into her hut. The door has been open all day and the air is less stuffy than it is in winter. The morning fire is little more than embers, dimly glowing. The witch is already sweeping some of the dirt by the firepit, and nods at the ground for him to lay the woman down.

She lowers herself to her knees beside the woman, not far from the crouched wolf. She pays him little mind sometimes: as though he really were an animal, and no speech expected from either of them. He speaks, though, eventually, as the witch is pulling the woman's eyelids up with gentle thumbs.

Turns her head to look at him. Glances at the door, then back.

"The man is full of fear and spite. I would have you close enough to hear him at any mischief, and to guard the door. You do not have to leave." Briskly efficient, she turns back to the woman, whose eyes are closed again, and then rises to her feet, rolling up her sleeves. She goes to a chest against one wall, hefting it open and removing a leather cord that is looped through a strange, natural hole at one end of a large teardrop-shaped river stone. He's seen her use this before. She can find water with it. He saw it over his own body a few times, early on.

'Conall'
And so he stays, crouched as he is, brilliant animal's eyes following her as she moves. Following the stone as it swings from the end of the cord.

Voices outside, the two men arguing in hushed, fierce mutters. Once or twice the wolf lifts his head, looks warily and alertly toward them.

"Why do you help them? They will not love you if you succeed. They will hate you if you fail."

[btw! if you tell me wat she trying to do, i tell you wat be roll :D]

Órfhlaith
The pendulum is already swinging. The embers in the firepit are already swaying, as though sensing her rising magic. The witch's eyes are already losing focus when the wolf speaks, bruising her reverie. She gives the faintest of exhales and just shakes her head.

"Their love matters not, and I do not fear them."

Which is not an answer. She focuses her eyes and her breath, swinging the pendulum over the woman's silent, still, corpselike body.

[she is dowsing! she's using the pendulum to try and discern where in the woman's body her spirit is entombed, or at which organ her humours are blocked, or w/e. basiklee WHAR IS BAD TING? cuz i imagine at this era even a super enlightened witch would interpret things through a physical lens. it's not the only thing she'll try so if that gives her no info jus be say pendulum nebbar do anyfing an witch will moob on.]

'Conall'
The pendulum is already swinging. The embers in the firepit are already swaying, as though sensing her rising magic. The witch's eyes are already losing focus when the wolf speaks, bruising her reverie. She gives the faintest of exhales and just shakes her head.

"Their love matters not, and I do not fear them."

Which is not an answer. She focuses her eyes and her breath, swinging the pendulum over the woman's silent, still, corpselike body.

[she is dowsing! she's using the pendulum to try and discern where in the woman's body her spirit is entombed, or at which organ her humours are blocked, or w/e. basiklee WHAR IS BAD TING? cuz i imagine at this era even a super enlightened witch would interpret things through a physical lens. it's not the only thing she'll try so if that gives her no info jus be say pendulum nebbar do anyfing an witch will moob on.]

'Conall'
[IGNORE LAS POS.]

'Conall'
"You did not answer me," says the wolf, but by then the witch is no longer listening. Her attention has delved within. Soared back into her self, and out through her fingertips; down the length of rough cord to that stone

which abruptly snaps the cord taut. Pulls, against all laws of nature, all laws of gravity yet undiscovered, to strain like a keen hound toward the motionless body of the woman. The witch's consciousness pours down that quivering line. Snaps across the space -- a moment of sudden vertigo -- and then she stands in an alien world, all wet and red and rich and beating. Here the liver. Here the entrails. And there, of course, of course, the seat of emotion and intellect; the thundering heart. Only this one is stilled. This one sheens, as though encased in spidersilk or thinnest ice, barely quivering in its place. There the blockage. There the trap. There --

a sudden feedback, a shock, an incredibly potent push that sends her reeling back into her own body. Knocks her flat, breathless, the stone skittering out of her hand to clatter noisily against her cookpot. It's seconds on end before she can catch her breath. Her eyes open to the roof of her hut. To the wolf balanced on three limbs over her, his concern transmuting -- as all things do for him -- to a growl, bared teeth.

Footsteps outside, rushing to the door.

Órfhlaith
"Be quiet, Con," says the witch, softly, not unkindly -- thought not very gently, either. She focuses, and fixates, and the stone pulls the cord tight. Her eyes unfocus. She feels drawn, pulled almost against her will, but her will is so intent on a single goal that all things that happen now are part of that will. So much of this sort of magic is non-resistance. This is why witchcraft is so often found in the blood of women, she sometimes thinks: men are incapable of non-resistance, unless they are broken. Passive strength is a gift not permitted to the rougher sex.

She is wrong, but then: everyone around her is wrong, too.

Her awareness is surrounded in red warmth and liveliness. It's vibrant and soft and awe-inspiring, like watching the starts themselves wheeling around her in perfect, endless harmony. But there: a schism. A discord in the melody of the body. The woman's heart, motionless where it should be the very core of everything else. It makes her ache to sense it, and bodily, she rests her free hand over the woman's chest, as though somehow her palm could warm through flesh and bone, melt the ice, return balance.
Even so, she rears back, a jolt snapping through her elbow, a spike going through her armpit, into her own heart. She falls backward, the pendulum flying out of her grasp as though it -- the focus of her will -- was the thing shoved away. Her head smacks against the dust. She is dazed, still half within another person's body, staring upward. But it is several moments before her staring gives her anything: the wolf snarling over her. She frowns at him.

"Keep them out," she whispers, quickly. And begins to roll to her hands and knees, already on her way to her chest, to some other tool.

'Conall'
It is a moment before he moves. Not until alertness returns to her eyes. Not until she begins to move. Not even then -- not until she rolls to all fours, all but physically emerges from his shadow.

Then he springs up. Voices outside, shouting in alarm and concern; he throws his weight against the door and bars it. They push. He pushes back harder, giving a single low snarl of warning -- doesn't even sound remotely human. Isn't even remotely human. He's shifted skins, somewhere between one second and the next: is larger now, straining the seams of his rough clothing. Holds the door shut with little enough effort.

On the floor, the unconscious woman gives a single feeble groan.

Órfhlaith
Hunched over her chest, the witch glances back at him. Sees him in that strange half-man shape she first saw him in. Thought she mistook her eyes that night by firelight and in shadow, but there was no illusion. He is not human, and his body changes. He may be possessed of a devil for a soul, or be the son of an animal. She cares not. There are equally distasteful rumors about her own origins... and abilities.

She returns her attention to what she digs through. Comes up with a box and opens it, removes a rough white stone. Comes up with a black pouch heavy with dust. Sweeps around and reaches overhead to a cluster of white flowers drying from the roof of her hut. Crushes the half-dried petals in her fist and fingers as she comes back over to the woman.

Working quickly, the witch uses the stone to draw in the dirt, a thick dusty white, creating a circle around the woman that takes up most of the floor. Steps into it and sprinkles that dust from the pouch all over the circle, and then over the woman: her feet, her hands, her brow, her womb, her heart. And then, crouching down, she forces the woman's mouth open, fills that mouth with crushed white flowers, and then forces her mouth closed, holding one hand under her jaw to keep her closed, covering her lips with the other.

'Conall'
There isn't much space in the witch's humble hut. The stone carves a circle, and the circle nearly abuts upon the wolf's planted feet. The men outside pound on the door, shout, protest. They heave themselves against the door and occasionally jolt the wolf an inch, two, but always he throws his weight back, holds the door fast.

She pays it no mind -- all that commotion, all that noise. She closes her circle. A small puff of dust arises from that deep scratch the moment the ends meet. The woman within. The witch within, working. Dust sifts, and though it is so fine it should blow easily in the breeze and rise with the drafts that pull smoke through the thatch roof, it does not. It settles, heavy as lead. Next the flowers, and by then the woman -- once so still, so silent -- is moaning, thrashing deliriously back and forth. That mouthful of flowers nearly chokes her. Makes her rear up yelling and spitting, only to be forced back down.

Someone pounds on the door. They are working in synchrony now, calling in rhythm as they batter the door. The wolf grunts, sets his shoulderblades squarely against that thankfully-thick barrier. Digs his heels in. "Go ahead," he says. "I have them."

So she does. So she clamps her hand over the woman's mouth, keeps the flowers in. The woman's eyes roll back. Her heels drum on the floor. Fingers open and close, claw aimlessly; spine arches terribly.

Suddenly a sub-audible implosion: a concussion that impacts the deep sensory fibers of the body. Something comes tearing out of the woman, unseen but keenly felt, raising the hairs on the back of the neck. The space within the circle seethes, swarms, dust rising from the ground, dirt swirling up in a blinding column, turning, gyring. For a moment the witch can see nothing, can hear nothing -- feels nothing but a black, oppressive, suffocating, crushing presence.

The circle splits. Breaks outward with explosive force. That deep scratch rupturing toward the door, a shower of dirt hitting the walls. The witch thrown backwards, the wolf thrown backwards, the door flying off its hinges to slam to the ground. The villagers outside go sprawling too, yelling in terror, tumbling several yards down the steep hill.

And then it's over. Her vision clears. Her ears unstuff. She tastes copper at the back of her throat. Imprinted upon the ground, in the dirt and across the garden and in the very rocks and wildgrasses of the hill is a long, straight, thoroughly unnatural track, dissipating as it arrows into the distance.
The lowlanders are still flattened. The wolf is picking himself up out of the dirt, groaning. And the woman is sitting up, dazed, color returning slowly to her cheeks.

[Órfhlaith was able to drive what was in the woman out (wits roll), but was unable to contain the presence within her circle (force-of-personality roll), and also takes 3 lethal from EBBIL MAJIK in the circul (stam roll resisting this -- )

-black magic- @ 12:40PM
[lethal crushing damage!]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )]

Órfhlaith
[DIS WAT I SED]
chalk: boundary-making (protective for her and the woman).

the dust: probably ash + salt mixture, sanctifying/purifying. it's sprinkled over the circle to make the circle sacred to her/her own power. that way if something comes out of the woman, it can't escape the circle and it can't hurt the witch. hopefully. also sprinkled on the woman to start purifying her, which should make whatever is inside her or hurting her very uncomfortable.

the flowers: some kind of purity/holy flowar. i not shur which! but she shoving it in woman's mouf to like, intensify making her body/heart a VERY INHOSPITABLE PLACE for blak magic or ebbil spirits to stay in.

basiklee she tink der sumfing inside woman dat is nogud, so she trying to force it owt!

[DIS WAT DAMON SED]
ROLL:
- wits + occult
- highest social attr + occult
- stamina + occult
[AN DEN I ROLLD]

witch @ 12:10PM
[wits + occult: witchcraft]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 3
witch @ 12:10PM
[highest social attribute (appearance) + occult: witchcraft]
Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5) ( botch x 2 )
witch @ 12:10PM
[stamina: resilient + occult: witchcraft]
Roll: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Órfhlaith
[DLP!]

Always stronger than she looks, the witch holds fast to the woman's jaw and mouth, forcing her to choke on the flowers. She grits her teeth, locks her arms, ignoring the shuddering of the door, ignoring the men who try to force their way through it, ignoring the wolf who keeps them out even as he reassures her. She is muttering, some language he doesn't know, some language that may not really exist, while the woman twitches beneath her grasp.

It hurts when it happens. Power whips through the air, up her arms, the veins suddenly searing. She keeps her hold on the woman in her circle, too aware of some of the things that might happen. And some of those things do happen: something emerges. Her circle is tested and then, explosively, breaks apart. What little furniture she has rumbles. Dirt falls from walls and ceiling, flies upward from the ground. The witch herself is thrown against the wall. Her tongue is bleeding. Her head is bleeding. Her shoulders are bruised, her hands feeling like they are on fire.

Gingerly, she begins to push herself away from the wall, following the track with her eyes. She closes them, then, dazed, and opens them again to see the woman sitting up in the slowly settling dirt that thickens the air. The woman has flowers spilling from her mouth. Orla acts as quickly as she can: tender as she is, she is not so stunned that she can't react. She rises, using the wall as leverage. She does not groan. She presses her lips together and stands as the dust clears, a breeze coming in through the broken door.

She spits blood into a small bowl nearby. The injury she feels on her head is on the back, covered -- matted soon -- by hair. It is hidden, and that is important. She wipes her mouth with the apron's edge, walks carefully to the woman in her hut.

Offers her one hand, and then -- if necessary -- her arm, her shoulder. To rise, to lean, to walk to the doorway and look upon her brother and husband.

'Conall'
Startled -- by her sudden wakefulness, by her surroundings, by the witch's uncovered head and brilliant eyes, perhaps -- the woman flinches away. Then she reaches forward, hesitantly. Takes the offered hand.

"How...?"

"Don't!"

It's her brother. Not her hateful husband but her brother, the fair one, the one who had counseled restraint. Stumbling now to the gaping doorway, leaning heavily against the stones. Bleeded and scuffed from his tumble, wide-eyed with astonishment and terror.

"Don't touch her. Please." He reaches out his hand, snatches his sister's wrist, pulls her out of the hut and behind him. "Mistress, we are grateful. But we must go. Beatrice -- Thomas -- we must go. At once. My thanks, mistress." The bows are hasty, retreating. "My thanks. We will not trouble you again."

The wolf -- man-shaped again -- spits in the dirt. Watches the brother hauling the husband off his rear; watches the three of them hobbling away as quick as they can.

Órfhlaith
Helping the woman up, the witch is suddenly shouted at. She lifts her head quickly, sharply, which dizzies her. The look she gives the woman's brother is baleful, her eyes lucid and glittering. But she removes her hands, stepping back. If the woman falls, it is her own brother's doing. Fool.

Her eyes narrow as they rush away, and she says nothing. No demand for payment, for recompense. She stares after them, which likely only has the effect of making them retreat even faster. She suspects him instantly.

--

Afterward, when they are gone, when they can no longer hear the shuffling of the trio's footsteps in the dirt and over the grass,

Orla sits down. Unceremoniously, but outside. She moves to the grass and sits, closing her eyes, hands on her knees. Breathes steadily. The back of her head is bleeding. Her dark hair is matted there.

'Conall'
Soon enough they're gone, the two men and their still-bedazzled sister, wife. They carried her all this way for Orla's help, but help is not how they saw it. No sooner did they get what they want are they in rapid retreat. It's not hard to imagine that if she had awakened, if Orla had not been able to wake her, that things may have turned ugly. They might have attacked. Tried.

The wolf seems ready for that possibility. Stands there wary, tense, until even their visitors' most distant scufflings are gone. Then he turns. Mid-morning now; the sun finally burning through some of the mist, casting gold over the sloping hillside. The wolf's shadow falls over the witch. Then he crouches by her side.

Rough fingers explore the back of her head; surprisingly gentle. He grunts.

"Next time I'll throw them down the hill. Let them roll back to their village and seek the help of their priests."

Órfhlaith
The witch flinches slightly when he touches her, more because she does not expect it. She looks sleepy, dazed, low in energy. Breathes in, and sighs out. Without questioning, or even hesitating, she puts a firm hand on his arm and uses him as leverage to push herself to her feet. Standing, she begins to untie her apron, covered -- like the rest of her -- in dust.

"There may well be a next time, and soon. Did you see the trail?"

'Conall'
It only takes the slightest flinch. The wolf draws back immediately. Keeps his paws to himself, looking away; moving only a little as she leverages his solidity to stand.

His eyes go to the trail as she mentions it. What used to be the trail, anyway. Wind blows, grass moves, dust rises and falls. It is fading already. Still, it troubles him.

"Yes. Whatever you drove from her is neither dead nor trapped." He too stands, unfolding with a grimace. "You would do well to arm yourself. Against the spirit. Or mayhaps the villagers."

Órfhlaith
The apron comes off. Soon, the robe follows. The day goes on and grows warmer; she never likes the sweeping hems, the long sleeves. She wears shifts most of the time, even wears pants much like the ones he does. Barefoot most of the time, when weather permits, but she is unbothered by mud, or even rough earth. Most of the ground around her little home is lush and green, earlier in spring and later in fall than the lowlands, somehow. 'Somehow' is the explanation for many things she does.

Somehow she dragged him unconscious, when he was three times her weight.

Somehow her goat lives longer than most goats, and in better health, and with sweeter milk.

Somehow she drove a spell, or spirit, from the body of a woman, without cross or holy water or liturgy.

Somehow, this is how she lives, and what she is, though all of it defies belief. The robe sheds, leaving her once more in muddied legs and uncolored shift. The wolf she calls Con because neither of them have called him wolf aloud, tells her to arm herself. She looks to him, eyes slanting upward.

"I am always thus," she says, perhaps with a note of surprise that he had not yet realized this about her.

'Conall'
"I suppose you are," says the wolf softly. He does not meet her eyes. Instead he takes up the backhoe again to resume his war of attrition with the potatoes, the onions, the cabbages, the leeks.

Órfhlaith
Witch follows him into the garden. To the herbs. Picks a few as she goes, bending and lifting. Doesn't have to hold a sleeve, doesn't have to lift a hem. This is why she wears shifts. Comes up with a few handfuls of this and that; crushes them in her palms. Should make a salve, should do something. A few broken leaves and flowers pressed to the back of her head will do for now. Soothe the wound, clear her mind, which currently is fuzzy, sleepy, and distracted.

She sits on a bit of rock while he argues, physically, with root vegetables and leafy ones. Watches him.

"Do I need to," she begins slowly, "arm myself," she adds, in clarification, "when you lay your head outside my walls?"

'Conall'
The wolf frowns. He jams the tool into the dirt; leans on the haft. Turns that frown her way.
"Do you ask if you are in danger from me? Or if I would protect you from harm?"

Órfhlaith
"I ask what my own defenses mean, when one such as yourself has made his bed here," she clarifies, still speaking slowly, a dreamy quality entering her speech. And her eyes.

'Conall'
There is nothing dreamy about his speech, his thought, his eyes. They are all direct; painfully concrete.

"Do you bid me leave, then?"

Órfhlaith
"Why would I wish that?" she says, sounding truly confused, her brow furrowing, eyes squinting against both growing light and bewilderment. She then vomits.

'Conall'
The wolf grimaces; straightens. Wades out of the mud of the garden to set the backhoe against the hut's wall. Wordlessly he passes her and goes into his shambling shelter. There is some rustling, some clattering. He reemerges; he has some small dried thing in hand. A seedpod off some tree or bush or weed, blackened, ugly.

This he thrusts at her. As though she might know what to do with it any more than he would know what to do with her herbs, her dusts, her potions, her brews.

Órfhlaith
Vomit is at least in the mud, and not on her shift. Flowers and leaves have fallen from her hand, off the back of her head. She is throwing up again when he comes back out with his... seedpod. Thing. This time she remains bent over, forehead resting against her forearm. She's dazed.

Feels exhausted.

He thrusts the thing at her, and she tries to look up, but her pupils are swimming. She would take it, but she's seeing double.

'Conall'
She hears him sigh. Then the crunch of dried vegetation between big hands. Then she feels those big hands on her. Quite literally he lays on hands: rests those dusty, dirty, muddy palms on her head. The back of her neck.

It begins like a trickle of fresh, clear water. Swells quickly to warm; the smell of fresh-baked bread; a snatch of song in her mother's voice. As fast as it came it fades. Leaves her feeling whole and hale, but longing: the way infants long for the mother, and sinners for the garden.

The wolf dusts his palms off. For a moment it seems he might walk away, go back to his gardening. He seems a beast built for war; is a beast built for violence and the hunt. Yet he seems to enjoy gardening. At least, he does not seem to mind it. Is no good at it, yet persists.

Not yet, though. After a beat or two he sits as well. Finds a rock of his own, not too far away. Leans over and rakes his fingers through dirt, picks up a handful. Uses it to scrub his palms dubiously clean.

Órfhlaith
No resistance. She might, usually. They do not touch. Have never touched purposefully since she dragged him into her hut and ministered to him, during winter. Winter has thawed now, spring has saturated the earth in its awakening, and summer now looms heavy and yet soft across them, but they do not touch. So when he does, one could be forgiven for assuming she would react. Strongly, perhaps. She is so solitary.

The witch just goes a little limp. She sighs when the water trickles over her. She smells her mother. Beyond bread, beyond vegetation, she smells that woman. There is no way to describe a person's scent. Just that it is them. For a moment it is her mother tending to yet another scrape, silent as she often was.

Then it fades. Her head does not throb. Her vision is clear. And she tastes bile.

Reaches back, gingerly, and touches her scalp. Feels matted hair, drying blood, but untouched skin. This is healing like she's never seen. Even her mother, accomplished as she was, could not mend flesh whole again in mere seconds, with nothing more than a seedpod, some water.

When he looks at her again, he finds her staring at him. Staring intently,
and perhaps warily.

'Conall'
Once or twice his eyes skitter toward her. He does not hold that intent regard. When he has scrubbed whatever imaginary residue remains on his palms he sits back; leans his back against a handy tree or fence, or perhaps the side of her house.

Staring into the distance he parts with a few words, "I have not your breadth or range. But I know a few tricks. They have kept me alive."

Órfhlaith
"That was no trick or chicanery," she tells him. "I know miracles when I see them."

She looks down at the ground. Her sick. She sighs. She picks up other flowers, stuffs them in her mouth. Chews, spits. Chews and spits again. It will do, til she goes to the well.

"What are you, Con?"

'Conall'
He can't help it: it startles a disbelieving huff of a laugh from him. "You would call my doings miraculous? After what you did in there?"

While she chews and spits, chews and spits, he stands. He picks up the hoe again with an easy swipe of the hand. Wades to the center of the garden. Digs up those stubborn, tangled clumps of potatoes -- larger, firmer, richer than any these rocky slopes have a right to grow -- and leaves them in a small pile. Later he will wash them. Later he will peel them, and she will boil them with aromatic herbs for which he has no names.

"I know not what I am," he says, some time later. "I have never met another like myself. You are as close as any has come. We are both ... something other than human. Near enough to pass, but not the same."

Órfhlaith
Bites her tongue not to argue: what she does is working well within the material world. The connections between material and spirit, at least. It's physical. It's scientific, in her mind, though she does not know such a word for it. What he did went against all laws of nature that she knows,
and she knows more than many.

He says she is something other than human, and her eyes sharpen on him, but she does not deny this, either. Does not argue.

"The night you came, you looked nothing like a man," she tells him. "The days you follow me to the lowlands, you steal the body of an animal for your soul to inhabit. Are you a devil?"

She does not sound afraid.

'Conall'
Again that dry huff. He leans down; picks a clot of potatoes from the ground. Tosses it atop the pile. Dusts his palm on his rough pants and looks over at her.

"If I am a devil it's a poor one. I haven't damned a soul. And I steal nothing. That is my body, same as this."

Órfhlaith
Her brow furrows. "How can that be so?"

'Conall'
He casts her a glance. Flick of the eyes: glancing, like a blow.

"I change. I become an animal. Think as one. Run as one. Hunt as one. Does that frighten you?"

Órfhlaith
That wrinkle in her brow only deepens. Curiosity, now, more than confusion.

"Show me."

'Conall'
Quickly his eyebrows draw together. He shakes his head, once, emphatically.

"I think as a beast," he repeats. "It is dangerous."

Órfhlaith
"Beasts do not harm me," she points out.

He is not the only animal that has followed her. Been curious about her. That stubborn old goat, still feeding from the witch's hand as though she were yet a kid. But birds and does and goats are not wolves.

"You do not harm me, when you are my shadow," she adds, more quietly.

'Conall'
The wolf's eyes glint, scatter light, gleam: flecks of amber embedded in green. He looks aside; that troubled brow, that tense mouth.

"You may fear me," he says at last; and in this, the core of truth. "Loathe me. Run in terror. It may never be the same again between us. Some things are best unseen, and some things seen cannot be forgotten."

Órfhlaith
For a time, the witch doesn't answer him. She sits half in shade from a tree that gives her small, tart apples in the autumn, near a bush that erupts with berries in the flush of early summer -- is ripening them even now. He has not seen these fruits borne, tasted them, shared them with her. He does not know how well this little patch of earth feeds her, protects her. Because she protects it, too. In the shade of that tree, her eyes gleam. Light refracts off her irises, scattering, like the sun off a rippling pond.

"Is it better, then, to pretend to be less than you are?" she asks. She looks aside, reaching for one of the half-hidden berries, not fully ripe, tugging it from its vine. Pops it in her mouth. "The truth is the truth, whether seen or unseen, embraced or feared."

'Conall'
Silence, in turn, to answer her silence. The wolf is far from still. He shifts where he sits; rubs his dirty hand over the filthy back of his neck. Scrubs his palms together, dusts them with dirt again -- as though this will make him clean. Perhaps it does. Partway through he is distracted by a rock half-buried. Picks it out of the mud and tosses it out of her garden.

"Why have you not driven me from your land?" he asks at last, and rather suddenly. "Why did you take me into your home at all?"

Órfhlaith
Witch chews the berry, swallows it. Contrary to him, she is so still. Does not scrub at her matted scalp or fuss, or even try to work. Moves her head, something of a small, gestural shrug. "When you move through the woods at night, and you hear an unfamiliar noise, or catch a queer scent on the wind that has no name you know, do you not follow? What bids you down those paths?"

'Conall'
"Curiosity?"

It is nearly unknown, this concept, this thought. None of the lowlanders would understand it. The thought of facing something unknown not with fear, but with wonder. Not with loathing, but with interest.

"I owe my life to your curiosity." The wolf finds some small bitter humor in that. "Is that the way of it, then?"

Órfhlaith
"'Tis so," she says, with a faint tip forward of her head: a shrug, a nod, something. It is an answer. So he may owe his life to some part of her that could not leave well enough alone.

"As Beatrice may owe her soul to it," the witch adds, without bitterness, without embarrassment. "The good is done. And what if it is borne not of holiness or done for coin, but a will to sharpen one's mind, as though it were a sword? The good is still done."

This time she does shrug: one scandalously bare, freckled shoulder. "You are here and you are well. You also did good this day, and more than once."

'Conall'
The humor is truer this time, lilting up the corner of the wolf's mouth. Almost invisible, that.

"In unearthing potatoes," he counts. "In holding shut a door against the combined might of two scrawny humans. And in un-breaking your head. Indeed have I done much good."

Órfhlaith
A little curl of the corner of her mouth, enigmatic in entirety and captivating in its rarity. "Good done is good done. Be content with potatoes and strength and miracles."

Reaches down then, picking up vegetation, her two baskets. Is no longer looking at him.

"Til the next unfamiliar sound, or queer scent on the wind, at least."

'Conall'
So too does the wolf lose his smile, what little of it there was. They both look away from each other; her magnetic smile and his earthborn roughness, her brilliant eyes and his wild-animal stare. He is frowning again, and she is -- well, he wouldn't know. He's not looking at her.

"We will endure," he says, which sounds as much a promise as a statement of fact. He rises then, lifting the battered backhoe again. The conversation -- more than they've spoken to one another in days, weeks, perhaps ever -- appears over. He begins to dig again, grim in his determination.