Fern O'Grady (sowandreap) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-08-30 22:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | elfleda, fern o'grady |
Seedling
Who: Fern, Elfleda
What: Plotting
Where: Searchlight
When: Present
Ratings/Warnings: Low
Flushed… Her gift had been flushed down a lavatory.
The one named Lady Elfleda had regarded the manner of disposal as a personal affront and it was not, she now knew, the fault of who her essence had merged with. There were others. Others who had meddled where not invited. Pre-emptive intervention where none was desired.
There are many variants of chess played on Earth. Taikyoku shōgi meets the record for the largest known edition of Japanese chess, comprising 402 pieces of 209 types, with 253 sets of moves memorised by competing players.
Imagine, then, how many layers must be toyed with in more cosmic realms. And how much greater the stakes when such games are arranged around mortals.
A move had been made and it would be met with consequences.
The O’Grady girl… The offspring of one Erin Warren, whose purpose had been found when Elfleda’s gaze had found her. Noticed her. Felt her potential. Spoke of her as blessed. A child who understood adversity was something to be overcome, not fled from.
There was a closet in that house. Today, that closet door could be heard to slowly creak open.
“Fern...”
Fern didn’t have much, not really. The pretty pink bedroom in her adoptive parents’ home was sold alongside the house and the rest of its furnishings, all of the white wooden furniture with its brushed gold embellishments, the soft pink bedding and gossamer draperies, all left behind. Where they belonged.
Those things, they hadn’t really been hers. They were set pieces, grown-up versions of the plastic accessories that came with an overpriced doll. That was, after all, all that Fern had been to them -- a pretty little doll to dress up and trot out at society events, a lovely young woman to sit beside them at dinners and parties to attract the eye of wealthy parents looking to find a suitable match for their sons. Fern had dutifully gone along with it, nodding and smiling and making tennis dates with the boys and spa appointment with the girls, half of the time getting felt up in the stuffy storage sheds overlooking perfectly manicured golf courses at this or that country club, never to be called again, and she did it all. Everything they wanted. Everything that was asked of her. All of it to keep herself entrenched in the false production of family bliss, a life that was still never really hers.
When it was over, she took only what she needed: some clothes, her plants, and a few small, secret things that the O’Gradys never knew about. Her crystals and her runes. Her chalice and her candles. Her athame and her herbs. Her stone.
There was nothing left of them about her and sometimes she allowed herself to be glad for it; sometimes she paid it no attention at all, content to pretend that everything that was always had been and that part of her life had never existed at all.
At the least, it made for light packing.
She had been placing the small things that really meant something on top of a dressing table made of artfully weathered grey wood that had been delivered just that morning, the only piece of furniture in the room as yet, when she heard it: the Lady had come.
Her back was to the door of the closet that had creaked as it slid its way open; Fern closed her eyes, a dreamy smile coming over her face, and breathed in deeply.
It wasn't invasive. Not with Fern. Not now. Once upon a time... Wasn't that how all fairy tales went? Once upon a time, it must have been different, though now it was gentle, soothing. An invisible sense of something familiar, something which had taken the time to understand Fern better than her mortal brethren ever had.
The inky blackness of shadows reached out and hands of pale white rested upon Fern's shoulders. A calm, reassuring grip which reached across time.
"Your patience honours me, Fern... Others are not so grateful. The doubts of loyalty have stripped you of family-to-be." Elfleda's voice, there could be no doubt. The one who whispered upon the wind, encouraged Fern with signs and had led her to this moment. But unlike those who had led the cult, Elfleda's visitation came with defined purpose and she leaned in from behind. "School has ended, my Fern. You have kissed baptism's flame... And you shall act, now, in my name. At my side."
It felt like sinking into dark water, the calm that came over Fern with Her voice. There had been others over the years, demons and devils and demigods, or so they had claimed, conjured up in the Worship House or by Fern on her own, but had never brought her such perfect calm. None had made her very soul sing the way it had when the Lady had first come into her life.
The tears came unbidden. Joy, perhaps. Relief. It had been so long, and Fern had worked so hard not to let it affect her. She had thought to see the Lady as soon as it was done, as soon as the O’Gradys lay dead on the polished wooden floor of their disgustingly ostentatious McMansion, but She hadn’t come, and Fern had been afraid to call for Her.
Maybe she had been confused, Fern thought. Maybe she had misconstrued the Lady’s meaning. Maybe she had done it all wrong. But now, all these months later, the Lady had returned, bringing with Her the aura of perfect calm that Fern so craved, all the jumbled thoughts and confusion slipping away into nothingness.
“Anything,” she whispered softly. “Anything for You.”
Somewhere, beyond the ether’s veil, great spiked cogs were turning. Notch by notch, click by click. The palpable relief radiating out from the girl was a form of empowering worship, bringing her that little bit closer to damnation’s call.
“Anything,” Fern’s beloved echoed. The very word, itself, smoothly embracing her, as surely as this familiar, now intoxicating presence surely did. An unseen cloud reuniting with an old friend, engulfing, protecting. None in the darkness saw fit to try and devour or control Fern. Not when they tasted who lingered in her aura. “Anything...”
Black lips curved and bestowed a sacred kiss through blonde tresses. A spiritual ripple could be felt echoing from it through Fern’s very soul.
“You are one of many, my girl, my Fern. But few have been placed so close between light and shadow… There is a child of heaven who would cleanse you of me.”
In contradiction, Elfleda’s essence soaked into Fern’s with an almost violently penetrative sense of something close to ownership, control. An oily, spiritual clingfilm, wrapping around, threatening to strangle, only to… Merge. A beautifully unholy fusion, rooting back into the child’s willing embrace. Something done many times before. A way to hold without holding, enhance and bind.
Derek had received but a sniff of it. True followers were submerged.
Engulfed.
“Together, we will help an angel to remember why there are places she must fear to tread.”
One hand slipped down, covering Fern’s abdominal cavity. The other gently moving smoothly around her throat. It was a symbolic blessing of womb and Damocelsian sword: Fern being made a totem of life and death in her Lady’s merciful hold.
“And we shall inflict upon them the Black Light’s way... The left-handed path of subversion.”
Fern felt as though she had been carrying herself along, dragging herself, propped up on little more than sheer will. She had been keeping herself upright by expending every last bit of strength she had within her, and now, now, she could rest.
Her entire body seemed all at once to feel light as air; all of the tension she had been carrying, muscles too stiff and taut to find any relief, drifted away as easily as a bad dream faded in the morning light. It felt like a dream, the worry and the fear and the anxiousness as wispy and intangible as the morning mist.
Fern was safe now. Fern was home. There was nothing the world could throw at her that couldn’t be washed away by the embrace of her Lady.
“An angel?” she asked, voice soft and calm. “How strange.”
“By any standards,” Elfleda observed. “Something even she seems keen to admit, wallowing in her effluence… One her poisons herself with the narcotics of old, yet seeks to cleanse those she claims no interest in. And, through this, seeks to poison my works.”
The figure released her embrace and walked past the girl with a mental sneer of dismissal at the cause of such interference. “If she wishes for engagement with the world she turned her back on… She shall have it,” Elfleda decreed with a decisive swish of ebony garments to face her charge.
“A dragon, Fern. Tell me… How would you gain the treasure it guards?”
For a moment, Fern’s expression darkened. Poison? Threatening the Lady? The gall. The absolute gall. This… creature… angel, or dragon, whatever it might be… it could not stand.
“Dragons?” Fern asked. She called to mind a handful of memories, moments of her adopted mother attempting some semblance of maternal instinct. The woman would sit gingerly on the end of her bed, spending more time smoothing away wrinkles in the bedspread than paying mind of the small child dwarfed among the massive decorative pillows and embroidered coverlets, and read a line or two from a stiff cardboard storybook whose spine was never broken.
Dragons were tricksters. Dragons were clever. Dragons took what didn’t belong to them and guarded it fiercely. There was only one way to deal with a dragon.
“Dragons have to be slain.”
Again, Elfleda smiled. A note of amusement sounded in her throat, though not a cruel one. More akin to a teacher with an impulsive student.
“So mortal,” the emissary spoke and gently tilted head to one side. “Remember, Fern: Subversion, not destruction. One can never know when a dragon’s respect may become useful. Or better still, its debt.”
Elfleda slowly turned, taking in the placement of every object, searching for meanings and symbolism.
“Persuade the beast its treasure is worthless, then find another appetite to which you can appeal. Replace the shine of gold with the stench of roasted pig and watch as it leaves in hunger, not for gold, but flesh. Desires and perception, Fern… In time, it may extend its thanks - and wish to follow in your path.”
There came a moaning exhale. Elfleda arching head, straightening spine. She had a sense of this place now. A better feel for her own follower’s nest. Arms had reached out to each side and nails unfurled like a great vulture’s talons.
“This angel’s perceptions, too, can be changed. And to do this, we commence with her circle, her support… We will change them from a treasure to worthless. Then watch as she leaves her harvest for others to reap. As she has taken from us, so shall we take from her, in kind.”
“Anything,” Fern readily agreed once again, nodding as she spoke. “Anything you want me to do, I can do it.”
It seemed daunting: an angel of all things! But she would try her best. Anything to serve the Lady. After all, leaving her adoptive home, taking the O’Gradys out of the equation… on the face of things, it had seemed so difficult. So frightening. But Fern had powered through and she had succeeded, all for the Lady’s favor, because nothing else mattered but serving and making herself useful.
No one else had ever really cared for her. No one else had ever really given a damn, all looking for ways to use Fern to their own benefit. The Lady was different; Fern was special to Her, Fern was important... she would serve, she would do whatever the Lady asked.
“Just tell me how we begin.”
“It begins, as do all things, with a seed. Many seeds…”
The ceiling had already started to darken. Now it was shifting, like a thick, viscous fluid and, from it, small objects were descending; held within it like an encapsulation of dark, resinous honey. A yolk of sticky pitch-like substance, allowing them to be held without the tiny spiked surfaces doing damage. They were falling smoothly around her like garden spiders on webbing.
“Plant them around her abode. The one where lights drape, intended for the celebration of a Christ child’s birth. Help them take root. Then it’s time you met some friends.”
“Seeds…” Fern repeated, eyes cast upward as the dark little drops began to fall. She held out a hand to catch one, marveling at the strangely shaped seeds held captive in a slick of dark liquid. She had seen spiny seeds before, that wasn’t new, but they had all evolved to protect themselves from animals that might forage after them. The seeds her Lady was bringing to her seemed to carry within then a far more sinister intent.
She smiled. “Like the seed pods for angel’s trumpet,” she mused quietly. Didn’t it just figure?
“And the walls came tumbling down…”
Elfleda’s sing-song of a reply was as doll-like as she looked. Nevada might not possess walls, but Jericho’s fate could yet be repeated in a number of ways. The shadowy portal behind Fern still remained open and an eerie howl of wind blew past mortal ears.
“Home,” Elfleda observed, raising a hand in its direction and… Moving back towards it, she halted and turned her head. Seemed to be gauging Fern for a moment, deliberating over something. The cavernous echo was large, like a whale’s cadaver. “Some day,” she spoke and caressed the backs of fingers gently across Fern’s cheek. “Perhaps soon… If you’re worthy. If you try.”
The shadows were rising to greet her as she restarted her walk. Enfolding over Elfleda in an intimate lover’s embrace. Luring her back to the open closet’s interior.
Watching the Lady leave, Fern felt only perfect calm. She had her mission now; she had her purpose. The darkness moved in searching tendrils, sweeping over the Lady and folding in around her, carrying her way to a far loftier plane than Fern could ever hope to see.
She stared on with wide, unblinking eyes, a single phrase falling from her lips in a voice that was barely a whisper.
“Some day.”