gillian. (chiburui) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-01-29 10:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !narrative, gillian goodwin |
And the walls kept tumbling down, in the city that we love.
Who: Gillian Goodwin.
What: Reflection.
Where: Emillion.
When: Capricorn 29th, backdated.
Rating: Tame.
Status: Complete narrative.
Without the familiar tin chime of the bedside alarm to wake her, Gillian rouses by habit with the rising of the sun. Light filtered through the curtains and washed the room in a lazy warmth, a touch that was gentle-urging on her bare shoulder. It was a comforting deception to the chill of the season, and she stirred between the sheets of her bed, slowly, each limb recalling a collection of wounds most recently obtained and, most recently, absolved as well. What remained now of them, and of that great struggle in those fell halls but a faint, lingering exhaustion and the ache of memory. She rose to greet the day without her usual fervor—a force of purpose derived from strictly-forged schedule, a list of tasks that had been put on hold for a day, and only a day. Life went on outside the window of her room, and meanwhile, here, there was only the demands of the home and of a personal life that so often went on without her as well. (And therefore, why not should she rent out the room above her own, when she so exiled herself from this place, where a young woman not herself swept the floors and tended laundry, took the dogs out about the neighborhood in absence of an owner and her collection of other priorities?) For now, she was only greeted to the sounds of Edmond and Mercedes as they clamored eagerly down the hall to greet her. Indeed, the hounds were always forgiving of her, and found themselves that morning eager to linger around her feet as she busied herself in the kitchen with the stove and kettle. Was it strange to consider, perhaps, that she might choose to surround herself with such comforts? Certainly if there was a time appropriate to allow herself these things, this day in particular seemed to mold itself within agreeable parameters. And yet, while the follow-up duties would not be taken up until the next morning, there was time to reflect on the events which had passed. Gillian had not been displeased by their apparent victories. And neither, she suspected, had the client. By inspection of surfaces features, in fact, if one did not glimpse with a particular knowledge, an awareness of the history of the Company, as an annalist of old might've constructed it with pen and parchment, then naught would have seemed amiss. But the stone had been plunged within the lake, and while the surface had stilled to deceiving glassiness, the floor below was now irrevocably, undeniably reshaped. She had chosen incorrectly before, Gillian knew, and again reflected in the quiet sitting room of her home, with the hearth alight with warmth, and the room basking in the presence of life—that perhaps she may not have made the right decision in allowing Wilham Wolfe to come along. What was a leader, she asked, who began to second guess her own decisions? Shadows danced uneasy in the corners of the room (but what had been done, however, could not be undone, and this course had been set so very many years ago). The day itself moved on, uneventful. Gillian did not wander through familiar city pathways to the offices, as natural as the action was or might've been, and instead made effort to redirect her attention, to neighborhoods less traveled, to efforts that were not business, and to company that had nothing to do at all with the likes of the Company—those men and women who had strove through Mist-dense forests at her command, seeking wealth and glory and their own sense of purpose. Winter afternoon grew into evening, as the lights of the city glossed with an icy sheen, as if one was glancing at life through crystalline. Bereft of pack, the beast went solitary wandering, searching for something as yet undefined, a determined trail of footprints scattering along behind her. |