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Tweak says, "I hope your apple pie is freak"

Esmerelda Weatherwax (ms_weatherwax) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-06-07 19:35:00

Entry tags:

!dropped, day 10, esmerelda weatherwax, l lawliet, location: church

Day 10 - Morning
Who: Granny Weatherwax & L Lawliet
What: first meeting
Where: near the church
When: Day 10, around 10am
Rating: TBD
Status: Active

Even though she didn't like to think of herself as such, Granny Weatherwax was an old person. Therefore she needed only a few hours of sleep every day. That night she almost hadn't slept at all, between the uncomfortable bedding and the feelings that the place was giving her.
Her neighbors were probably glad when she got up; nobody ever had the courage to tell her but Granny made in her sleep some noises that couldn't be simply described with "snore".
Granny was already fully dressed when she got up - she had no intention of undressing in foreign places after all the stories she'd heard from Gytha. Granted, Gytha could tell similar stories about Lancre too, but in Granny's mind it was better safe than sorry.
She fixed her own iron-hard bun as her only concession to toilette and stepped outside.

For some time she walked around. She didn't met anybody, which was a bit of a surprise for her. In Lancre everyone got up at the crack of dawn and the sun was already up on the horizon.
But she enjoyed the quiet. Some of the people she'd met the other day had been... simply awful!
Granny made a face. They hadn't shown her no respect! Nobody even recognized her as a witch!
She'd only got the vague concern that people offered to the elderly and the weak, and in her opinion Grann was neither.
She was tempted to do some magic just to prove her point, but that would be acting like a wizard. She wouldn't be having any of that.
Her footsteps brought her to the door of a large building. Granny had seen Unseen University once, and this building reminded her very much of that.

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inmyownworld
2009-06-07 01:54 pm UTC (link)

L, on checking a second time, actually had found a shovel in the thrift store. He had wandered back to the church for the second time since yesterday, listless and exhausted from a night filled with upsetting dreams. Things had always been complicated with Light, but his death left so many loose threads and so much unfinished business that the detective was at a loss. Even though it was promising to be a sweltering hot day, L was out with the intention of digging up at least one of the blank graves to see if anyone was buried there. If his moral majesty the Doctor hadn't objected... what harm could it do?

He was already up to his bony hips in dirt; even though L wasn't physically very strong, when he set his mind to something and paced himself, he was in fact capable of getting things done. However, a figure at the door of the church distracted him from the task at hand, and he glanced up to see a woman older than any he'd yet met in person in Vas Captio.

"Granny...?" he ventured, half to himself but still out loud.

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ms_weatherwax
2009-06-07 04:09 pm UTC (link)

Granny looked around when she heard someone calling her. She was really losing it, not having noticed someone who was so close...
A man was digging a grave. When she walked closer, she noticed that he was very young - hardly more than a boy - and definitely foreign.
"I'm her," she said.

Granny might have been old and not used to the journals, but it didn't take her long to make the link. "I believes we exchanged letters earlier?" she said, referring to their earlier exchange. She wasn't sure of who the young man might be - it appeared as if she'd communicated with more than one person and not all of them had bothered to introduce themselves - but she didn't like asking too many questions. It made her feel ignorant.

She walked closer, peering to see what L was doing.
"Is someone dead?" she asked. She wasn't like those obnoxious women who had a great time talking about other people's funerals, but she didn't mind discussing the subject. Besides, it was clear that this place had a high mortality rate.
She turned towards the forest, frowning. He would make sure of that.

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inmyownworld
2009-06-08 12:10 pm UTC (link)

The old woman's linguistic patterns seemed to affect her regular speaking voice every bit as much as her writing in the journals. L watched her carefully as she approached, his paltry knowledge of witches keeping him on his guard. Tonks and Luna and (possibly) Merope seemed to be exceptions, but normally, in stories, witches were responsible for turning young people into frogs or making them sleep for decades, or deeds along those lines. Though L was certainly the first to dismiss fairy tales as such, he did not want to be too careful after having witnessed various impossible and strange things in Vas Captio.

It was true that L didn't bother to introduce himself unless his name was specifically asked for; and only then with great reluctance. "We did," he confirmed, resting the shovel against the crucifix-shaped tombstone and pulling himself out of his waist-deep hole. "Yes," he said quietly. "Someone is dead, as it would happen. He has already been buried, though... I am simply digging to see if anyone is resting here."

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ms_weatherwax
2009-06-08 12:31 pm UTC (link)

Granny felt annoyed at the young man's unwillingness to give his name, but she decided to let it pass for the time being.
From the way he acted she guessed he was probably the person who knew less things every time he learned anything new. Not really someone she would have liked to run into, since his way of writing confused her and seemed downright silly, but then again all young people were silly in Granny's opinion.

She watched L, her face impassible. It was obvious that she'd made some impression on him when she'd stated she was a witch.
"Don't worry, I ain't goin' to turn you into a frog," she said as if she could read straight into his mind. In truth Granny had never turned anyone into a frog. It wasn't as if she didn't have the power, but there were much nastier way to get back at someone.

"They're in a better place," the witch said. It wasn't that she believed in afterlife or anything, but any place was probably better than there. Granny knew a lot about Evil, the one that was spelled with a capital E by everyone and not just witches with an erratic approach to writing, and this place seemed full of it.

She was a bit surprised by L's next comment.
"Usually one doesn't go diggin' dead people back up," she remarked sternly. "They already have enough trouble as it is without you messin' up their graves for them."

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inmyownworld
2009-06-09 12:00 pm UTC (link)

"If they're in a better place, it should hardly matter what I do," L said with a deep sigh. Granny's reassurance that she wasn't going to turn him into a frog (eerily in sync with his own thoughts, actually) was what he needed to continue to converse with the elderly woman in a semi-friendly manner.

"I know a dead girl who left her own grave. She's here, and she has a detachment to the world. She is not in a better place, and she has no troubles except for those she chooses for herself." Like me. L regarded Granny with some interest now; true, she seemed set in her ways, but there was a steadfast quality to the elderly that made the unstable L feel more secure at times.

"Just how old are you?" he inquired, plucking at the shovel's handle as if his world consisted of it.

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ms_weatherwax
2009-06-09 01:44 pm UTC (link)

Granny looked at L in silence for a moment while he dug. If she'd really been opposed to the young man digging up the grave she would have been more outspoken, but she saw no reason to stop him. The grave seemed empty to her. She saw no reason to point this out, though, since in this place they could always do with new graves. It was a grim thought, but it was undeniable that death hung in the air.
Not Death with a capital D, Granny knew the man and he was likable enough. Just death, pointless and sudden. Like all witches Granny knew in advance the moment of her death but it was a small comfort in that place.

She stared at L.
"Zombies," she said, with just a trace of disapproval. "I ain't got a thing against 'em, but just think of what'd happen in a couple hundred years if people kept hangin' around when they're dead."
Granny would have gone off on a rant about people keeping themselves to their own graves when she was a gel, but his question threw her completely off track.
"I shall excuse you on account of being forein' and not knowin' how to talk prop'ly and all," she said in an icy voice. She had no intention of giving away her age, especially to someone who hadn't even introduced himself.

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inmyownworld
2009-06-09 05:22 pm UTC (link)

Indeed, it was looking more and more like the grave was completely empty, to L's combined relief and disappointed. To say that he was "complicated" would have been a vast understatement. He contradicted himself often; not necessarily in words, but in nature. His best friends were his worst enemies. He was childlike and weighed down with more responsibility than a hundred adults. He simultaneously feared death and slept with it. Quite literally.

"Not zombies," L corrected, narrowing his eyes. Even if Granny didn't know immediately that he was defending a lover, it was clear that she meant something to him. "Zombies aren't capable of what she is. And they're certainly not capable of being what she is to me. As for what happens in a couple of hundred years... I don't plan on living that long." He glanced sidelong at her, wondering if she could possibly be that old.

He raised both eyebrows in amused disbelief when she made a condescending remark about proper speech. Like she'd know, with that odd pidgin she seemed to be sporting? "Whatever you say," he said, after a long pause. "Thank you very much for excusing me. But you didn't say. How old are you? Do witches live longer?"

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ms_weatherwax
2009-06-10 06:34 am UTC (link)

Undead people walking around were, in Granny's mind, definitely zombies. But she remembered all that business with the voodoo lady in Genua and decided not to insist. It was no point arguing with this young man, who apparently had enough problems of his own already.
She just hoped that when he said zombies he just spoke by hearsay. It wouldn't be nice to find out that the place was full of dead people walking around.

Granny pursed her lips when L insisted. He was certainly being stubborn! The witch considered him to be a bit slow.
The truth was that, even though Granny remembered her exact age, she didn't like giving it out. She saw no point to it, since it only served to increase some people's erroneous impression that she was getting too old.
"I sure ain't a century old, so don't even think it!" she said sternly, crossing her arms as a defense against foreign-ness in general.

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inmyownworld
2009-06-10 01:41 pm UTC (link)

L was stubborn in ways, and slow in others. When a person had intelligence like his, other parts of them had to be lacking to compensate for that kind of overendowment.

"Not a century old... so... more than that?" L hazarded a guess. "Most of the people I've known haven't lived to be as old as you, so... I guess it's just unusual to meet someone who's lived anywhere near that long."

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ms_weatherwax
2009-06-10 04:56 pm UTC (link)

"No," Granny said. You could have used the sharpness in her voice to cut diamonds, but this seemed to have little effect on the man in front of her.
"I was born in the century of the fruitbat," she said, determined to leave it at that.

Over a century old?
Granny didn't know what to think any more. L seemed normal enough most of the time, but then came out with the most outrageous things.
"How would you feel if I were the one askin' you questions all the time?" she remarked. "Like what's your name, how old are you, where are you from...?"

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inmyownworld
2009-06-12 12:36 pm UTC (link)

L quirked an eyebrow at that odd time period. Wherever this woman had come from, things seemed more than a little bit strange. "Fruitbats," he said, nodding. "I think I understand." People born in that century have a predilection for becoming batty old women. Will remember this.

"My name is Ryuzaki. I'm twenty-five and I was born in Paris, France," L said, shrugging as if it meant nothing. It was the first time Granny had asked, after all, so it was easy for him to pretend that he would have given the answers this easily if she'd only thought to ask at an earlier time. "I suppose I don't feel like my privacy is terribly compromised, Granny Weatherwax. So now that you know something about me... how old are you?"

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ms_weatherwax
2009-06-12 04:48 pm UTC (link)

Granny couldn't even start to guess what the young man had understood, but she gladly dropped the subject. Or at least, she would have been willing to drop it if the man had done the same.
She was a bit taken back when he introduced himself, especially with that silly name, and he was claiming to be from... where? Granny was increasingly annoyed by the amount of foreigners she'd had to meet in the last day.

And now this man - Ryuzaki - kept insisting!
Granny was starting to think that maybe turning him into a frog wouldn't have been such a bad idea, and had to exert all of her self control to prevent herself from doing so.
"This and that is two completely unrelated matters," she said, feeling very vexed. "If you must know I'm a bit older than sixty. There."
It was only marginally a lie, since she was older than sixty by over a decade, but she was annoyed at this person for thinking she was a crazy old woman. Darn this whole place!

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inmyownworld
2009-06-13 03:13 pm UTC (link)

This answer was no more satisfying to L than Granny's previous evasion of the question entirely. He canted his head, looking suspicious.

"I thought that the elderly were beyond vanity... I mean, once you're past sixty, what's one more year or decade?" he asked, shrugging. "So... a bit... sixty five? Sixty six?" He asked, leaning on the shovel handle, clearly even more interested since it seemed to be a very big secret. "It's only fair, you know how old I am..."

Two things were true about L. One was that he was extremely tenacious. The other was that no one had ever told him that it was impolite to ask people older than him how old they were.

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ms_weatherwax
2009-06-15 04:10 pm UTC (link)

Well, now he'd done it!
Granny had thought she'd been a model of patience up until now. At least, she'd managed to control her hot boiling rage and had even given Ryuzaki answers, after some time and in her own fashion. But the way he was still badgering her... It was unbearable!
Granny's patience, running thin ever since the day before, had finally reached its end.

It was at times like these that she wished she could be the bad witch; the frog option was looking very appealing right now. But she had to contain herself. The poor man already had enough problems of his own without her having to add to them.
She looked - or rather, stared - at him for the longest time without replying, then shrugged and walked away.
"It'd give up on the grave-digging if I was you," she said without turning her head. "It ain't for you."

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