OPEN | prompt one | RAIN

[wrens]

prompt one | R A I N I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain - and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light. I have looked down the saddest city lane.

 

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[motherlands]

[ Unsettling for most but not Mother Charlotte, who is — in her own way — unsettling as well. There are some people who say that she's mad; and Father Methuselah who labels her the devil incarnate, proof of the fester that Alexandria brought to the city-states and continues to bring, blighting the land. Rumors and hearsay keep a lot of souls at bay, made wary and nervous by the look in Mother Charlotte's eyes, the way she can pitch from tempestuous to serenely calm, and how she is able to insight a fury among her people as easy as she can still them to silence with a raised hand. The trick, she's learned, is to find those so far disenfranchised that they will embrace anything, even unpleasantness, so long as it means some measure of salvation.

Constant, she knows, doesn't need salvation. Maybe once upon a time he did (she doesn't ask; he returns a favor), but a man like him isn't born hard in some places and yielding everywhere else. No, men like Constant are made, Mother Charlotte thinks. Just like women like her (saviors, false prophets) are as much built by their own devising as by the people who follow her.

Her gaze doesn't falter, not when he touches her or not even when he smiles. If he's unsettling, she enjoys that about him; perhaps much more than she enjoys the devotion she gleans from everyone else. ] That's very generous of you, [ Mother Charlotte says. ] Do you like that word: generous? Or do you think it's as meaningless as all the rest?

[eyeshined]

[It's likely Mother Charlotte is mad. Constant isn't going to say it, doesn't need to. Madness in this wasteland is as common as thirst and hunger. Completely human, in the wake of the Event, and Constant never blames anyone for their humanity. Just the ones who like to pretend humanity is something good or beautiful. It's all the flaws that are beautiful, in the way they fall together. Madness, in the way it falls apart.]

Doesn't get used enough. [His fingers run over the back of her hand, contact rather than the ghosting touch he traced over her arm.] Out here, anything you don't do for yourself is generous.

[motherlands]

[ Her gaze lowers to where his hand touches hers. The price of being Mother Charlotte is that of elevation, of being placed on a pedestal, a seat raised above the rest. It means that no one comes near her, no one dare touch her and, to her advantage, no one dare speak their mind to her. Since Constant doesn't prescribe to such notions, he alone is allowed to stand in front of her, face to face; he alone meets her eyes and he alone answers her questions, providing answers formulated by his own mind rather than simply parroting back what's already been said in paraphrase.

Her lashes low, she looks at him again before craning her face upwards, towards his. Her jaw sharpens and her throat lengthens and for a moment it seems very much as if Mother Charlotte intends to offer herself up for his appraisal. ]

And am I generous, Constant?

[ Revenge is always selfish, she thinks. Even when it is righteous. ]

[eyeshined]

[He looks into Mother Charlotte's eyes, and he sees wrath. Driving everything she does, every word she says, all the time she takes to gather people to her and keep them there. It's pure in her, purer than he's seen it in anyone else - and he's seen some wrathful fuckers, closed away in antioch's white-walled hellholes.

She isn't desperate with it, isn't constantly fitful, lashing out at everything and anyone. It's tempered in her, sharpened down to a blade. And Constant has an appreciation for blades.

His fingers press heavier against her hand, following out the slim bones, the lines of tendons, curling around her wrist to touch the throb of the artery there.]

No.

[Selfish to the extreme. Just like him and his desire for survival. They were two turns of the same dial, he and Mother Charlotte. He knew it, and that was why he stood here now, close, meeting her eye, touching her.]