Inkling

Title: Inkling
Time Period: August 17, 135 A.E.
Characters Appearing:

Summary: Blake seeks out Dina to request the use of her unique magic.

Inside, there are children in large room of the tall brick house, learning the fine art of reading, writing, basic maths and even history. The future of Dornie wrapped up in the school house that only in the last two years has been established. Today is one of the days that the children are in learning and also a day that Dina had made her way to check in and see to the needs of the school.

The older woman, right arm in a sling and tied close to her body, hair pinned up, and in her usual blouse and long skirt is exiting the school. There's a carriage off to the side, waiting, hooked up to a singular horse and a guard/driver who has been waiting for Dina to be finished inside.

Blake approaches the school on foot, walking along the beach from the direction of the plant and the loch that fuels it. There is a toad on his left shoulder, a thin set to his lips and a furrowing of skin between his eyebrows. Eyes pensively cast towards the ground in front of his feet as he walks towards the school's entrance, he wouldn't notice the carriage if not for the noise the toad on his shoulder makes to get his attention. Pulled out of his reverie, he looks up with a less troubled brow and glances at the transport before scanning around and spotting Dina. He pauses as he watches her; dark eyes roaming over the sling and then her face as he considers something. After several seconds, he once more walks. This time it is to intercept her at the carriage she heads towards. His manner is nonthreatening, but his mien is the kind that tends to set guards on edge.

The guard makes a sound not unlike what the toad does, and Dina pauses at her transportation of choice, looking towards Blake. From beneath the sling, perched atop her arm and in the gap, pokes the head of the wood mouse that is Greets The Sun. <You be who?> This to Pighead. Not that Blake can hear it. "Good day sir" Mentally, the welsh accented woman is trying to place who the man approaching. "The Armorsmith's apprentice" She has a good memory for this. She has a good memory period. "How is the shop?"

Blake tries to force a smile as he addresses Dina, but his current state or the lack of experience with such a thing makes it come out nearly as a sneer. His eyes pull towards the guard with a clear discomfort about the other man's presence, and he attempts to mutter something that will reach Dina's ears but not her servant's, but of course fails. "A word? In private?" Again, his dark eyes pull towards the third party, and then the carriage. "I can make a fuckin' appointment," is said not in polite offering, but rather the bitterness of someone addressing one of much greater wealth and status.

Pighead stares at that mouse, blinks a lopsided blink, and doesn't respond. Unlike his mage, however, the familiar spirit is quite hard to read. Whether it is snubbing or still forming judgment or both is a mystery.

GTS can respect that. He's not chattery with other familiar. He's a man of simple words himself. Or well, a familiar of simple words.

Dina on the other hand, is studying the other man, face impassive and mentally calculating. "I can carve some time out of my schedule this moment, depending upon what it is that you wish to speak privately about." Dina gestures with her left hand to the shade of some tree's nearby, then to her bodyguard to remain where he was. Not that the man won't be able to get off the open carriage in a heartbeat. "Or do you prefer some place else to speak?"

Following the gesture with a glance, Blake nods, scratches at the bottom of his nose with the back of his left index finger and states, "That'll do." He turns towards the trees without offering Dina anything more, and heads that direction with a brisk, ready step rather than a stroll.

As he turns, Pighead continues that unyielding stare, but replies at last to Greets The Sun with a sense of stubborn pride, like a bully attempting to start a fight on a playground: <My mage is faster and of better breeding age than your mage.> Blake must get some sense of this or a message along similar lines, because he turns his head to glance at his left shoulder and says, "Don't be a fucker, fucker."

«He is» Greets The Sun acknowledges this but only because it's a simple truth. He is, and is of breeding age, which Dina left behind a good ten years before. But he remains the mouse, tucked away under the wraps of the sling. Dina just looks to the frog then back to Blake. No running commentary on what the familiars might be saying to one another. "How may help you mister…." Fishing for his name.

Pighead is dichotically satisfied with 'winning' and at the same time disappointed in the lack of argument. The toad goes back to silently staring even as 'his mage' replies. "Esho. Blake Esho." His jaw flexes, and his chin moves twice before he manages to say three very difficult seeming words for him, "I need help." A deep scowl etches into his face as if that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth to admit. He elaborates with only a fraction of that hesitation. "Is it true you can find the memories someone has lost to time? One… plagues me. I canno' remember it, but I cannot stop feelin'…" he lifts his hands to ambiguously gesture as he trails off, "like it's right there." He taps above his right temple. "Haunted."

"Such skill is within my grasp indeed. Memories are never lost, just the capability of retrieving them. Everything is stored away somewhere" Dina rests her left hand across her left arm, a glance up to his temple when he taps it. "At times though, they are not recalled for very good reason." Which isn't to say that she won't help. Dina glances toward the man who waits at the wagon with just as vigilant a stare as Pighead. "How badly do you wish to see what haunts you and rests at the tip of your mind Mister Esho. What will you do if you do not like what you see?"

Blake waves this warning of dark memories off with a sweeping gesture if his hand. "My life has not exactly been filled with unicorns and sweet fuckin' nothings." He reaches into the pocket of his vest, which is too small to hold a real weapon, and withdraws a very pretty geode of quartz tainted by amethyst a little bit smaller than a fist. "Is this enough?" he asks as he holds out the payment towards her. "I assumed that armor wouldn't be high on your list of desires, seein' as you have men to spill their blood for you."

"I take no payment for my skills in that area" Her left hand raised to ward off the amethyst. "No price can ever be put on recovering lost memories. Save that, for another time and another individual. When I speak of how badly, I mean not to the cost of compensation, but to how badly you wish to read that which has been elusive."

Frowning in obvious dislike of anything that could be taken as charity, Blake pauses in consideration for several seconds before putting the exposed geode back in his pocket slowly. "Fine," he says as if trying to convince himself. "I would not have come 'ere if I was goin' to walk away now. I only ask that whatever you see in my mind is taken to the grave. If that is something you can promise, then I am willin' to face whatever. I do not fear my past." There is conviction in his words, and the graveness of his expression backs them.

"Would that others had the same conviction as you about that which remains in their closets" Dina nods her head though, to the request for silence on behalf of what she see's. It's a given. And then she reaches out, at first with her right, but with a flutter of eyes and whiteness around her lips, she remembers and it's with her left instead. "I will need your permission. You'd be best to help me by trying to think of whatever it is that you're trying to recall. It will aid me in finding it. Lest you wish me to sort through until I find a random memory"

"I consent," Blake states without hesitation, but there's a wariness about him. The wariness of someone that has difficulty letting the perpetual awareness of a warrior down. The muscles along his jaw and temple flex, and his lips press tight and thin as he takes a step towards her. "Something about a coat. A certain cut of it. I'm not sure what you'd call it. A captain's coat or a pirate's jacket or some shite like that. I gather it's a old-fashioned nautical cut. I will picture the fuckin' thing." He forces his eyes closed. It's notable that he doesn't close his eyes. He forces them closed, as if shutting them while someone is this close is against his very nature. "I'm ready. It's in my mind's eye."

A nautical jacket. She has something to go off of. Dina doesn't close her eyes, leaving them open even as that which she's looking for flickers into view across her own field of vision. Memories, visual wisps that vy for attention. The whole of herself focused on finding what he's wanting, a memory. The jacket, Rhagfyr's own is the freshest and she pauses at it, as if getting a better clearer picture. And then she's off, searching, mental fingers combing through the mind as if lifting up the manilla tags in the dewy decimal systems at libraries. SHe keeps this up, back to area's left foggy, left dormant, takes more care and time there. Looking for something lost.

Blue dominates the vision. The aqua of the ocean. The navy of a coat. The azure of the sky.

A very young boy stands on the edge of a ship looking out across the sea. He's two or three, and quite small for his age if he's the latter. He wears a muslin tunic belted over patched denim jeans handed down from the old world. To his right stands a handsome, stubbled man dressed in calve-length gray pants, a long navy blue coat nearly identical in pattern to Rhagfyr's but wrong in color. At first, he might even be mistaken for Blake, but there's gray in his temples, crow's-feet reaching out from the corner's of his eyes and his chin is a tad more jutting and masculine.

Another ship is pulled up along side their own. It is smaller and damaged, and there is a mixture of laughter and screams in the air; laughter from the men of the large ship as they strong-arm helpless women out of their clothes and onto their own ship; screams for help and in terror from those women; screams of outrage turning into deathcries from their male companions; sobbing from the captured men that dare not object due to fear of death. The man in the navy blue coat has his hand on the boy's shoulder as if coaxing him to watch, which he does so with all the innocence of a child.

On the invading ship, beside the young boy and what one presumes to be his father, is Dina. Watching the ongoings, surveying all that is happening. That which is out of the young boys view is foggy, filled in by the mind with presumption and knowledge. People rustle about her and through her even, when she doesn't make the effort to step out of the way, but observes the instance. As Blake can too, using her ability after she deems that it's in his and her best interest that he remember, to sharpen it and bring it forth and fresh. No longer lost.

Blake watches from two perspectives as the ship shudders violently as if hit by a cannonball, but there is no blast echoing over the water to indicate an attack from another ship. The youth and several captives with their hands and/or ankles bound are thrown to the deck just before the ship rocks and a scaled, white creature of massive size rears its dragon-like head out of the water to look down upon those there. Its serpentine body extends what may be dozens of feet above the surface, and seems to only be a fraction of its total length. It opens its mouth like that of a snake until only purple-blue flesh and limb-length fangs can be seen, and strikes downwards with acceleration and force that seems impossible….

The memory ends as something smashes into Blake's head, or perhaps he is thrown into part of the structure.

And like that, there is no more, real life springs back to meet Dina and she drops her palm to his shoulder, momentarily sagging with the expenditure of energy and abrupt end to the memory. But just as quick as she falters, she is upright one against, removing her left hand gracefully and setting about to smoothing her skirt and assuring her familiar vocally, that she is well.

Which, after another moment, brings her gaze back to what seems to be a pirates son.

As the memory ends, Blake reflexively reaches up with his right hand in a sudden motion; grabbing the top of his head as if wounded. His eyes are wide, but there is no immediate signs of shock or panic on his face. His sunkissed skin is quite pale, but that is likely from the surge of epinephrine crashing through his body like that sea serpent crashed into the ship's deck. He lowers the hand from his head much more slowly than he raised it, and looks at it as if expecting blood despite knowing there won't be any. He takes a step back, then another, and bumps into a tree. He leans back against it and looks at nothing in particular as he processes what he's just seen. "I…." No words follow.

"I can make it inaccessible again. Remove it even. As if this never happened Mister Esho." It's a quiet and respectfully spoken offer to the armorsmith. "But now you see, why I ask how badly one wants to remember that which the mind has hidden, for a reason" It's not an I told you go, but perhaps a gentle reminder to be careful what you ask for. "Come, we will give you a ride back to the armorsmith. I believe that Jeremiah has something hard hidden in a flask in his coat, that you may partake of, before we part ways"

It's hard to tell whether Blake's mind defensively buried that memory or if he was just too young for it to be recalled. Either way, he barely shakes his head at the offer for the memory to be removed, eyes still focused on nothing, and then reflexively states, "I do no' drink." Without a thank you, goodbye or even a lashing out, Blake rights himself from the tree and begins to walk north slowly. Pighead hops from his shoulder, sprouting thick clumps of fur and exploding with growth even as he falls, and growls momentarily at Dina with a good show of bared teeth before turning to follow the dazed smith.