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[we_bring_hell]

Nothing is wrong. Well, nothing new is wrong. It's just that sometimes you wake up and hate everything, starting with yourself and extending outward from there.


She has snarled at Gideon, banished Gideon to the distant past, and is now sulking about being abandoned by Gideon. She was trying to work on the Lyctoral theorems, but her bile got in the way, and now she's chewing on her interdimensional communication mechanism.

She is considering burning characters into her living bones while her cavalier is away and without a healer standing by, because she may be 90% of Gideon's self-control but Gideon is 70% of her self-preservation.

The Mountain Goats is blaring; Transcendental Youth.

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[herald_ingress]

When Ingress stopped by Bar, she was surprised to find a note from Gideon waiting for her. It's a brief note. Ingress nods, thanks Bar, and accepts the challenge.

She can definitely protect Harrow from death!

(But can Ingress survive Harrow's mood? That remains to be seen.)

She looks around the main room for Harrow, but doesn’t see her. She checks the library, but she’s not there either. Ingress frowns a little, not worried exactly, not like on the day she and Lan Wangji searched so frantically, but now she’s determined to find her. Ingress goes upstairs to check Harrow’s room.

Huh. That music sure is loud. That’s a good sign she’s there, though, right?

Ingress knocks on the door. “Hello, it’s Ingress. Are you there?”

[we_bring_hell]

There's the scrape of a chair, and then a silence that goes on marginally too long before the door is opened by a tall, heavily-built skeleton.

"Greetings," Harrow says in a repressive tone, still working at her desk. Even alone in her room, she is wearing her gloves and robe, the hood sinking her face in shadow.

(In old movies people scream
Choking on their fists when they see shadows like these)

[herald_ingress]

Ingress grins at the skeleton upon seeing it, because why not? Skeleton servants deserve friendly greetings, too.

Then she hears her friend’s voice. Hmmm. Harrow is never cheerful, exactly, but she’s usually not this glum.

“Are you too busy for a visit?”

It’s a silly question to ask, since Ingress isn’t going away, no matter the reply.

[we_bring_hell]

The scritching of her pen pauses, as Harrow contemplates if it can possibly be this easy.

"No," she says finally.

The rolltop desk is crowded with books and flimsy she has scribbled on, and a fully-articulated skeletal arm on a brass stand; a bonework vase that holds a violet and a lily.

"What is it? Did someone prophesy your doom too?"

[herald_ingress]

“Not today. But there’s still time.”

She enters the room, only a little tentative. This is less because of Harrow’s mood and more worry for her friend.

“I haven’t seen you for a bit, and I was hoping to find you when I visited the bar today.”

[we_bring_hell]

The skeleton steps silently out of her way.

"The Bar has done nothing in particular to deserve to have that inflicted on it," she bites off. "I am working. There is so much to do."

[herald_ingress]

She ventures a little closer.

“If I can do anything to help, I’ll offer it.”

[we_bring_hell]

"Have no doubt that if you had any utility to me I would wring it out of you like a damp rag," Harrow says savagely, tugging at the fingertips of her gloves.

[herald_ingress]

“Oh, would you now?”

She doesn’t add “Miss Grumpy” to her question, but she thinks it.

Hmm. The prophecy, Gideon’s absence, the difficulty of her world, this work that must be done - any of these would put someone into a bad mood, but all together at once?

“When my sister gets pissed off and overwhelmed, she finds plenty of work that must be done, too. She’s a right horror, but I go to her study and bother her anyway. It takes her mind off of what’s bothering her to bicker with her little sister.”

[we_bring_hell]

"That is what I used to do to Griddle," she says, frowning, tugging off the gloves. "She was my whipping girl. The repository of my..." She flexes her hands, like pale spiders, and scowls at them; begins putting the gloves back on. "Vile intentions."

[herald_ingress]

“And that’s all in the past, yes? The nice thing about the past is you can leave it behind if you want to.”

[we_bring_hell]

"That's the most incomprehensible thing you've ever said to me," Harrow grumbles.

[herald_ingress]

“Incomprehensible,” she repeats, pleased. “I like it. Gives me an air of mystery.”

She settles into a chair not too close to the desk, but not too far from it, either.

“What’s wrong, Reverend Daughter? Besides the usual everything.”

[we_do_bones]

Gideon is in a much better mood than the one she was in when Harrow all but shoved her out the door earlier in the day. She knows Harrow probably won't be, but she feels a lot more equipped to handle that, now.

Tea. Meditation. Providing those things for others.

Harrow isn't much for tea or meditation, but that doesn't mean Gideon can't try to help her ease up. And maybe Gideon has a better understanding of just being nearby without actively doing anything, too.

(The rabbits were extremely helpful.)

Even the gloomy music currently blaring from the speakers doesn't dampen her spirits; she comes in and starts peeling off extraneous robes without waiting to see if Harrow will send her away again. "Hey, Harrow, I got you something."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow, for her part, is in a better mood too. The thestral was interesting, and Ingress was not unbearable. She is still head-to-toe in extraneous robes and fully painted, though; in the last few weeks, she has begun to be a little more relaxed about being bare-faced in private, even when they aren't fooling around, but she's every inch the prim and proper nun today.

Her gloves are off, though. And the music is no longer the same gloomy Mountain Goats music. It's different gloomy Mountain Goats music.

(Wear black when it's light outside
Wear black when there's no light)

"That was unnecessary, Griddle." She looks up from her work with a frown, but it's a habitual frown, not a sinister one.

[we_do_bones]

"You're the one who started giving presents," she points out, shrugging out of her heavy outer robe and wandering over to Harrow while digging in her shirt for two small, thin packages, which she slips onto Harrow's desk.

"Here."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow frowns, a different frown this time. (This one means she doesn't have a good rebuttal for that.) She unwraps the first package and with some coaxing it pops back up into a lily. Harrow places it cautiously beside the bone vase that holds the necromantically preserved original lily and violet.

(But even Harrow's powers have their limits, and they are beginning to grey and crumble on the edges.)

She reaches for the other with another, third kind of frown. "Sentiment. Combined with craftsmanship. Hallmarks of an appropriate tribute."

[we_do_bones]

"I just thought you'd like them."

She reaches to touch the lily, and the two butterflies that flutter around it. A completely different sentiment from the phoenix and pomegranate of the other piece, but she still likes it.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow unfolds the other, and almost-but-doesn't-quite wince against the bright pop of color splashed on the somber tones of her desk.

"I do like them, you ridiculous creature," she says sharply, lifting her fingers to press against the corner of her eyes against suddenly welling tears.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon, less panicky now after these few weeks about Harrow's occasionally teary response to emotions, grins and leans down to nudge her thumb against the corner of Harrow's eye and smudge away some wetness.

"Okay, good."

[we_bring_hell]

"Now both of us have smudgy fingers and can't touch them," she says fretfully. "Really, Griddle."

She belies her words by letting her slim hand wrap around Gideon's.

"You're very brown," she observes.

[we_do_bones]

"Yeah, I guess real sunlight will do that."

And she's not the only one. Even Harrow has a little more color in her face and her occasionally ungloved hands, although most of her is the same milk tea color as always. She folds Harrow's hand in hers and slides a hip up onto Harrow's desk, disturbing her work but mindful of the delicate paper phoenix soaring up from its resurrection. "How's it going in here?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Tolerably," she says, clipped. "Ingress came by -- your idea?"

"She introduced me to a thestral."

[we_do_bones]

"I asked her to make sure nothing killed you while I was gone," she admits. "And nothing did, so good job, Ingress! What's a thestral?"

[we_bring_hell]

"A strange magnificent beast... a bit like a flying skeletal horse," she says. "It was... fearsome." She says this in rapt tones, the way a normal person might say beautiful.