eachdraidh | video. locked to unseelie.

An act of kindness?

[The Brucolac has clearly just received bad news. He looks positively poisonous, wide streaks of silver whorling over his skin. His jaw is stiff with it, even his hair frosted over with strange metal. His right eye burns gold still.]

I am sick to shit of this half-cocked magic. [He shudders—would gesture, but he doesn't want to show off how badly his left arm is faring under the encroaching silver. It hurts to raise it to shoulderheight; above is impossible.] An act of kindness is no godsdamn cure, to be bottled and applied at will!

What is an act of kindness? Is it kind to tax a people, that a city may grow? Is it kind to lie in order to protect the honest? Is it kind to enforce a system of law and punishment?

By the gods, [he drops back, shaking his head, looking weary,] there is no hope for us.

Before anyone tells me to just do something nice, [pitching his voice mockingly higher] I've given my scribe a longer lunch break. [It is midnight.]

And apart from a marked decrease in efficency, fuck all has happened.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[The Brucolac receives that suggestion with an indelicate snort.]

Ahhh, shit off. I've had others try to convince me that will work.

[His profanity is of the warm kind, rather than the vitriolic.

Speaking of kindness to fellow undead, he squints thoughtfully at Simon, his bloodless face and strange eyes. Rubs at his own jaw.]

Kindness is too wide and unwieldy a concept to pass such swift judgement on. Generosity, unwarranted goodness, for want of a better word...ah, hell do I know.

[He shrugs, moves on.]

You're ab-dead, are you?

Maybe it would? [There's that ghost of a smile again.] I guess someone'd have to be pretty desperate to go that far, and by then they probably wouldn't be able to even walk. [He'd been unable to move his arm before he'd been cured,

He notices the narrowed eyes, which cause his brows to lift, and recognizes the dismissal as a change of subject. That's ok, he's not even really sure about all this himself anyway.

His head tilts at the question.] Yeah? I mean, I'm undead. [He'd rather not use the z-word.] Ab-dead, is what what they call it in your world?

Aye, it's clearer. Everybody's undead, when you think about it.

[He relaxes a little, clearly pleased to be in the company (even virtual) of another moving corpse. His tongue snakes out; long, thin and forked, it's totally unsilvered, and looks uncomfortably visceral next to the metallic sheen streaking his face.]

Things like us, we aren't supposed to get sick. Disorientating. —You're not kin, are you? Vampir?

I s'pose that's true. The other words they had for us were less kind.

[Simon's reaction isn't disgust, but more like intrigue, or interest. He understands, it's liberating to be among one's own kind, to share in the mutual acceptance of that and to not have to hide anything.]

Yeah, I thought so, too. I'm not s'pose to feel pain either, but nearly turnin' to silver wasn't pleasant. [A beat., and he shifts.] No, I'm-- a zombie. [He cringes inwardly, if only because of the negative connotations attached to the word in his world, but he figures maybe people here will recognize it.

But because zombies were usually mindless creatures who ate brains, he has to add, by way of further explanation:] In my world, after we rose, and after they'd already killed some of us, the living came up with this drug to give us our minds back. It's about the only good thing they did for us, after that they sent us home and expected us to put on makeup to hide our pale skin and eyes, and to pretend like nothin' had changed, that we were the same as we used to be when we were alive. [And that wasn't even the worst of it, really.

This is the first time he's told the story to anyone he's met here. Even if they're not exactly the same, there's a level of comfort he feels with fellow undead that isn't there with the living.]

It's good to meet someone else like me here, thought Kieren and I might've been the only ones.

[The Brucolac hisses, tongue rippling like a snake's, his eyes lighting up.]

Yes, yes, I remember—Kieren, the redhaired young one? Ah, he spoke to me years ago now, he told me the same story...

I'd forgotten it. [He shakes his head as if amazed by himself.] Fuck me. Zombies, you see, in my world, ahhh. They were...shit, they were cheap labour. The living would be fed through factories and come out—

It thrilled me, when I first heard about your world. Thinking, speaking, articulate, angry zombies—undead, I mean. [His mouth is racing ahead of himself, but he tries to notice and respect Simon's discomfort around the word.] It gave me a great deal of hope. I'm surprised I forgot it.

Ah, fuck it, I'm getting maudlin. [He waves a hand.] Mmn. You're entirely wrong to suppose there are only living around here. Great clans of vampir up north, natives, but they...likely wouldn't consider you too close to them. The dead can be territorial. Then there are wandering spirits, shapechangers, walking corpses...more that can be dreamt of.

[Ah, right, Kieren's been here such a long time. Simon's small smile fades at the mention of how zombies-- how his kind of undead are treated in this other world. And it's not so terribly far off from his own, either, but it sounds so much worse.]

Where I'm from they tried to use us as slave labour, too, claimed we had to "give back" to society, we didn't get a say in it. [He can't keep the bitterness out of his voice, and worse still, he doesn't know all that is over and he won't be finding out for a while.

He appreciates the respect, he really does.] My world's got a ways to go yet. What about yours? If mine gave you hope, then I take it those factories are still around?

I figured there might've been more natives, since Kieren and I went to Quendi, too, but all the same it's good to meet other Shardbearers like us. Seems lots of the natives don't like us very much, just not undead, but all of us. [Still, he does want to see or meet these others some day, it's a wondrous sort of thing.]

video. locked to unseelie.

video;

video;

video;

video;

video;

video;