Private Tales Mending Flames

A private roleplay only for those invited by the first writer
Miriel kept glancing over her shoulder as she walked; part of her expected the girl to run away or change her mind. She had given her some of the worst jobs and it was usually at that moment people decided the work life wasn't for them. But she seemed happy enough. She kept watching however when they got in the house, sensed the slight tensing of her form and the apprehension in her eyes. Again, the worry for this girl deepened: something traumatic had definitely happened in her past.

What she wasn't expecting was the absolutely horrifying suggestion she would put the girl in a cage. Miri turned so she was facing the girl, hiding her own thoughts on the matter to give the girl a smile instead and shake her head.

"No Mara, there are no cages here. You can come and go as you please but this is your space," the elf moved to the window which overlooked the fields out back and opened it to let in the fresh air. Then she sat on the small little window seat. "Mara what happened? These men... what did they do to you?" Her voice was gentle, her face open. It was clear she wanted to help in anyway she could.
 
She almost could not believe that it was so. The only person that had treated her with anything like respect before had been Valthar, and that seemed such a long time ago. "Who, the chasers?"

Miriel's question seemed simply enough, but there had been so many troubles in Mara's short life. She decided she couldn't mean the chaser's, because they had never used a cage on her, or at least not yet. She decided she must be referring to the Bad Place, the place that another had called a lab. The word meant nothing to her.

"They tried to teach Mara," she replied simply. And they had, but there was nothing simple about it. "They used magic on me, and then made me fighting things. They tried to teach me how to fight things, but Mara is not a good fighter."

She shivered at some of those memories. "They used to hurt me when I did not do what they wanted to. Mara sometimes got hit with sticks, sometimes with big sharp metals. Only if she did not learn fast enough." She looked up at Miriel with a bright smile, but it seemed a bit brittle. There were certain truths that were buried uncomfortably close to the beatings and the humiliation she had endured, although it was hard to say if she had been humiliated when she seemed to have no sense of self, no ego to beat down. "They called me a defective weapon, and tried to kill Mara," she added.
 
A rage Miriel had not felt for a very long time unfurled in her. She could not abide people who tortured others: it was cowardice in her mind and cowardice was an execution-able offence where she was from. It was only with that schooled training she was able to keep any sign of such anger off her face - it would do no good for the girl to see her so.

"Well, they're not going to hurt you here," Miriel stood up from her seat and gently took the girls hands in her own and gave them a squeeze. "I promise you Mara, nobody will raise a hand to you here. This can be your home if you would like it to be. I'll teach you all I can and if those men come here then they will regret doing so." Because they would. Miriel only fought when she needed to but she had been trained since birth to be a weapon and she had over 200 years of it under her belt. That was before she even stooped to melting their weapons as they still held them.

"I'm going to go cook some food, I ran a bath for you next door so you could freshen up - are you ok with that?" the elf raised a slight eyebrow. She wondered if the girl even knew what a bath was. If she had been on the run since she had escaped this place which was what it sounded like, she probably just threw her head under some water and carried on: Miriel was the same when she travelled.
 
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The elf did not understand, of course.

The ones that had done all those awful things to her - at least the ones that had been directly involved in it - would never do it to her again. They would never do it to anyone again; they had got what they had deserved. The punishment was one of the nightmares that haunted the redhead every night. She could still hear their screams, and could still taste the blood in her mouth.

"What is home?" It was a simple question, and quickly skipped over. She knew what a bath was, although probably not in the style that Miriel meant it. For her, it had entailed finding a stream or a river, pond or a lake, and diving in, clothes and all. There was little to be excited about by a bath. "Mara is hungry, though," she said. She then jumped up with a fist in the air (hitting the ceiling). "Mara will go take bath and then I will go hunt some food down for Miriel-lady to cook!'

Without waiting for a reply, the girl took off at a run, pelting through the door and hallway with remarkable speed. As in the past, she simply hit the water steaming in a tub without a second thought, clothes on and everything. A split moment later, and she yelped at finding out that the water was hot, not cold, and smelled faintly of something mildly pleasant.

There wasn't much noise after. Maranae was discovering the joy of soaking in pleasantly warm water for the first time.

--

When Maranae came back downstairs from her bath, it was in clothes and hair still dripping wet. She felt looser and more relaxed than she had in a long while, and the scent of something cooking filled the entire house. It had been that scent that had drawn her out of the water, markedly cleaner than she had went in.

She followed her nose to where the food was being prepared.
 
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Mirel had been about to reply to her question when Mara leapt into the air. The elf winced as she touched the ceiling, half expecting it to have a hole in it when she whizzed off and was amazed to find that it didn't. For a moment she stood there, listening, and then began to laugh to herself when she heard the yelp from the bathroom. Shaking her head she went downstairs to begin cooking. Of course, she wasn't entirely sure how the girl liked her meat cooked but she had a feeling it was going to be closer to bleeding than well done - especially based on her earlier comment.

By the time the girl came down the stew was bubbling nicely, Miriel had only just scraped the meat into the pan. Beef didn't take long if it was only being cooked to rare. She stirred it slowly, glancing over at Mara over her shoulder with a twitch of her lips.

"Do you feel a little better now?"
 
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She nodded her head emphatically, which served to splash water across the room. A small puddle had formed at her bare feet, water running down her legs. The clothing was, unsurprisingly, the same clothes she had been in when she arrived.

Only arguably cleaner, possibly better smelling, and definitively wetter.

Her stomach rumbled loudly as she looked at what Miriel was preparing. The stew held little interest to her, but beef certainly did. She noted that the elfin lady was doing whatever every other person she had ever met did with food, putting heat on it and changing it in some subtle way that Mara, for the most part, did not like. Despite her own previous hesitation, she got closer to the food that was cooking, delicately sniffing the air in the same manner as a dog would.

"I have never seen hot water before," she said suddenly. "It felt...it felt..." she seemed to struggle to find words to express exactly how it felt, and gave up. "I could stay in all day, but water got cold!"

She approached the stewpot cautiously. Such a medley of scents in that thing, but the one that stood out the most was meat. She could see bits and pieces of other things in it, and looked to Miriel questioningly.
 
Miriel's eyes ran down the girls body to the pooling water at her feet and her lips twitched a little as she tried to hide a smile. Casually, she threw her a towel from the cupboard which she kept downstairs mainly to dry off horses from the rain but she didn't think the girl would care in the slightest.

"Usually when you have a bath in warm water you take off your clothes and then you put on new ones - I've left some in your room so you have something to slightly better fitting to wear tomorrow. We can go find you some other pieces in town on Sunday," her eyes returned to the stew as she added in a few more ingredients. The elf kept her posture relaxed as she sensed the girl approaching, glancing at her out the corner of her eye as she followed her nose to the source of the food.

"It's a stew," Miriel moved slightly so she could see the other things such as potatoes, carrots and mushrooms which she had been chopping up and were now floating in the warm broth. "I wasn't sure what you liked but I remember you said you prefer it still bleeding so," Miri grabbed a spoon and filled a bowl for her, the meat had barely cooked so it still looked raw. The point of adding it to the stew was so that the blood flavoured the rest of the broth so even if there were vegetables in it they all tasted of meat. "Let me know what you think."
 
The elf clearly did not realize just how acute Mara's senses were. She could smell things better than a bloodhound could, and her sense of taste and sight were not far removed from that extreme.

She took an offered bowl with mixed feelings about its contents, and went to one of the walls to sit down with her back against it. She stared at the brown substance with bits of things floating in it. She tentatively reached into the bowl with her fingers, ignoring the heat, and plucked a piece of not-meat from the stew. She popped it in her mouth, and then made a face every mother in the world knew very, very well.

She spit the potato out, and scrubbed at her mouth before selecting something that looked more like meat - it was - that she chomped on tentatively at first, and then chortled over before digging around in the bowl looking for other pieces that looked like that one but not like the potato.
 
Miriel smothered a laugh but left the girl to it, letting her own food cook a little longer before spooning herself a bowl out. She glanced at the table and then shrugged and joined the girl on the floor. It was odd having someone in her home but in the nice way. She had been on her own for such a long time, and then Valthar had stayed a while and he had helped fill her home with laughter. When he had gone it made made it feel all the more quiet around here. Perhaps she was getting old.

"Do you have any questions for me Mara?" Miriel cleared away their bowls when they were both done and then sat back down on the floor and passed the girl a bowl of chocolate cake. "I realise I've asked a lot about you today but if you want to know anything I will attempt to answer," Miri licked the chocolate icing from her spoon after taking a bite.
 
She did not do more than pick at the sweet; it was a foreign thing to her. Although she looked human, she was most assuredly not. Buried within her being was a human soul, but the things that had been done to her had made her anything but.

"Questions?" She looked confused by the question itself. There had been no reason for her to question anything in her life, except for the only one that mattered to her. "I only want to know what Mara is," she continued slowly. She seemed. "Who am I?" The question was surprisingly lucid, almost completely out of character.
 
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Miriel wanted to know the answer to that question too. She quietly ate the chocolate as she thought how best to answer and indeed thought over what she had seen as well. Over the day she had caught little pieces of the girl that were not entirely human, but that could mean anything. There were a miriad of different species who could change their form. Though, she had to admit, it was very rare to see one who could take aspects of different animals and replace one part of her body with them. The only shapeshifters she had ever met able to do such things were old and had trained a lifetime - Mara seemed to be able to do it without thinking.

"You are Mara," Miriel was content to answer the who question. "Mara is whoever you want to be. When it comes to what... I thought you were a shapeshifter but I am not so sure. Do you remember anything from before the lab?"
 
"Shapeshifter? To become another thing...I can do this, but do not know how," she conceded. It was a thing that happened when she was truly hungry, or else greatly stressed or under the thrall of strong emotion. Every time it happened, then there would be bloodshed soon to follow.

That part of her terrified Maranae. It was wild and unchained, a base beast that she had little control over despite her every effort.

"Mara only remembers little things," she said. A shapeless face smiling down on her, a sense of comfort and of warmth and belonging. A handful of esoteric ideas that the girl did not have the vocabulary to express. "Bad people...they..."

It was no use trying. She did not have the words to describe anything beyond simple concepts.
 
Miriel finished up her own chocolate cake and then put the bowl on the floor. Well if she didn't remember anything nor have any clues herself, Miri would make enquiries on her behalf. It would have to be quietly and carefully but she knew the right people and the people who wouldn't talk or ask further questions.

"We'll figure it out together Mara," Miriel smiled at the girl, crossing her legs over. "I know a few people in Elbion who might have an idea of what you are, but we can see what we can figure out on our own for now."
 
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