To Grimley

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TennyoCeres84
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To Grimley

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

What was your first meeting with Meris like, after you dodged her volley of fireballs or lightning bolts?
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IamLEAM1983
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As Grimley

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

"Well, I had to spend a while exhausting her, first. A face like mine, asking her to slip inside a caravan wagon? She had every reason to trade spells for punches, believe me! I didn't make for an easy sell like the Gammell fellow, no m'am - it took a little convincing, some dancing, some cavorting, a little Black Speech thrown at me by a pretty white throat oozing skepticism... She brought me to tears, she did - happy ones, mind you - but what started to sell her to the idea that there was really some method to my obvious madness was when I didn't respond in kind...

I tried, I remember exactly what I should've said to counter her salvos; but that was Hogarth screaming from some dark, tiny corner of my mind. The words came, their ridiculous nonsense followed along, and I needed every ounce of self-control I had to avoid collapsing to my caravan's floor, my sides aching and tears smudging my makeup...

Obviously, seeing me leaning against the wall with a fist, sputtering as if my life depending on holding all that merriment back, gave Meris some pause. I managed to focus enough to raise a hand, asking her to stop before I'd soil myself - and squeaked a few words in edgewise, saying we'd better sit down.

I told her that what you'd call changes in management happen every once in a while. Being Horatio Grimley's a tough sell, and the previous one had more or less stopped caring. All he needed was blood and hard cash, all I want is gladness and a sea of grinning faces under my lights, the smells of popcorn and cotton candy as offerings of peace to the mortals we entertain and enlighten, and the wisdom of fools being given a proper place in the annals of the undead.

The Grimleys and all those who came before are gatekeepers to Lilith's most exquisite form of madness, the twisted sights and transports of true seers, those the blind mortals prefer to ignore, to call beasts or monsters. We stand at the root of the idea of the Clown, the waters out of which Harlequin and Pagliacci crawled, cackling at this world's idiosyncrasies or forever sobbing in the face of Humanity's tragedies - well before P.T. Barnum's lackeys would decide to keep his jesters mum, well before the Roaring Twenties' Ringlings would cram these mute fools in tiny cars or keep them to pratfalls and silly laughs. When Athens stood, we wore masks and cavorted for your gods, just as our Berserker cousins drank for Bacchus and dedicated their frenzies to the heavens.

Mine is the madness of History, dear girl - even if what leaves my mouth on a daily basis is nothing historians would care to record. That last stab of irony is precisely what makes my life worth living, as well as Konrad's, Alora's or the good Doctor Dickens', Virgil's or that of all the roustabouts and roughnecks we keep on hand.

I told Meris we remembered everything most others would rather forget, as well as everything other undead foolishly assumed they could forget - or consign to oblivion. I can't quite cast my mind back to the first of us, the details are too hazy - but I remember a sacrifice, a high deed - something that brought the Mother of All Vampires out of hiding. The first Freak had been punished for its vanity, the first of me followed some time afterwards. Lilith changed gibbering madness into something... a tad more constructive. We spidered out, different siren songs pulled us apart - but I stayed true to our first purpose.

Justice isn't necessarily pretty, after all. It's ugly, callous, and sometimes fairly cruel. It usually laughs in the face of dismayed monsters and hypocrites. If we also laugh at the world's beauty, on the other hand, it's only because we've grown intimate with it.

Past all that? Oh, I showed her I could still brew a halfway-decent coffee cup and only had to ask our helping hands to spare enough for a decent dinner for our most esteemed guest. Popcorn and early nineteen-hundreds' corndogs don't really make for a decent meal for anyone with an active lifestyle and a living set of guts...

A bit of prestidigitation, a few japes, one or two pratfalls... I think I tried to get Konrad to spit out a few corkers, but it's fairly obvious the Augur's beloved wife hasn't been seared by the centuries to the point of growing a knack for dark humor."
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