To Barney
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TennyoCeres84
- Site Admin
- Posts: 2931
- Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:59 am
To Barney
How did you and Sophia meet?
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IamLEAM1983
- Site Admin
- Posts: 3709
- Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
- Location: Quebec, Canada
As Barney
"I was just out of my teens, in 1863, and I was shacked with Jenny O'Glennan, from Mertown. Mom and Dad were having another fit of bad managerial decisions as a family unit, so they couldn't feed me properly. Mertown did as it's always done and kind of took me in as a whole. I think I'd spent the week before visiting Centennial Park just - caterwauling like a fucking idiot about how everything was unfair and it'd never get better for me and, well, what have you. I was being a teenager, basically. Nothing too dramatic, but teen angst hurts when there's nobody else around to understand you.
Well, they all understood me - I mean, a teen's a fucking teen - but try telling that to a pubescent fish-man with a head fulla hormones and a heart full of girls he'd never get to talk to.
So, seeing that, Jenny decides that's it; I'm due for a harsh introduction to life outside of Mertown. Harsh, of course, means she'd skip traumatizing mundanes and instead traumatize me by introducing me to Sophia. A lot of Norway natives in 'Town tended to confuse Sophia for some kind of Huldra-like entity, so I'd heard she was one right ornery woman. Cross my tree and fucking die, more or less.
Jenny and I head up to the park, I'm dressed in the best Veil she'd managed to purchase from the local witches, and I really don't wanna be here. I'm used to strict diciplinarians, Mertown's locals having a lot of that stolid Scots blood in 'em; so I'm conjuring all sorts of stupid notions about Sophia being this beak-nosed stickler with a dry branch for a ruler who'd spend the entire day swatting the park's visitors into behaving - and my Veil's making me look like a dumpy kid who looks like he's been forgotten in a coal cellar for a couple nights after being overfed for a few years. I looked, well - I looked dumb. Eyes set too close together, one awful pug nose, a little shock of unruly red hair; and don't forget it's all a Veil. There's a timer on that, and we already wasted two hours walking to the Tree, all the way from Mertown...
At first, Jenny figures I'd like to play with the other kids. Two things: one, I'm way past that. I'm too busy denying that I'm scoping out the girls to admit it, but I am. Two: my playtime usually consisted of sitting away from the other kids, looking miserable. When it wasn't that, I was getting beat up. When I wasn't getting beat up, I was beating 'em back. I've never played well, period. With that in mind, I give the Tree one good look and decide I'd be better off just getting it over with. Once I spot Sophia, I pretty much just cannonball for her, give one of her sleeves a tug and say hi.
Then, well - I froze. I figured, either the Veil works and she goes all nice or Math Teacher from Hell-ish, if the crones from the wharves turned out to be right; or these biddies' El Cheapo take on personal concealment falls apart under the experienced gaze of a lifelong observer of the supernatural, and she more or less freaks out. I've always known I shouldn't exist, that people like me are what happens when folks from the Deep get to being major disappointments to the King. I always figured I'd die impaled on some righteously scared somebody's implement of death or whatever. Or, well, again - that's how it used to go for me.
The weirdest thing happened.
She didn't look scared or disgusted or anything. She looked like she could see through that cheesecloth-worthy Veil, and I could see surprise in her eyes, but she didn't let disgust take her over - maybe figuring I'd come with some kind of adult. I saw her looking in Jenny's direction and putting two and two together; then that surprise faded. She just looked nice, now.
We talked. It'd be the first of our talks, and it wasn't really anything deep. It was awkward for both of us, so we stuck to the weather and the city's general happenings and if I was happy in Mertown or if I thought the park looked nice. I think I only needed, what, two, three visits? Past that, some kind of cork just blew out in my chest. I laid all my frustrations out, maybe less than a month after that first meeting.
Again, she surprised me. She told me she understood why I needed to vent, because nobody in Mertown vented. It just wasn't done. If you're a Mac Loch or you lived with 'em, you learned to stay tight-lipped on your problems or your frustrations. You pushed through and didn't bother anyone with the icky stuff. Me finding someone to talk to was good, but the Mac Loch were also right, she said. I needed to push through. I needed to stop saying me not having a legitimate job wasn't fair, and I needed to own all that I could do, all that I could be.
Doesn't look like much, I know, but she started what I'd become. I'm the guy you don't say no to, now. If I have questions, I'll want answers - and screw anyone who tells me off because I'm not normal or because it's not my business. I was raised around pig-headed motherfuckers who never backed down once they had something gnawing at them, and I've made a tool out of that stubborn streak.
The end result is Sophia's pretty much the last person to ever see me cry for anything that wasn't severe physical pain. Sarvin's ancestors might've figured plug-ugly bastards like me were fit for latrines or underwater trash heaps, but I'm worth more than that. I have to claw my way through red tape or my clients' lies or omissions, sometimes, just to prove it, or dare a pair of fists with a badge into kissing my ass.
One of the local Finman's assistants strutted up to my office, once, wanting to ask me to work for Sarvin's branch of the Commission on a case. She handed me my fattest retainer ever - and the promise of official reparations. In Reverse Political Bullshit, that meant Sarvin would apologize for something he'd had no part in, assuming I was still whining about my existence. He'd do nothing concrete, though, because he couldn't. Can't go back on something so old it probably predates the freaking Minoans...
I told her to fuck off. My ego doesn't need stroking. My belly needs food and my wallet needs cash - my ego's nobody's business."
Well, they all understood me - I mean, a teen's a fucking teen - but try telling that to a pubescent fish-man with a head fulla hormones and a heart full of girls he'd never get to talk to.
So, seeing that, Jenny decides that's it; I'm due for a harsh introduction to life outside of Mertown. Harsh, of course, means she'd skip traumatizing mundanes and instead traumatize me by introducing me to Sophia. A lot of Norway natives in 'Town tended to confuse Sophia for some kind of Huldra-like entity, so I'd heard she was one right ornery woman. Cross my tree and fucking die, more or less.
Jenny and I head up to the park, I'm dressed in the best Veil she'd managed to purchase from the local witches, and I really don't wanna be here. I'm used to strict diciplinarians, Mertown's locals having a lot of that stolid Scots blood in 'em; so I'm conjuring all sorts of stupid notions about Sophia being this beak-nosed stickler with a dry branch for a ruler who'd spend the entire day swatting the park's visitors into behaving - and my Veil's making me look like a dumpy kid who looks like he's been forgotten in a coal cellar for a couple nights after being overfed for a few years. I looked, well - I looked dumb. Eyes set too close together, one awful pug nose, a little shock of unruly red hair; and don't forget it's all a Veil. There's a timer on that, and we already wasted two hours walking to the Tree, all the way from Mertown...
At first, Jenny figures I'd like to play with the other kids. Two things: one, I'm way past that. I'm too busy denying that I'm scoping out the girls to admit it, but I am. Two: my playtime usually consisted of sitting away from the other kids, looking miserable. When it wasn't that, I was getting beat up. When I wasn't getting beat up, I was beating 'em back. I've never played well, period. With that in mind, I give the Tree one good look and decide I'd be better off just getting it over with. Once I spot Sophia, I pretty much just cannonball for her, give one of her sleeves a tug and say hi.
Then, well - I froze. I figured, either the Veil works and she goes all nice or Math Teacher from Hell-ish, if the crones from the wharves turned out to be right; or these biddies' El Cheapo take on personal concealment falls apart under the experienced gaze of a lifelong observer of the supernatural, and she more or less freaks out. I've always known I shouldn't exist, that people like me are what happens when folks from the Deep get to being major disappointments to the King. I always figured I'd die impaled on some righteously scared somebody's implement of death or whatever. Or, well, again - that's how it used to go for me.
The weirdest thing happened.
She didn't look scared or disgusted or anything. She looked like she could see through that cheesecloth-worthy Veil, and I could see surprise in her eyes, but she didn't let disgust take her over - maybe figuring I'd come with some kind of adult. I saw her looking in Jenny's direction and putting two and two together; then that surprise faded. She just looked nice, now.
We talked. It'd be the first of our talks, and it wasn't really anything deep. It was awkward for both of us, so we stuck to the weather and the city's general happenings and if I was happy in Mertown or if I thought the park looked nice. I think I only needed, what, two, three visits? Past that, some kind of cork just blew out in my chest. I laid all my frustrations out, maybe less than a month after that first meeting.
Again, she surprised me. She told me she understood why I needed to vent, because nobody in Mertown vented. It just wasn't done. If you're a Mac Loch or you lived with 'em, you learned to stay tight-lipped on your problems or your frustrations. You pushed through and didn't bother anyone with the icky stuff. Me finding someone to talk to was good, but the Mac Loch were also right, she said. I needed to push through. I needed to stop saying me not having a legitimate job wasn't fair, and I needed to own all that I could do, all that I could be.
Doesn't look like much, I know, but she started what I'd become. I'm the guy you don't say no to, now. If I have questions, I'll want answers - and screw anyone who tells me off because I'm not normal or because it's not my business. I was raised around pig-headed motherfuckers who never backed down once they had something gnawing at them, and I've made a tool out of that stubborn streak.
The end result is Sophia's pretty much the last person to ever see me cry for anything that wasn't severe physical pain. Sarvin's ancestors might've figured plug-ugly bastards like me were fit for latrines or underwater trash heaps, but I'm worth more than that. I have to claw my way through red tape or my clients' lies or omissions, sometimes, just to prove it, or dare a pair of fists with a badge into kissing my ass.
One of the local Finman's assistants strutted up to my office, once, wanting to ask me to work for Sarvin's branch of the Commission on a case. She handed me my fattest retainer ever - and the promise of official reparations. In Reverse Political Bullshit, that meant Sarvin would apologize for something he'd had no part in, assuming I was still whining about my existence. He'd do nothing concrete, though, because he couldn't. Can't go back on something so old it probably predates the freaking Minoans...
I told her to fuck off. My ego doesn't need stroking. My belly needs food and my wallet needs cash - my ego's nobody's business."