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scold the brat [quest]

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#1Coventina 

scold the brat [quest] Empty Wed Apr 24, 2024 8:45 pm

Coventina
It is not often Coventina makes an appearance in the twilight of an evening, with the threat of the sun still close at hand and the slightly discomforting feeling of being ... seen. It wasn't as if she was a shy individual by any measure, and fortuitously not a prude one (for a carnivorous flower has need of its scent to catch its prey), but there was a level of power that came from stepping out of darkness that she had adapted to an almost melodramatic degree. It had the same edge as a parlor trick, but the pitch of night at your back and the moon to frame your shadowed edges had quite the quirk of destabilizing most people's senses. She knew how to play in that space. She knew how to play people.

Alas, the things we do for Jewels. She made an exception just this once for an import she had ordered recently and needed to cover -- soon.

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#2Coventina 

scold the brat [quest] Empty Wed Apr 24, 2024 8:51 pm

Coventina
The clientele was a different sort for the Countess to take on her own hands, for she rarely had interest in managing the lesser whims of the weak scaring the weak -- a petty thief, was it, that had been a problem for the shop's owner? This seemed more up the alley for a legal guild than a woman from Phantom Lord's guild hall, with the semi-myth status she had as a local. This, too, couldn't be helped. She made due with what she was given on this occasion, and found herself bending under an awning to greet the man of the evening - Mel - with a smile that could not be construed as anything but unsettling.

"I am your ever dutiful assistant this evening, my dear," came a voice that did not sell itself as such, but dripped with such intense honey and threat both he had no choice but to acquiesce and point out the thief in question.

A little boy.

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#3Coventina 

scold the brat [quest] Empty Wed Apr 24, 2024 8:58 pm

Coventina
"Th-that's Jerr," came the voice of the man, timid only by the intensity of the amber gaze that fell upon him in riposte. He warmed up to his own admonishment as the frustration got the better of him and his words came thicker, pressed. "He's an orphan about here and I feel for him, I do, but he's been knicking from my shop and the others around for too long. We've tried talking to him, we've tried compromising even, but there's nothing that'll get him to stop. We're thinking the only thing that'll scare him straight is a Dark mage, and there's where you're coming in, missy -- Madam." Mel cleared his throat, seeming to remember the gait and tone of the woman he had spouted his tirade to.

He'd balk, then, for he met her eyes again; and a hint of red had rimmed the pleasant gold of an expression that was once disinterested and now glowered unhappily. This was to say the least.

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#4Coventina 

scold the brat [quest] Empty Wed Apr 24, 2024 9:04 pm

Coventina
She has no time to impress upon this man how little - small- she thought of him, and just how breakable that made him. How squirming was he, like a bug, and she detested the sort of insect that would click its mandibles in her direction. She has no time for this because Jerr sees them, sees her, and the shopkeep's eyes on him drawing her notably impassioned own scares the boy from his post. He takes off, and it is only a moment - a second, a blink - of her eyes widening before she curses under her breath and grips her fists around magic seals flaring in response to her chagrin.

She is there in that moment and gone the next, a twinge at her jaw and within the arm that propels her through the shadows on the back of her magic craft. She is swept between them, one after another, in successive dashes between these curtains of darkness until she has even a hope of catching up to the little one.

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#5Coventina 

scold the brat [quest] Empty Wed Apr 24, 2024 9:10 pm

Coventina
"No!," comes the shout of a boy who can feel her at his back as each split of light under the drawing shadows of the twilight hour is another rift for her to emerge from: and not even he could outrun his own shadow. He is stumbling, gasping for breath, and the sudden hopelessness of a lady so large - so intense, with that look in her eyes, and the air of dissastisfaction she wore - scared him to the point of tears. He begged for a savior even on the throttle of his legs, running from his eventual fate to the last sputter of his pleas. "No! Please!"

He has no salvation from the twist of his foot unable to keep up with the pace he had set, spiraling off his ankle with a yelp and a desperate flail affront him, squeezing his eyes shut -- only for the striking pale of long arms to recoup around his middle and stop his fall. "Shh."

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#6Coventina 

scold the brat [quest] Empty Wed Apr 24, 2024 9:18 pm

Coventina
He gasped. He blubbered. He couldn't handle more than pawing at the air from the gentle, firm embrace she had locked around him, running her arm up for a similarly light caress through his hair. She held him until his palpitations slowed and his crying hiccuped to a stop, a dawning realization of the lack of harm she intended upon him. She repeated this - "shhhh,"- for the minutes it took to settle the boy, and she'd continue as long as it required to soothe him. "Shhh. It's going to be okay. I'm here." He would begin to believe her.

This would not be a trick from black-heart of Oak. "It's okay. It's okay, my little love. Shhh. Tell Auntie why you take from the shop, yes?" She murmured to him in a half-drag that had him placed atop her lap, thumbing his hair through the last of his blubbering. "I - I -- I have f-friends, m-ma'am, and they ... they r-rely on me, they do, a-an' I --" She shakes her head, brushing a teardrop away with a stray finger.

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#7Coventina 

scold the brat [quest] Empty Wed Apr 24, 2024 9:24 pm

Coventina
"That won't do," she spoke low, soft, and she shifted to move a hand unseen through the folds of the darkness that seemed to settle around her alone -- and it reappeared with a small bag, dangling the jingled promise of Jewels over his lap before depositing it to his whims. "I'll make a deal with you, sweet one. If you avoid stealing from the shops around here anymore," a particular distinction, and one she made for a sole reason: they would not stop at calling her alone if she didn't step in, and she had no interest in another Dark mage taking her place on this venture. "I'll have the locals leave you and yours alone, and you may then always come to me for help if anyone was to bother you. Does this sound fair?"

She tapped the side of his cheek, her smile melting earnest and unrestrained. It didn't quite reach her eyes - nothing did anymore, it seems - but it lit her expression in a way it had never been for another. Her eyes went warmed: honeyed.

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#8Coventina 

scold the brat [quest] Empty Wed Apr 24, 2024 9:30 pm

Coventina
Jerr was beside himself and eager to scuttle off with his prize that way only children could be; grateful, yes, but forever dedicated to their personal agendas. A strange lady, off-putting in both decorum and the way she held herself, had softened to him to the point of offering both money and protection? He had no leg to stand on - quite literally, as she held him in this comforting but disquieting position - and no reason to decline, even if it meant going out of his way further in the future. That didn't mean as much when he had a settlement on her part - this might not be many jewels to a well-off adult, but a gang of orphans could subsist on pennies alone. Coventina knew this well.

"O ... okay, miss," he mumbled, his voice dry and raw from the tears. He was embarrassed, now, and thankful, two emotions young boys historically struggled with. He clutched the bag tighter, almost worried she'd take it back and dismiss this whole scene as a prank or elaborate torture. She only returned this concern with that same smile.

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#9Coventina 

scold the brat [quest] Empty Wed Apr 24, 2024 9:37 pm

Coventina
"Very well. Go on, now. Your little friends are waiting for you, aren't they? You'll need to recount them your spoils," a finger lifted to her lips, the universal sign for 'quiet.' "And we won't need to tell them about all this, will we?" Her head tilted in that soft expression, spooling down a line of raven black hair as if it could hide the kindness in her eyes. The boy, Jerr, met the scene with eternal confusion, but the warmth he felt in his chest won out as he untangled from her grasp. He stood there, stalling with his foot tapping the ground and the Jewels clutched between his little fingers -- and he thought better of hugging her, shied away from the idea, and thanked her again before running out. "Th... uhm, thanks. ... Auntie!"

As he turned the corner, revitalized and salvaged from the shopkeep's intent, Coventina would lift herself from the grime of the alley to dust her pretty silks clean and raise her head to the sky. There was a transition, a ripple effect. Each inch her body moved seemed to morph it; her face hardening to a point and a deep, dark, red smolder in the sharp hawk of her eyes. It pierced at the end of its trail, whipping back from where she came -- and that smile, it sunk and it grew, glinting beneath the fully setting sun.

Well, they would no longer have a complaint of the little thief boy.

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