#markedmanmoody

( @markedmanmoody )

Watching the paranoia grow in an environment that fostered nothing but would have been worse if she were not already accustomed to the feeling. Surviving a war had a deadening affect on the feeling of impending disaster. With the Nox Division incoming, and their silver-eyed woman identified, Alice felt calmer now than she remembered feeling in months. She had never fallen prey to the wild speculations about the ghost. Once you held a newly-murdered woman’s body in your arms and used her as a gruesome mannequin to stage your own suicide, you learned to turn your panic into something more productive.

Knowing that their shy spy was her cousin warmed her, but only to an extent. Alice did not know her cousin very well, whatever familiarity the two women adopted now.

It was that doubtful judgment that drove Alice to search out a more skeptical mind than hers. Moody had been her partner and sounding board for too long for her to not solicit his opinions now. Up until recently, their opinions regarding Port Montrose and its inhabitants had been shared--the Mud Club, Vivienne, and the Nox Division had changed too much, and Alice could not be sure what Moody thought any longer.

She found him making rounds, pretending as always that he was not watching his neighbors as closely as he was looking for intruders. Out of earshot of the rest and not close enough to the wards to attract attention if a certain silver-eyed woman were nearby, Alice fell into step beside him. The sound of the waves was overpowering for the first few moments, but proximity acclimated her ears. It would drown out any voice spoken in the right tone. She would have been surprised if Alastor had not chosen this route for that exact purpose. It seemed more prediction than coincidence that she’d found him here. He knew the risks she’d taken finding Arabella.

And there were nights the waters stilled, the fog began to fade, and the moon came out to sing its tune to the sea. Mary raised her head to meet its light, sighed as it kneaded the toughness from her flesh, as it dragged the blood through her veins. Saltwater veins, she had. They all had. And all water must be returned to the sea.

It had been cold in the water, colder than she had predicted. But she had dipped herself in from head to toe once, twice, and the air was warm against her skin when she emerged. And now Mary sat content on the beach, clothes clinging to her frame, warmer still though her skin refused to show it. A hand drew lazy patterns in the sand.

And from a bottle of amnesia slid out syrup for her throat, and when she swallowed it felt like she had the sun trapped in her belly, a fire trapped in her heart. She wondered what it might be like to have those things, have them always, when she woke up and when she went to sleep, when she ate and drank, when she ran. She wondered what it might be like to have those things every hour of the day, every day of the year, without having to steal them from shiny glass bottles.