#nowhere callowey

(In which Nowhere Callowey gets back to work.)

"Oh enough of this." Nowhere waved off a few attendants, the women skittering off like mice, fearful of a wrath that would never come. Lady Mistwinter...she snorted, ladyship for a crimelord. One country's nobles kept another's criminal elements in line. Her husband was as good a man as they came- in her opinion -and he meant well, but why they insisted on this foolishness, the attendants the serving... It felt wrong. She been capable of dressing herself for nearly a century now, nothing changed with title. She winced as she pulled a dress pin from her wrist, folding and tucking the sleeve before carefully pulling the coat off, setting it aside on a dress form.

A crimelord... A broker... When had she done anything worth those titles? She was either lounging in the comfort of her manor in another country or playing courtier to the king in her own. She'd lost touch, lost her edge, her daughter ran The Family, her son hunted monsters, her entire future was retirement.

An undying woman aged out of her only career...

She eyed herself in the mirror, her mismatched eyes seemed to laugh at her, her curves had softened from time at rest, her figure was more matronly, her face seemed... Kinder. It was a shock even those servants feared her wrath, with her looking like a fattening aunt.

With the state of the kingdom of Thesta she had neglected many duties, many allies, many friendships. Her goals of a cut or so of every country, a branch of her Family tree in every kingship had gone on the backburner over insane dragons and mad kings. With that threat out of her hands, she felt lost and idle and unneeded. Where she was once a necessary evil she was now the opposite, she wasn't even evil.

Her pondering in the mirror lost her focus, the sound of footsteps behind her barely audible and she assumed it another servant- a sigh crossed her lips, the tiefling cocking her hip and holding out the pin.

Nowhere Callowey had softer edges lately, the keen dagger eyes and sharp tongue had eased back to a more patient, wiser woman. She had seen her friends wed and retired and her estranged family knit back together in a way she'd never imagined.

The Seeker's Respite was full of dust and as she reopened the tavern, fence, and inn, she found herself a little wiser than before. Perched at her own bar, a new streak of sliver-white curls sprung from her brow and spiraling into the rest of the inky blackness of her hair.

Eyrine Mistwinter was seven, playing on the rolling lawn of the Mistwinter estate and chasing butterflies. She had her mother's eyes, or what had once been her eyes before the touch of undeath, pools of molten gold spilled into a small cheerful face. A tiefling's tail flicking out behind her as she bounded through neatly hewn grass. Straight, silky hair fell about her shoulders, her father's hair, his elven nose, the sharp pointed ears... If it wasn't for the eyes and the tail, no one would ever see Nowhere Callowey in her smiling little daughter. The information broker hoped that no one would.

The sound of crying broke the broker's thoughts as she rose from her chair, beneath an awning that protected her from the searing sun. She rushed out towards her fallen child, the butterfly crushed beneath a fallen hand. The sun ached on her flesh but she knelt anyway, lifting the little girl to her feet and brushing the tears from her wide eyes.

"Hush now it was just a tumble. Are you hurt...?" Eyrine's response was only more unintelligible sobbing, and a pudgy child's finger pointing at the remains of the butterfly, smashed beyond life. The traces of its fair powdery wings stained her daughter's hand and so briefly, her mind flashed with the first kiss of blood she'd ever felt. She pulled her daughter to her and carried her back beneath the shade of the awning, cradling her arms kissing her forehead until she calmed.

"Hush now Rin. It did not suffer, little one. Easy." those wide wide eyes blinked up at her, sniffling like she might burst at any second.

"Why do things die..." children, she had learned, asked the most difficult questions.

She thought of the child's father, away attending their affairs back home in Storn. He was better at this, however brief he had been the one with the doting parents once upon a time. He sang the lullabies and answered 'why is the sky blue' far better than she did, she was always honest to the core, never able to lie to the reflection of her own eyes.

"No one truly knows why, just that things cannot exist in this world forever. They live their fullest life and when the time comes, they die." she wiped the tears from the child's face, "Do not mourn the dead Rin. They have lived their lives, and you must always live yours, without regret."

"But I killed it mama..." the way she clipped her words, the sharp inhales between them, another sobbing fit on the verge of taking her. Nowhere shooshed and stroked her hair, holding her close and ignoring the way it made the minor burns on her flesh twinge.

"Sometimes, little one, life and death need a little help. We become their tools, extensions of their power... Sometimes we have beautiful little girls," she pressed her lips to her daughter's warm hair, "and sometimes we fall on butterflies. I promise little one, it did not suffer, and it is in a better place- because of you."

It was not long before the child was laughing and playing again, picking flowers for her father's return later in the day- even if they were just weeds poking through the earth at the edge of the treeline. Never in her life had Nowhere felt something so strong as the desire to protect her child from the life she herself had led. So she smiled and said the bouquet of long grasses and weedy wildflowers was pretty and helped her find a vase.

Nowhere watched Tath as he sifted through books and replaced them on the shelves of her study. Her life was in complete shambles and here he was trying to put the pieces back together, again. She righted her chair at the desk and sat down, her fingers shaking as she drew out a scroll of telescription, and a simple quill. As she wrote she tried to steady her hand, to not let her own fear show too greatly on the page.

Eleneril,

I thought us friends once, still in fact, and chose so far never to call upon the favor I claimed from you for my assistance so many years ago. Unfortunately something- (she scratches through this word and pens beside it) - someone dear to me is missing and possibly in danger. There are not many I can trust in this… Find me in my tavern, The Seeker’s Respite, in the town of Dunmire. Come alone, and come quickly.

- N. Callowey.

“There’s one thing this city’s taught me… It’s that you can put a price on anything…” Nowhere crossed her arms. “So what’s your price, then…”

Nowhere had suffered a great loss. Her best agent carried away from her to a Circle controlled city and her heart was heavy with regret. The fault was her own, she had pushed Aelynth far too far against her nature, yet she had never lost a member of her family.

She had closed the tavern for the day, needing to repair damages from a prior night’s business. Several tables had been broken and they had lost a window in a scuffle caused by heavy drink. Nowhere was not a weak woman, she rarely felt things like regret or loss so profoundly, yet her she was, regretfully mourning the defection of her closest friend. Perhaps joining the Circle would break her. As she overlooked the tavern proper from the second floor she surveyed the damage to both her building and her organization. One skilled spy and saboteur lost to Daigo Belfir, and the other content to play a lute in her tavern, it seemed she would have to get her hands on new agents, form new alliances. Rebuilding an empire was stressful enough the first time, when she was in Storn. Now it seemed impossible, not knowing who to trust, the complicated nature of Regina Wormdrake and her counter Donatello… It was enough to make her head hurt.

She had sent letters out by clockwork raven to the other members of the circle a week prior, introducing herself and inviting them for a drink at her tavern for introductions. Daigo been the first to come, her Flametongue whiskey was to his taste and with it he took one of her closest friends. Now she waited, perhaps to see what the other members would take from her…