#suantrai

...Would you be surprised to hear that it wasn't the Unfolding?

It was his arrival at the base.

The original plan was for the Deenwood Compound to have locked down into DEFCON-1, and he's able to get inside via his prewar military clearance where the Furriers can't. I was enchanted with the haunting notion of a character's gruesome past still recognizing him no matter the time since it last laid eyes on him. I was significantly less enchanted that the plot broke down to "all he has to do is walk up to this building, and he gets both a leather coat on par with a higher-MK Railroad coat, and history's single most unethically-sourced chemistry book."

Olivia, the Rust Devils, and Bogey weren't in the picture in any way. I had intended some long-game tomfoolery with Sticks, but hadn't actually firmed up exactly what I intended to do about it until around the time 'Choly first enjoyed all the prewar trappings of the Deenwood Compound.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqkuvFC8ZDo)

Méav Ní Mhaolchatha - Suantraí

The pen was a simple thing, just a run of the mill fountain pen. It had been used many times and, to the discerning fingertips of someone who knew what to look for, it bore the faintest of imprints where a pair of fingers had pressed as it skated furiously across paper, parchment, sometimes flesh. It had long since run dry and had no use whatsoever. Delicate fingers traced over the smooth surface, touched the faintest of imprints where those fingers had so long pressed, then closed around the pen. Eyes closed, the strikingly beautiful woman bowed her head over the pen. Then, as though she had not clutched it so tightly but a moment before, she set the pen aside and stood. She ran her hands over her clothes and hair, checking that everything was in its place. It was of course. She was never less than put together. A faint smile quirked her lips up, then blossomed over her face in a becoming, beguiling fashion until she was transformed once more into the seductress she’d always been. The seductress she’d always be. She’d only taken a bit of time off. For the owner of that pen. But he was gone now, and she moved on.

She crossed to the door with gliding steps and opened it smoothly. A man looked up from the bed in the next room. His Adam’s apple bobbed visibly as he gulped and his eyes raked up and down her hungrily, desperately.

On the desk in the room behind the woman, in a place of prominence among other trinkets of obvious value, lay the old, worn-out pen.