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Who: Henry

morbide & Soren

silentsavant
When: Noveuer 28th
Where: Shopping District
What: It's a quest log

It's a promise for 1,000 cunes per hour... and for a bodily function! But as Henry stabs himself for the umpteenth time with a needle and thread, sewing gems and jewels onto the surface of a crisp jacket, he thinks about how hard that simple demand really is — both for to perform, and for him to witness in earnest.

Attaching gems is only half the price promised for genuine tears, and Henry's in a bit of a financial bind. After finding himself ill and stuck behind the Coven's doors for the better portion of the month, he's hurting for money. (If only he were literally hurting, he thinks to himself with a chuckle. Maybe that'd get him to cry! ...Probably not.) The illness was with poor timing: earlier in Noveuer, he'd promised a ("perfectly legitimate") vendor a large sum of money for an excessive purchase. Naturally, he failed to follow through.

And failing to follow through has promise of consequences, he found.

He glances out the window with a sigh. Makes a sloppy effort to attach another gem. Stabs his bloodied finger again. This time, he feels nothing — unfortunately. Feeling the pinprick of the needle is really hit or miss with his nerve sensitivity, dulled and destroyed after years of routine torture. If he hadn't gotten sick, he might've been able to amass the funds to pay off his latest dubious purchase in a timely manner! Now, if he could only just cry for a few hours...!

There must be a way to earn that 1,000. Henry turns his attention back to the interior of the shop, scanning the tops of the heads belonging to other dedicated workers. While some embellished hats and sashes with feathers, others dutifully sobbed into glass beakers. The shop's full of perfect strangers save for one exception. He makes out someone with a familiar hairstyle, though he can't quite remember where he's seen it before...

Henry shifts from his bench with resolution and approaches with stealth, a mischievous smile on his lips. When Soren's shoulder is just within reach, he gives him a light tap.

"Heya, stranger. You having any luck with those waterworks?"

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The dragon winces at his voice. He'd noticed him come in, but hoped that if he stayed subdued in his isolated corner of the shop, the whimsical witch might grow bored of his repetitive task and leave before he ever noticed him there in the windowless murk of his spot. It wasn't a hope he put much stock in. Even while tucked close to his body, his jagged wings cut a striking silhouette. Moreover, the debonair designer hovers like an anxious eye gnat. It's obnoxious. Counterproductive, even. But he's being paid by the hour and not the tear, and double the amount posted, so he doesn't horribly mind coming up dry. Soren doesn't even turn to look at Henry, but a tinge of annoyance colors the back of his tone. He makes a point to sigh.

"That's a bit of a personal question to ask a stranger, don't you think?"

Edited 2019-11-30 06:44 (UTC)

"Eh? But aren't you the one turning your sorrows into a paid service?"

Henry decides then and there to take himself to Soren's workspace, making himself at home by his side. The beading will henceforth go neglected by the window. Henry leans forward, pressing his cheek to the tabletop as he examines the glass set before the Monster.

"Yeesh. Now I don't know how clear these jewels show up in the bath, but this looks like a whole lot of nothing." He taps the glass with his fingernail. "Ah well. No shame in being totally luckless. At least you haven't found yourself dead yet! Aaaanyway... Need any help? I'm real good at making people cry, but I'm hopeless at doing it myself."

Soren was about to tell Henry that his business is none of his, but then he just keeps going on and on about his lack of crying and how lucky he is not to... be dead? ??? It's typical fair from this guy to weave macabre divergences into his speech to the point that it comes across as a morbid obsession, and you only need but a few conversations to realize this. He maintains his frown, having given his attention to him the moment he encroached upon his space. Just as he opens his mouth to shoo Henry away, the fashionista clasps his hands together rather audibly and moseys toward them.

"What a marvelous idea! It's to cry for, darling!" He casts a hopeful look to the both of them each in turn. "That's just what this boy needs. He kept insisting that he would do a much better job crying in a corner all by his lonesome—"

"I never said it like—"

"—but the hour's almost up and he hasn't shed a single beautiful tear!" He throws the back of his hand up to his forehead in a sweeping dramatic gesture, then drops it. "A good sob story milks the best kinds of cries. There's nothing quite like the sparkle of a scintillating tale. Don't you think it's time for a change of plans, honey?"

Cry? With him? Soren looks about as disgruntled as he feels, which involves a wrinkled brow and a stinkeye, which he directs first at Henry, then the designer. "I don't need his help. He's making me more irritated and less sad."

"Then cry tears of annoyance, or whatever! Look. I'm willing to pay a premium for those dragon tears, but only if I can get some! Otherwise, you won't get a cune out of THESE pockets!"

They're incredible fancy pockets, by the way.

"Fine." Soren perches his chin on the palm of his hand and gives Henry a drooping, exasperated look. "Cast a crying spell on me and get it over with, or something. That should be easy for you, right?"

"A crying spell? Oh, man. That brings me back," Henry sighs, staring down at the beaker on the table. The shopkeeper hurries to the other side of the room to helpfully — and hopefully — deliver to Henry himself a jar of enchanted crystal-forming solution. (May as well, just in case!) "Back when I was a sorcerer in Ylisse, and not a Witch in Geargadas, I had spells that could give you the snifflies, to curses that could blind you with salty sobs. One time I used it on a bear of a man when he tried to throw a hand axe my way. Let's just say that not only did the poor sucker miss his target, but he also missed his catch! Nya ha ha!"

This is not a tear-worthy story. Before Soren's allowed any room to comment, Henry sighs again.

"But here... I'm still learning my enchantment spells. Crying? Haven't bothered to give that one a try. So far I've got sleep, silence, laughter, calm, truth-tellinggggg," lists Henry on his fingers, losing his place at the last one before giggling again. "But nothing that'd make those prized tears start falling. Sorry. Maybe if I liked seeing people cry, I'd have put more stock into learning it first.

"Now if you REALLY want me to give it a whirl, I remember having read about it... I could always try a blind hex. See what we can spill?" With that, the Plegian mage smiles sinister, imagining all of the ways an enchantment could go awry when done without skill and caution. At least he knows he has the talent for it. "Really, spill! It could be ANY kind of liquid, given how unpredictable the magic is here. ...I wonder what this fluid does to blood...?"

Soren swats at the air between them. "Enough of that disturbing nonsense. You will not use a blind hex on me. As a matter of fact, you are hereby forbidden from using magic on me at all." It was foolish to bring it up as a workable solution to begin with, and Henry has verbally demonstrated why. "Let's see what else you've got."

At least they can keep stalling for time. Henry takes a lot of effort on his part to deal with, but as long as it's just a matter of listening to him prattle on about grimoires and guts, he could be paid 2000 cunes an hour to bear with it. He might not cry, but he has a few ways to make himself if he's desperate enough.

Edited 2019-12-01 04:20 (UTC)

"As you wish," concedes Henry with a short nod. "Traditional story-telling route it is!"

This requires only a moment's pause from Henry, who has to wrack his brain for the tales that brought Olivia, Ricken, or Lissa to tears. Dead birds, neglectful families, fallen comrades-in-arms... Somehow, after seeing Soren's history in that odd dreamscape, he's not sure any of these will work.

But it's worth a try. Henry still doesn't quite understand what makes a story sad to others, and Soren strikes him as very emotional in a depth he can't quite strike himself, despite their similarities.

"Okay. Pick a story: the one about family, the one about friends, or the one about death." He pauses, and laughs. "Yeah, that last one's misleading, since they're all about death! You get the picture, though. Three categories, one choice."

"I guess we're going with death, then," Soren replies flatly, conveying about as much interest as he would have in discovering a stale cracker crumb in his bag.

Henry nods cheerfully.

"Death it is! Although..." Henry rubs his cheek, planting his elbow on the tabletop. "I just had a thought. Since time's money and all that, and you're not a fan of the cat-people and couldn't see yourself bonding with animals the way you can with people, I don't know if this story would do it for you." He chews on the inside of his cheek. "I know: if you had a pet cat and lost it, how would you feel?"

"I wouldn't know. I've never had a pet of any sort."

What sort of experience is he supposed to approximate with that, anyway? And why is he thinking about Ranulf at a time like this? He's a human, not a cat, even if he does purr and use trees as scratching posts on occasion. Anyway, thinking about the cat laguz makes his heart sore in a peculiar way, so he avoids contemplating it for much longer.

"I will probably fail to relate."

"'Kay, no telling tales of dead little birdies," sings Henry, making a motion as though snapping a book shut with his hands. "It made Lissa cry, but I don't really know why. You don't strike me as the kind of person who cries like Lissa cries."

...Or, now that he thinks about it, much like Olivia or Ricken. That thought slaps him in the face enough to make him sigh yet again, defeated.

"Aw, man... I don't think you're the type to cry about ANY of my tear-jerkers," admits the Witch, scrutinizing Soren's features like he might divine some answers from it. "I don't think they're all that sad, myself. But the folks who cry about it are huge softies who wear their hearts on their sleeves. You? You've probably seen more tragedy than most of them, so you would handle stories of torture, or neglect, or casualty too easily."

An assessment based on Soren's harsh upbringing, anyway. Anyone who has weathered so much so early on must be a lot like himself, thinks Henry. And if Soren's more like himself, what would make him cry...? (He thinks about Mustafa's passing. He thinks then about Olivia's paling features as her very life drained from her lips at the coaxing of black magic, and how different these two events made him feel.

He doesn't want to tell Soren about almost losing Olivia, he decides, and purses his lips.)

"...Maybe an onion'll do the trick..."

Well, that was a short-lived attempt. So much for the stories. It might be better to quit while he's ahead. Soren also doubts Henry has what it takes to conjure tears out of him without the special help of hexes or other external aids. But it does start to make his skin prickle when he considers how the sorcerer had seen the scornful looks of the laguz exactly as he remembered them, glaring through the foliage of a dream-imposed memory...

"I don't know..." he responds, unsure. A long-ago memory of Mist calling him weird fades in, emphatic and demanding to know as he rocks the knife into the cutting board why onions make her cry but not him. "I don't think that's a foolproof method. Moreover, where are you going to get one?"

"I bet the owner of this place wouldn't mind funding a mere onion if it meant he was getting dragon tears out of the deal," reasons Henry, jabbing a thumb at the shopkeeper. In fact, he goes so far as to wave his hand at him. "Hey! Have an onion anywhere handy? Can you get me one?"

The fashionista wrinkles his nose. "An onion?! And taint the crystals?!" he snaps aggressively, marching over straightaway. When he continues, he does so in a hushed tone. "Don't say that so loudly, boy! ...Listen. My customers don't much appreciate the notion of tears being evoked from... From onions. Really, it doesn't do a thing to their crystalline purity, but try telling that to some of these stubborn sorts. As long as you— you stay in this corner where nobody can see you, I'm willing to cut some corners... in this case."

He shoots a glare at Soren, who he's paying premium prices to do absolutely nothing as of yet.

"I'll fetch you an onion from my kitchen. My abode is a floor up."

Henry claps as the designer does the same, summoning forth one of his associates to man the shop while he ascends the staircase. "Yay! See, Soren? I toldja it would all work out!" Henry cheers, turning to face Soren again. "It's totally foolproof. Even I tear up a little from all of those juices. Ah, this takes me back... Onion-chopping was among the LEAST desired kitchen duty tasks during the war. Nobody likes being blinded by vegetably-induced tears. This is gonna be perfect!"

All the ridiculousness of his current position sort of floods in after another one of Henry's rambling verbal deluges and Soren starts to dissociate a little bit. He wonders again how he got stuck working with this creepy clown. At the task of performative crying. All in the name of fashion. Oh, and he's a dragon now and has been slowly undergoing a grueling transformation in a foreign hyper-magical dimension far removed from Tellius for about half a year now all because he started washing his face one morning.

Really, what is going on with his life anymore.

He sighs, cross but at a point somehow beyond caring much. He keeps his head propped against his palm and examines his sharp and dangerous fingernails, hating that he no longer finds them as weird and unsettling as he used to.

"Not like I mind milking the clock a little more."

Yeah, take a little moment to assess your very real circumstances, Soren. Henry's not going anywhere. He laughs at Soren's dry remark. "Yeah, you wouldn't. You'd sit here all day and be as gleeful as a Risen in a pit of villagers if you didn't shed a single tear."

If Henry knows Soren would be satisfied doing absolutely nothing for pay, one must wonder what his motives are in trying to get him to do work.

The shop owner sneaks down the staircase, hands in the pockets of his large overcoat. When he makes it to their table, he slams the onion down so close to Henry that it slides against his sternum on its way to the tabletop. "Stay. In. This. Corner," he warns again through the corner of his mouth before taking his hasty leave. Henry hums, carefully picking up the brown onion set before him and turning it in his palms.

"Wow. He's serious about not getting caught." The dark mage turns to Soren. "Got a knife on you?"

Does a deranged person like Henry even need motives to pester people?? He seems to be here for a captive audience to give him the attention he craves so that the tears he cries aren't from boredom. Besides, it's not like Soren intends to leave without crying a single tear. His employer would just as soon not pay him at all, then. But Henry's presence is accomplishing the opposite of helping. He scowls at the onion and doesn't even begin to reach for the knife he certainly has. Besides, he might even be able to crush it with the strength in his small-handed fist, the daggerlike claws poking into the layered flesh... What a thought. At any rate, Soren looks about as enthused as ever about this.

"Onions fail to make me cry. I'm not even going to bother. If you no longer think you have what it takes to make me cry naturally, why are you still here?"

"Whaat?" groans Henry, fiddling with the the papery stem. "Nonsense. How often do you cut onions, anyway? Sometimes I get lucky and get enough of a draft to keep the tears at bay, but in this cramped little corner? Heck, even I'LL be crying. It's a two-for!"

Henry believes a lot of things, but he doesn't seem to think Soren's immune to onion tears.

"But I guess we can't figure that out if you don't have a knife. I left my dagger... somewhere. Got plenty of 'em, but I can never remember to carry them around."

At this, Henry waits expectantly. Soren never told him that he didn't have a knife...

"You didn't answer my question," reminds Soren.

"Yeah, but neither did you." He peels the papery husk off of the onion in pieces. "I bet taking a bite out of it would make you cry..."

Yeah, no way will Soren eat a raw onion. Henry places it on the work table between them, just in case. Even as he spills his thoughts, Henry's forced to consider why he's still here — but it remains the same reason as why he came over in the first place. He doesn't think Soren would like to hear his answer, though, so he avoids it still.

"When's the last time you cried?" he asks, a sudden shift in tone from joking to light and curious.

"It hardly matters," blurts Soren before he has time to seriously consider the answer, eyes falling to his lap. With that said, his mind sinks into the recent past to discover that there had been a number of times he had succumbed to tears. Most of them revolved around the possibility of never seeing Ike again, influenced by a variety of other variables that worked with that longing in tandem: full moon consequences; extreme pain; the Looking-Glass House on a lonely night; waking from a nightmare or a wonderful dream. In truth, he can fathom why Henry would pose this question. That doesn't mean he won't be guarded about such personal information.

"..."

Feeling simultaneously frustrated and played into his hands, he procures his knife from within the layers of his clothes and snatches the onion from Henry's hand to carve a pattern of slits all around the diameter of it, holding it close to his face while he does with irritated focus drawn into his features. If he's going to bring himself to tears before anybody, he'd rather it be blamed on a vegetable and not excavated by playing into his emotional vulnerabilities.

"Fine. I'll demonstrate what I mean. If I'm proven wrong today, at least I will be normal."

Henry grins, balling his fist against his cheek while he leans into the table to watch Soren's face with rapt attention.

"Yay! He's got knives!" he cheers. It's hard to tell with his smiling, but he studies Soren's knife for a moment, satisfied that he took Soren for a knife-wielding type correctly. He himself's a knife-wielding type, but not in the name of combat or anything. Knives are handy.

"Well until you prove it to me, I just wanna say that I think it DOES matter. I notice that people who cry more are more in touch with their emotions... And stuff. Maybe if you want to cry, you need to be in touch with how you're feeling."

The onion's a diversion. Henry maintains a smile.

A startled sob discharges from the throat of a faun in the midst of a good cry. She gapes in fright at the white-haired witch. This helps provoke the attention of other workers to swarm in the direction she stares, as well as the chipper youth who proclaimed someone "had knives". No one really understands whether they should be curious or alarmed as they catch onto one another's nonverbal cues like a dragon catches the Cwyld. All save the fashion designer, of course, whose rising dudgeon is quite legible on his otherwise smooth and graceful features. He swerves to gather their attention up by doling out loud and insincere compliments to the shimmering beauty of the faun's tears.

"I don't cry well in front of other people," reminds Soren. Which is false, of course, because he's cried all over his best friend before, and it was one of his best memories, actually, and remembering that moment of unrestrained tears surging down his hot cheeks like broken gutters in a rainstorm while Ike's arms sheltered him digs into his chest right where it hurts most. Oh, and he couldn't forget the waterworks show he gave Yako the first time they met during his inaugural full-moon metamorphosis. They'd only really just gotten started acquainting themselves with each other, and Soren found himself drawn to her inner strengths, her natural curiosity, her willingness to play a part in helping others on her journey to solve the problems plaguing this world, and she'd been so generous in her pity just like Ike had been the first time they met in a cruel and scary world, and this world had been cruel and scary in its own ways and Soren had felt similarly alone and resented and she'd been the first hand that reached out to save him from that fate. But she's gone now. A pillar collapsed. He'd been foolish, then.

The emptiness carves into him. It's more tangible than any emotional pain; it's the fresh loss of a Bond and it aches like a healing wound. The painkillers must be wearing down, he realizes as a sharp pang seizes him. His concentration bores too deep just like the pain. He drops his onion. The knife slits his hand, the skin too tough to break.

His eyes gleam as he winces. "Oof... My fingers slipped." He sniffles and bends down to collect it from its sad plummet.

Even for someone like Henry, it's clear to him when to clam up and let Soren do his thinking. He becomes a quiet observer, one who has a handicap compared to the likes of Olivia or Ricken in that he feels like he's not observing anything at all, not with his eyes anyway. Instead, it feels like he's privy only to the ghosts of Soren's emotional turbulence. He wishes he had the ability to read people like some of the Shepherds do.

But for what he lacks in visual reading, he can feel in ways he can't describe. It's so fleeting that Henry thinks he's imagined the emptiness out of his own heart. The two might have enough of it to create a black hole, sitting next to each other like this.

Though there is no blood, Henry hums at the slip-up. He was expecting to see red.

"You didn't hurt yourself?" he asks, tilting his head. He could have sworn he did: if Henry saw anything, it was pain. "Oh, it's those hardy scales to the rescue. Can I see?"

He thrusts his hand out brusquely to show its unmarred surface. The skin is tough, though the surface of his palms more tender and ashen toward the center. It was the side of his thumb that should have wept a deep, metal-reeking red, but the back of his digits are plated like midnight-black gauntlets.

"There's nothing to see," he replies on a thick voice. "Hand me the beaker, please. Be quick."

"Right-o," mumbles Henry, soundlessly sliding the glass of crystalline fluid into Soren's outstretched palm. In the process he gets a look at his thumb: sure enough, it's Soren's transformation as a Monster that protected him from his own distraction. It's unscathed. No blood, no cuts.

(Then why the pain...?)

To carry a knife like that, Henry doesn't think Soren should have made the slip-up for any other reason than a distraction. What really went on in his head that he wouldn't share? But he keeps that question to himself, for the time being. He's a lot less interested in Soren's actual crying, though he knows that's the reason for his demand.

The incomplete monster takes the vial and presses it beneath his eye socket to catch the single tear rolling out. He can practically feel the spike of enthusiasm in the room as their employer rejoices over the production of a fresh dragon's tear. The salty fluid oozes down the side of the glass on a patient journey to the solution below.

"As it turns out, onions do make me cry," he whispers. He thinks of what Mist might say to that if she were present. She wasn't as important to him as Ike, but she certainly mattered to him, mattered the world to Ike as his little sister, the last of his family after the night the Black Knight stole his father from him. She'd been woven into the tapestry of his life, featured on the relief of his mirror in the Looking-Glass House, and wishing he could hear her singsong-voice carry the shock of this 'discovery' somehow encouraged another tear to slip from the other eye. Grooves appear on his expression as he bears the burden of painful emotions on top of the ailment that arose from losing Yako.

"They sure do," agrees Henry, his voice a lot less enthusiastic than the congregation behind them. It's not the same cheery cawing that comes from him usually, but something subdued enough that it could be carried away with the wind. He sits in silence once more, his mind exploring the pitch-black caverns of Soren's dismay — Henry, without a lantern to navigate with. He closes his eyes.

"You didn't hurt yourself with that knife... But I'm pretty much a seasoned veteran when it comes to pain. ...You winced before you cut yourself."

For now, he leaves it as a comment.

Soren's penetrating reptilian eyes bore into Henry's blithe and unassuming ones that squint in perpetual mirth, uncanny and unchanging as a statue even though a nuanced life surely beats within. Those eyes may be squeezed almost shut, but they are keen as a vulture's trained on carrion. It is moments like these that outline the true insight of the sorcerer. No matter is too grave to joke about. He laughs in the face of death and suffering, dons the impression that he is immune to the effects of mortal concerns such as loss, and his childish comportment might belie that sharp eye of his. Here it is communicated to Soren quite clearly that Henry knows his tears have little if anything to do with the onion. The look he flashes Henry suggests he knows that he knows. Then, he sweeps his gaze to the desk cluttered by remnants and patterns and tucks the dissected vegetable behind a mound of textiles.

He's on guard; the witch's curiosity unsettles him. And yet, he feels exposed and appraised as his humanity is cut open in front of him. He collects the other tear from the corner of his eye before it can dampen his cheek. In the solution, a brilliant gem is born. It scintillates in the dark like a dancer's sequins catch and flirt with the scant light of the night and leaves behind an obsidian speckle dusted by a starry finish. His sadness, rendered like the boundless sky that separates him from his whole meaning.

"..."

What does he have to hide? He's human. He hurts, too. That's all his tears reveal: what should be obvious to anyone. Whether he has scales or not will never take that quality away from him.

When Soren doesn't say anything but gives him a look that bores into him, Henry can't quite tell what it all means. He readjusts his legs, uncomfortable with the situation he's in and he thinks, hard, trying to come up with something that might cheer Soren up. Something that might reassure him, or something that might comfort him. Something that might get him to stop looking at him like he's his enemy when he just wants to understand.

Something that might express his own feelings, perhaps.

The only thing that comes to mind is something that makes him uncomfortable. But he opens his mouth before he thinks it through, finding it relevant.

"Somebody once told me... that it's the split-second expressions that people make that betray their truest feelings," repeats Henry carefully, like he's speaking a foreign language. His smile is frozen when he laughs airily. "People like you who can't cry are probably the people who need to cry the most. More than that, in front of somebody to tell you that it's okay. You'll torture yourself to death in your own head if you only cry all by yourself! So I'm glad."

A pause.

"That the onion worked."

Soren got so emotional just then thunking bout the ONE time he hugged ike and cried all his repressed feefees out that he bbroke out into a disney song called, "Let It Go" and started spinning around doing ice bitch shit, which made their employer mad so he paid both henry and soren loads of cunes and told them to leave

just kidding that's, idiotic,

here's the real tag

What the fuck is all of this

Being told that doesn't make it any easier to open up; it only makes him want to push Henry away more. Nevertheless, it cuts away at the stitches holding more of his tightly-contained feelings inside. He doesn't have anyone he can cry in front of here. Not anyone he can come out of it feeling fully resolved. When his tears are done being shed, nothing about his situation will have changed. The universe scarcely takes pity on him. This is his conviction.

"I don't need someone to tell me it's okay," he contests on a wet voice, another tear rolling down his cheek that he moves to capture. "I already know it's okay. But crying won't solve anything... Not really."

Henry pauses, unsure of what to say. Because he's not as equipped as others might be for a situation like this, truthfully, especially when it doesn't pan out as easily as many of the people he's ever talked to. Reassuring Maribelle was a piece of cake when he did it with his own tools, and he was always perfectly fine with grappling with Cordelia's problems...

This is just awkward and uncomfortable. He tried stepping into someone else's approach, someone with more empathetic abilities, and it just made Soren cry harder. Henry huffs. He gives up on trying to be sympathetic. It's too hard, so he'll go back to something more comfortable.

"Nope! It won't," he says simply. "But hey, you're here to make money, right? Maybe you'll get a bonus!"

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