In the Shadow of Ribbons: Part 1-06: Erian: Infused Objects & Swirling Ribbons
Scene 6 of 'In the Shadow of Ribbons', set Within Thalenra. Erian begins a tour, and promptly forgets to finish it.
The previous scenes are all saved Within Thalenra. Or go direct to scene one here. We now pick up from leaving Marnie’s room
Erian was more than a little distracted when they left the bedroom he’d set Marnie up in. Their first proper conversation hadn’t been anything like he had expected. He was used to the children the CCD brought to the transition centre being quiet and withdrawn. They only spoke when spoken to, always waiting permission. It could take weeks for some of them to come out of their shell.
But not Marnie. If he hadn’t carried her into that room four hours before he would have thought she was a different person entirely from the one he had found. She was so full of life now, excited by almost everything he had said. Erian knew she was still processing that she was free - that warm ochre moment of satisfaction had been blinding - but she seemed to be sincerely looking forward to what came next. And then there was her enthusiasm any time he’s brought up different abilities - the thin ribbons of orange had flickered through everything else. There was an earnest desire to learn there, far from what he expected from someone forced to train in the very magic controlling them.
The part that was distracting him the most though, was how she had reacted when he said he could see Empathic energy. He had long grown use to ribbons of grey-green hues, the wariness and unease that floated from someone, when they found out for the first time; how it would transition into the dusky bronze of suspicion, that he could not just see their feelings but change them too. But he didn’t get that from her at all. Instead, there had been nothing but curiosity and fascination. The bright shades of pale-gold and amber had been a welcome change to that tiresome conversation. To think someone actually wanted to know how what he saw worked.
But why wasn’t she suspicious? That was what was he couldn’t figure out. Maybe she hadn’t fully understood what he meant? Tomorrow would change that. Erian would have to enter her Mindscape, and she was bound to act like everyone else did then.
Oblivious to the despondent thoughts building in Erian’s mind, Marnie was following him, peering into each room they passed, and asking questions of each one. “What’s this one for? Whose books are they? What do those strings do?”
Even in his preoccupied state, Erian was answering - “That’s a meeting room. Anybia probably. They make music.” - and by the time they reached the large doors of Gretham’s workshop, Marnie’s enthusiasm had worn him down to the point his distraction was long forgotten.
“Gretham? I’ve brought our guest,” Erian called out as he opened the door, and stepped inside. Gretham was standing at one of the many counters in the large space, every surface covered in a variety of objects; tiny stones and crystals, foci of varying shape and size, and larger devices covered in the intricate stitches and symbols of complex threadwork, that few beside Gretham were capable of.
Gretham didn’t look up as he waved a hand at Erian, his gaze focused on the rod in front of him. “One moment. I think I’ve finally found it.”
Erian began to move towards Gretham to see what he had found, when he heard a series of layered taps behind him, their echoes halting suddenly; empathic energy chimes of sudden emotion. He turned then and saw the ribbons of wariness and unease Marnie had been missing before, with a lot of the smoky-jade tones of caution overwhelming them. It reassured him somewhat that she was acting normally, even as he immediately felt the need to calm her.
“Marnie, this is Gretham.” He said, as he gestured it was all right to enter. “He’s an Artificer, one of the best around. He fixed your clothing and sorted your food for me.” He picked up a small wooden block off one of the counters and held it towards her. “Would you like to look at some of the objects he’s infused?”
The grey-green ribbons immediately vanished from Erian’s sight replaced with familiar pale-gold and amber as she took the block from his hand with no hesitation. It was fascinating watching them swirl around her, joined by many others, entwining in unusual ways, as she turned the block over in her hands. He jumped when Gretham spoke, his attention pulled back to the now.
“It took me a while, kid, but I can finally make them out. You were being generous when you said it would take me days to lay the thaumcraft for this. I’d put it at a two-week, if I didn’t sleep.” He put the rod he had been working on down, and came over to where Erian and Marnie were standing. “Has she said how she did it?”
Marnie, now running her fingers along a silver-blue metal pipe, didn’t look up, instead letting out an “Ahh” as the pipe sent out a stream of water across the counter, knocking over several objects. “This isn’t like those taps is it? It looks like them, but this doesn’t make hot.” She ran her fingers along it in the opposite direction, and the water returned, pulling the items it had swirled around with it, until they were piled at the end of the pipe. Marnie nodded. “I thought so, your pull thread was being a bit stubborn, but it’s alright now.”
“How did you do that?” Gretham asked, a little too loud, as he pushed past Erian to grab the pipe. “I spent months getting it to pull one crystal back.”
Erian activated his thaumic sense, and began running his fingers along the threads of the pipe’s infusion as well, panicking slightly as he realised he had let someone - who Meliath would expect him to treat as a potential Order recruit until assessed - actively use thaumcraft. He could see the change she had made; an incredibly subtle shift in the translucent thaum strands of the lapis blue threads, increasing the strength of their attraction considerably. He promptly forgot about Meliath, as he and Gretham began asking her to look at some of the other objects Gretham had been struggling with.
*
“How did you learn this Marnie?” Erian eventually asked after Marnie finished tweaking a hollow wooden pyramid (It stopped giving off the high piercing whine Gretham had given up on ever re-moving). “No matter how I approach it, I find it difficult to believe Belaine let you spend any more than the minimum amount of time to learn the basics on this.”
“And how did you keep it hidden from him?” said Gretham. “We didn’t find anything with your signature at the training camp, and I ’ain’t seeing someone from that Order, not taking the chance to make their tools as effective as possible.”
Marnie looked up at them both and shrugged. She had long since grown use to Gretham by then, but Erian could see some of the smoky-jade ribbons returning, mixed in with grey-smoke confusion and a faint tint of murky-violet guilt. “I … I’m not sure. I don’t think he noticed. I don’t remember getting to look at objects like this.”
“He let you work on some,” said Gretham, picking up the rod he had been looking at when they first entered. “Erian used this earlier. Frightened the life out of me it did, when I thought he’d blown himself up.”
Marnie carefully took the rod from his hand, and looked at it for a couple of moments, and then suddenly brightened, warm-ochre satisfaction began entwining with soft-yellow playfulness around her. “I remember this! It was the second time, or maybe the third? He hadn’t noticed I was waking up yet and told me to make it backfire.” She gave a slight grin, a thin ribbon of silver pride swirling behind her. “I thought for sure he’d punish me for this one, but he never said anything.”
“How did you hide the illusion?” pressed Gretham. “Who trained you in it if not Belaine?”
Erian could see soft-gold coming from Gretham now, streaked with passionate deep scarlet, and beginning to wrap around Marnie’s ribbons, warping her colours. Erian wasn’t used to seeing this level of emotion from Gretham; he had long since learnt to suppress it around Erian, as many close to him did. The suddenness of it unsettled Erian, and he stepped between Gretham and Marnie, arms up towards Gretham.
“Gretham, calm down. She’ll tell us what she can if you give her a moment. You’re pushing too much.”
Gretham looked up at him, and stepped back, taking a deep breath. “Right, right. Sorry kid.” His ribbons receded, back to the loose dull cloak of suppressed emotion Erian was used to. Gretham glanced at Marnie then. “Is there something you can tell me about how you hid them? It’s alright if you don’t remember.”
Marnie was glancing back and forth between the two of them, and Erian could see the swirling ribbons beginning to settle a little, although her confusion in Gretham’s sudden shift of tone was obvious. “I’m not sure I do remember. I just did it, I think. I wanted him to not see it for as long as possible, and I guess he didn’t?”
“What about this staff?” Asked Gretham, holding up a gaudy gold staff with a large emerald crystal at one end. “Did he ever have you take a look at it?”
Everything about Marnie changed in an instant. Gone was the curious, enthusiastic young woman that had been talking to them all morning, and instead there was a small, frightened child holding her arms tight against her chest, her back firm against the cabinet behind her. She was breathing heavily, and speaking fast and high.
“I didn’t want to touch it-I didn’t want in there-they made me-I swear-I won’t come back-Please let me move-make it stop-why did it see me-did it see me-is anyone coming-I can’t move-it hurts-it hurts-it-”
Before Erian had time to notice, she was curled up on the floor, terribly similar to how she had gotten in the cell. “Hide that thing!” He snapped at Gretham as he knelt in front of Marnie and put his hands on her shoulder. He could barely see her behind the swirling silk ribbons now, shifting through so many shades that he couldn’t hope to tell what she was feeling any longer, only that it was overwhelming her. He gripped her tight. “Marnie, it is all right. He is not here. The staff is gone. You are safe. No one is hurting you.”
The ribbons slowed ever so slightly, but were not going to stop. Erian could feel his own panic beginning to surface. He was going to have to repeat what he had done in that cell, and he didn’t know how he had done it the first time. He glanced at Gretham through the decreasing gaps in the ribbons filling his vision now, aware that, to Gretham, none of the swirling colours were visible. “Something strange might happen in a moment. Just ignore it.”
“What do you mean. Is she-”
Erian closed him out and focused on bringing the overwhelming empathic energy under control. Breathing deeply, he bent his will towards controlling the spiralling ribbons around Marnie. Just like the night before, all it took was a single thought for his own energy, hidden to his own sight, to begin swirling amongst Marnie’s ribbons, creating images in their wake as they pulled out her memory of the staff into the Real. Erian experienced it alongside her as she was thrown through a window, her fear and worry, of where she was, the need to get the staff and leave, all ultimately leading to waves of pain as she lay on the floor of a wood panelled room unable to move.
Erian was almost overwhelmed by the intensity of it. This was worse than the cell, where the memories had been underwritten with an expectation of what was happening. This was unexpected, raw. No wonder she couldn’t move. He steadied himself, taking deep breaths. He could faintly hear Gretham’s alarm at the images appearing, asking what he was seeing, but he had to blank that out as well. He couldn’t pull Marnie out of the room this time. He needed to take control of this if he was going to end it.
He reached for the end of his invisible energy and took hold of it, setting firmly in his mind it was his to control. It was difficult. He hadn’t practiced this in years, instead choosing to avoid any situation where he might need to do more than sense empathic energy. It struggled away from him, preferring instead to be with Marnie’s prismatic storm. He could hear her still, repeating her words, and he gritted his teeth. He was in control here. Not the energy. He reached for it again.
And then, it was his.
It was the next step that was difficult. He rarely thought about what happened when he manipulated this energy, happening as it did when he was at his most stressed. He needed to control consciously what was always uncontrollable. He willed his energy to slow down, to wrap the prismatic ribbons and slow their speed in turn, bring them back to the ground away from the storm.
Slowly - much too slowly it felt like - he could feel a change. There were gaps in the swirling ribbons now. He could see Marnie’s face again, could feel her breathing beginning to slow under the grip he had on her arms. The images of her broken form that had been all around them faded away. Until, eventually, it all stopped.
Marnie opened her eyes and looked into Erian’s. She didn’t say anything, just a weak small smile. Erian took a deep breath, and gave his own small smile back, letting go of her shoulders, and helping her up. “At some point.” He said quietly. “We need to work out why that keeps happening. But for now, let me handle any questions Gretham has.” Marnie nodded, not saying anything.
Erian turned to see Gretham standing there with his mouth hanging open. “Before you say anything, Gretham, there is nothing to worry about.” He said, thinking quickly of an excuse. “Marnie just has some traumatic memories with that staff, and it generated an excess of empathic energy that needed to be diffused.”
“Right … diffused, huh?” said Gretham, clearly not convinced. “I can’t say I’ve seen you ‘diffuse’ it before.”
“I don’t think I have, either.” Said someone from the vicinity of the door.
And Marnie, in a flurry of vermilion-red ribbons streaked with grey, disappeared from Erian’s sight.
Thanks for reading! As I tend to think of scenes being everything that happens in that location until time moves on, the cliff-hanger here was unexpected, but too good an opportunity to miss. You’ll have to wait to find out who was there, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to guess.
Erian is a character I love, but I have to think a lot about emotions to write for him. Personally, I am terrible at working out what emotions are being felt, whether they’re my own or someone else’s, so I’m clueless as to how I chose to have it at the core of what I’m writing here. The emotion-colour combinations are very loosely based on looking at various sites, but are more or less what feels right to me at the time. I’m keeping track of what I use, and categorising them somewhat for consistency, but it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’m going to get some mixed up at some point.
There’s an in-narrative reason for Erian to be focused on Marnie’s ribbons right now, given she’s a ball of mystery, but I would guess if I keep it going at this level throughout the entire novel readers will begin to get bored, so I will tone it down once the characters are settled in.
The next scene is Scene 7: A Formal Introduction