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January 30th, 2012 @ 12:45am
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Anyone having problems, withdrawal, etc from the closure of the Market this month, you can stop by Haven and we'll see what we can do to help. Any Havenites with problems that haven't made yourselves known yet, let us know. Rather fix it whilst we can than have to fix the roof from an outbreak of pyrokinesis.
Any knowledge on when it'll be open again?
Haven
If you're having control problems, for Christ's sake say something. The common room's south side is out of action for the immediate future unless you want an unfortunate consequence.
Catherine
[Abrupter; slower, pencil-not-pen which speaks of an addition to the entry rather than main thought and thrust of its purpose]
Happy New Year.
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January 4th, 2012 @ 10:08pm
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It begins with cold stone. Worn-smooth familiarity, the fingers of one hand fastened around the knuckles of another - a malformed prayer, this - twisted and ill-made but oh the words offered up to blank-eyed representation (of a God he seeks out with moving lips en-route and in cold-shouldering dark that gives him room to walk alone and quickly, fingers numb in palms, as if in practicing for priest's quiet-voiced declaration of what is penance-required and knowledge that it will not be enough) are awkwarder still. They are the shuffling conformation of lips and tongue and teeth into what is confession of what is still settling in like ash on skin and bone-deep echo of assumption this is how it would end.
It begins with cold stone. Knees that numb, that ache. Hands on wooden pew back until light blurs and winds itself through clear glass, until the shambling through what is rote interspersed with what is raw-broken is ended in the knowledge that there is another he must lay this misdoing before and accept what is meted out in far more physical a fashion than a God who holds Himself quiet and distant and beyond reach.
It is worse. It is worse because Leo Gryffiths is a man who lives in physicality, in what he can manage with hands where magic is never-forgotten memory of possibility and capacity. It is worse for the man who wears true anger ill across his face like it is paper mask, incalculable formation of features too true to be anything but Gryff's hard-eyed acceptance of what he must look at and see for his own creation -- is brother and friend and the shattered betrayal is worse than what is Cian's cold clarity in what must be done.
It is done. It is penance and he tells himself this as the bloody tang of iron coats his tongue and fills his throat. Bows head before this in what is battered gratitude for violent, virulent reaction (for where is his God in the still of the church, the quiet not broken as it ought be?).
And from there, he goes to where is discreet door and beyond -- to where woman-thing witnesses what he can--ought-not-be--is and his hands are on her wrists and she does not break and he shatters instead until there is white-blindness and her voice and he is blank and blind and soundless and there is the escape of nothingness that is permitted (he believes) for the agony of after.
That is a brief (for he gives her that, the absence of speech that is constant annoyance and aberration on his part, now likely welcomed) note that offers explanation but sums the whole without more words for he is man of few and the ones he has now are dust in hands -- but asks for days instead of weeks. Supplication rather than supplementation, he asks and beyond that cannot be thought. It began in cold stone. It will end in cold stone -- echoing with other prayers, beneath the beams of what has never forgotten purpose but is kept alive and whole, does not weigh upon back and leach into exhausted dreams, what is uncorrupted sanctuary tended to by those that do not slip. And he tends (briefly) to flock before fleeing.
Leaving briefly (do not wish to find new source of money for roof in absence). Any problems, sort it out yourselves. Emergencies only, speak to E Andley.
Anything important that cannot be managed, leave a message. I'll get to it in time.
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December 4th, 2011 @ 12:39am
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The place that used to do the tree has gone out of business, recommendations or locations for places to buy a ten foot one for under a tenner?
And if Haven can find a carol other than Jingle Bells to sing, the next twenty two days will go a lot faster.
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November 6th, 2011 @ 7:46pm
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The smell of bonfires and fireworks is startlingly close to gunpowder, is a thin-silting mist on the air, along with the laughter. The garden is dying; the plants dug over in February, that bloomed long after Liv of the clever hands and wild-tangled hair had left, have finally ceased to bloom and thrive and are twisted and dried and almost gone in an expectation of winter.
And with winter is, as ever, the hardship of finding money in infinitely-squeezed budget for roof repairs and drains unclogged (when he cannot himself, when standing on a ladder is climbing onto the roof and sending tiles skirling down below, precarious balance of staying on top versus falling, as grimly hauling handfuls of mulch out of centuries-old drains). When the heat ought be switched on but eyes turn away from the thickly dressed inhabitants, until the shivering and the colds set in and only then is the massive and ancient boiler allowed to hum and sing and apply miserly heat throughout the place.
And there's yet more to flit through quiet times, through periods lacking in substance to concentrate on. There's a woman-girl who's all tied up with Market and magic, fingerprinted with bargain made that can't be mended, who doesn't stop long in doorways but whose music sings out when it's dark, when there's absence of anything else. (A woman-girl not to think on overlong - and within that, there's the old call to elsewheres, to places where there's little complication but a great deal of letting go of all that mounts up within a day, a week, a month, that rides his back until it can be set down for a night or three, until smoke clings to clothes and he's a little less clipped, a little less terse with all the fragile-glass people who want things much of the time. And isn't that of itself, solution tied up in time, in playing rituals and games he's never fussed much with?)
There's the memory (gone worn at edges already, perhaps from the number of times taken out and examined) of another woman-thing all sunlit and serene in a church, with hands that burned. And yet another -- with (as memory allows) closer examination, she bears more resemblance to faces known, to facets and pieces that make up utterly different whole.
No doubt novel advice to the lot of you: when cold, put more clothes on. Don't turn up the radiators.
[Em]
Might be out a night or two this week. Lock up as usual, if the boiler goes and it's too cold, you know where the blankets are kept, dole them out and keep the lot of them from belly-aching.
[Cath]
Slower hand here, hesitant and halting.
What was it you really wanted, the last time you decided to drop by?
[Madam]
And even slower -- a pause between first drop of ink on page beneath the ward and then the next slow curve of words
How'd it work.
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| Leo Gryffiths is unimpressed by underage magicians |
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October 21st, 2011 @ 9:09pm
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Talk of hellhounds and Market - for Christ's sake, check what you're buying and make certain you can handle it. Better you swallow your pride and ask rather than end up with us here at Haven.
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September 29th, 2011 @ 2:45pm
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Apart from the rain, we're back on track. Any of the lot of you still staying with hosts, let us know when to expect you back.
Try not to break anything within the month. Had time to do the last of the repairs whilst all of you were out so if it's broken, ask yourself first if it is deeply important it be fixed and second, if you can manage yourself.
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July 22nd, 2011 @ 11:12pm
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[Haven residents]
As some of you know from Andley and I asking. The wards are currently down. We are working to find you temporary accommodation and to get them back up. Any of you concerned, see me.
[Cian Andley]
We've got a problem.
[Open]
Occultists. Names and mode of contact.
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June 27th, 2011 @ 9:53pm
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Ritual copulation in public places is not acceptable. After the Solstice, it is not even excusable.
If anything is damaged in Haven, now is the time to let us know before orders are placed. Not on time, it won't be replaced.
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May 25th, 2011 @ 10:58pm
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Eleven days between them, eleven days like a tide to lap lightly at the feet of one birthday before the next. Eleven days that pass into one another, fan out like a hand of cards in the grasp of a master, slip-sliding into nothingness far too quickly to be noticed. Eleven days roll on, and there's enough to do not to notice the lack of Emily, Emily-turned-twenty-three, Emily older -- possibly wiser, certainly different but his mind does not linger long on that fact for fear of seeing the old shadow of magic's serpentine self cast dark and deep by time ticking on. Eleven days and his birthday. It is not a celebration; what Haven does not know it cannot bedeck itself with and the day of his birth is something that a long-left-behind family knows of and the small adopted one (limited to a man who smiles like a half-starved dog, all teeth and loping grin just shy of menacing, limited to a man-and-daughter who comprise all of what Gryff needs in the world, for they are sun-and-stars between them, enough to twist himself around and circle slowly) and besides, as years slot themselves along the abacus of existence, he has been here overlong enough and not yet so long that each year must be counted off as achievement.
It is a birthday fraught with what must be done -- a conversation with old Havenite now well immersed in a world of magic, whose livelihood is thread-delicate, spun between the fingers of a not-woman beautiful-deadly, a conversation with tradesmen to cover that half-shadow-step cost of what is increasing overheads and lower incomes. It is a birthday in which Gryff half-forgets it is, with no idle man who can sit slumped over a single glass for hours and let it soak itself into his bloodstream to saturation or who can drink the bar dry for his own amusement to remind him of its purpose. No Cian, no Emily -- no Andleys in fact, and thus when Gryff rolls onto the journals, block-print and quiet efficiency, it is without pomp, circumstance or presents
If we could avoid pyrokinetics turning up before we've got another gardener to keep the garden from being torched, that would be nice.
[Madam]
Had one of yours reach out - one of your old ones, that is. Said something about needing help.
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April 10th, 2011 @ 3:11am
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[She has to go. There are no doors slammed, no tempests to seethe down corridors and carry themselves to further ears, to those who listen, alert, for signs and sigils of something a little ... more than has been made evident. In recent weeks perhaps, the door of the study's been locked more often of late evening -- but few come and try the handle, few people listen to the cadence of warm-rich female laughter and the deep roll of masculine beneath, brief intermission making it all the brighter. In recent weeks, he's come and gone by another room entirely, shrugging into his shirt and buttoning it over wet-warm skin from a shower more laughter than necessity -- for give her what she'll take without asking, her humour has wrapped itself around them like one of her plants, all tendrils. But she has to go.
It's not a conversation pleasant, not one that's much of anything beyond the awkward, the back turned, facing the window with unblinking stare, 'of course', 'as you like', all those words lined up given blandly over where silence cannot do instead. She stands on worn-in carpet, tells him that she's going -- better place, better position, gardens that aren't afterthoughts -- with that soft little sound in the voice that he doesn't recognize (only after, only later) and when he finally turns, he nods. 'If that's what you want.' The smile, half-twisted, isn't the same as the one worn when unbuttoning her shirt with one hand, taking his glass away from him with the other, not the same as the bold bright thing worn when she tells him what she wants with lazy commands-unmeant. 'I'll write a reference, if they ask', he says, because that's the done thing, the path she's put them on, and she turns too quickly, and she nods and she smiles a little too brightly, and her fingernails on the doorhandle are crusted round with dirt. She'd been in the garden then, that morning.
It doesn't occur to Gryff -- perhaps she knew it wouldn't -- that she might have been asking him to ask her to stay]
Careful when it comes to the Market. Check the fine print.
[Locked: Cian]
That Library going to punish you for accidentally ending up in the same pub as me?
[Locked: Dominic]
What's this business with your sister? Found where she is yet?
[Locked: Em]
Munroe's in, check the bills from the grocery suppliers. When they know he's back they overcharge us, figure we won't notice with the quantity. And you can have the daily woman clean out the second room in the west corridor -- Ellery's moved on.
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April 2nd, 2011 @ 7:54pm
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Lots to do, lots to fix -- no news of Mortimer, no whys or wheres -- but the absence of news is not new at all to Leo Gryffiths, used to settling in, bearing it out, waiting with the kind of patience that lacks anything gentle or soft about it. They have new residents and old ones alike, drifting back beneath the roof that holds up, dispelling any doubt about something so quickly, magically repaired as durable. And Emily -- quick-light step dancing down the halls and out -- is not quite so quick with cold tea and slammed doors, so there we are, all is whole and settled again (or at least, skimming across the surface, hawk-sharp look around all that needs surveying, all is as whole as is needed, decay headed off and attention can turn to the next thing before it crumbles, slides into dust
Hold off on the pitchforks and vigilante action. Anyone trying it is likely to get well-acquainted with Library justice. [Wry, wry -- if anyone knows the extent of swift, unmerciful action, it is this man and yet the words are tempered, held back]
[Locked: Wren]
Some reason why you haven't dropped by with those visions of yours?
[Answer expected, that not-especially-paternalistic drift of attention cast over and caught on what needs to be seen, what needs to be done, remembrances of a girl in a park.]
[Locked: Cian]
All's fine. [No more, no less -- the bare minimum, what half-constitutes apology for scare and warning before in two short words
[Locked: Liv]
Is there a reason there's a bonfire blowing smoke through my office underneath my window?
[Locked: Em]
Need to rearrange the rooms. We've got one or two coming back and they need their old spaces. Talk to the residents about shifting, they're less likely to whine to you.
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March 11th, 2011 @ 11:13pm
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Gryff is busy, and when Gryff is busy he is terse -- but the thread of tension through the letters that needles them to absolute points is oddly absent. Everything is strictly to the middle of the thing, no preambles, no fuss or nonsense but it is with the general calm and implacability that makes him good at his job rather than the simmering fury that carried him through to breaking noses and knuckles, that has tied itself lover-tight around his soul since magic coursed through him and Haven both and broke them well enough to be irreparable
I come out of the office, everyone's scattered. Bodes well or bodes badly. No prizes for guessing correctly.
( James Mortimer )
( Em Andley )
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February 14th, 2011 @ 1:26am
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It is obviously not-right; tea sent back with little fanfare but a determined little setting down of cold-cold mug amidst the tide of paper on his desk, an air of sulky, sultry exchange of words not said but there, tidal current beneath the surface. He considers first - for once, for the first time in a very long tradition, Gryff is slow to seal the envelope, thoughtful-pause for what might be said by not saying anything at all - and then dismisses it with impatience, out of hand for what it is not. This is, after all, a year-by-year thing, first cards handed solemnly over to a mite all curls and solemn eyes, and then the little coquette, mother's daughter with shy little smile - long absence and he had begun again in the hope of anything at all, that tenuous-thin connection between a girl shut away in a room and the world outside it, within safety's thick stone walls. And so he seals it up, and pushes it beneath her door that morning, as usual.
( Em Andley )
He has a habit, now, of sending cards. It's a learned one, not innate - he will never be a man who picks through occasions, finds remembrances to make them more than what they are (for if they are what they are, memory will serve, won't it?) But it is a learned habit, one acquired when young enough to solidify along with broadening shoulders and stoic look, and now those in his life who have attained importance are sent small tokens of what is not precisely affection, but what is not exactly not.
This one though, he's careful over.
( Left for Liv Ellery )
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February 2nd, 2011 @ 1:59pm
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Not seen him about the place in days - glancing up from papers, at the tread of steps in halls he does not recognize. Gryff uses the journals as back-up, that method of communication frowned on when he can say more with a look or a question-really-an-order in person. But driven by absence --.
[Mortimer]
Everything all right?
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January 5th, 2011 @ 10:24pm
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We're open again.
[No mention made of having been closed, nothing about renovations in place; the message is quite clear. Doors wide, expectant of the masses, make shift and make do for the duration of any problems]
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| backdated: Nina-rampage |
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December 21st, 2010 @ 6:24pm
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The words sketched out against the page are from pen held in humming hands, magic so thick it lifts the paper up toward the pen until the ink bleeds a little deeper. He is an addict with the purest kind of hit to cover pain of what is almost certainly a broken knee and the room in which he sits - journal dragged from pile of that morning's paperwork to write in - is a maelstrom of weaving, wavering mid-air objects that dance and bob and dip in time to each savage stroke of writing implement. Gryff is angry, floodgates thrown open wide to stark severity for it is in incandescent rage he can avoid the onset of guilt - waking to find a bloody path with girlish footprints danced through it, winding to the heart of the stone walls that calls themselves a sanctuary
[Locked: Tomas Riley]
Another old friend, not quite so strong the ties that bind but one with vested interest in the safety, sanctity of Haven. Riley's connection predates him, has seen through fire-starter whose self-immolation nearly took off the roof and his own time shattering windows. He has a useful talent and a keen eye - this enough; Gryff has only so many allies to call on for this
Haven people dead. Your magic could help me. In or out, Riley?
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November 23rd, 2010 @ 8:15am
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This is hurried, perfunctorily written in a haste that is Gryff doing what is necessary precisely because it is necessary and no more. No malice in the writing, simply the terse strokes of one who has added another duty to a no doubt very full day and is getting it done in the quickest way possible -- but nor is the writing as even as perhaps Gryff's might usually be. A little too much pressure to page, a little too deep the lines and the full stop at the end is marked hard in a way that is a very final 'an end to this' that expresses just how thin Gryff's patience is
Need a vendor who specializes in seals. Recommendations and names.
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November 20th, 2010 @ 6:59pm
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[Written in the kind of pen that ought to flow, but does not, largely because the person whose hand it is in does not have the kind of handwriting that permits flowing anything. The letters are small, cramped and fit into the page like soldiers on a field, doing precisely what they are ordered to. Gryff wastes little time]
Ordering day. Anyone need anything at Haven, now's the day to get it to me and if it's past five, you're shit out of luck.
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November 6th, 2010 @ 9:44pm
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Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
And it's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken ( hallelujah )
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