Menewsha Avatar Community - View Single Post

01-06-2013, 03:49 AM

Melodie Genevieve Rassignol

When the fight first broke out, Genna stared disbelievingly from her perch near the battered and slightly off-key piano. In the world she came from, people didn't just hit each other. Fortunately for her, the girl who'd come in with Rayner had more sense. She shoved the stunned girl behind the piano and pushed her head down just as splinters started flying. "You can't just stand there in the middle of a fight, dummy."

"Oh... I'm sorry. I've never been in a fight before." Genna smiled at the strange yellow-haired girl in the low-cut gown. Inwardly she was dancing with glee at the success of her disguise. No one ever treated the heiress of House Brass this way! It had taken quite a bribe to convince her chambermaid to buy a set of plain, 'common' clothes for her, but it was worth every penny to be able to blend in like this. "What do we do now?"

The trollop stared at the strange girl's wide blue eyes and innocent smile, and shook her head. "What we do now is keep down and wait for the Watch to show up."

"The... Watch?" Genna bit one of her rosebud lips and looked around in alarm. What if she got in trouble! Her parents would find out! "Is... is there a way we could get away before they come?"

The question elicited another stare, but the blonde seemed to decide this innocent needed a keeper. "Yeah... that's probably not a bad idea. I've had a few too many run-ins with the watch lately. Follow me, and if I say run, you run... oh, and by the way, my name's Della."

"Thank you so much, Della. I really appreciate this, it's just that if I get in any trouble they'll never let me out again..." Genna's sigh of relief was interrupted by a wince at the discordant sound of breaking glass. It jarred her sensitive ears even more than the occasional sour notes of the piano had. The jarring, however, reminded her of her manners. "My name's Genna. It's nice to meet you."

Della stared again, completely baffled by the strange girl. Innocence and manners like this were even further outside her experience than bar fights were from Genna's. "Okaay... Just... follow me. It sounds like the fight's going outside, we should be able to get away easy before the watch shows up."

The two women weren't the only ones slipping out the back door of the pub to avoid notice by the City Watch. Della led the raven-haired girl along the alley to a set of narrow steps that lead to the road above. At the foot of the steps, Della paused to check her reflection in a rain barrel. She pouted slightly at the reflection and gave a touch to her bleached hair and a quick adjustment to her chest in its ill-fitting corsetry. Almost as an afterthought, she dabbed a bit of color onto her lips before starting up the steps. "So, what was a girl like you doing in a place like that?"

"I was listening to the music... it was so wonderful! It made me want to sing, and dance!" Genna had reached the top step by the time she got to the word 'dance', and she punctuated it with a happy pirouette onto the street.

The door opened quickly as Cassandra called out, revealing an apprentice's anxious face. "Your Highness! I'm so sorry it took so long! I was upstairs and didn't hear your knock. Please, come in. They're expecting you."

The apprentice hurried toward the workshop, then paused and came back, realizing it wasn't appropriate to rush royalty. The trip through the Warehouse seemed very long, sprinkled as it was with the boy's endless and awkward apologies, but it didn't really take very long for them to reach it.

The mechanics standing around had their backs to the opening door as the machine was started. Black smoke belched from underneath the sheet, accompanied by horrible screeching and clanking noises. A grease-smeared hand appeared from under the muffling cloth and Crispin's voice rang out. "Give me a number eight pentagonal wrench!"

The tool was produced quickly, and the awful noises suddenly stopped. There were a few moments of heart-pounding silence, followed by an abrupt explosion. Crispin staggered out of the resulting cloud of smoke, coughing but waving the wrench triumphantly. Behind him, the machine had assumed the regulated ticking it was designed for. "Cam was installed crooked, and the timing belt was set in wrong. I sorted it... oh... Hello, Princess."

Crispin's smile was brilliant against his soot-blackened face, and he offered his hand in greeting, forgetting it was still coated in grease and soot.