My heart will lead me there soon [Locked & OTA]

[posilutely]

WHO: Queenie Goldstein
WHERE: Graves' House/Inn & Hot Springs
WHEN: 1 week after her arrival & March 22, evening
OPEN TO: Graves, Credence & All
WARNINGS: Half-naked witch? IDK
STATUS: Closed

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backdated: about a week after arrival (for graves & credence)

Queenie Goldstein is not the sort of girl who looks a gift horse in the mouth, she really isn't. Ask anyone -- She's just a regular ray of sunshine. Too much of one, some people think, but Queenie's always felt it's better to err on the side of being grateful.

She and Teen, they didn't always have a lot. Somebody needed to find a silver lining for them both.

It would be a real understatement to say that it's been a challenge to maintain her typical upbeat demeanor since she found herself whisked so abruptly away from New York City's familiar clatter. She knows the silver lining's there, but there's only so much the universe can ask of a gal when she's been pulled from her home, her job, the only family she's got left. Does she have a roof over her head? Yes. Does she have food to eat? Absolutely, even if it makes her feel awfully guilty to not have much to give in exchange. She's got a couple of familiar faces around, too, even if technically they both tie her stomach up in knots.

It could be so much worse. She's been trying to remember that this whole last week as the full weight of reality settled on her slender shoulders. She really has. Some days it's just harder than others.

So, it's no real surprise that when she woke up today and found a big, ol' box sitting on her kitchen table, and then she opened the box and saw what was inside, that she had to sit down and cry for a minute. But a minute was all she was giving it; she dried her face on a towel, plucked herself up, and did the only thing she could do: She made cocoa.

The first she carries next door, a single tea cup shivering in her hands as she waits on the porch, hoping that Mr. Graves is home. A little later, she carries another to the inn, saucer fit over its top to protect the hot liquid inside as she looks for a skinny, sad boy with wide eyes.


current: at the hot springs (ota)

The hot springs has, by far, been the flat-out, absolute best thing Queenie has discovered about this place. A chance encounter on the road a couple of weeks ago, a teenage girl with big, tired eyes and a towel looped over her arm, dark hair still pinned high on her head.

I don't want a scar, is what the girl had said when she'd pulled up her sleeve to show the ghostly web of lines tracing her skin. It's great for your hair, too.

Queenie's been slipping out into the forest every few days since.

The girl hadn't been wrong; curls once limp were now bright and bouncy again, and Queenie just felt better each time she took the time to go the springs. She could swear she had more energy than ever before, but even if she didn't, she thinks she'd go anyway. Sure, she's got a tub at home, but it's just not the same.

Today she's carried along a couple of bath towels and an empty teapot to fill with water to carry home. They're set neatly aside under the nearest tree, under a low branch draped with her coat and clothes, black cotton fluttering gently in the warm mist skating off the water. She's kept on her underthings -- She's not that bold, no matter what her sister might think -- but there's not all that much left to the imagination as she gratefully sinks in, all the way up to her shoulders.

Comments

[posilutely]

This is far from the first man Queenie's ever seen a man shirtless, but she forces her gaze away anyway, not embarrassed by his nakedness but rather aware enough that it's not ladylike to stare even if she wants to. She's never been particularly moved by a pretty face on its own, but there's no denying he's handsome, and polite, too, so she sits on her impulse to peek and waits to look back until she hears the lap of water as he settles into the pool.

"Isn't it just divine?" she answers with a nod, her smile wide and indulgent. On instinct, she moves a step closer, then ducks back again, Tina on her shoulder and fussing in her ear.

"You're still learning English, huh, honey?"

[ad_dicendum]

Divine. He knows that word, because it's one of those words in English that's so similar to Latin that he can guess at its meaning, particularly now that he's learned how English-speakers pronounce the 'v' sound he's always pronounced so differently to them. Divine is an accurate description, where something like this occurs without the complicated heating systems the Romans use in their own baths.

Gracchus smiles back at her, relieved as he still so often is to find someone who is willing to speak to him with his uneasy English. She is a beautiful woman, with striking looks that speak more of distant foreign lands than Roman ones, like so many other people here. It's the clear kindness she extends, though, that strikes the deepest impression. Her accent may be unusual, her terms of addressing him unfamiliar, but her intention is clearly friendly.

He hunches his shoulders so that they slip under the warm water, then lifts his hands to splash his face.

"I did not speak English before here," he agrees. "I speak Latin and Greek. But some are teaching me."

As he's so often finding, he doesn't know the words to express what he's feeling: the confusion, the frustration at the inability to say anything but the simplest sentences to the people here. Even then, he can't always say what he wants, because he doesn't know what the words are.

[posilutely]

Getting a good read on people who don't speak English as their first language is never easy for her -- Unless you're really good at it, really used to English, you think in that other language, and that just leaves impressions to pick up on. Feelings. Here, she sometimes feels like she's hardly getting anything at all; bits and pieces she can pick out from a fog as thick as the one blanketing the village. From him, they're obviously enough shaped like disappointment and frustration.

"That's gotta be the pits, not being able to say what you want. And you so smart and all," she says, her eyes soft with concern. "But you're doing just great. You really are."

She steps forward again, forgetting herself in her curiosity. "You're from Rome, honey?"