𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐓 —

[evocandum]

action, picture prompts, overflow, etc. fully welcome wildcards! shippy, general, all goes.

actively seeking psls for this character ♡

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[hollywar]

[ The specificity of his workings in human affairs might be honoured by a documentarian of the supernatural, someone content to observe the uncanny at remove, but the collision of their respective worlds is also an epistemological unification, that is to say, he is initiated into the knowledge of Christmasland and she into his inhumanity. His newly acquired insight imperils her mission because, unlike the everyman, he actually possesses the facility to act on that insight. She cannot admit neutrality from such a force: an attitude that Millie inherited from her father. There is a reason that the supernaturally-inclined scatter upon sighting the awful figure of Charlie Manx.

She roosts on his chest with such outrageous ease not from a place of insolence alone. In Millie's afflicted mind no personal boundary is breached. Spontaneous roughhousing, mindless brawls, are all too common in Christmasland. Habit compels her to treat him like a fellow child, albeit a big one, although she knows he is not.

His request for civility meets a saw-toothed smile. ]

I saw it clear, in the well of your eye. The fury. Did you want to play?

[ Millie rises and takes his hand. She pulls the man upright, a whole ninety degrees from a lying position to a standing one in a motion. ]

"Our kind" is a menagerie. Some of us are sworn enemies. You can't protect me and be a friend of the Walking Backwards Man.

[evocandum]

[ She speaks to him the way no one does. The living that Mordrake visits are deferential in his presence, by fear more than awe. There are the rare few who do truly wish for him, who call him specifically with the intent to die, who greet him with a warmth of welcome in their eye, but there is never a whole absence of fear. Not really. Even amongst freaks, he is a horrible thing.

The girl isn't afraid of him at all, at least in no way he can perceive. It truly is a child's candor, a forthright honesty, but also something that makes him uneasy: the sensation of a thing brushing the prickle of nerves lining his skin, when he could feel such things. 'I saw it clear'; not only did she see his flutter of wrath, she calls him out on it now, which is all but unheard of. No one else would dare.

Edward finds himself giving a slight shake of his head, almost like a reflex, the faint echo of a gesture. ]

That fury is not mine, [ he almost insists, the smooth intonation of his voice uncharacteristically strained, even if for only a moment. And when he's pulled to his feet — with another startling display of the girl's unnatural strength — he's gathering himself quickly, attempting to smooth out every jagged edge of himself that she'd seen so clearly. The spectre clears his throat, brushes hands down his person, adjusts every carefully-maintained piece of himself after having been knocked askew both literally and figuratively. With one gesture of his hand, his cane returns to its position against his palm while the other hand waves quickly through the air. At once, a small round table is conjured, with room enough only for two, and a pair of chairs. It's an absurd, even comical sight to see manifested in this forlorn and decrepit graveyard, but why shouldn't there be some decorum even here? ]

Please. [ He motions for her to sit, still looking a bit ruffled and still seeking the civility he'd spoken towards. (He is a gentleman more than he is a monster. It has to be so.) ]

Pray tell, who is this Walking Backwards Man? Is he like you? He is something different?

[hollywar]

[ Her fearlessness before something akin to death incarnate arises not from total incapacity for fright but an emotional deficiency all the same; the instinct to recoil from the promise of bodily harm is dulled like flesh made numb by a persistent cold, a figurative cold that permeates her being. He's not encountered her like because what permits such a child to exist is not of this plane, save perhaps for the sanatoriums where minds untethered from reason roam and where she would surely be corralled if given over to psychiatry.

As though the numbing of certain faculties demanded a counterbalance, a sharpening of opposing instincts, she displays remarkable intuition about "his" temper. Why so? Because fury is woven throughout the games she plays, just as the playfighting of beasts is never far from the genuine article.

His preening routine draws giggles from the girl. She hasn't a modicum of tact! Yet for her viciousness her laughter is strangely free of venom. She merely finds his behaviour queer to behold. ]

You're like a plucked cockatoo! No one's stole your feathers!

[ The toy soldier's levity is arrested by his sorcerous display. Millie's weight shifts to a heel, the girl's expression equivocal. A pause, then her engine starts anew, propelling her into the chair per his invitation. ]

That was dynamite, Edward.

[ She flattens her hands upon the table. ]

He's a tough son of a bitch from winters past. Not like me, but more than others. My father dealt with the Walking Backwards Man after he picked a fight with Uncle Abe. But who's to say he's gone for good?

[ She lapses into silence, then lifts a hand and tap-taps her temple with a nail. ]

My memory... Feels like my head is full of holes... A beehive head... And the worst of it? It doesn't hurt...

[ She shakes the fog from her head. ]

Right. Your turn to answer: Who is this man that sits across from me so sullen?

[evocandum]

[ Through his underlying unease of the child's seeming lack of fear in the face of what is a very literal bogeyman, there is further nuance: perhaps even a form of a more pleasant surprise. Something.... refreshing, if he could allow himself to dwell on it. It seems more and more possible that she's truly never heard of him, of what he really is, that his dark legend has either not found its way to her or simply doesn't exist at all, in her world. But Edward cannot allow himself the luxury to be refreshed for very long. There are too many unknowns at play, here. And if the demon's countenance does uncharacteristically decide it wants her little soul..... well. There is nothing he can do (he thinks, assuming, of course, that his usual rules would apply here. There's some possibility that they would not.)

This is also assuming that she has a soul and that she is, in fact, actually a child. For the more she speaks, the more he is uncertain as to her nature or self at all. He eyes her calmly across his little conjured table, but with an intensity that tightens him at the edges, just-so, mouth held in a faint thing that is neither a smile nor a frown, absent of emotion, seeking and searching. His knuckles press through the thin material of his gloves, fingers slowly lifting from and then re-grasping the cane he keeps in his clutch. The gesture is reminiscent of a slow drumming against wood, of a cat's tail slowly curling in and out: waiting for something, patient but expectant. The demon so wants to learn more, to draw out each strand of knowledge from her buzzing head, desperate for it. Edward, as the unwilling proxy, feels a twitch at his jaw, forcing this all to go as peacefully (and properly!) as possible.

For now— he stores the information the girl gives him, even if each answer only begets far more questions. There is time for them; he must give as much as he takes, and so he'll tip his head forwards to the back-and-forth questioning, as though in a soft nod. ]

You do not know at all of me? Of Edward Mordrake's dark tale? Most of the freakish and the damned do, though I may only exist within their hearts as a whisper on dark nights, a story passed to-and-fro by giggling, nervous children and the shuddering superstitious. When they discover how real and true I am, it is too late.

[ He concludes ominously, and a little theatrically. After a brief pause, he asks anew, a glint in the icy blue of his eye— ] Tell me, Miss Manx, have you ever heard of the Two-Faced Prince?

[hollywar]

[ The notion of time being little more than a construct is better understood in the abstract than in practice. Human society is regimented in accordance to time and cannot do away with the construct, but what of a society for whom time is wholly without relevance? Her spectral acquaintance is unmoored from the hands of the clock in a respect but nonetheless walks this temporal plane of entropy and change. Her home does not change, is immutable in every way. Christmasland may expand its attractions but is fundamentally the same, growing in size but never in concept. His legend cannot penetrate so self-contained a place; in fact, her involvement in the affairs beyond its gates is a sin.

With her elbow on the table's surface the young lieutenant regards him in deadpan, her cheek upon her fist, a web of blue veins lending her face the appearance of a propped up cadaver like that of a late child memorialised in a post-mortem photograph. She is out of time as well.

Her eyes roll white, looking up in contemplation. ]

No... You sound like a cautionary tale, a judge. That's Santa's business.

[ His tale is in competition with the dominant tale of Christmasland; it cannot admit a second judge of children, not in a serious way. ]

I'm all ears, missster.

[ Millie cranes her neck to confirm his epithet, having taken it quite literally, for unlike an adult she is willing to entertain fantastic things. ]

Eyes too. Is the face your own or another's? Is it hideous or handsome too?

[evocandum]

[ Again, she speaks of this Santa of hers, and again — anyone else might think the girl to be raving mad. But Edward has seen madness, intimately, known it himself. Even in death, the echoes of the screams in the sanitorium have never quite left him; if he was not fully mad before his family had their greatest shame committed and locked away, then his time in that place surely pushed him past the brink.

There is a possibility madness exists within the girl, as it does within many. But she is not only that. That is the difference. She is also something with mottle upon her skin; now that he sits across from her in some parody of propriety, a Hellish tea party with curls of green fog ghosting across the worn old headstones peeking up from the earth—

(“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. “No, I give up,” Alice replied. “What’s the answer?” “I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.)

—his eyes catch the mapping of blue to her cheek, further evidence that the girl with the buzzing in her head is something very different from the human, living souls who call him.

It's been a while since he became The Storyteller, but Mordrake slips into the role and smiles almost warmly, indulgent. He watches her peer closer, and he slowly reaches up to adjust his hat, placed at just the correct slope and angle to conceal his monstrosity. Not just yet— ]

Another's. As hideous as I am handsome. [ His smile stretches, wry; that is how the story goes, after all. He has heard it retold by the living many times, his legend. They mostly get it right. ]

As a living man, I was born cursed, you see. By a second soul — something not of the natural world, but Hellish. A demon's face mirroring my own. A living creature with... dark and vile desires. [ His performer's smile flinches, but only slightly. A faint tremour. ]

When I was staying in company of a sideshow, that was my... rather exotic moniker. The Two-Faced Prince. I would win the hearts of the crowds with my talents and charms, and then afterwards I would reveal the monster within the beloved prince.

....In death, the demon's hunger has only grown more terrible and more damaging, for it now feeds on the souls of the monstrous. The broken, the—... lost. My ilk. [ Here, another switch changes in Mordrake and he abruptly goes more solemn again, very serious. The story shifts with him into a warning, and he watches her intently. ]

Since I have been drawn to you, then you have caught Its attention. That is not to say that It would seek to harm you... but I cannot speak that for certain. You must know this of me, child.

[hollywar]

[ It was said that her nocturnal home cannot permit a second entity to preside over the wayward souls ensnared in its thrall, and in the case of the Prince this metaphysical inflexibility is doubly true; because, as improbable as the coincidence happens to be, his nature and modus operandi bear a shocking resemblance to the master of Christmasland, her father. It would be presumptuous to forecast his posture towards Mordrake in the absence of the man himself, but what can be said with confidence is that Charlie Manx would take measures, the strictest measures, to prevent Mordrake's supernatural career from inconveniencing his.

Millie on the other hand is enthralled by the phantasmagorical tableaus conjured by his words, envisioning each chapter from his life like a play on the stage of her mind. She is entertained by the telling and whether through conscious effort or happenstance, he keeps the girl engaged. ]

Is it another's when your souls are twisted in a knot?

[ The question is as much pointed at herself as the girl metabolises his peculiar condition aloud. It is only after the tale is done that the pale soldier goes over the details with an eye for interpersonal risk.

She leans back in the chair, interlocking her fingers at her waist in silent rumination. ]

Nobody is without vile desires in this world. The difference is your desires have a face. It's honest, in a way.

[ She sits up with jarring alacrity. ]

I have an idea!

[ Millie sets an elbow on the table and reaches across to the dead man. ]

Let's make a pact. When you... or should I say It wants to do ill things to me... you'll tell me before you're overwhelmed. I won't behead you for black desires. Tell them to me.

[ She extends her pinkie and smiles her jagged smile. ]

Scout's honour.

[evocandum]

[ 'Is it another's when your souls are twisted in a knot?'

Edward doesn't answer, though it's only because he knows he doesn't need to. The answer is clear, of course: and the child sees into him with far too much frightful lucidity, some pellucid, pure insight to counter the cryptic carnival-ride of her strange remarks and stranger perceptions. There's something to her that is an old soul more than it is a young one, at least in moments like this.

Her next statement only further illustrates this, and the spectre sits almost stunned again by such wisdoms coming from her sharp-toothed little mouth, before she at once becomes something juvenile and sprightly once more, springing up the way she does, offering out a hand. He blinks down at the gesture, utterly unsure what to make of her all over again. (A pact? Is it wise to tether himself to her in this way?

Hasn't he already decided to? Or rather — was it ever a choice at all?)

All of this is unprecedented, never before done. He's figuring it out as he goes, sorting out where the rules of him fit against the confines of his new parameters with this entity. What she proposes means safety, at least in theory. (At least in hope.) It might not guarantee as much, but..... if he is to follow through with this, with continuing to learn the creature as she learns him, and to potentially— assist her? Save her? (Try?)... then such measures must be taken. Honesty.

He stares for a moment longer, eyes very slowly lifting from her hand, then returning down to the sole finger jutted out. There's an almost comical moment when the sinister spirit of reckoning looks almost lost, unsure what he's meant to do. (Edward Mordrake has never pinkie promised with anyone, to be sure.) But he can follow along well enough, and finally lifts his own gloved hand, hesitant for a moment before he imitates the gesture and pushes his own closer, absorbing the moment in like a sponge, with a fascination he can't quite suppress. ]

A pact. [ He affirms, with due solemn respect, taking this all very seriously. Then— ] But my dreadful warning will ideally be an unnecessary one. We do not harm children.

[ This is spoken purposefully, chin lifted and eyes sweeping sideways, making it well-known — yes, a reminder aimed to his dark twin, as he sometimes must give. It does test him so.... and the little beast of a girl may tempt the demon as something quite unlike the usual child; it might categorise her differently. ]

—Now then. [ His eyes flash back, returning forwards to her. He'll wait his turn to ask her his own questions, head tilted politely, making certain first— ] Is there anything more you wish to ask of me?

[hollywar]

[ The aforesaid reflections on time as a contrivance of humanity also account for the difficulty if not impossibility of determining her age in keeping with scientific method. Does arrested youth correspond to adulthood with the passage (or in her case absence) of time or is Millie a child in every sense? and if so can one square her penetrating remarks with the verdict of childhood? Her psychological terrain has no analogue in the pages of a medical journal, therefore the onus of drawing an opinion falls on his shoulders, a responsibility he did not ask for or is compelled to undertake by anything but his own disquiet mind.

The pact is a trick. Smoke and mirrors. It is not a trick played consciously by the pale beast on the gentleman but an artifice which came about as if by happenstance, because, there is no authority to enforce her pact but the frail bonds of a promise; and therein is the brilliance of it: Millie intuits that perfidy is not in his character, or rather that he is true to his word, and will therefore feel compelled to remain so without collateral. Now this rash judgement of his integrity may prove mistaken, but she does not think it will. ]

Good intentions.

[ Her malformed smile expands to reveal another pointed tooth. Ideal circumstances—intentioned circumstances—so often come undone in a crisis. He is not so naive as to affect absolute certainty; and though her education insists on absolute distrust of adults, perhaps this one can be relied upon for certain things. Her olive branch, self-interested though it may be, is another sin against the doctrine she must follow.

Millie eases back, the promise made. ]

You remind me of him... of my daddy. You're different and alike. It's like a riddle.

[ She drops a palm on the pommel of her sword. ]

There are people that need running through. I said it: there is a war on Christmas. If Christmasland is ailing someone is breaking it from the outside. You will help me find them and put them to the sword.

[ Millie raises her pinkie as a reminder. ]

Or will you let me come to harm? I think you're interested in me, but I'm not your little doll. I can leave with or without you.

[evocandum]

[ The spirit is indeed true to his word — a trait clung fiercely to in life (some attempt, amongst so many others, to remain a true and good man, a noble man in every sense of the word) and simply solidified in death. In part, it's how a thing like him functions: there is no need to lie, but he is also bound to truth itself. Just as much as the souls he comes to are demanded to speak candidly if they shy away from the concept, Mordrake will speak candidly in return. Concepts like secrecy and shame are not.... absent from him, not wholly, but they have been smoothed and numbed down over these long years beyond the veil. He's only the shadow of what a true person is, anymore.

His cane has vanished somewhere along the way, gone now for the moment, so as to free his hands. Now both of them come to rest on the table surface, folded together as he sits there attentively and listens. When she brings up her father again — compares them — he's freshly curious, the crystal of his eye sparked with intrigue. ]

Is your father also helping to remedy this... situation?

[ He has to wonder, or if it's a task she's taken to on her own, on the 'outside', as she says.

Quietly, he watches her, staying silent and unmoving like that for a long moment. The parameters to what he is means that he is not, in fact, a killer. ....Not without reason, at least. A life must be taken to acquire a soul, that much is fact, and he loathes it each time. (He loathes it, but it's still done with a flourish, with a grand sweep, with a flash in his eye and a pull to his mouth as sharp as the edge of the dagger that rests against his person now. Can he claim the demon to have infiltrated him fully during these times?)

Outside of that stipulation... he does not target the living or harm them. (But he can, and he has, if they stand in his way. On rare occasion, some have. To protect their fellows, to stop him from proceeding. They will know... punishment, in those cases.)

If he vows to protect the girl (who may not be authentically one of his monsters, but she is one of his kind and therefore his protective wing casts itself out to her), then he vows to stop any that might harm her. Her world.

And, of course, he can't risk losing contact with her just yet. She threatens to leave without him, to carry on her way, perhaps to find another dark thing to help her with her task, and he is not quite ready to part ways with his new beastly little companion. Neither is The Other, Its eyes narrowed dangerously by the mere concept; when It makes connection with such a dark soul, It latches onto that energy like a sucking parasite. ]

I shall help you. [ He concludes, finally blinking again, as though he's only remembered what it is to need to blink. ] You will seek them out in that way, then? On the "outside?" How long can you remain beyond the borders of your Christmasland?

[hollywar]

[ Whereas an adherence to truth is a focal point of his identity, Millie possesses no qualms about the use of deception to achieve an end. The nature of truth is all the more fluid from where she hails, a domain born of imagination where fact and fiction are confused, rendering truth untenable as a governing principle: if everything is unreal, nothing is unreal. It is only during her sojourn on an earth common to the both of them that the distinction between what is and what is not enters her mind as an unwelcome complexity. She does have curiosity about the mundane world, but at the same time it's Newtonian logic chafes against the dreamlike habitat she is most accustomed to.

She has thus far entertained his queries at a pace that precludes deception from all but the most accomplished of fabricators, firing off answers without forethought much like a child, and though her pronouncements contained no lies, the sunken-eyed waif in uniform made conscious omissions to protect her master. Now that the status of her father is put to the question, the girl's eyes drift, irritated by the trajectory of his prying (despite herself having likened Mordrake to the man!).

She suddenly bashes her fist on the table, snapping at Edward. ]

Why!? Huh...? Your pact is with me. Of course he's working to [ the girl parodies his phrasing with sardonic tilts of her head ] "r-e-m-e-d-y t-h-e s-i-t-u-a-t-i-o-n."

[ The explosion of anger feels disproportionate to the question, yet it has touched upon a deeper something Millie wishes to conceal.

She exhales, flexing her fingers, her slight mouth shutting the sight of bared teeth. ]

He's working very hard. Always.

[ Millie sends a minute nod of approval in his direction once the merits of the arrangement prevail over the prospect of her departure. Her tyrannical conduct hasn't diminished her charm for those of her ilk, and perhaps for him. ]

Santa has many enemies, but few have the brass to move against him alone. I need to figure out who's involved.

[ Her activity in the Real World is an on-going experiment of her making. Millie is reluctant to concede a weakness, but it is one relevant to their undertaking. ]

I don't know. Maybe as long as I want, but it isn't what I want. A base of operations in the Real World would be a start.

[ The girl dresses it up in military speak but is essentially saying she is homeless on this plane. ]

[evocandum]

[ This outburst is different from the previous — not a literal jump for his throat to knock him backwards but rather a flash of fire, a slam of fist to table; he's offended her in some way. Mordrake sits there calmly in the face of it, though his mind is spinning, reeling, and his eyes cut sharply to watch every flicker of movement in the child as he listens to her anger; he won't miss a single beat. She's like a ticking bomb, this little devil, and as much progress has been made in sitting down and speaking to her, in slowly peeling apart even just the most surface layer of connection, she could snap back like a spring at any moment.

She is defensive about her father. Protective. Even as he watches her work herself through her anger and out of it, his eyes flitting down to stare at her hands for a moment as she flexes them, he sees that it is by force that she does so. The nature of what he is now — the carrier for a thing that feeds on secrets, for that is what is at the heart of pain and suffering and every thing that the demon salivates for — prickles at the edges, aware and alive. Sorrow, guilt, anger in this case; all are delicious emotions for it.

But he feels what the demon cannot. And it is with a visible frown that he watches her for a moment, mouth tugged down at the corners: thoughtful, and unabashedly mournful. He can't know the intimate nature of what fuels her anger, but it is an ache in him that she should feel it at all. No matter what causes it or what she has known, it is too clear that this scarred little soul is tormented, as such instability usually suggests. (And doesn't he know that too well, himself?)

He quietly files away this father of hers to explore later. For now: an untouchable subject. The demon's face whispers for more but he ignores it; now is not the time to suck truths and secrets from the girl. Mordrake is speaking with her conversationally right now. Gathering information necessary for this task at hand with which he has agreed to assist her; she is not a victim but a partner, for however long that may last.

'I don't know', she says, which suggests that she has little experience with the concept of remaining outside of her realm, which is.... worrisome. He eyes her for a moment longer, then— ]

Can you be harmed, beyond your realm? [ He continues, quickly, at risk of conjuring her ire again, ] If I am to help you, then I must know of what can harm you. Little can touch me, being what I am — but you.... are of solid flesh, are you not?

[ Beat. ]

The "Real World", as you call it, has changed much through my endless existence. Each time I visit, I encounter a land anew. If we are to traverse it together for a time, then we must be prudent and cautious.

[hollywar]

[ Her place of provenance is depicted as a heaven for the saved according to her own description, yet the emotion of anger and its corollaries are generally seen as incompatible with heaven, for how can negative emotions take root in the soil of perfection? These theological quandaries do not fall under her purview as the disciplinarian of Christmasland, yet they open themselves to the scrutiny of a perceptive observer through Millie's discontent: is she vexed by the current state of things alone and is otherwise the picture of equanimity or has something gone awry a long time ago?

Her fingers tap the table in sequence from her little finger to the thumb, soundlessly but with an anxious energy that presages another outburst at a too-tender a line of questioning. He is in an unenviable position with the flesh-eater on edge but without a precise notion of what might exacerbate the situation; the typical conventions of polite conversation seem insufficient for the task of navigating her personality safely.

Her fingertips stop, arresting their dance. She has noticed his probing gaze and fixates her pupils on his as if to announce her awareness of such concentrated scrutiny.

She flashes a fleeting smile as though recalling a fond memory. ]

We bloody one another without pity in the Big Glorious War. But that's there. Here...

[ Her temple motions to the reality at large. ]

Here children die. They suffer. The essence of this world says I can die too. It's the nature of the beast.

[ She does not know whether she might perish from a grievous wound in the Real World, but an educated guess can be made.

Millie pushes herself upright, green fog lapping at her boots. ]

Let's exercise that caution before a grieving widow interrupts our tea party.

[evocandum]

[ Caring for the living is not something Mordrake is accustomed to anymore — the souls that he watches over are nothing corporeal, a collection of fellow ghosts. But here... is a responsibility to keep someone alive in a world they could potentially expire in. (He is feeling rather stressed about it!)

Not that he thinks the girl is in any immediate danger, unless there is something to her nature that requires particular care (can she exist in any environment? In the sunlight?), but with so many unknowns still surrounding his peculiar new companion, it's difficult to know exactly how to handle this. And he can well-imagine how her presence might be received amongst the living of this era. Caution will certainly have to be exerted.

As she stands, he slowly follows suit, movements fluid, quiet as usual, and with a flit of his hand the conjuration lifts, gone as though it never were there at all, leaving them standing alone in the middle of the graveyard. ]

A base of.... operations, [ he reflects upon the words she'd used before, turning to face the cemetery gate, the way that leads out and into the nearest city. Mordrake taps his cane thoughtfully against dirt for a moment. Now that he's been summoned here (whether intentionally or not, for someone has summoned him, even if it is not the girl he's now tethered to), he will require a soul to return to his own realm. In that way he can remain here in this land of the living for however long he likes, even if the concept is a novelty to him. For there has never before been a reason to prolong his return to the afterlife like this, but now.... there is. He can collect his soul after he has assisted the girl. ]

We might find refuge in the city. [ What a pair they'd be, walking down those streets in the dead of night....... A hotel, perhaps, could suffice — though he isn't used to this modern era and is painfully out of place within it...

There's another thought, suddenly, and he turns his head to look at Millie for a moment. ]

Do you require sustenance before we find our base? [ Eating is a thing living beings need to do, that's right... ]

[hollywar]

[ The lieutenant understands that the pale hand of death can reap life from the disenchanted field of reality, yet she perceives her own death at great remove. She had no need to account for her demise before and circumvents the thought even now for fear that admittance would open a door to the possibility of failure; meeting her end in so wretched a place with her task undone is unacceptable to the child. Banish the thought! And should doubt scale the ridges of her spine, banish it anew. Has she not perfected the art of pushing things down—unbearable things—for the fulfilment of one man?

She decrees his knowledge of her workings sufficient to take the next step although his insight is anything but complete. Each item of information is a piece of herself surrendered to a stranger whose motivations cannot be corroborated with a mere exchange of words. He must become less strange to her in order to lower her defences. It is a matter of building trust through action. ]

Yes. Sacrifice your right hand to my appetite. I'm feeling mighty peckish, soldier!

[ Her gaze lingers on the gentleman without humour. Her lips part, raising the curtain on a monstrous smile. ]

Then again, a ghost can't be too filling.

[ Her pallor casts doubt on whether the girl is alive at all, a question without a definitive answer; that she eats, however, is a certainty. ]

I want to eat flesh. Human flesh! But the buried are nothing but bones.

[ Millie looks to the bleary glow of city lights like shards of bottle glass blinking in the sky of night. She presumes, perhaps naively, that he is better acquainted with civilisation than herself, in part because he is an adult. ]

Her gaze drifts to a crow perched on the cemetery gate. She points to the bird. ]

Kill it. It'll have to do.

[evocandum]

[ Calm as his surface is (is maintained, with a delicate hand, like an expertly-crafted work of art — a play, an opera, a symphony, things he once composed in his mortal life — but just beneath are fissures, mustn't let them split open too much or else he'll be grinning as widely as the girl, and his teeth may not be sharpened points like an animal's, but his madness strikes as fast and as brutal—) .....he's alarmed, just so, when Millie demands offering from him. Brows lifted, eyes flashing downwards to his prickly little companion, he can't claim to know if she teases or if she speaks with severity, with her flip-flopping. He isn't afraid of her (fear doesn't exist in him for his fellow monsters; he welcomes them in with every ounce of his wretched being) — but he must admit to being very uncertain as to how the rules of her work, of how to handle a being like her.

Is he going to have to stave her off from actually trying to consume from him, or— No, no, she's quite moved on, though the knowledge that she craves flesh is met with an equal amount of stun. Edward stares at her with some mix of startle and wonder: a meat-eater, in the most ghastly sense. (Unless this is meant in some dark jest, although he cannot be certain that it is. It would make sense that the child with her predator's mouth and deathly hue and unnatural strength might feast on the human living.)

When she directs his attention to the bird, Edward stares mutely for a moment longer, as though lingering to see whether she means it or if she'll bark a laugh at him. There's a purse of his mouth; is this where his fate lies in this unholy unification? A servant to a child's demands? Yet he'll do it anyway, with only the softest huff beneath his breath. (Of course he will; he's been damnably loyal to the little devil since he first lay eyes on her.)

And he isn't even truly irritated by the demand, a faint glint of mirth in his eye as he vanishes abruptly, only to reappear just at the animal's location. He strikes in seconds, too quickly for it to even know he's there. He could snap its neck with a will of his mind, but he opts to stab the thing with the ornate dagger he pulls from his person — for the demon's bloodlust has only livened since Mordrake made connection with Millie Manx, the vile creature attached to him made excitable in the presence of Its own kind. The soul of an animal is nothing to what It really needs to satisfy some of that hunger, but it's something. A life taken with the cursed blade that Mordrake possesses is a hideous thing indeed — and the display of blood, the act of his own hand causing it, pleases the demon. It might exhibit some mercy for him as reward, a brief reprieve from its Hellish whispers.

The bird utters no sound, silenced before it can even react. Still, it's a more gory scene than it had to be, and Edward winces as he pulls the dagger from its large body and reappears at the girl's side. Delicately, fingers pinching it by one bloody wing so as not to get mess on his glove more than is necessary, he holds the limp thing out to her. ]

Your meal, Miss Manx.

[hollywar]

[ Beyond the grisliness of her demand is an element of the absurd. They are not so far removed from civilisation that dispatching wildlife is essential to her survival. After all, he could supplement her quite real appetite for flesh with a sandwich from a rest stop. Her sense of immediacy on the matter leaves open two distinct explanations: the girl is experimenting with her authority over her accomplice; or that her impulse control is truly that of a feral child in fancy dress so that the notion of "later" is secondary to "now"; and yet because she is capable of forging plans, as exemplified by their accord, there is perhaps a tension between her rational and irrational selves with one intermittently prevailing over the other. This would account for the difficulty of discerning her seriousness at any given time: her mind is in flux.

She watches the bird without blinking. Will it detonate with a word from the spectre? Will he pierce it with a phantom spear from afar? The spectacle of his powers has captured her imagination and he is complicit in cementing an expectation of theatrics by flooding the stage of their meeting with smoke.

Her undivided attention is rewarded with a glimpse of his momentary disappearance, swift as the flash of a camera, immortalising the bird in death. Millie turns her head towards his re-materialised self, looks to his face, the bird and back. ]

Look.

[ She lifts a hand, slight and quivering with black glee. ]

I'm trembling. Trembling at the horror we'll unleash.

[ The same hand snatches the bird and Millie sinks her uneven teeth into the carcass feathers and all. The black plumes burst about them from the force of her bite as she devours the animal with both hands like a savage, ripping and tearing until it is little more than a crimson stamp on her uniform and chin.

She spits out a snapped femur then posts up mysteriously before Mordrake. The child lifts her chin and closes her eyes, awaiting something implicit in his role as her manservant? Enabler? Father figure? What she awaits is for him to clean her up. ]

[evocandum]

[ As is quickly becoming pattern, Mordrake is waiting with bated breath (...figuratively speaking, for a being that no longer truly breathes) to see what truths his strange new associate will actually claim as true, and which may be less than that. (Will she really eat the bird or is this simply an impish little trick to see if he'll obey her? Or perhaps it's a tease.)

But what it comes down to is that he'd asked her explicitly about sustenance, and when faced with providing it for her, there is to be no hesitation. He'll care for her, as promised. And despite the curl at the corner of his mouth of faint disgust as he holds the bird inbetween pinched digits, he'd repeat the violent (and dramatic; he does enjoy a show) act if it would satisfy her.

When it does, indeed, become known that it will satisfy her, something is affirmed within the spectre, and it is that he has fulfilled a true need for the girl, that it isn't a tease. He stares at the shuddering hand that she lifts to show him, with that same mixture of bemusement, true startle, and some sort of horrid awe — 'the horrors we'll unleash' — there's no time to let the words absorb before she's scarfing down the dead thing like a starved beast, and Mordrake casts his wide gaze to watch the entire gruesome act.

...Gruesome, but not off-putting. Not really. It would be a pure lie to claim that each rip of her jagged teeth to flesh and feather doesn't enchant him further to Millie. She's more monstrous than most any adult horror he's encountered. He's come across souls holding the weight of so many dark things, but this.... The spirit stares as though in wonder as he watches her eat, raw and unforgiving, leaking blood all over. She'd actually eat his hand off if it did get in the way. He's slowly withdrawn it, letting both of his hands fold politely across his torso as he watches her feed, and when the demon hoarsely whispers Its delight, he barely flinches. (How deeply does his own darkness go? He'll never know where he ends and worse things begin.)

When the girl moves to stand before him, head lifted up almost expectantly — eyes shut, which is a strange display of.... not quite vulnerability from her, although maybe, perhaps something somewhat trusting, a momentary guard let down around him, or perhaps he still has no true idea what to make of her — his thought-process is already aligned with what she's expecting, because goodness she's made a mess. And he is prepared for it, hand flicking with a quick flourish to extract the neatly folded handkerchief from within his breast pocket.

It's a familiar gesture, even if he's never used it for anything quite like this before. But it's a part of him, a phantasmal extension of himself — the cloth. Offered to many of the souls he comes to claim, for often their owners weep with either fear or relief to see him. Edward lifts it to her, but the girl's eyes are still closed, and he realises— ...another first. ]

Now I'm the one trembling at the mess you've made. My word. [ It's not quite a chastise, even if he says it with all the sternness of an unhappy butler coming across a spilled mess on a freshly-washed floor. But the cloth to her cheek is soft and careful as he fusses over the state of her, free hand gently coaxing her face to one side and then the other as he wipes the blood, as much of it as he can, from her wan visage. ]

There. If you become hungry again, do tell me and I'll find more. We mustn't have you tearing out the throats of passerby on the streets.

[hollywar]

[ There is nothing wrong with a good jest, a practical joke or nasty trick; her violence, however, is neither an empty exaggeration stated for effect nor a final recourse to an insoluble problem. It is a self-sustaining mode of being without intrinsic horror, to wit, when Millie declares her admiration of horror, it is as its perpetrator and engine, a being unconscious of its own darkness for it is the essence of her nature as a Christmasland child, requiring no more acknowledgement on her part than the autonomous workings of one's organs. She is a mockery of her former self but not without a kind of purity to the completeness of her corruption. Perhaps figments of light yet circle her soul, but at an immense distance, like stellar objects orbiting the rings of Saturn, the detritus of memories faded and proscribed.

She awaits his ministrations as though they are par for the course, a duty thrust upon Edward to his unknowing. It's surely learned behaviour, given the confidence with which she choreographs her post-meal dance, but learned from whom? He could hazard a guess, but too rash a judgement carries the risk of doing away with all nuance. Millie does approach him like another figure in her life, but not exactly like them. He is yet himself.

Her actions convey a measure of unspoken trust, though were Millie to reflect on this development, she would make a face, chagrined at her negligence before an adult. But here and now, shutting her eyes and relaxing her inhibitions feels right, if only for a moment. ]

Are you now. Is your dead heart athumping.

[ Words delivered blindly and without the emphasis of a question mark but with the beginnings of a smile upon her bloodsoaked lips. The minute cracks in his expertly cultivated demeanour are all the more salient for his refinement.

The girl tolerates the manipulation of her face to a point, the onset of a whine building in her throat just as the deed is done. ]

Argh... am I decent yet?

[ Millie opens her eyes. ]

I'm glad you understand: whether bystanders die depends on you. I have no tender feelings for the hoi polloi.

[ She looks past the stone arch then takes the lapel of his coat and tugs a single time. ]

Let's go, Eddy!

[evocandum]

[ There is much that could be considered about her actions and choices and mannerisms, much to be analysed — he'll tiptoe towards it, no doubt, as he continues making sense of the mysterious being. As much otherworldly insight as he may have gained over these long years (and as much as his own mind has been shaped by its detachment from a mortal form, transforming him into something that can only parody a human being at most) he's almost comically inexperienced with this direct contact. There is always some curtain between himself and the living, no matter how he tries to breach it in their final hours, sitting with them to share conversation and whatever kindness and decency he can hope to exude before casting his terrors upon them. This, by contrast, is extremely intimate.

(Of course, yet again — Edward can't claim to truly perceive the girl as one of the living; he categorises her this way only by virtue of her having a solid, corporeal form that is more vulnerable than his own for such solidity.)

He narrowly escapes too much fuss, withdrawing his hands just in time as she begins to complain, brows clipped sharply down at her — though with a patient slowness as he neatly folds the cloth and returns it to his pocket. He can't assume she won't snap those teeth at him, no matter if he has not a drop of blood to be drawn, but he won't treat her like an animal, even if he will cautiously respect her tendency to behave like one (the pouncing, Miss Manx, really must not happen again.) But she is not an animal, the way no freak or monster that he has known are animals. Not even the thing tethered to him is an animal. ]

A stark improvement, at least for the moment, [ he answers almost with amusement as she opens her eyes, his own sweeping down her again: taking in the uniform, the tasseled epaulettes at her shoulders, the sword at her side. She'll be a strange sight roaming the "Real World", as she calls it, though no less strange than his own countenance.... They truly make quite the costumed pair.

'whether bystanders die depends on you' — Another disconcerting remark that could be a tease or could be true, and another that Edward has to take at face-value for now, giving a soft exhale. What a responsibility! He'll have to do his best not to cause undue harm to the poor victims who come close into contact, although.... if it came to it, would he help procure a human meal for his new devilish associate? (Yes.) The esteemed, civil aristocrat (hah) will try to avoid such an outcome, at least.

He slips out of his thoughts as she tugs at his coat and prompts him with a childlike enthusiasm, as though they were set off for a night of merriment rather than traversing a land neither of them belong to, with the intent to (probably brutally) combat whatever forces are attacking her realm. ]

On we go then, my dearest. I shall try to keep up. [ He agrees, and steps off towards the cemetery's entrance, now their exit — cane appearing back in hand, his gait a poised one. Fortunately at this hour, the streets to be found leading in are lonesome and quiet, though the lights of the city sparkle perpetually at backdrop, an ever-present buzz a reminder of how very alive this world truly is, and how vast. For all their exchanged abstruse knowledge and insight, neither Mordrake nor his demonic fiend come equipped with internal maps of this domain, and his gaze cast around the environment is a bit tight, severe, and mildly suspicious. ]

Have you somewhere in mind for this headquarters of yours? There are sure to be hotels and boarding homes deeper in the city where we might find privacy, though I not know how elaborate. It has been some time since my last venture to the mortal realm.

[hollywar]

[ He can file her pouncing under the most flagrant offences to proper conduct but without a mechanism to enforce his notion of etiquette, what she does and does not do is contingent on her whims. This is wholly as intended and even foundational in respect to the principles of Christmasland. She is unmanageable because anything that stifles the wildness of a child has been excised from that nocturnal realm of blood and tinsel. Her aggressive behaviour, her unapologetic physicality, is good and proper to her understanding, whereas it is an incursion against his conception of proper bearing. This is not to say the girl is incapable of learning or exercising restraint but that Mordrake contends with a deeply alien perception of the world in Millie.

Her costume is likewise a relic from the other side. Far from being a mere aesthetic decision, her costume and those of her pale ilk are unique and loaded with symbolism. A great amount of significance can be read into one's dress in the Real World, and not without sound reason, but the relationship is not quite the same. Here she is a child playing dress-up, perhaps one chaperoned from a production of The Nutcracker by a fellow actor, for Edward's wardrobe is an artifact of a bygone century. ]

Are you pulling my leg? As if a ghost might limp.

[ The certitude leaves her voice before the final syllable. Can a ghost become reliant on a cane? or is the stick a blueblood affectation? He can cover distances in a blink without apparent discomfort. ]

A hill fort would advantage us in open war, but our charge is reconnaissance, assassination. The enemy may be hunting me as I hunt it. Our quarters should be small with a clear view of the exits. We may have to move often, so a temporary headquarters.

[ Her thinking is surprisingly clear-eyed in respect to tactics. Millie abruptly turns about and grabs his coat with both hands. ]

You seem... How should I put it? At sea. I'm an outsider here too—I get it. But you're my adult. Adulthood opens doors in the Real World. I need you to be competent. We must face this confusion head-on.

[ Millie relaxes her fingers and smooths out the ruffled fabric of his coat as a kind of consolation. ]

Onward then.