These days, rearranging his Essence is less a matter of time as it is one of will - it takes effort to do away with the densely muscled shape of the lioness, to unwind and remake the sharp moon bright teeth and the heavy paws and the short tawny fur. In another place, he might have been a blackbird fast as blinking. He would have popped the latch on the window, pressed open the pane and been away into the night before Kitty had even pulled the door completely shut behind her. But here, it is a matter of both instinct and shackle. Where once the pentacle bound him, he is now strangely untethered. Smoke twisting in an uncorked bottle, so used to the shape of the glass it has been made to fit in that drifting up and outwards seems almost unnatural; where once he was free, the rift shard now snags and snarls like the sharp ends of a particularly pointy bramble bush. How far does he stretch into the tangle, knowing that with each change - with each flex of power -, that he is baiting the thing that wants to devour him?
The point is, it isn't any easier to stop being the lioness than it is to start. Maybe that is why he is still there when the door again comes open.
But that seems unlikely. The shape he's chosen isn't made for evening escapes out of upper floor windows. Sitting cross-legged on Kitty's bed is the boy. It is not, Bartimaeus thinks, any particular one. The shape he had taken to sit in the Inquisition's dungeons had been purposefully anonymous, a familiar face which he sometimes liked to remember turned half away or seen as if viewed from a distance. The boy is familiar in the way all boys are, and he is particular only around the eyes and in the fine white scar on the side of his forefinger. Ptolemy had cut himself there while sharpening the point of a reed pen and he likes to see the mark of it now a thousand years on even as the hands themselves have been formed purposefully incorrect.
The boy sits with his chin in his hand. In the most rapturous, tear-streaked, over the top simpering he can manage, Bartimaeus says, "I've been looking all over and I don't know what to do."
The brief hope kindled by seeing him still there, and seeing him wearing a reasonable, recognizable, human shape, is snuffed out very quickly. For just a brief moment, she thought that maybe they'd actually get somewhere - but no. Of course. This has to be just another way to mock and belittle her.
What if she left? Stormed out of this room. Stopped speaking to him. Treated him like he was dead as Mandrake. It'd be a lot less misery in her life, that's for sure. She'd have to endure a lot less insults. Her life would be quite a lot better if she just never spoke to him again.
And yet - she stays.
"Spirits aren't stupid," Kitty says, "and you're not stupid. So I don't know why it is you insist on being stupid." She shakes her head. "You know this isn't what I want."
The illusion of tears are summarily brushed and flicked away. Is any of this a stunning example of maturity earned over the course of five thousand years of being jerked around at the whims of deplorable strangers like a fish on the end of a particularly sturdy line? No. But it had been worth it for the look on her face.
(Besides, get a load of this! They've practically managed to wander away the top of Mandrake all together.)
With a sigh of surrender1, Bartimaeus leans back to lean against the wall alongside the bed and stretches his legs out over the edge of the lump stuffed mattress. "I really don't know what you want say, but let's not pretend that you'd really go for whatever it was even if I did. I could be as sincere as a sweet old grandmother and you'd still say, 'Bartimaeus, what are you getting at?'"
For this last bit he's adopted a particularly unflattering falsetto.
1. Or the pretense of it. The first rule of this business is to never commit yourself to anything if you can avoid it.
"As if you even can be sincere," she snaps back, a little rankled by that nasty little impression of her. "I don't think you're even capable. I don't think you're capable of telling the truth at all."
A long breath out, and then, abruptly, with very little change in tone - "Which I understand. I know you've had to spend...hundreds of years, thousands, keeping yourself safe from the people who summoned you. I know that you're afraid of being exploited. But it's not as though I'm suddenly going to snare you in a summoning circle because you let your guard down enough to have an honest conversation with me."
Sitting with his back to the wall, the dark eyed boy's thin face narrows slightly further. He smiles. It's not an especially warm expression, but for a moment he regards her.
"Say, do you recall that old bag of bones from Gladstone's tomb? The one with the bright idea to jump with both feet into a golem."
"How long did it take, I wonder? For him to go a little funny. I mean, he was only stuck in that box, bound there to the dusty bones of his master, for a little over a hundred years. That's not really very long at all when you think about it."
Her brows draw down. "What are you talking about?" she demands. "That's - That's a horribly long time. I can scarcely go a day in my room without being able to move around and see new things. A hundred years is unthinkable."
A small, humming sound. The boy clasps his hands together. He taps his thumbs against one a other and he does not look to the window for even a brief instant of contemplative silence.
"When you put it that way, I suppose it is. Now personally, speaking as someone who has spent a day or fifty in bottles, I wonder if it was the being closed in a box part or if it was the being trapped in the bones one."
The boy brightens.
"Not that it really matters. He and I have a thing or two in common regardless. Would you like to guess what that is, or should I just tell you?"
Do you want to guess is a dare, and Kitty has a bit of difficulty resisting dares. At least when they're dares that involve demonstrating that you're the cleverest one in the room. But - well - There's no point here, really; all she'll do is get it wrong, likely because he'll lie if she does get it right. So.
Having his bluff called is almost as satisfying as if she'd played along. Almost. Nevertheless, he heroically soldiers on.
"We both have been stuck somewhere we don't belong, bound to something we aren't meant to be bound to, and most importantly- and this really is the vital bit -, we have more or less have been left to our own devices. So it's possible that you are either radically underestimating me and what I am capable of today, or--"
A shrug. A smile. It has too many teeth, but doesn't sound like a threat. Not really. "It is only a matter of time before things get really nasty."
And then, springing ever so deftly from somber note to good cheer: "Or maybe neither. Who can say with Afrits. He may have been batty from the get go."
What is he saying - that he'll go mad? It's a strange thing to say, especially since it sounds strangely, vaguely, like a warning. Strange, because frankly, he's at least a small sliver mad already...and also, strange, because why would he warn her about that?
Kitty ponders this for a moment, frowning, and then firmly shakes her head.
"He wasn't left to his own devices," she responds. "That's the vital bit. He was shut up in a box to be bored and go mad for a century. You're not shut up in a box."
He says, hmmmmm, and it's in the tones of someone debating the value in trying to describe green to someone who can't see it. In the end, he falls on the side of:
"The point is," --because it isn't any of this-- "That who I do or don't trust isn't the problem. You're the one with a rampaging spirit shaped chip on your shoulder who's convinced every other word out of my mouth has some ulterior motive buried in it."
She flushes, feeling dreadfully uncomfortable. "That's not true," she says. "I haven't got - any chip on my shoulder, spirit-shaped or otherwise. I want to protect spirits, I'll have you know."
"Because it's always a trap," she says, pushing her hand downwards in a gesture quite reminiscent of stomping her foot. "Because that's always how it is with you. If I'm cruel to spirits, I'm despicable. If I'm good to spirits, I'm laughable. There's never any way to say the right answer. There is no right answer with you."
What kind of question is that meant to be? Of course it's a trap, time honored and criminally vulgar as a Spanish bull fight. Just because she's wearing all the brocade and the fancy cape doesn't mean there isn't a sword under there somewhere. He's not stupid. He's seen the glint of it. Whether she realizes it or not doesn't change the fact that she's armed.
"There's any easy way to get out of me running you round and round in circles, you know."
"Let me guess," she bites, "leaving you alone. Never talking to you again. Letting you live your life and not inconveniencing you with all of my - hopes and - desires for the world to get better, because they're all just so foolish and inconvenient for the life you're trying to live, which is one in which you're imprisoned and forced to work till you die with no hope of improvement ever. Is that how?"
"Ooh, good guess." Which he is tempted to let linger for a moment, though doesn't. He can see that opinion ready to burst right out of you, Miss Jones. "--But no. It's by trusting me. Believing what I say when I say it, even if it's something like 'I'd rather like to give cutting the arm off a go, actually.'"
The boy sighs, all dramatics and sulking radiating from where he's slouched width-wise across her bed. "Don't you just hate when someone has faith in you? It takes all the sport out of lying."
She crosses her arms, scowling at him. "And what - it's supposed to all go one-way, then? Oh, Bartimaeus, you're so trustworthy. How about you trusting me?" A huff. "Because I see absolutely none of that from you. Ever."
Here, a flicker of offense flashing in the dark eyed boy's narrow face.
"I'm here talking to you, aren't I? And you, the only person in the whole world who knows what I am. I could be off in the library. Ooh, Leander. You're a bit of a weirdo, yeah? How would you like to do me, a humble little mage, a personal favor?"
"Talking to me to find out information you wanted to know," she responds. "What happened to Mandrake. And it's not like I know what you are 'cause you lovingly entrusted me with that information, now did you? I just know 'cause of before." She shakes her head. "Not trust. Nothing even approaching trust."
He opens his mouth. He scoffs. Does she even hear herself? Oh Bartimaeus, let me interrogate you with a series of ten dozen questions. Oh Bartimaeus, let me make all kinds of demands on your time and attention. Oh Bartimaeus, let me take advantage of you the moment you don't have complete control of your blathering tongue. And now this! It's as if the moment he isn't flashing teeth and flexing claws in her direction, she forgets entirely who and what she's dealing with. Like it is not obvious what privileges she's been given simple by the merit of not being devoured outright.
Well there are limits.
The boy on the bed bristles. It's a subtle change - like the shift in the direction of the window breathing past the closed window of the narrow little room -, but somewhere in the last series of moments, the shadows have bent themselves more fiercely about him. They sit heavy under his brow and in severe corners of his mouth, and the gnarled shape of his knuckle bones and knobbly elbows and skeleton thin wrists. It is not a lioness with her glittering eyes and lithe, muscled body. But it is something - a shape waiting in a corner, a figure who waits.
"I wonder," he says, far too pleasantly. "What exactly it is you think that most spirits would do to little girls that annoy them."
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-08-17 11:17 pm (UTC)The point is, it isn't any easier to stop being the lioness than it is to start. Maybe that is why he is still there when the door again comes open.
But that seems unlikely. The shape he's chosen isn't made for evening escapes out of upper floor windows. Sitting cross-legged on Kitty's bed is the boy. It is not, Bartimaeus thinks, any particular one. The shape he had taken to sit in the Inquisition's dungeons had been purposefully anonymous, a familiar face which he sometimes liked to remember turned half away or seen as if viewed from a distance. The boy is familiar in the way all boys are, and he is particular only around the eyes and in the fine white scar on the side of his forefinger. Ptolemy had cut himself there while sharpening the point of a reed pen and he likes to see the mark of it now a thousand years on even as the hands themselves have been formed purposefully incorrect.
The boy sits with his chin in his hand. In the most rapturous, tear-streaked, over the top simpering he can manage, Bartimaeus says, "I've been looking all over and I don't know what to do."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-17 11:58 pm (UTC)What if she left? Stormed out of this room. Stopped speaking to him. Treated him like he was dead as Mandrake. It'd be a lot less misery in her life, that's for sure. She'd have to endure a lot less insults. Her life would be quite a lot better if she just never spoke to him again.
And yet - she stays.
"Spirits aren't stupid," Kitty says, "and you're not stupid. So I don't know why it is you insist on being stupid." She shakes her head. "You know this isn't what I want."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 12:48 am (UTC)(Besides, get a load of this! They've practically managed to wander away the top of Mandrake all together.)
With a sigh of surrender1, Bartimaeus leans back to lean against the wall alongside the bed and stretches his legs out over the edge of the lump stuffed mattress. "I really don't know what you want say, but let's not pretend that you'd really go for whatever it was even if I did. I could be as sincere as a sweet old grandmother and you'd still say, 'Bartimaeus, what are you getting at?'"
For this last bit he's adopted a particularly unflattering falsetto.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 12:57 am (UTC)A long breath out, and then, abruptly, with very little change in tone - "Which I understand. I know you've had to spend...hundreds of years, thousands, keeping yourself safe from the people who summoned you. I know that you're afraid of being exploited. But it's not as though I'm suddenly going to snare you in a summoning circle because you let your guard down enough to have an honest conversation with me."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 01:24 am (UTC)"Say, do you recall that old bag of bones from Gladstone's tomb? The one with the bright idea to jump with both feet into a golem."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 01:25 am (UTC)"I'm not about to forget him."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 02:27 am (UTC)"When you put it that way, I suppose it is. Now personally, speaking as someone who has spent a day or fifty in bottles, I wonder if it was the being closed in a box part or if it was the being trapped in the bones one."
The boy brightens.
"Not that it really matters. He and I have a thing or two in common regardless. Would you like to guess what that is, or should I just tell you?"
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 02:35 am (UTC)"Just tell me."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 02:53 am (UTC)"We both have been stuck somewhere we don't belong, bound to something we aren't meant to be bound to, and most importantly- and this really is the vital bit -, we have more or less have been left to our own devices. So it's possible that you are either radically underestimating me and what I am capable of today, or--"
A shrug. A smile. It has too many teeth, but doesn't sound like a threat. Not really. "It is only a matter of time before things get really nasty."
And then, springing ever so deftly from somber note to good cheer: "Or maybe neither. Who can say with Afrits. He may have been batty from the get go."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 05:51 pm (UTC)Kitty ponders this for a moment, frowning, and then firmly shakes her head.
"He wasn't left to his own devices," she responds. "That's the vital bit. He was shut up in a box to be bored and go mad for a century. You're not shut up in a box."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 07:08 pm (UTC)"The point is," --because it isn't any of this-- "That who I do or don't trust isn't the problem. You're the one with a rampaging spirit shaped chip on your shoulder who's convinced every other word out of my mouth has some ulterior motive buried in it."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 08:29 pm (UTC)"Because I'm not handing you a medal for a little basic decency? You ask me, that sounds like a personal problem."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 08:44 pm (UTC)She lets loose a noise of sheer frustration.
"Don't you get tired of it?"
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 09:04 pm (UTC)"There's any easy way to get out of me running you round and round in circles, you know."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-18 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-19 12:19 am (UTC)The boy sighs, all dramatics and sulking radiating from where he's slouched width-wise across her bed. "Don't you just hate when someone has faith in you? It takes all the sport out of lying."
no subject
Date: 2019-08-19 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-19 12:30 am (UTC)"I'm here talking to you, aren't I? And you, the only person in the whole world who knows what I am. I could be off in the library. Ooh, Leander. You're a bit of a weirdo, yeah? How would you like to do me, a humble little mage, a personal favor?"
no subject
Date: 2019-08-19 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-19 02:49 am (UTC)Well there are limits.
The boy on the bed bristles. It's a subtle change - like the shift in the direction of the window breathing past the closed window of the narrow little room -, but somewhere in the last series of moments, the shadows have bent themselves more fiercely about him. They sit heavy under his brow and in severe corners of his mouth, and the gnarled shape of his knuckle bones and knobbly elbows and skeleton thin wrists. It is not a lioness with her glittering eyes and lithe, muscled body. But it is something - a shape waiting in a corner, a figure who waits.
"I wonder," he says, far too pleasantly. "What exactly it is you think that most spirits would do to little girls that annoy them."
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