[Belin]

Around the corner and back into the library. There.

Celumëomaryu had finished her pacing, and was glad to return to her usual haunt behind the bookshelf. She had seen Anna come in there with those rabbits, and by the aroma in the room, the stupid girl had known nothing better to do with them than simply scorch the beasts in the fire. The accountant shook her head. Once they'd had a cook, a talented and cheerful individual who had prepared the most delectable of feast for them, and had hung about in the kitchen, grinning rather offensively at the appreciation of the others. Celumëomaryu had never expressed any such appreciation; the savor of the food had been a matter of course and a detail beneath her notice. She had never expected to pass beyond the ability to taste it.

Just as well, she thought with a sniff, if there was to be no better than what Anna could provide.

Provide for...? Celumëomaryu walked to the landing of the stairs and tilted her head, listening intently. Yes... voices.. the voices of the living. She stood very still.

"Who are they?" she whispered. An idea was forming in her mind. The voices came, not from below, but from the dungeon above; Calimiel had mentioned prisoners. She took a step forward and was surprised to find that, even after all these years with no flesh, her fingers could still tremble violently enough to prevent her from properly grasping the banister. As her hand slipped through it and around it, her mind raced. Prisoners, the living, here, here... hers. She took two more steps up the stairs and had to stop; she refused to chance someone seeing her fall down.

Should she see them now? She wanted to think; she had to have a plan. But she couldn't. She sat on the stairs for a few moments, not quite paying attention to the thoughts that were passing through her mind, and then she stood, composed and distant as ever, and walked into to the dungeon.

Kenelm stood there, and Calimiel, and the infuriatingly everpresent Anna as well. Celumëomaryu hovered silently near the wall, unnoticed, feeling the strange thickness of the air that the living had been breathing, hearing, after the quietness of long years, the rustling of their clothes against their skin and the beating of their hearts. Ah, yes. Yes, indeed. She stared through the bars at them, with a slight, grim smile. One of the prisoners suddenly turned a pair of large, anxious eyes upon her and shrank back still more under the force of that gaze. Celumëomaryu did not speak to them, but her lips moved slightly, forming the words, "For me..."

But Anna had seen her and had moved to her shoulder. Do you admire them, Celumëomaryu?

"Where did they come from?"

Anna shrugged. Does it matter?

She turned toward the girl with a sudden fierceness. "Yes," she rasped, "Yes, I think it does. Yet I have, perhaps, a more interesting question--why are you here? What business, housemaid, do you have with the living?"

[ December 26, 2002: Message edited by: Belin ]