A bitter-sweet bite

A general forum for all in-character posts as they relate to Act VI: Absolution, the characters that inhabit the world at large, and the events that help shape both.
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Marlowe
Posts: 42
Character: Quincy Everhard

A bitter-sweet bite

Post by Marlowe » August 17th, 2022, 1:53 pm

The house was quiet when he slowly opened his eyes. The generous layers of cloth serving as a pillow worked fairly well, his neck wasn't sore in the slightest. Quincy focused but couldn't hear anything downstairs, which meant Miranda busied herself somewhere else. The vacant space of the upper floor was oppressive, each footstep reverberating freely without a single piece of furniture to stand in its way.

Quincy descended to the main floor, noticing a few things had changed places already; she must have sorted through his equipment to better accommodate what she had in mind. He crossed the threshold to the kitchen and remembered he had a few places to sit now, choosing the stool by the stone counter even though there were cushioned chairs by what was to become a living room; he chose the stool because there was still some pie left.

Quincy reached for the cutlery set in a drawer, but didn't immediately sink his fork in the half-eaten baked sweet in front of him. He wished he remembered what he said when Drusilla told him she had made it herself, even crediting Ani for her guidance. She had brought him cooking by her own hand the day he told her he didn't want to be around her any longer. He sighed and thrust the fork here and there into the soft crust, a hand holding his cheek. Did she really have to gift him then, of all days? Had he been overly harsh?

Quincy abandoned the fork stuck in her pie, seeking the score he'd had practiced so many times by now. There was no need to rehearse it yet again, but that was inherent to him: evading unpleasantness as he saw fit, even at the expense of leaving loose ends that might eventually come back to hang him. He checked the score one more time, but he knew it by heart already and just sat down with his back to the stone wall. That corner was becoming his favorite spot, and proof of this was that he left his mandolin at arm's reach there.

Once more the song he'd made for the Ancestry Treasury museum echoed by those walls, even though it was a desirable echo unlike the one from upstairs. Quincy knew the song was good, that he was actually retreating into his playing like so many times before. Just like he ran from the gathering at the Risk when Atticus brought a set of rather distasteful (but useful) books from the museum's storage. And he was likely to steer clear from the museum that evening once he had enough to compose a good piece for the Herald. But what was he afraid of now?

Oh, he knew exactly what that was. Quincy pushed himself up with a scowl on his face, grateful that Miranda hadn't installed any mirrors yet so he could apprehend his face. And there it was. He was thinking about her and their long exchange again. What did he want? Did he even know? He felt like a rogue leaf, fluttering in the wind that blew in a very definite direction. A wind prone to sabotage him. This time, he actually forked a few bits of the pie into his mouth. It was different from Viola's and certainly not as good, but Quincy enjoyed the unexpected of trying someone's take on a new thing.

The apples were left a little too long in the pan, he thought, the bitter aftertaste was clear. Sweet in the beginning, sour by the end. Quincy grinned to himself. A perfect pie.

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