Bloody Cute Molly

Victory never tasted so bitter, but I'd reckon Mum's probably proud of me, taking this first step. To my mind she showed us her blessing the whole trip. Even counting them grabby-tentacled misbegots. She wouldn't've  wanted to go making things too easy on her girl. Not my Mum. And she twisted her knife in my heart a couple times, just to make certain I really felt it. Didn't find her, though. I wanted to, but there wasn't time or breath for it.

I'm thinking Dinah's feeling the loss again near as bad as I am. I should see about getting her a nice thank-you gift. Something shiny enough to, if not ease the ache, at least distract from it.

Chaz has been surprisingly supportive through all this. He even understood about the flag, bless him. Because of that flag, though, I'm starting to show more of my Mum. I've started the first of my caches and hidey-holes. It's right next to the...ha!...as if I'd put that in here. It's safe and hidden and that's all that need be said.

Seems likely Kestrel's made it to town. At least I think she's the only one mad enough to mix up a concoction like that one. Threw us for a loop, too. Why is it whenever folk leave me rum, they never just put a simple note with it?

Hastily scrawled, stained with pinkish-brown smears, and scented with sloshed-over rum:

Shiny things down there - Ooooooh,lots!
Unexpected meals of battle-sushi - 1

Camaraderie and reminiscences- Plentiful
Rum- Also plentiful
Ointment - Running unexpectedly low
Realizations that other equipment may have been helpful - Head-swattingly obvious
Hand-gestures - Amusing and wriggly
Massive hickeys that may need some explanation, later - Several
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current Tally = Sore, but hopeful!

A letter, painstakingly written in an obscure pirate code, folded into the shape of a tiny sailing ship and set loose on the outgoing tide. This time the ship is loaded with a tiny cargo in the form of a small cork-stoppered glass vial of Very Special rum.:

Dear Mum,

Share with me a sup of the finest rum I could find! Your hopes for me may not have been in vain. I've been working towards making a big decision, and I've found counsel in, amongst others, our old, dear friend. She is going to help me chart my course to earn my right as well as find the tools to wield it. Please, Mum, if you have any means whilst the currents rock you in your slumber, please guide us to what we seek. Because the woman had that look in her eye. You know the one. And I'm certain I'll need all the assistance I can garner. Help me to be a proper daughter of Minos in her times of need. Even if it's to be in my own particular, though you might say obstinately wrong-headed, fashion.

Your Dutiful Daughter,
Molly
 

 

By the Blessed Depths! By Stormalog's Beard! By the Shining Beacons of PROGRESS and SCIENCE, They might've laughed at me*, but I do believe I've cracked it!

Might have to draw on a new eyebrow and the roof might need a touch of fresh paint. And a new railing,  But those're small enough prices to pay.

On an entirely unrelated note, it's getting so's a body can't go down to the seashore on a simple, innocent trip to send a letter to their dead mother without being kidnapped into forced aeronautical joyrides at the points of disturbingly large talons. What is this place coming to? Oh, yes. It's Amber. What was I thinking?


*Alright. No one actually laughed, not where I could see. I did get one or two funny looks, though, and I don't think the squid were over-pleased.

Having been back in the city for a while now, Molly has finally had a chance to unpack her bags from her vacation trip to Sunny, Sunny Sukho. Among the things unpacked was a sand-gritted, salt-crusted leatherbound journal, containing, amongst others, the following pages... (note: full-sized images may be a bit on the largeand slow to load  side)


 

Okay, so the Bloody Cute part didn't exactly make it through the whole year...still.

Bloody Cute Molly was approved 3-17-08, so I've been mucking about with you guys for a whole year now, despite some slight scale-backs in online time recently.

I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone for taking in a newbie who'd never MUSHed before and giving me a great place to waste time play, and a bunch of fantastic people to entertain me do it with.

It's been Awesome!

Written in a wobbly, inconsistent hand that rises and falls erratically.


I am thoroughly drunk!
The wolves drove me to it, of course. The shouting, growling, fighting wolves.

One of em changed several times before my eyes, though the look of him never once shifted. From man to monster to one desperate to make a difference, it seemed. Hard to tell which is the larger part of him. The other wasn't what I'd thought, but how much is the job he'd come to do, and how much his own arrogance? The third, the quiet one? Ha! Quiet. How's that for irony, since she was the one being silenced the whole time. Her changes seem to've been deeper, ongoing, and far more interesting.

It weren't my fight, which left me to feel helpess and frustrated. Didn't understand half of what was happening. Wasn't something I should've even bore witness to, but it was brought out and waved round for any and all to see. There's troubles there. Big ones. I didn't need the quiet wolf to tell me that. No wonder Sadie ain't been round to play much lately.

Smuggled vinegar makes the fish at Bloody's far more than tolerable. Oh yes! Don't help the ale none, though.
Now I'm crawling into bed afore my falling over wakes Chaz.

Sometimes it's the simplest things that make us happiest.

A hand offered in peace
The muscle-ache of hard work, the smell of wood-shavings, and the feel of grease under your nails
Coming home to find that someone has been kind enough to beautifully decorate your spouse for you
Pawing through a chest full to bursting with coin and cackling, "Mine! All mine!"  when no one is looking, before surrendering it over for division and re purposing.


All right, so those last two might not be so simple. Still make me happy.

We start In Medias Res here, so the reader doesn’t have to go through some awkwardly vague introductions and their resultant misunderstandings, the majority of the shoe-shopping (and thus the occasional reference to Molly’s legs), and discussion on valid colors for elephants (sparkly blue seems to have been the order of the day). 

Molly has brought Meijanri to meet Valentine, thinking their skills might be of use to one-another....


( Pushing the Guild-Building Agenda )

Be careful what you wish for, they say.
Bastards.
How dare they be right?

Since the trip, my life has mostly been work. Work and more work. And trying not to think.
I should be wary of that last one. That's the one that always gets me into trouble. Think too much or not enough, the result is almost the same.

I should report soon to the Doc, get my "told you so"s over with, and find out what it was she didn't tell me before. Also should give her back that "secret weapon", and apologize for being so discourteous with its use.

Despite not much wanting to speak to R again, I fear I may need to. She's sailing around with one of my babies, and I just can't have that.

On the up side of things, I had the chance to spend some distractionary time with some old friends at that foot-wine festival. I can't even express how good that felt, even if it was only for a few hours. There was a most unexpected hug from D! I very nearly cried.

What does one wear to the desert, when helping out a friend?

What does one wear to meet a (possible) father who they've never met before?

Can those two items be combined without making me feel a fool?

I think I'm going to go be ill for a while, then tackle a stack of mind-numbing paperwork until it's time to leave.
I should probably shout at the men a bit before I go, but they'll know if I don't really have my heart into it.


Additional note: Clean and oil gear and pack additional oil for the corset, in case sand gets into the workings. And for goodness' sake, don't forget or misplace that Secret Weapon the Doc leant!
Should've asked her for something to stave off the inevitable panic-attack, but I can pack a flask of gin for that.

Been settling back into my normal routine.

Back at work at the 'Yards, and the boss seems mighty happy about that. Found a nice crate of rum in my office on my return. Life is Good.

Been making the rounds and catching up with friends and business. A bit of work I'm doing for an old friend may also have led to some work for Mr. G. Life is Very Good. It also may have led to an invitation to step on fruit. This is, perhaps, Less Good.

Had an interesting conversation with Dr. J. Community is Good.

Need to get together with V. I have some wisdom to impart to him, and our conversations lately have my head ticking. I think I can learn some things, there. Education is Fundamental.

I can't stop fiddling with those sword shards. That experiment may not have been a dead-end after all.  Also, the equine-compensation devices are nearly complete, I may have a delightful little trinket to show the other Doc, and I might've come up with something else to put together (See sketch, New Fashion Trend? - duplicated from notebooks-, facing page). Science is PROGRESS!

Well.
Tonight's experiment didn't go nearly so well as yesterday's.
Need to completely rethink this one. It should have worked, dammit!

On the plus side, the shop is still standing, I didn't actually injure anyone, didn't singe any of Chazzer's work, and most important of all, did not set off the shop's safeguards. Poor Valentine got one hell of a surprise lesson in misapplied StormCrafting, though.

Almost there! Just need to build the Final Models, now, and Comfort Shall Abound!!

Went out for a visit last night with Miss N, and to take measurements and test out the Pneumo-Reactive Posterior Compensator. I carefully followed all of the Recommended Guidelines and Procedures for Pre- & Post- Testing Confidence Building & Relaxation. Might have followed those a little too closely, as Miss N may have been a bit, er, Wobbly when I left her. I did give her some sterling Advice, borne of Years Of Experience in that particular matter, so if she follows it, she should fare well. Still, might avoid her 'til the memory of the hangover, or at least the ache itself fades.

( Behind the cut for more gadgety giddiness and senselessly random capitalization )

Home.

The Begma trip was brilliant. Enjoyable (with the uncomfortable exception of my first experience with MiniSafe, of course), full of the delights and wonders of Begma, and relatively successful.

We've returned and shortly found the shop full to bursting with friends come for the Nigelmas celebration. Where I've been. And where I should be. But talk turned, briefly though it was, to home, which for most of them means Begma. Home is more complicated for me. I've come up here with a tumbler of gin, a pack of cigs, and this journal to look out at the shiplights in the harbor (though there's nowhere near the numbers there used to be, these days) and try to catch a whiff of sea air. With the sounds of revelry below, I'm finding myself pining for a home that doesn't really exist for me anymore.

This is my home. Here. No. 18, Ironmonger's, Amber City. It's enough. More than enough. But once in a while, in those rare times when for some vague reason I feel almost an outsider here, something that was once home calls to me.

I should get back to the others and to the celebrating, but the lights are so beautiful out on the water, and I think I can smell salt when the wind blows just right.

I mark this day with joyous celebration. No one is actively angry with me today!

While it's possible that someone out there may be harboring a smoldering discontent, one or two men at the yards might flinch at the sight of me, and the spirit of my Mum's probably still none too thrilled, I can rest assured that, for the moment at least, no one will be spitting in my footsteps. Huzzah!

Also, I met the newest Gilga-spawn. She is an adorably charming young lady that I hope to spend more time with in the future. She seems to be wearing her daddy out, as he fell asleep mid-conversation, but Lady E. seems to be picking up any slack there. I may find myself taking up knitting again in order to have excuses to visit more often. Apparently any Begman-ized gifts would be a bit frowned-upon, as her custodians seem to not trust me to use proper safety and precautionary measures. Yes, there was distinctly disapproving frowning. I probably shouldn't have mentioned tentacles. Or explosions.

Speaking of gifts, the work continues.

Molly closes the door as her employer leaves and turns to take a good look around her new office. She walks over to the filing cabinet, pulls a bottle and glass out of the “R” drawer and takes a seat at her desk to pour. Leaning back in her chair, balancing it on its back two legs and tossing her feet up onto the desk, she takes a sip, settles the glass on her chest and closes her eyes, sighing in contentment.

A sense of  Something Needs To Be Done fills the room and there’s a soft rustling.

Molly cracks one eye and sees that a paper has appeared in her formerly pristine and empty in-box. She glares at it. It doesn’t cringe away in terror, so she rights herself, pulls out a pencil and her Automatic Encalculator and sets to work.  With a smug smile she proudly places the paper in her formerly pristine out-box.

There is now a stack of papers in the inbox.

Molly shrinks back, startled. She looks around the room accusingly, but there’s no one else there. Taking a worried sip from her rum, she starts working on the fresh stack of paperwork.

A slight breeze blows through the room. There is now a stack of papers over two inches  high in the inbox. Their pages rustle angrily.

Molly pulls back with a little shriek. She tries to escape from the paperwork, but gets tangled up in her chair, falling…falling…until she jerks her head up, gasping and bleary eyed. She chuckles, murmuring to herself with relief. “Sleepin' at the job now, Mol? Means it’s time you got yourself on home.”

A paper has appeared in Molly’s formerly pristine and empty in-box.

Molly glares at the in-box.

This is an office. That’s just how it goes.

Molly blasphemes mightily.

Cyrus has come back to town, still alive and kicking. I gave him an impromptu "I didn't screw up. See!" tour. It went quite well, and he didn't once make his Disappointed Cyrus face or tell me to put everything back the way I found it. Might even go so far as to say he was impressed.

What he did not do, however, was take back the helm. I can't say I can blame him for that, right now. Looks like another few weeks yet of running and shouting and devastatingly urgent piles of  paperwork for me. He also declined to take some good news to someone. Looks like I'll be on my own for that one. Might try to remember to wear my particularly stab-resistant coat that day.

I've also got a few specialty items to complete, shopwork to keep up on, notebooks full of ideas I've had no time to work up, learning to be done, and might be there's one or two folks I've been avoiding in case they have something else they want me to do. I really should also pay a visit to Gilgamesh and his new addition. Now that I know things are stable at the 'Yards, I might take some time to spread my efforts around a bit more.