Canon: Charm of Magpies series

[etherics]

SETTING ONE: Prose or Brackets

Ah, Victorian London. The Thames, the clock tower, the palace. The crowded dirty cobblestone streets, the ever-present pall of coal smoke belched from trains and factories and steamers, the curling fog around the lamplights in the darkness. There are handsome gardens and lush concert halls waiting for the wealthy and privileged, private rail carriages and cut crystal on white tablecloths, but for the poor and the working class there are crowded boarding houses, dark alleyways, and the echoing footsteps of someone following you in the roughest parts of town where they'll never find your body.

Perhaps this is your first time here, and you're staring about in awe or disgust. Or perhaps this is all old news to you. Perhaps you, like everyone else, are about your daily business hailing a hansom cab or perusing shops or solving mysteries. Perhaps you don't even notice the whip slender, shabbily dressed little man until you've bumped into him, or until he's come alongside you trying to pass by, or has accidentally started for your cab. In a city of first appearances he's not much to look at: sickly pale like someone recently ill, five foot, and so thin as to look almost a youth, unfashionably short cropped red hair and patches on his jacket.

The edge of a cheap cotton glove pokes awkwardly from a pocket. He's wearing the other one, cradling his left forearm close to his body to obscure the sight of it for the same reason the glove had been hastily stuffed away - both are entirely covered in blood, his left arm soaked to the elbow.

Whether it's his blood or someone else's is anyone's guess.

Perhaps this meeting is in the dead of night, when no legitimate person has any business on the streets, in which case another detail might make itself alarmingly known to you as he materializes out of the fog. The man's unnaturally dilated pupils are ringed in gold, and faintly glowing.


~


SETTING TWO: Brackets, Text, Video or Voice

[ Oh my stars and garters, it's a jamjar. Is it a space station? A magic castle? An island governed by capricious gods demanding sexual sacrifice? Whatever it is, it's bloody irritating, and justiciars aren't allowed vacations. ]

Excuse me.

[ The voice that raps out is lit with annoyance, the owner clearly clinging to a veneer of courtesy by his teeth, which are clenched tight beneath pressed lips. ]

I don't have time for this. I'm expected - and I will be missed, if I don't turn up. I won't be kept here, understand.


~


SETTING THREE: choose ur own adventure!

Comments

SETTING TWO idk idk?

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[It is definitely a magic castle of some denomination. Sure, it's pretty and shiny and it does its purpose - to serve as an utter distraction for the fact that they've been kidnapped here against their will.

Gladys has tried (unsuccessfully) to rally against the powers that be. Protests? Petitions? All the usual things, but nothing has worked to her satisfaction. Now she's simply mad, and getting madder. She should be knee-deep in the mud of the War by now, so she understands and is more than sympathetic to someone being separated from their purpose.

She waits until he's finished with his message, and then finishes rounding the corner she'd been obliged to hide behind so as not to startle him while he was recording it.]

I'm terribly sorry, I couldn't help but overhear. Has no one been able to explain this place to you yet?

[She's dressed as any lady would be, elegant clothing and jewelry, perfectly coiffed hair and make-up but her hands are calloused and rough and she extends a hand as if she were speaking quite unabashedly to an equal.]