Momento Marw

RP Date: 2026-10-19

Location: The Wreck

Participants: Lucian, Marw

Summary

Marw harvests fine furniture from a shipwreck. Lucian blames evil spirits for sending him romantic gifts. Together, they come to terms with the reality that they have not yet come to terms with the reality that they are not in charge of Grimwych.

This archive was published after approval by all listed participants.

Roleplay

Marw wants many things in life. Today, however, top of the list is a settee. Given her choice of accommodation, that comes with problems. There are many stairs in her home, so something small is required. Luckily, the ship that has already gifted her many a bottle of red, and some rum to others, is not yet exhausted of its uses. It provides her with a suitably small settee that she may actually have some hope of manoeuvring into her home. Though possible, it certainly is not easy.So, after several hours of unfastening it, manoeuvring it over rotten boards, through doors, through the hole in the side of the ship and, finally, onto solid ground, she manages to get it as far as a dozen metres away from the ship. The settee, though not yet in its destined spot and instead sitting quite exposed in the open, is occupied by the woman as if this were her very lounge. One leg crossed over the other, eyes upon the rag of a flag fluttering above the landlocked boat, she is not exactly a fine example of looking well kept at that moment. One elbow rests upon the arm of the couch, the other hand holding a crystal-cut glass with a swig of rum within it. Her determination to move the damned thing is, for the moment, on pause.

Lucian arrives for once in silence, his guitar tucked away in its case, the case slung across his back. He has an empty parcel from the post office with him, and he holds it up frowning as he looks at the flag on the ship's mast. The symbols match. Is this its lair? How does the pile of clues fit together. "Can you hear me, cosa mala? Where do you hide?" He mutters under his breath. Then, of course, he spots Marw. He hasn't slept more than an hour at a time since the shadow monster made its appearance. He checks his reflection quickly in the back of his flask, straightening his hair and beard. What can he do about the dark shadows under his eyes? Find concealer, and a video tutorial for men's makeup? Unlikely. But, he remembers, maybe not impossible. As best put together as he can, he approaches Marw, calling out ahead of him. "Doña Raposa. I come seeking the black widow, and I find only you. In your..." he looks around, "New living room?"

Marw's eyes flick briefly to the side as she hears a familiar voice and then to the openness before her. "Apparently, Mr Corvo, I am a strong advocate for open plan design." There is the faintest incline of her head towards the settee beside her, invitation enough. Leaning forward, she reaches down for the bottle of rum resting near her feet and tops up her glass in her hand before extending the bottle towards Lucian. "There are glasses inside." Apparently, being outside the walls of her own home absolves her of any obligation to play hostess, there is no offering of hers nor the offer to get him one. Her attention lingers on him properly for a moment. His usual vibrancy seems dulled. "Though you look like you may prefer to drink from the bottle." Blue eyes narrow, dip to the parcel, then return to his face before a brow lifts. "Spill." She takes a sip of rum, watching him over the rim of the glass. "The black widow?" A vague gesture follows in his direction, encompassing the tired eyes, the subdued manner, all of him really. "And whatever is happening with you to make you look so?" Her hand circles once in the air, apparently unable or unwilling to settle upon a more diplomatic word. "That."

Lucian glances at the rum bottle. On the one hand, once this is gone it will not come back. On the other, maybe he could use a break from straight tequila and water as his only beverage options. He has a small sip, right from the bottle, still eying the ship warily. But, apparently it is not some murder hole, just another abandoned object to be looted. With a brief grunt he turns his package around so Marw can see the hourglass symbol inside it. He traces the same symbol with one finger in the air to emphasize the point, then gestures toward the ship's flag with the rum bottle. "The black widow. Maybe the one who traps us here in her web? I thought she lived in the post office at first, I called her La Cosa Mala. It means...the something, I do not know, but it is bad." He frowns again at the flag. "I think she reads my mind." He frowns and looks around again. Rum, a weird chair, Marw. a ship that doesn't belong here, but neither does he. Not as terrifying in the daylight. He looks back to Marw, "I met this Adamina you spoke of. For the first time." He lets that hang there and hands back the rum. A like tree, that's what they really need.

Marw barely glances at the hourglass symbol in the box. Instead, she looks at him incredulously for a moment, as if he has just declared the sky blue, the grass green and the day long. Yet the information she has to mentally digest does not end there. Giant spiders? The flag she is already well aware of. Conspiracies involving the post office? Then the name of the woman who had very confidently declared Ms Foxx a mother. She needs a moment. That moment was used to untangle the sudden mess of thoughts, pluck them out one by one, line them up neatly and decide which, exactly, she intends to address first. A slight shift in her seat, lips part to respond, only to purse again when she apparently decides she requires another moment. Her attention drops to the glass in her hand, staring into the rum as though an appropriate answer might be fished from somewhere within it. A slow, controlled breath leaves her. Then her eyes return to the man. "Did?" A brief shake of her head, no, best not. She would concentrate on the sudden onslaught of information. Try as she might though, she settles upon one single question. "Mr Corvo, did you send me?" A pause follows as she searches for the correct way to word it. "?flowers?"

Lucian frowns and grinds his heel into the ground, just an idle act of vague and generalized aggression. Take that, Grimwych. His fingers twitch, with neither a guitar or a cigarette to keep them occupied, he fumbles instead for something. Reaching into his pocket he finds only a carved chess piece, a rook and a roosting raven, which he plunges back in as soon as he identified it. He settles instead for the medallion of San Dimas on his neck, worrying it between his fingers. He offers Marw a wan smile, "Would that I had, Doña. When resources allow I will shower you in bouquets. To date, I have sent only the nail polish by post." He eyes the ship again. Maybe it is a lair, hidden in plain sight.

Marw seems, in all honesty, a little too invested in awaiting the answer, and once delivered it is not the one she had banked on. She leans back upon the settee, her free hand tapping against the arm in an almost agitated rhythm as she becomes lost in thought for a few moments, recalculating certain things with this new piece of information. This is mortifying. She had got it quite wrong?.terribly so. Her glass lifts and perhaps a slightly too generous drink is taken. It burns, but it is still nothing quite as offensive as Lucian's preferred tipple. Her chin tilts upwards as she looks towards the sky for a moment. Clouds loom overhead, though nothing appears quite ready to threaten her couch just yet. "Humour me for a moment." Her chin lowers again, attention returning to him. "Let us pretend, just briefly, that we live in a place where resources are somewhat limited and one might, on occasion, have to reuse something. Whether it is?" A small tap is given to the arm of the settee. "Or, say, something as basic as packaging." One eyebrow lifts questioningly. "Just play that little game out in your head for a moment and tell me how that might change your thinking."

Lucian looks down at the box, then back up to Marw. Then, and this is key, down at the box. He replaces the San Dimas medallion in his hand with the chess piece in his pocket. "Ahhh, one of your other admirers, in this thought experiment, sent you flowers in the black widow's box? And you may have reused the box to send me a chess man?" Lucian pauses, then looks up at the ship. "Well if you are the black widow, that is well and good. It means Cosa Mala remains my enemy."

Marw lofts a brow, not entirely wishing to confess to the whole thing, yet here she is, sat in the middle of nowhere, apparently doing exactly that. "Dried foxgloves." Of course, it had been rather amusing to think of dried poisonous flowers being sent to her by him. From an anonymous source, not at all. Her attention drops to the piece he holds and, with a slight incline of her head towards it, she quietly repeats words she has uttered to him before. "Your move, Mr Corvo." Beyond that, she seems to have little desire to explain the inner workings of her mind any further. Especially now that things have gone rather wrong and the little gift she had received feels more malevolent than mischievous. A hand lifts in another vague gesture towards the settee beside her. "Sit down. Your loitering is irritating." Perhaps she is a touch sensitive now. Her glass lifts again before her eyes settle upon him. "So. Adamina?" A small pause. "Is she cosa mala?"

Lucian joins Marw on the settee, shrugging his guitar case off his shoulder and resting it on the ground, clutched between his knees. He keeps the chess piece out, working it between his hands as he performs the opposite mental gymnastic to Marw, making this perceived threat from an evil spirit into a mischievous provocation. Her question catches him off guard, and he immediately answers, "No," before considering it more deeply. He qualifies a noticeable moment later with, "I do not think so. If she is, we are very badly outnumbered." He offers Marw a slight smile from the corner of his mouth as he watches her and wonders how to put this tactfully... "There are a few people now who know the name Marw Foxx. They remember it from where they were before, or say they do. Their descriptions of you are apt, but off in some key details."

Marw shifts once again upon the settee, turning a few degrees towards him. Her glass changes hands so the other arm can bend, elbow pressing into the back of the seat while the corner of her hand absently toys with her earring. "Oh." Another thing to be caught on the back foot by. Apparently there are numerous people here who know her, while she does not know them. It is a strange thing to experience, teetering upon the edge between ignorance, which certainly has its benefits, and being armed with knowledge. Some small part of her tries to persuade her towards the path less travelled and to not ask. Yet you cannot teach an old fox new tricks. "Is Naledi one? I bumped into her yesterday and she called me <i>Mrs</i> Foxx. However, there was a corpse to distract us?" Her gaze drifts briefly towards the hourglass billowing upon the ragged flag above the ship, but perhaps that particular matter can wait for another time. Blue eyes return to Lucian. "So who am I to everyone else?" A slight furrow begins to form between her brows. "Or is this another Grimwych trick?"

Lucian doesn't quite grimace. He wouldn't call it a grimace. If you said he'd grimaced, he'd point out why you were wrong to say that. "Naledi Boconita. Big Mouth, Hela called her. Poor girl." He clicks his tongue quietly. A corpse? The corpse gets his attention, and he catches Marw's eyes at its mention. Too much to discuss at once. Focus. "Naledi spoke of you as her employer. Former. And the cat ear girl more recently. Adamina calls you mother. Her sister Hildako is apparently about, who I have not met. And Hela, it seems, refers to Hildako as mother." He nods, that's nicely sorted. Nobody said abuela. Mother and mother's mother, that's it's own thing. He throws up his hands on a brief gesture at all of Grimwych. "Maybe it is a trick. Maybe it is true somehow, and still a trick. Maybe it is a trick on you, maybe it is a trick on them. La Cosa Mala, it thinks itself very clever, I think."

Marw goes still as he talks. The fingers at her earring stop. Her glass remains suspended loosely in her other hand while he lists each link, each name, and not one of them brings with it even the faintest sense of recollection. Her eyes drift away from Lucian. Not towards the ship this time, but out towards the horizon. "Well." A small paise. "That is inconvenient." The words are dry, though any attempt at humour behind them falls flat. She takes a drink. Then comes a small shake of her head. "No." quietly. Then again, a little louder and firmer. "No." The maths begins regardless. 'Mother's mother.' Her eyes snap back to Lucian with a look so withering one might think he has personally insulted her. "Bullshit." Another pause before she continues to cover herself in the blanket of denial. "Absolutely not." Straightening slightly, she reaches for the package Lucian has brought, drawing it closer so she can inspect the hourglass again. "Memento mori," she repeats, returning to her earlier theory. Her gaze remains fixed upon the symbol. "If this is some elaborate joke, Lucian, simply be prepared for the fact that I will papercut your eyeballs, douse them in vinegar, then jam cocktail sticks into them." She studies the hourglass as though seeing it anew. Memento mori, death, time, reveral, restart, past and future. There seem to be as many meanings attached to carry as many meanings as there are secrets scattered around Grimwych. There should perhaps be curiosity about who these people are, what they were like, what they thought of her. But that was too hard of a pill to swallow. Instead, irritation coils visibly beneath her composure. For someone ordinarily rather skilled at keeping herself contained, it is remarkably easy to see through her now. She can apparently uncover a corpse while staring a giant wolf in the eyes without betraying much of what is happening beneath the surface. Yet discovering that other people know who she is when she does not? Something else entirely. A loss of control she does not yet know how to outmanoeuvre. Her attention finally lifts from the hourglass to Lucian. "What exactly is La Cosa Mala?"

Lucian accepts the stillness and gives it back, ceasing his fidgeting to give Marw time to process. What possibility would he hope for in her place, a family he didn't remember, or an elaborate trick by strangers for no meaningful end? He watches her doing the same math he did, and wonders if that's what his face looked like. He meets her gaze when she threatens his eyeballs, and offers a kind smile in return, "Marw, I swear by Santa Lucía, if I am lying I will serve my eyes to you on a silver platter. This may be a trick, but it is not my trick." And then the abrupt swap. Well. He does not blame her. He doesn't have more answers here, though, and shakes his head sadly. "I truly do not know. The name, it means 'evil thing.' It sent me a package when I arrived, blank sheet music. Who knows that I mourn the silence of this broken place? Only you, and me, and Merlínito at that time. So I think maybe it reads my mind." He sighs and looks at his little chess piece. "Then, Naledi and Morgane are chased by some fantasma, spirit of shadow, into the tavern. I think, this sounds like vampires, maybe la cosa mala is a vampire. Duendita, Lilith, she tells me it is some sort of ghost maybe. Did you know ghosts are real? I did not."

Marw remains visibly irritated, though it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell how much of that irritation is directed at who or what. "It does not particularly matter if there are a thousand monsters in this village." she sounds somewhat distracted in her response. "Vampires, ghosts, werewolves. " A shrug of one shoulder. "History has demonstrated, rather consistently, that humans are usually the worst monster and here we are trapped with them in this cage." The words come almost absently. Her attention is elsewhere now, caught upon the far more inconvenient matter of herself. A mother. Really? A grandmother? Absolutely fucking not. She may not be quite as young as she would prefer to imagine herself, but she is certainly not old enough to be grandmother to a fully grown woman. That particular piece of information can remain firmly rejected. <i>Mrs</i> Foxx, however...that thought gets a visible annoyed twitch of her nose. Her eyes fall to the chess piece in Lucian's hand and for a moment she looks at it. Then she holds out her hand above it, hovering there for a second as though reconsidering even this. Eventually her fingers close around the piece and she lifts it gently from him. She places the piece carefully upon his knee. Then, with one finger, she pushes it over. This will have to do with with no king to topple. "I am sorry, Lucian." Resignation handed in. She could not play this game if she did not know who she was. Her chin inclines towards the village. "You should go. You need sleep." Then her attention shifts to the settee. "And I need to move this." However attention snaps back to him, anticipating that he might try out for the knight position instead. "Do not offer to help." Perhaps hauling the piece of furniture the remaining way and down too many stairs is quite ridiculous to do alone. However this was hers to do. If it survived her.

Lucian watches the piece fall, and stands up to retrieve it, tucking it quietly into his pocket. His open mouth is met with an answer before he speaks it, do not offer to help. He could offer some uplifting music while she toils, but perhaps this is not the time. He looks at Marw, preparing to wrestle a specifically long piece of furniture down access stairs. "Doña Raposa. Marw. I will only say this: I want to live. I want as few other people hurt as can be. I will fight to make that so. But I want to live. When I watch you think, I say, there is a woman who will survive. Stick by her, Lucian. So. You take your sofa, and I will not offend you with my offers. But when you send an invitation to dinner, or to a meeting with Marley, or to plot about Morgane, know I will answer the invitation." Lucian busies his hands gathering his guitar case. He gives one final look at the ship, mentally filing that hourglass under Marw's mystery, and only his tangentially.

Marw gives Lucian the only appreciative look he is likely to receive from her this day: an incline of her head in farewell. Truth be told, it is some time before she moves from the couch at all. He is long gone by the time she finally battles it. Her glass is finished, another poured, and the pheasant she has been keeping an eye on for weeks has the audacity to stroll past her entirely unchallenged. She does not even notice. Eventually, however, time moves on and so must she. The near-impossible is somehow achieved?.granted, the couch suffers for it. There are several deep scratches across the back of the leather, one of the feet breaks clean off when her patience finally does and she simply lets the damned thing fall down the last few stairs of the reservoir, but nothing an angled blanket and a strategically placed stack of books cannot solve. So she ends the night with a couch. She may have lost any reliable sense of self in exchange, but that, of course, is temporary. Time would fix that.