Foxx News: Husband Dead, Memories Missing, Election Pending

RP Date: 2026-10-22

Location: The Last Chance

Participants: Adamina, Marw

Summary

Adamina finds herself explaining to her not-mother that yes, she had six children, a dead husband, and about two centuries of baggage.
Marw responds by redefining motherhood, drinking rum, questioning her entire existence, and somehow dragging Adamina into village politics.

This archive was published after approval by all listed participants.

Roleplay

Marw sits at one of the corner tables of the taverne, tucked into the side nearest the fire where the warmth gathers most generously. The perfect spot, out of the way, where she could watch the room if need be and no possibility of anyone coming from behind her. A mug of tea, sits on the table before her, thin curls of steam winding lazily upward. In one hand she holds a book bound in black, its cover marked by the red graphic of a blade and the title A Court of Blood and Bad Decisions. A well-known romantasy. A well-known smutty romantasy, more accurately. Every so often, one of Marw's brows lifts as she skims another passage, her expression suggesting the author has personally offended her. Less often still, she reaches for the pen tucked behind her ear, draws a neat line beneath some offending sentence, then adds a few small notes in the margin. Whatever she is reading, she appears to be taking it far more seriously than the book deserves and not in the spirit of the author's intent.

Adamina is just now coming into the taverne after a day spent scavenging usable wood from the shipwreck and working on her smaller vessel. The sleeves of her ankle-length dress I rolled up to her elbows, but aside from that she appears clean well, kept and presentable, and has put on blue clothing tailored to fit her. She passes Rory, who is deeply asleep in a pile of papers and picks up his rum bottle by the neck. Finders keepers. She pours herself a glass and appears delighted when the liquid level of the bottle does not go down. "Now this is what I'm talking about." After a day out in the cold wind by the lake, she is ready for somewhere warm to sit and approaches the fire and the table occupied by her mother?or is she?  The title of the book is not lost on her. "Xenith and I used to read those," she remarks. "That one's okay."

Marw glances up at the sound of the door opening, watching as her apparent daughter walks in, helps herself to a drink, and addresses her as though any of this is remotely ordinary. The pen remains between Marw's fingers, twirled once in thought. Rather than answer immediately, she uses it to tap lightly against the side of her mug, a small gesture inviting Adamina to add a splash of whatever she has poured to the tea. It is unlikely to improve either beverage, but Marw has the distinct feeling that alcohol may be required for a conversation with this particular woman. Only then does she set the book aside, leaving it open and face-down upon the wooden tabletop. An inclination of her head indicates the empty chair opposite. "I assume Xenith is some relative of mine too." There is no inflection to the question. No curiosity, either, truth be told, she is beginning to suspect that every unfamiliar name comes attached to another branch of a family tree she has no desire to climb. She offers no explanation for her study of the book. Instead, after a brief glance towards its black cover, she supplies only a critique. "The protagonist is lacking in backbone."

Adamina pours a splash of Rory's rum into her mother's tea. It's probably going to taste terrible, but let her decide that for herself. "They always are. People don't read those looking for strong independent women they just want to see them get busy with some kind of fae shadow daddy." No wonder Sypher had so many children. "Xenith is?<i>was</i>, a friend of mine. I wanted to marry him." She has helped herself to a chair by now and then helps herself to the book to see what page her mother is on. Her eyes skim the material. "The next chapter is better.."

Marw's gaze follows the book as Adamina takes it, one brow lifting, though she makes no attempt to stop her. "<i>Do not</i> lose my page." If Adamina chooses to nose through it, she will find that most of the annotations cluster around the magical and sacrificial scenes. A few are marked as possible avenues for later thought; others contain brief reminders to cross-reference particular rituals against other books. There are questions in the margins, small observations, the occasional underlined phrase. And, here and there, on certain pages clearly favoured by the book's intended audience, an exclamation mark or two. Nothing more on those. Marw allows her several moments of uninterrupted nosing before, at last, opening the door to the conversational elephant that has been sitting between them since Adamina arrived. "Adamina, I think what is about to happen now is a conversation no one is going to find pleasant. However, certain conversations have to occur. They cannot simply be avoided." She leans back in her chair and crosses one leg over the other at the knee, her hand settling loosely around the mug, two fingers slipping beneath the handle. "So, before I talk?" Her gaze settles fully on Adamina. "Is there anything you want to say first? Get off your chest, perhaps?"

Adamina has much more interest in smut than human sacrifice, so she only reads enough of her mother's notes to determine that she is researching, and not looking for the fairy boy that puts the lady against the wall. She doesn't lose Marw's page, and eventually passes the book back to her. "It could be," she agrees. "If this is the part where you telling me that you could not possibly be my mother and that you have no memory whatsoever of getting married or having children or?you know." <i>Getting old.  </i>Grandmothers were often old. "? or how you have no desire to be any of those things, go on and spit it out."

Marw takes the book back when it comes her way and settles it once more upon the table, open and face down again to preserve her place. Her head tilts to one side a fraction as Adamina speaks. The woman is almost on the right track?almost. The mug is lifted instead and she brings it to her lips, blowing gently across the surface before taking a tentative sip. A small grimace follows. Rum and tea are not natural companions, apparently, though she suspects that by the bottom of the mug she will care less. It is placed back upon the table with a dull clunk. Before speaking, her gaze darts towards Rory, lingering long enough to assure herself that he still appears quite thoroughly asleep before returning to her daughter. Even then, when she begins, she keeps her voice deliberately low. If he happens to be hovering somewhere near the edge of waking, there are certain things she would rather not have him hear. "I think we will first address the motherhood aspect." One plum painted nail taps lightly against the side of her mug. Once. A brief pause, less hesitation than courtesy to afford a moment to Adamina to steel herself for whatever comes next. "Now, I understand and accept that I am highly likely to be your mother." Her thumb catches a thin trail of rum laced tea creeping down the side of the mug, wiping it away before it can reach the table. "But you are not my daughter." Her tone though quiet, was rigidly firm. Another pause, not because she intended her words to wound, but because piling explanation upon them too quickly seems worse. Adamina deserves at least the opportunity to absorb one blow before Marw delivers the reasoning behind it "What I mean by that is that you look at me and you have memories, emotions, history." Her gaze remains on the redhead. "Whether those memories are good, bad, or some unfortunate mixture of both, they are there." The tip of her tongue catches briefly between her teeth, an unconscious brake upon the next sentence. She is pacing herself now, deliberately arranging words that refuse to become any kinder simply because she handles them carefully. "But when I look at you?I have none of that."

Adamina takes a long, slow drink of her rum, which is not mixed with anything.  It's not as good as the rum that was aboard the whaling ship, which they were allowed only in specific increments because the air and water were both so cold.  Alcohol tricked both the mind and the body, and once a watchstander had taken his shirt off and frozen stiff out on the cold sea, drunk as a skunk.  She regards Marw over the rim of her glass, studying her face the way an artist might observe a work of art in progress, something workable but not complete.  "That," she replies at great length. "--is exactly what my mother would say."   Still.  <i>You are not my daughter.</i>  She knew this was coming; she could have predicted it the moment Marw looked at her without a shred of recognition, but the anticipation of a blow does not mean the delivery doesn't sting.  To be told by someone that looks so much like your mother does steal some of the wind from her lungs, albeit briefly. "But I understand." 

Marw rolls one shoulder in a small shrug. It is not casual, nor dismissive, but an acknowledgement of what Adamina has said. If anything, it rather proves the point. To Adamina, she is her mother. To Marw, Adamina is still, however unpleasant the truth of it, someone she barely knows.Her chin dips once in a measured nod, blue eyes remain fixed upon the redhead, steady and almost unblinking. That is the first part dealt with. The next, she thinks, deserves a little more padding around the edges. "When it became apparent that you may not have been entirely incorrect in your claims, I decided I would come to some conclusion about it later. Given everything happening within the village, a personal problem hardly seemed deserving of priority in the current climate." Her hand leaves the mug. Both settle instead into her lap, loosely and neatly clasped together. "It took me a few days to realise that I had, in fact, made the decision immediately." There is no flourish to the admission and certainly no apology attached to it. "I will not be attempting to restore any memories. More than that, I intend to actively ensure they do not return, if such a thing is within my control." A brief pause. "And I am asking you not to try to stir them up." Her fingers tighten once against one another, barely enough to notice. "For some people, perhaps recovering what they have lost would make them feel restored. Whole, even." Her gaze does not leave Adamina. "But I do not believe me remembering her would restore me. It would replace me."

Adamina closes her eyes for a long and slow moment, allowing the words to sink in.  She swishes the rum around in her mouth a little bit because it is a good excuse to keep from speaking, to keep herself appropriately composed while she sorts her thoughts.  This is difficult, but not as hard as it could be.  How very Marw to not let other people tell her who she was. "You are younger than I ever remember my mother being," she says at length. "She had more gray in her hair even then, more lines around her eyes.  And why wouldn't she?  She already had five children when she had me, and the oldest two were almost grown."  She takes another long, and slow drink. "You could be her sister, her mirror, or something, but you could no more replace her than she could you."  The pieces are there--<i>some </i>of them, but not all of them, and her mother was already approaching middle age by the time she was old enough to remember anything.  This might be harder for Dwain, or Hildako, but Mina, in the cold sunlight of practicality, cares nothing for her self-centered sister's feelings.  Let Hildako manage them. "But, I will not promise to ignore your existence, avoid associating with you, or anything like that.  This is a small village, and we could be useful to each other.  I also cannot promise that my sister and her daughter will agree to what you want."  Drink, swish, swallow.  She is starting to feel warm. "I won't try to stir them up," she continues. "But heed my words of warning.  If you don't want to risk becoming a woman that has been elderly for <i>two-hundred years</i>, it is in your best intereest to <i>not return home." </i>

Marw is not prepared to hear how many children she apparently has. Was she a Foxx, or was she a rabbit? A sharp shake of her head follows, as though she might physically dislodge the information before it has the opportunity to settle anywhere permanent. Then comes the next blow?.her age. She is? <i>how old?</i> That, at least, succeeds in knocking every possible response clean out of her. Her lips press into a thin line. For several seconds she merely stares at Adamina, then abruptly pushes herself to her feet and closes a hand around the neck of the rum bottle the redhead has so helpfully acquired. "One moment." It is all the explanation she offers before marching towards the bar in search of a proper glass. Tea and rum are clearly not going to fix this, perhaps liver cancer might. She pours one glass and drinks it swiftly. A second is poured before she returns to the table, bringing both glass and bottle with her. She settles back into her chair as though the brief excursion has been entirely sufficient to put the world back into some semblance of order. "Right. Where were we?" The second glass remains cradled in one hand now, nursed rather than assaulted. "Well, I do not expect you to be the messenger to them. That would hardly be apt. If any of them require the same conversation, send them my way." A fractional pause. "If my husband turns up, send him my way as well." Her free hand slips into the pocket of the coat hanging over the back of her chair. When it emerges, it carries a small black box. The plum ribbon it arrived with that morning has already been discarded somewhere at home. Marw places the box between them without opening it, one plum-painted nail taps lightly against the lid. "I don't know if you will want these." Inside lie two wedding bands. Gold but dulled with age; both scuffed and tarnished by years of wear. Marw can make a reasonably confident wager as to what they are. Adamina, however, would know. Hers and Mr Foxx's.

Adamina takes her time nursing the rest of her first glass of rum and then pours herself a second. "We were at your age," she reminds her not-mother gently.  Very carefully she takes the box and peers inside.  Mr and Mrs. Foxx.  She'd seen the ring on her father's hand when his eyes closed for the last time, on her mother's hands as she went about her labors.  She takes it carefully and puts it in her pocket, then retrieves something to offer in return.  It is a clipping from the <i>Solol Crier</i>, the obituary of one Zuvimas Foxx.  It lists Marw as his wife, and there is a faded picture of them from...near the time the curse was cast, when he was still acceptable to be seen in public at least some of the time. "He's not coming.  You need not worry there."  She drinks only a little more deeply this time, unwilling to look like a lush in her not-mother's company because there is still something of the old battle-axe in there, and something in her that craved that maternal approval.  "It might be in all of our best interest for this human sacrifice in a specific place not to happen.  I already lived in one villge cursed because of it, and would prefer to ah...start over, here, if I must stay here."

Marw takes the small clipping from Adamina and looks down at the photograph? nothing? no recognition for the man she has apparently spent more than two centuries beside. No pull of memory or sense of knowing. The only face in the picture that carries even the faintest thread of familiarity is her own, and even that feels strangely detached, as though she is studying someone who merely happens to resemble her. It takes several moments before she manages to drag her attention away from the photograph and towards the print beneath it. Something about a museum, a taxidermist's shop, sleeping pills found in his system. The words refuse to settle properly in her head. Her eyes move over them without taking them in, so she closes them hard for a moment, opens them again, and forces herself to read the clipping one word at a time. A small nod follows. Then she holds it back out towards Adamina, lips already parting around what will presumably be something sensible, measured, cold and classically Marw?perhaps. Before Adamina can take it, Marw pulls the clipping back towards herself. Her eyes drop to one phrase. <i>Sleeping pills.</i>, it does say that. "Fucking hell." So much for measured. "Did we?" She starts again. "Were we?" She stops again. A large swallow of rum follows, and Marw waves one hand through the air as though physically batting the question away before it can finish forming. "No. I do not want to know." For once, her posture fails her. Something gives in the usual rigid line of her back, not quite a collapse but enough of a slump to betray how much the clipping has managed to get beneath her skin. She falls silent, pinching the bridge of her nose between finger and thumb and rubbing slow, firm circles into the pressure there. And for the first time since the village meeting, something cracks in the certainty of her decision. Would the portal take her home? What would happen if she went through it? Had she killed him? Would she become old again? Would her memories return and she, as she is now, no longer exist? The questions arrive faster than she can contain them. "I will think about it." It is the closest she has come to retreating from the boundary she drew only moments before. Then, almost as quickly, some familiar piece of Marw resurfaces through the fracture. Her eyes flick sharply up to Adamina. "But you know that, no matter what, Morgane cannot get chair, right?"

Adamina has already read the article, and has the luxury--or is perhaps a burden, to know the answer to those unspoken questions, yet she does not voice it.  However cold Marw might sometimes be, she's not <i>cold-blooded.  </i>That was, inevitably, why Adamina had intervened.  She swallows her rum more slowly, and alongside it the lump that rises in her throat. Young Mina, running home from school back when the sun still came up, waving some picture she'd drawn in art class around for her father to see.  She'd never drawn pictures for Marw, who never appreciated them, only Zuvimas, who would hang them in his study.  He'd been a sharp man, keen of mind back then.  She used to read with him.  Those closing eyes, bleary almost beyond recognition.  Sometimes he knew her, and he had that day, as she passed him the cup of coffee.  <i>Thank you, Mina.  </i>Her free had closes tightly around the box in her pocket. "Who is Morgane?  The meeting was before I arrived." 

Marw keeps her fingers pressed against the bridge of her nose for another few seconds before finally lowering her hand. "Morgane is trouble." It is delivered simply, as though that should be sufficient explanation. Knowing Marw, perhaps she genuinely believes it is. "She must live." A small pause follows, her expression settling back into something firmer as familiar territory replaces questions she has no intention of answering tonight. "But she cannot be allowed to have any power." The remainder of the rum is swallowed in one decisive mouthful and the empty glass set down upon the table. "I should go." There is no further explanation. Marw rises, collects her coat from the back of the chair and slips first one arm and then the other into it, tugging the fabric neatly into place at her shoulders. The small adjustments are perhaps unnecessarily precise, but they give her hands something to do. She inclines her head once towards Adamina. Not quite goodbye, but close enough. Then she turns and makes her way towards the door. A few steps from it, Marw slows and then stops. Her gaze travels back across the taverne towards the table, the black book remains exactly where she left it. For several seconds she simply stares at A Court of Blood and Bad Decisions as though its continued existence is yet another mystery she does not want to unravel but she turns around, crosses the room again. Once she reaches the table, she collects the book and tucks it firmly beneath one arm. Not so much as a glance towards Adamina. She turns once more, walks directly to the door, and this time actually leaves.