#don’t do what he does tho. put something sturdy under the wood or work in gloves. palm cuts are nasty and bleed like crazy
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geminison · 1 year ago
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Wood carving and killing people both require knife skills. And both tend to leave marks
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feliicityrampant · 7 years ago
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here’s the first part of a mchanzo fantasy/witch au. it’s ~2800 words. i have a lot of ideas about it so i hope i finish it. it’s not edited much tho. consider it an interest inquiry?
(untitled as of now)
“Do you believe in true love?” Old Mina says, her stout figure blocking out the sun.
Jesse is ten years old, crouched in the bed of her garden with dirt trapped deep under his finger nails. Everyone in the village says Old Mina is a nasty hag who can’t be trusted. Jesse doesn’t understand why he’s being punished this way, why he’s been sent up to weed her garden over a little fist fight.
The adults don’t think the kids in the village hear the stuff they say about Old Mina. They think they’re all scared of her just because she’s mean. But Jesse’s not stupid and neither are the others and they all know. Old Mina is powerful. She’s the strongest witch in the valley, even stronger than the coven leader. Worse than that, though, she’s selfish, and she likes to play games. Nobody wants to be unlucky enough to catch her attention.
So Jesse squints up at Old Mina, her features barely visible when she’s back-lit so heavily by the lowering sun, and he does his best to squash the urge to run. He’s not a coward. And, even if he was, he wouldn’t want her smelling his fear.
“Of course I don’t,” Jesse says mulishly. “That’s girl stuff.” He reaches up and pulls his hat snugger on his head, seeking comfort in the familiar feel of the rough leather.
Old Mina laughs. “Let me see that hand of yours, boy,” she says, and snatches it quick as lightning off the brim of his hat.
She hunches even further, her long nails digging into his palm as she examines it roughly. Jesse is thankful he’s been out working in the sun for the last hour. It’s a convenient excuse for the sweat gathering under her critical gaze. He doesn’t dare move, even to wipe his brow or ease his aching knees.
“You should believe in true love,” Old Mina concludes after what seems like forever. She drops his hand and smiles nastily down at him. “Yours is going to kill you.”
Jesse goes home trembling that evening. When his mother asks him what’s wrong he just shakes his head and goes to bed without dinner. He sleeps fitfully that night and his dreams are disturbed.
It’s a long time before Jesse works up the nerve to talk to Old Mina, not just about what she said, but about other things as well. He’s twelve when he’s brave enough and really has the desire. But by that time, he’s been banished, exiled from the valley, and it’s already too late.
--
Jesse has stopped for a drink in a small nothing of a town out in the foothills of the Black Tip Mountains when he hears about the Shimada.
The mountains are half a day’s journey south and the nearest town on the other side is another day’s journey from the highest part of the pass. It’d be easier and faster with a horse or a mule, but beasts don’t like him much. So he’s having a drink and contemplating his options, staring out through the bar windows at the peaks, dark like ink stains against the blue afternoon sky. He’ll stay in town the night, he thinks, and take off in the morning. Make it through the worst of the trip tomorrow and camp out at the bottom of the pass on the other side. The weather’s been good so far, but at this time of April it’s hard to know what’s coming unless you’ve Seen it.
“…heard about Paulina,” Jesse overhears, mostly by mistake. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“We weren’t very close, but I appreciate it,” another voice says. “I’m just glad we found her in the end. It would’ve been worse for my aunt and uncle, the not knowing.”
“She went missing up on the pass, right?” the first voice asks. “That’s difficult terrain to search. How was she found, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Jesse slides his eyes away from the window and tracks the conversation to its source – two middle aged men at a table in the corner. Their hands are calloused and their clothes are rough. His best guess is that they work at one of the mills along the river. Lumber is the town’s primary economy.
“One of the Shimada found her,” one of them is saying. “Seems like there was a block on the pass and she tried to bushwhack around it. She got lost off the path and there was a mudslide. It carried her halfway down the Prince, into the shadow of the King.”
The three mountains that make up the Black Tips are the Black Prince, the Black King, and the Black Queen. The Prince is the smallest and the only one safe enough to traverse for most of the year. But there’s always bad luck. The man’s companion hums, sympathetic.
“Still,” Paulina’s cousin continues, “the Shimada said she didn’t suffer much. She probably died within the first few moments of the mudslide.” He pauses to take a drink. “He didn’t charge. It was good of him.”
Jesse turns back to his own drink. He should probably reevaluate his plans to cross the pass, anyway, if there’s been mudslides and blocked roads. Normally that would annoy him, but it seems like there are things of interest out here in the middle of nowhere after all. He catches the attention of the bartender who’s wiping down the counter not far from Jesse and motions him over.
“The Shimada,” he says, “they a coven?”
“A coven?” the bartender repeats. “Not really. There’s only the two of them and they don’t have ancestral roots. They’re witches though, and they Keep like a coven does.”
“Hm,” Jesse says, and scratches at his stubble.
Covens are land-bound. It’s important for them to stay as families, tied to the earth where they’ve spilled ritual blood for generations. It’s part of why Jesse’s banishment hurt so much. He’s heard here and there of covens who weren’t land-bound – even been part of one for a short time – but they tend to be migratory, binding to other things, like rivers, or otherwise just going where and doing as they please. It’s weird to hear of one without ancestral roots doing something like Keeping.
Covens that live in or near towns and villages have a bond with the people who live there because those people in turn have a bond with the land. They Keep them, do magic for them, heal their sick and tend their crops, usually in exchange for payment of some kind. Jesse’s coven had been modest and the village it Kept even more so. They worked for food and livestock for the most part. But there were covens in cities and mining towns who were wealthy beyond description.
“Where can I find them?” Jesse asks.
The bartender eyes him a little doubtfully but nods his head toward the river. “Upstream about ten miles or so,” he says. “They have a place right on the river. It’s probably not worth your time, though. Plenty of folks like you have come through here in the past looking for them but they turn ‘em all away. Don’t like big magic, or so I’ve heard.”
Folks like me? Jesse thinks. Big magic?
“Well I won’t bother them none,” Jesse says with a smile, the kind that makes most people trust him, never mind his rough appearances. “I’m just curious, ‘sall.”
Unless they’re as good at tracking as that little conversation has led him to believe. But he keeps that thought to himself.
Jesse cracks his back as he stands and grabs his hat off the counter. He places it on his head, tips it gratefully to the bartender, and leaves a bit more than he owes next to his empty glass.
--
The Shimada residence is certainly upstream about ten miles or so, emphasis on the “or so”, but there’s no clear path and the forest grows thicker and thicker the further from town he gets. He tries to imagine the townspeople making this trip for anything less than a dire emergency but finds it difficult. (Then again, it sounds like they make a habit of crossing the pass, so maybe they’re hardier than they seem.) By the time Jesse emerges out of the woods into the clearing where the small house sits, the sun is getting low and the golden light of dusk is spilling through the trees in intervals, like shards of warm glass.
The building itself is sturdy and old fashioned, with a woven grass roof and dark cedar paneled walls. The whole building is raised slightly, surrounded by an open porch, and the door – made of paper and that same cedar – appears to slide open. Jesse steps up onto the porch and puzzles at the door slightly before deciding to rap lightly on the wood frame. The door jostles a little but the sound isn’t very loud.
When no response comes, Jesse carefully slides his head into the entrance hall. “Excuse me,” he calls. “Is anyone home?”
For a moment, there’s nothing, and then a door slides open down the hall and a man steps out. He’s tall and dark skinned, with no hair and a series of nine dots on his forehead. He’s wearing a yukata and it’s only because the sleeves are rolled and tied up past his elbows that Jesse can tell that he’s not a human at all. There, barely noticeable, are the thin seams along the joints that indicate that this is a construct.
Jesse blinks, caught off guard. It’s been a long time since he’s seen an animated construct in working condition, let alone one in the shape of a human. They’re difficult to make and almost universally disliked. It’s off putting to see one, especially out here, and especially with folks who claim not to like “big magic.”
“Hello,” the construct says. “Forgive me for not coming sooner – we just sat down to dinner.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean to intrude,” Jesse says, eyeing the construct a bit at his phrasing. Constructs can’t eat. “I can come back another time.”
“Ah,” the construct says. “That won’t be necessary. Have you eaten? There’s plenty of food.”
“That’s mighty kind of you,” Jesse grins, not bothering to try to conceal his growling stomach. “Food sounds great. You folks are hard to find.”
He kicks off his shoes in the concrete entrance hall and steps up onto the straw mats of the main hallway. He feels a bit self-conscious – his socks have holes in them and he’s been travelling in them for a long time. They’re probably not much of a step up from his shoes.
The construct leads him back down the hallway to the open doorway and gestures for Jesse to enter. It’s a large, airy room, with more sliding doors that have been pushed open to reveal the porch and, beyond it, the river, which it seems like the house juts out over by a little bit. In the center of the room is a low table surrounded by cushions. Two men are sitting there, eating what looks like a hot pot of some kind.
The man on the left is lounging back, looking at Jesse with open curiosity. He has bright green hair and an open expression – though Jesse knows better than most that looks can be deceiving. He’s wearing a yukata nearly as blindingly bright as his hair, blue and covered in green foliage, hanging open at the chest and thighs probably a bit further than propriety dictates, though Jesse doesn’t have enough familiarity with the garment to say one way or the other. His only point of comparison is the construct and the man on the right.
The man on the right is distinctly more subdued. He sits upright with his legs crossed and a look of displeasure on his face. His black hair is held up in a tight ponytail and his dark yukata is immaculate. Only one thing sets him apart as extraordinary – two coils of bright blue that encircled his neck.
At first Jesse thinks they’re tattoos of some kind, but then they begin to shift, slithering silently across the man’s skin with a kind of languid grace. Two heads appear out of the man’s yukata and begin hissing quietly in his ear. Snakes, Jesse realizes. Familiars, by the looks of them. The man glances at them for a moment, and then back at Jesse. His expression of displeasure does not change.
Although Jesse had eagerly followed the construct at the promise of food, he now again feels as though he’s intruding, and can’t bring himself to sit down at the small table and join what is clearly a modest family dinner. He instead removes his hat and presses it over his heart.
“My apologies for coming at such a late hour,” he says. “Jesse McCree, at your service.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the man on the left says with a grin. “Visitors are always welcome when there’s nothing happening. I can’t even eat when I’m bored.”
The man on the right snorts in an inelegant way apropos to his appearances and the construct hums as though it wants to voice an opinion. Which is impossible. Constructs don’t have opinions.
“I’m Genji,” the man on the left continues, ignoring them. “This is my brother Hanzo. And this is Zenyatta.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, McCree,” the construct, Zenyatta, says.
“Jesse’s fine,” Jesse says. “And the pleasure is mine.”
“Sit down, sit down,” Genji says, patting a free cushion. “Where are you from, Jesse?”
“Uh, here and there,” Jesse says, sinking down onto the cushion as directed. His knees and back ache a bit at sitting on the floor like this. He doesn’t see how the two men who look to be about his age can manage it so casually. Particularly Hanzo, who has a distinguished swath of grey behind his ears. “I’m more interested in y’all, if I’m being honest. Haven’t heard of a coven Keeping without ancestral roots before.”
“That’s none of your business,” Hanzo says peevishly. He sets down his bowl and chopsticks with a click and focuses a glare on Jesse. “If you intend to interrupt our supper, Mr. McCree, you could at least do us the favor of being forthright. What do you want?”
Jesse definitely feels like he can’t eat now, no matter how hungry he is, but the construct – Zenyatta, he reminds himself – has already knelt across from him and is passing him a bowl filled with broth and noodles and mushrooms and beef.
“Don’t be such a buzzkill, Hanzo,” Genji whines. “Can’t you see something interesting when it’s sitting in front of you? How’d you lose your eye, Jesse?”
Jesse reaches up to touch his eyepatch, startled at having it so directly called out. He’s saved the discomfort of having to answer, however.
“Genji,” Zenyatta admonishes in a sharp tone.
“Oops,” Genji says, looking cowed. “Sorry. But it is interesting.”
“Nothing good ever came of interesting,” Hanzo says. “Mr. McCree, please don’t waste my time.”
“It’s just Jesse, if you don’t mind,” Jesse says, although it’s painfully clear that Hanzo does, in fact, mind. “But I heard in town that y’all were good at finding people and I was hoping you could help me track down a comrade of mine.”
“Is she pretty?” Genji asks.
Jesse laughs. “He’s, uh, old, and kind of scruffy, and…doesn’t really want to be found. I’ve been looking for him for about a year now. Heard he might be down near the coast but that’s all I know and it’s just a rumor.”
“That’s far,” Genji says, but his eyes slide over to Hanzo almost at once.
Hanzo can do it, Jesse thinks with a jolt of sudden hope. It’s just a matter of whether or not he wants to.
“I really would appreciate any kind of help y’all can give me,” Jesse appeals. “He’s something like a father to me, y’see, and he’s not exactly. He’s sick. He needs me and he won’t admit it.”
Hanzo sighs and looks out at the river. One of his snakes raises its head and begins hissing again.
“What’s his name?” Hanzo asks.
“Gabriel Reyes.”
If the name means anything to them, they don’t show it.
Hanzo considers a little more. The snakes hiss a little more. It’s eerie. Jesse wishes he could understand what they’re saying.
“What will you pay me?” Hanzo asks.
“Well I don’t have much…”
“That much is obvious.”
“…but we can do an exchange, if you like,” Jesse finishes, unperturbed. “I’m no good at scrying or anything, but I’m a witch in my own right.”
“Oh?” Genji says, leaning forward. “What can you do?”
Jesse eyes them warily and drums his fingers nervously against his thigh. He can feel Hanzo’s eyes burning into the side of his face. He clears his throat.
“I can talk to the dead.”
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