Fandom His Dark Materials: An Unlikely Duo - Laufey/starkravingsane

[starkravingsane]

His Dark Materials: An Unlikely Hero
Backstory

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Mazie Raxxol and Luximian

Mazie was a young witch with a sharp mind and a fierce heart. She was headstrong, and she had to be, because something--something neither she nor any other witch could ever quite put a finger on--had always set her apart from the rest of the clan. She was a misfit, a loner, and she had never been quite as talented as the other young witches when learning to use the abilities afforded to witches. Okay, not quite as talented was an understatement: she was an all-around bumbling klutz when she tried anything at all. Heck, half the time she couldn't even navigate correctly when flying. The last time the clan elders had admonished her, it was because she had botched an attempt at making herself unseen, and Queen Ruta Skadi, that evil know-it-all, called her "a failure of a witch."

Mazie had been so angry and hurt that she determined to become the best of all the clan at hiding herself in plain sight. She flew out of her clan's territory and practiced for days, and sometimes she thought she was getting it, and at other times her nerves would cause her to suddenly stand out in the most inconvenient of places.

Finally one night she went to see her lover, Samson Wiles, a dashingly handsome young aeronaut, to seek consolation in his arms. The other young witches had always been jealous of Mazie's relationship with Samson, although they never said so, but instead made snide comments about how she could have ended up with someone as charming as Samson. One witch in particular, Laissa Tonta, had always been especially jealous and exceedingly cruel, and it was she who Mazie found in Sam's bed that fateful night as she was trying to make herself mundane enough to walk unnoticed into the room.

Immediately Mazie lost all concentration and her focused modesty gave way to overwhelming hurt, betrayal, and shame, which quickly turned to uncontrollable vengeful wrath. Somehow, as she suddenly became very, very visible, and every cell in her body pulsed with wounded rage, a circle of blazing light extended out all around her and burned up Samson, Laissa, and half the town in an instant. Mazie found herself screaming a horrible, guttural cry and holding her eyes to block out the blinding light. It was gone in an instant, and as she slowly gathered her wits about her, Mazie realized she was standing on a small circle of unmarred wood floor surrounded by a burnt chasm that stretched for hundreds of yards in all directions. Buildings were completely leveled and badly charred bodies lay in her wake.

When Mazie went back to Lake Lubana to explain what had happened, she was brought before the entire clan, where the elders would not even let her speak a word; they just looked at her with disdain and disappointment so intense it pierced through to her bones. Ruta Skadi delivered an impassioned, vehement denunciation. She declared that Mazie would be forced to live in exile from all witch clans until she was able to redeem herself and prove herself worthy of being called a witch. Ruta did not specify how Mazie could do this, but intimated that it would need to be something of immense importance to the future of the Lake Lubana clan and to all witches.

Ryania Merseltos, the eldest of the witches, who rarely ever spoke but had always shown compassion for Mazie, slowly lifted her frail body to stand. She looked Mazie straight in the eye and asked her to explain how she managed to kill her fellow witch and decimate the town. Ryania added that there might be a way to lessen the punishment if Mazie were to help the elders understand how this could have happened.

But Mazie had been damaged to the core by Ruta Skadi's harsh words for the last time. She was powerless to exact revenge, so she did the one thing she could think of. She stood strong and tall, puffing out her chest and steeling herself against all of her shame and sorrow, and locked eyes with Ruta as she declared, "Ruta Skadi, you once told me I was a failure of a witch. Well look now. I have abilities you could not even dream of. And I will never tell you anything about them."

Mazie left. Having no idea what she could possibly do to earn back her clan's trust, and wallowing in her guilt, shame, and anger, she wandered around the North aimlessly, disguising herself as a human, and creating mischief everywhere she went.

Lee Scoresby and Hester​

Meanwhile, after Lyra, Roger, and Iorek fall out of his balloon, Lee Scoresby hits a strong storm. He's a seasoned aeronaut, but his balloon has already been ravaged by cliff-ghasts and bullet holes, and some of his instruments were damaged. Lee and Hester do their best to navigate out of the storm, but they are caught up in the severe winds and are blown quite far away, though how far they couldn't say, until finally they are struck by lightning. Lee manages to make a hasty emergency landing and saves their lives, but not his beloved balloon.

 

[starkravingsane]

So I got a little carried away and wrote way too much for this first bit. So I'm just going to put the first two scenes, which aren't even necessary to read, into a spoiler tag and the part where she actually meets Lee is below.

Spoiler: Mazie gets run out of town

Mazie woke up, opened her eyes, and then wished she hadn't. She closed them tightly as if to ward off the new day.

"Uughhh..."

She rolled over and the bed creaked so loudly it sounded like an avalanche under her thin, wiry frame. She stood up and walked to the window to open the curtains, then instantly pulled them back and clutched her aching head.

"This is why witches don't drink," said her daemon, Luximian, a loon, who was plucking at the feathers of his left wing, refusing to even look at Mazie. "You can't hold your liquor. Do you even remember what happened last night? 'Cuz all I can remember is..." He cocked his head. "...Well, not much. I vaguely remember stumbling up here and starting an argument with the innkeeper about something...the color blue? Or blue cheese? Something that made a lot of sense, that's for sure."

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Mazie whined, collapsing back into the bed loudly and pulling the tattered, stain-covered blanket over her head. She tried to remember what happened in between finding her way into town and...whatever she was so angry with the innkeeper for--something about his feet?

Witches don't normally drink alcohol, no. But Mazie Raxxol had reason to drown her sorrows. After she found her lover in bed with another witch from her clan, Mazie unwittingly set the two ablaze, killing them and decimating half of the surrounding village. For this Mazie was exiled from the Lake Lubana clan by that ruthless Queen Ruta Skadi, whom Mazie now spent half of every day imagining suffering a thousand painful deaths. Ruta had said horrible, unconscionable things about Mazie, who was convinced that the wayward spell was not the real reason for any of it. Mazie had always been different from the rest of the clan, in some way she could never quite put her finger on, and was generally not accepted by the rest of the clan. But the other witches were all satisfied as long as Mazie was the clan screw-up, incapable of using any of her witch abilities effectively. It was only when they thought that she had discovered abilities far beyond their own that they disowned her, that Mazie was sure of.

Mazie smiled now, thinking of what an amazing bluff she had pulled off. Sure, it got her exiled for possibly the rest of her life, but she didn't believe Ruta would have agreed to lessen her punishment no matter what she said. Well, I may not know how to make myself unseen, but I sure know how to make myself unknown, she thought.

"You also don't know how to make yourself un-hungover," Luximian chirped.

Mazie threw her pillow at him.


Later, once she knew the bar would be open, Mazie dressed in long sleeves and a long skirt that she had lifted from a store in another town, and watched herself put on a rich, luxurious cloak--this one gifted to herself by a socialite who'd daftly left it hanging on a coat rack--in the hazy mirror, making sure that all of the cloud-pine on her skin was well out of sight. She itched and squirmed a little, unused to the heavy material weighing her down, and then left the inn, carefully sidestepping the innkeeper lest he ask her what the heck happened last night, walked across the street, and took up a seat in the back corner of the counter in the dark, dingy saloon.

The barkeep was at the opposite end, trying to help a young man wrangle his drunken companion who was singing and dancing, or at least trying to. A tall, thin man whose looks were nothing to speak of, the barkeep looked over at Mazie and flashed a surprisingly endearing grin at her, accidentally letting go of the drunken man, whose left leg went limp beneath him, leaving the barkeep to rush to push him into a booth, where he fell face-first onto the wooden seat and began snoring.

The barkeep walked back behind the bar and approached Mazie with a cup and saucer. "What can I do ya for, young lady?" he asked. "How about a cup of tea?" His orange tabby cat daemon, laying curled up on the opposite end of the bar, picked her head up, glanced blankly at Mazie, then licked her tail twice, closed her eyes, and rested her head back down.

"Bourbon on the rocks," Mazie said.

The barkeep looked at her with concern.

"Make it a double," she added.

He nodded, filled a glass with ice, and poured her bourbon, and handed it to her gently. He kept looking at her as she took her first gulp, hoping the dark liquor would calm her aching head, and then did her best to conceal the rising nausea from her face.

"Pardon me, it's just that we don't get a whole lot of women in here. Not alone. Or drinking bourbon," he said.

She belched. "What's wrong with bourbon?"

He laughed. "Nothing," he said. "You just don't look the type."

"And what type do I look like?" she asked.

He demurred, looked away, and then looked back at her. "Pardon me for the rudeness, miss, I didn't mean to offend. Let me start over." He held out his hand. "Hi there. I'm Jack. Pleased to meet you, miss...?"

She looked at his hand suspiciously and then sighed and shook it. "I'm no miss. The name's..." Shit, what had she been calling herself here? "Sadie." It was the first thing that popped into her head, and she hoped there was a reason for that.

Jack smiled that cute smile again. "Nice to meet you, Sadie. What brings you to my neck of the woods?"

Sadie gulped down the last of her drink and wiped the excess off her lip with the back of her hand.

"Jeez, you want another?"

She shook her head. "Give me a coffee, and whatever you call breakfast around here."

Once again he looked at her like she had two heads. She lowered her brow at him, and he said, "Right, coming right up, Sadie," and poured her a cup of coffee. As he headed into the kitchen, he asked, "How does meat and potatoes sound? It's that or...meat and potatoes."

Mazie felt bad that she had miffed him and remembered she needed to keep up appearances to blend in and keep anyone from finding out a witch was hanging out drinking in their backwards little town. "Oh, meat and potatoes, you don't say, what are the odds," she said, trying to sound jolly. "Sounds absolutely fabulous."

Five minutes later he came back and put a sloppy-looking plate in front of her. He walked back behind the bar and set down a knife and fork for her. "So," he said, flashing that smile. "You were about to tell me what brings you to Marlesburg."

"Oh," she said as she slopped a piece of roll in the meat juices and shoved it in her face, "I, um... Can I have another bourbon?"

"Sure," he said, and set about pouring another while she shoved a bite of meat in her mouth to give herself time to think of a suitable answer. He put the drink down in front of her and kept his eyes trained on her as she chewed. She was beginning to get a funny feeling about him, and this place. She glanced around and realized that the drunken man's companion, seated opposite his comatose friend in the booth, was only pretending to read the newspaper--he was peering out at her over the paper, trying to look nonchalant, and he hurriedly held the paper up higher as soon as she made eye contact.

Washing her food down with the coffee and then the bourbon, she said, "I'm with a group of scholars who've come to study the wildlife of the North. I work as their assistant, you know, transcribing and fetching things and that sort of thing."

"Hmm," he said. "Haven't seen any scholars around lately."

She nodded. "Right. They are still on their way. Our airship brought us to a town south of here, and I came ahead of them by sled, to prepare for their arrival." She looked at Jack's cat daemon, who seemed to be invested in cleaning her paw, but whose ears were pricked and pointed toward Mazie.

He nodded. "Well, that should be exciting. We don't get a lot of scholars around here," he said. She pushed her empty plate forward and he scooped it up, set it down in the basin, wiped up the counter in front of her, and refilled her glass. "Say, what town did you say you took that airship into, Sadie?"

Shit, Mazie thought. She had been wandering around these towns haphazardly and never really bothered to remember their names, and certainly had no idea which ones received zeppelins.

Just then the innkeeper burst through the doors. "There you are, scoundrel," he said, walking with purpose straight toward Mazie. "I knew you'd be in here, Emilia, ya drunk. You broke two of my lamps and a chair last night, and woke up all of my paying guests, banging around drunk as a skunk." The short, bald man, wearing an apron over his gut, was wagging a finger in Mazie's face as she realized he'd just called her the wrong name. "And what were you on about? You said my feet smell like blue cheese, frankly screamed it for the whole town to hear!"

He looked at Jack and said, "My feet do not smell like blue cheese! See for yourself! Smell them!"

Jack looked very serious.

The innkeeper continued to Mazie, "If you think you can skip out of here without paying, Emilia, you're sorely mistaken, missy."

Mazie put her coffee mug down and prepared herself for what would come next. Witches did not usually have possessions, or other needs for money such as a drinking habit, and thus Mazie didn't have a penny on her. Luximian tried his best to look casual as he flew several feet up the bar toward the door and plucked at some crumbs.

"Emilia?" Jack the barkeep said. "I thought you said your name was Sadie?"

Mazie threw back the last of her bourbon and stood up. "Listen, I'm sorry about the mix-up--"

The innkeeper, who was staring at Jack in astonishment, turned to Mazie and grabbed her arm, saying, "Sadie? What's this about?"

Mazie shared a knowing glance with Luximian, who flew closer to the door again. "Please remove your hand from me, sir," Mazie said. Jack was moving to the end of the bar and starting to come around Mazie's side.

"No, I won't, you trickster," the innkeeper said. "What kind of game are you playing here?" The man in the booth had stood up.

Mazie could've easily gotten away from the sniveling innkeeper, but Jack was tall and the other man was sturdy, and all three were between her and the only exit. So, she figured, it was worth a shot. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, focusing all of her energy on becoming completely mundane and boring, so much so that you'd forget she was even there.

"I mean it, Emilia--Sadie--you..."

She breathed in and out deeply through her nose and concentrated on attaining a modesty she was not accustomed to. Finally she felt the innkeeper's hand leave her arm, and she opened her eyes.

The man across the bar in the booth had sat back down and was trying to rouse his companion with a kick. The innkeeper and Jack looked at each other dumbly for a second, and then Jack asked him, "What can I get for ya?"

Mazie slunk through the bar, her shoulders hunched and her head low, still concentrating, and finally opened the doors and stepped outside. The bar's occupants looked up at the door lazily and then looked away.

As soon as they were outside, Mazie let herself be seen again so that she could strip off her heavy clothes and kick off her awful shoes, leaving it all on the ground in the street. People on the street and standing on porches started to notice her now, fully recognizable as a witch in her tattered black silk, her cloud pine showing on her bare arms. As someone started to point and call out, Mazie leapt into the air and was quickly gone.

"Slow down, please, Mazie," Luximian the loon daemon pleaded. Flying over god knows where, he was trying to keep up with Mazie, trying to reason with her, but it wasn't working. His white-spotted black wings were getting tired of pumping away. But he knew that Mazie could have really gone much faster if she wanted to, if half of her wasn't desperate for his help.

"Look, I don't even know where we are--" he said breathlessly.

"Good!" she replied.

"Mazie, we will find a way to right this. We just have to keep control of ourselves, slow down and think logically."

Mazie ignored him at first, and he allowed her her silence. A few minutes later, she said, "It's no use. We have no chance at getting back to the clan, so we may as well give up now and just have our fun."

"This was fun to you?"

Mazie frowned, and gradually slowed down and started to fly closer to the ground. Luximian was worried. Even he was starting to doubt their chances, but he tried to push away any such thoughts to keep them from her. If they didn't at least have hope, well...then there was no hope.

They both started to take stock of where they were. They were over a forest thick with huge pine trees.

"We're in Muscovy, right?" Mazie said.

"Doesn't look like it."

"Well, we were in Lapland and then we went South and then West..."

"We weren't in Lapland, we were in Europe! And we went North...for the most part..." he said, then his shark eyes spotted something to the East. Or the West. To the right. "Do you see that bit of color down there?"

She looked where he was looking, but she couldn't see anything. They flew closer, and she saw it. "What on earth is that? It's in the trees..."

"We'd better be careful." He said. They flew closer, but slowly, so that they could see what was below them. For a while, nothing but trees. And then--"It's...it looks like a big piece of fabric stuck in the tree."

"It's a balloon," she said.

"Oh, is it now," he said, knowing what she would do next but struggling against it all the same. "Well, why don't we--"

But she was already speeding toward it.

Luximian groaned, but he knew it was no use, so he followed after her.

Mazie meant to quietly, gracefully alight on a tree branch behind the man who stood staring up at his balloon. But instead she scraped her face on a pine branch and yelled "Ouch!" as she tumbled gracelessly for several yards and landed straight on her behind.

Startled, the man turned around.