note - plant and poison and music

Just because, this is the honeysuckle vine. Potentially invasive, so clearly it's tenacious enough to have survived neglect and reseeded itself if needed.

Thallium is, like arsenic, colorless and water soluble and all those good things - and as I was comparing the two, turns out thallium was one of 743902 things used to treat the symptoms of tuberculosis. Which seems preeeeetty convenient to me. ;)  While it caused hair loss with lower doses - thus, its use as a depilatory for awhile - higher doses killed you before that was evident.  Discovered in mid-1800s, so a fairly new and spiffy thing.  Unfortunately for me, it appears there's now a fancy perfume called Thallium, so finding a good reference image for an antique one wasn't something I could do quickly.  (As it was, I went down a research rabbit hole, which I'm not supposed to be doing during November. argl.)

Rat poison, though, led to much better search results, woohoo! Page o' antique poison bottles.

Warned y'all there was going to be Sigur Rós this year, haa.  Lyrics and a (probably very loose, definitely unofficial) translation for "Kolniður" here.  Google Translate actually failed to sort the title for me, so I'm guessing it's not a common (or real?) word.  Roughly, "endless dark" or something to that affect.  "Kolniður og myrkur úti, en í mér, ríkir óveður" something like "Endless dark or darkness outside, but for me, there is a storm"  (From the two or three words I recognize, that seems reasonable.)

note - characters and translation

So, I have a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Mason was originally supposed to be Adrian, not Azal. WHOOPS. These are the things that happen when you lose your notes! But I think I'm going to run with it anyway, and make it work for Azal. Uh. Somehow.

WAIT.

I think I just had a really good idea. Because I was breaking my own continuity for his character, but maybe I don't have to.  That could work. Huh. Uhm.

Anyway. Spoilers. ;)

Alternately, it's not like they couldn't be using assumed names or something, if I can't make it work. (And if you're unfamiliar with Amaranthus, my other favorite NaNoNovel-in-eternal-progress, none of this matters anyway.)


Azal likes languages, and it's already pretty well established that these guys know a lot of them.  Bits in today's chapter:
"Tutto è andato" - Italian. All is gone, or everything went
"S'il vous plaît." - French. If you please, or please.
"Longa est vita, amor aeternus est." - Latin. Life is long, love is eternal.  (This came into the story last time I worked on it, thought I'd throw in a refresher. ;)

As is often the case, translations are courtesy of Google, because my characters know more languages than I do. If you happen to see I've screwed up the grammar or anything, please let me know! <3