WHO: Two Geckos + an assortment of guest stars WHAT: Summary of content WHEN: Late Bloomingtide WHERE: The Gallows, misc. Kirkwall haunts. NOTES: Will update as needed.
Seth said it a few times on the way back, venomous and livid as they were jolted around in the back of a wooden fucking cart. Richie hunched under someone else's cloak. Probably still pristine.
It's bullshit. They were supposed to be done with this B-movie garbage. Or at least, they were supposed to be dealing with it on their own terms. (Which is not at all.) Instead, here they are. Mopping up in a fucking stone whatever the fuck. Fortress. Dust turned to mud from where he'd been dropped out of the sky, caked across his suit, mixed with something. Sludge. Blood? Whatever oozes from the horror shows that had dropped out of that sky alongside with them.
Fucked.
"You see this?" is what he says now, draped in towels, sat on the side of the sunken tub. He lifts a palm, flashing green towards Richie. "You got one?"
Or is it something Richie's body can just reject, the same as he'd expel a bullet.
Seth's been brewing up a rant since they fell out of the sky, and for once, Richard can't blame him. They fell out of the fucking sky, in broad daylight, surrounded by monsters that were even more Hammer Horror than what they'd had to deal with the past few years. They'd managed to get and keep their feet under them, but getting out of the situation had mostly involved following directions - yelled, urgent directions - while trying not to burn to a crisp.
Being dumped that thoroughly into the unknown grates on Richard, leaves him simmering irritation, but whether it was getting clean or the simple luxury of it, sinking chest deep into the warmth of the baths had started to help.
Until Seth abruptly interrupts.
Curiosity wins out against the urge to ignore him, Richard opening his eyes just enough to see what Seth's indicating before closing them again. Lifting his matching palm out of the water for Seth to see.
"Hit us both with that one, brother."
It wasn't just Richard getting inducted into the freakshow, this time.
The urge to kick a spray of water over Richie's face: high.
Seth refrains for a moment, scowling at Richie's palm before pressing his own thumb hard against the splinter of green in his own. Typical. Just when you think you're out—
"Maybe we should've tried to backtrack before we zipped that fucker up."
Nevermind that closing the rift had not quite hurt, but it had been uncomfortable. Plugging in to something big, sensation juddering down his arm. It figures the thing hadn't come together until Richie had put his hand up too. Semantics aside, it's the same old refrain: two Geckos are better than one.
They hadn't really gotten a chance to refine what that looked like when the dust Amaru had kicked up settled. Now they got a whole new situation to figure out at the same time they settle everything else.
Seth closes his hand into a fist, blotting out the light.
"How long you think we got to case the joint before someone starts asking questions?"
Because surely someone's going to start asking something. Eventually.
That feels like a better question. Not that the green shit in their hands wasn't a point of concern, but it was one that was going to take asking questions and possibly, from Richard's experience, just following gut instinct. And in the meantime, dwelling on it was going to aggravate more, like poking at a literal splinter under the skin.
Casing a joint was something they knew, something he could dissect properly. Even if the joints in question weren't usually medieval castles.
"Couple of days, at least." Drawing himself up a little straighter, watching the ripples in the water as he chews it over - snatches of conversation overheard on the cart ride back here, the sense of the place being slightly hollowed out, like a house waiting for a family to come back from vacation. But then, also - "If they start asking at all, the way they packed us up and shipped us down here."
Efficient and well-practiced to the point of routine. Like emergency workers, cleaning up a scene before rolling onto the next.
Two weeks isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but it gets old fast.
Worse, for the creeping sense of being enclosed, trapped somewhere he can't slip from. It's on an island. The construction on the windows can't dispel the claustrophobic effect of the building's architecture.
But two weeks. He can do two weeks, and then they can really get to work.
In the meantime, one can come across Seth occupying himself by—
● Sweet-talking his way into the kitchen, and into possession of a jug of wine ● Swinging a sword loosely around the training yard, scoffing at a practice dummy. ● Parked at the top of the stairs, observing the coming and going of the ferry.
KIRKWALL.
A con man walks into a Ren Faire—
No, the joke's on Seth.
But look hard enough, familiar bullshit present itself. Here, a card game. Seth doesn't completely grasp the rules, but a strong bluff gets a man anywhere and everywhere. Elbow on the table, glint of green pressed down against the sticky tabletop, Seth eyes the growing assortment of gold, trinkets and chits in the center of the table before leaning back to the vaguely recognizable face alongside him to mutter—
"These the type of guys who take it personal if they lose big?"
Not that it'll change the outcome, but its the kind of thing that's good to know.
The last ferry of the night rolls in, and someone exits with a weary but dogged tread. Probably not looking forward to climbing all those stairs.
It's been raining, so Ellie has her hood pulled up, hasn't bothered to pull it down yet, and by the mud and soot-smeared look of her she's fresh back from a trip. She looks like she belongs in this world, even down to the dull gleam of Fade-touched crystal worked into the body of the bow slung across her back.
"Fuuuuck me," she whispers to herself as she starts up, but doesn't pause, even when she catches sight of Seth at the top of the stairs.
New guy.
She pauses for a second, considering, and reaches up to push her hood down.
"Waiting for somebody?" she asks, and without waiting for an answer, gestures out at the retreating ferry. "That's the last one."
Something to remember: last ferry at whatever the fuck o'clock.
Seth's counted up the circuits that boatman's been making, and it's imprecise, but better than nothing. Still makes him want to break something for want of a watch.
"Just killing time," Seth tells her, tipping the tankard in his hand back over his shoulder as he takes her in. Marks the bow. The cloak. Figures: local. "Not much happening on this rock after dock."
And there is, of course, the calculation Seth has been making frequently: who the fuck is going to stop him from getting on that boat?
But pushing the envelope just for the sake of it is a bonehead move. Seth comes to that conclusion time and again, despite the gnawing boredom that builds with every day sent rattling around the Gallows. (Nevermind worrying for Richie, how long he can hold out until his next meal.)
Ellie gives him a knowing nod, glancing from the ferry back up to the man perched on the stone steps above her like he wants to take off. She can feel the trapped-animal energy of him from here.
Ellie's carried that feeling into every single place FEDRA put her since her memories began, into Jackson as a far too self-reliant kid, into the cellar beneath a bar where she had nothing but a hospital gown and a stolen dart from the game board upstairs.
She understands it, though that sort of thing doesn't always tip good when gravity pulls them down.
"Ellie," she says back, without the smartass comments she could make about him not offering his name first. God, she misses Lance. He'd know what to do for the new people who fall through the Rifts. She always feels worse than useless, but he'd say that the fact that she feels that she had to do anything at all is more than most people.
She trudges her way up, stops just across the landing from him and leans against the handrail, giving him the up and down. Nothing sexual about it, though he's a good looking guy, if she's going by aesthetics.
"Scouting," she adds, and holds up her left hand. The fingerless gloves do a good job of covering the anchor shard, so she tugs back the edge, giving him that flash of green.
A practice dummy is barely any fun. Perhaps the new kid on the block would like a moving target, one lingering on the fringes of the training yard, in the process of stretching her quads. They're the only two people out here; the easy, loping swings of the stranger cut into the silence of the afternoon. She watches him swing, a few more times, then calls out.
"Oi."
She's in a leather vest that leaves her arms free but for the thin, training gambeson underneath. They're like that so she can swing her mace all the wilder (not that she's going to be using it against this guy, cuz. What an intro, right). "Wanna spar?"
Tiffany can regularly be found in the yard. Riftwatch life is life without a schedule--which she's mostly grown used to, now, or at least as she used to it as she's ever likely to be. Still, training makes for a good set of markers to the day, like waypoints on a map.
She's been working at it for some time. Sweat stands on her brow and small bits of her hair have escaped her once-tight plait. She flicks the length of it over her shoulder and gives a little smile. One elbow keeps her sword upright, with the point of it planted in the soil of the yard.
"They can't have any limbs lopped off accidentally, which is quite a large plus when you're training with live steel."
The aimless looping swings come to a halt. Seth hitches the sword up to rest the flat of the blade on one shoulder.
"Thanks for the pointer."
Only a little dry over the words. Seth assumes every single thing he's done since showing up in this spot has telegraphed how little he knows what he's doing. Medieval weapons, not really his wheelhouse.
"Any other hints I need to know? Hands off the sharp spot, aim for the head, all that good shit."
Tony's been watching the game, and the case of beginner's luck or bullshitter's fortune that seems to be happening. Got to the end of his tankard and took over an empty chair when one presented itself.
Why not? You need to lose money to lose money.
"Nah," he says, as he flags down a server for a refill, tone quiet but tempo up. Adjacent accents. "Everyone's just having fun here, in the criminal poverty-stricken underbelly of Camelot. Why, you planning on winning, now?"
QUARANTINE This isn't the first time that Richard's found himself in a place where his only relevant knowledge is from genre movies and the kind of books no one wants to call classic because they don't want to shelve the elves and monsters next to Austen and Dickens. Part of him is still aggravated about it, days into their confinement, because who would seriously think they'd have to do this kind of reality expansion twice. But there's only one way for Richard to get over that - throw himself into it, full tilt.
Which is why he can mostly be found: - in the library, building himself a fort of books in one shady corner. He'll reshelve them all later, maybe. - exploring the gallows at night, attempting to find the highest accessible window to get the best view of the place. - looking through the armoury, picking up various weapons, examining them, judgementally putting them back.
KIRKWALL He'd thought it was a joke at first, the way this place was named. First at his expense, then maybe in the kind of way where really tall guys landed themselves with the nickname "little". Hightown and Lowtown, rich and poor, and Richard knows which side to learn the lay of the land of first.
There's no point trying to be subtle, not when he doesn't know what subtle is, here, yet. And especially not when he's stuck wearing a cloak low over his face to keep the sun off his skin, looking about as discreet as a cape-garbed villain. So he looms, and he lurks, and ignores all the suspicious looks cast his way as he watches the crowds and how they move, listens to snatches of conversation and gossip here and there.
Gravitates, slowly, to the mentions of Darktown, curiosity drawing him further and further round shadier corners.
WILDCARD Hit me with whatever, but I may need handholding with setting stuff!
The very highest point of the gallows at night also happens to be the best place for impromptu astronomy. The mage tower is Ellie's favorite place that isn't the library, and when she hears the top door creak near-silently open, she pauses what she's doing, pulling away from the collapsible telescope to glance at the newcomer.
He is a newcomer, one of the pair that showed up this past week. While Ellie's not one of the effervescent welcoming party (she doesn't have Adra's effusive warmth or Derrica's steadying presence or Wysteria's gift for carrying on an entire conversation by herself) she isn't shy or unfriendly.
And she knows all too well what it is to feel trapped in a place, to be new and penned in and untried and untrusted, and to want to get the lay of the land.
Ellie's a wisp of a twenty-two year old who could pass for a teenager, if it weren't for all the scars. She's wearing a big cloak pulled over well-worn, light leather armor, and fingerless gloves that hide the anchor in her left palm. Nothing hides the missing fingers on that same hand, though. The last two are shorn off at the first knuckle, long healed.
It's not a total surprise to find anyone else up and about at this time, but it is something of a surprise to find them here. He's silent, half in that surprise and half in assessing her, the clothes and the way she holds herself.
"Something like that," he says, finally, just as the silence was stretching into uncomfortable. It's a non-answer, but he doesn't seem particularly evasive, letting go of the door and stepping onto the tower proper. He's not totally nocturnal. It's just easier, for things like this.
"Looking for something?" He doesn't outright indicate the telescope, but it's clear he'd noticed it.
"That door sticks closed," comes a voice, gentle over the advice. Derrica's hair is coming loose from her braid in wisps, and her cloak is slipping off one shoulder, but she has a cup in one hand and a cloth bundle in the other. It's very late, and she may be on her way to bed, but—
"Are you trying to go out onto the ramparts?"
She can spare a moment. She doesn't recognize this man at all, and the newness of him requires some kind of welcome, even if it's just showing him a way to get in and out without having to do battle with a door.
This may not be a job, but a door that Richard Gecko can't open is insulting to something in his base sensibilities. He'd honestly been about to set his shoulder to it when she speaks, and there's some irritation in his expression as he looks at her, like she'd intended to catch him in an embarrassing position.
But she hadn't, clearly. She's just another stranger who knows this place better than him.
"If that's where this goes." There's still some bite to it, but it's directed at the door, at the ramparts apparently behind it. He looks at her again and actually sees her this time, the cup in her hand, the soft touches of disarray.
"I can find another way." She's heading to bed. He shouldn't take her out of her way.
When one finds themselves in a strictly limited habitat, it's difficult not to be keenly aware of the people who move so thoughtlessly through it.
For example, Laurentius feels he could name a great majority of the people who share the floor on which his and Lalla's loaned room are located. And if he couldn't name them, he could almost certainly describe them. He knows the people who make a habit of taking their meals in the dining hall at similar hours, and the one of them is a member of Forces who almost always makes directly for the ferry and that the other is a member of Diplomacy whose work must be primarily practiced in the division office given their post-meal trajectory. He has memorized the ferry schedule. He has marked which, out of the faces he recognizes, he has seen more than once roving around the corridors and courtyard late at night.
(He wasn't so observant in Vyrantium, he thinks. But the eye makes a habit of dismissing what it expects to see.)
That the same can probably be said of him—that to anyone stuck in slightly similar straits might have already earmarked him in their mind—is a less present thought. Still, it's highly possible that Richard recognizes the tall, severe looking man who is present cutting a very purposeful course to intrude on his shady library corner. He's the tall, severe looking man who has been in this library every day since Richard arrived. He is the tall, severe looking man who seems to know exactly what he's looking for when he arrives at Richard's fortress looted from the surrounding stacks.
He tilts his head promptly sideways, locates the volume he's after, and then produces a similarly titled book from where it was heretofore tucked under one arm. It's offered across the barricade.
"I need the Griswold. This covers the same period of the Chantry's history."
From a distance the fort of books may have looked like a purposefully constructed wall, stacked up to create a privacy barrier in Richard's chosen corner of the library. Closer, though, and it becomes clear that the construction's followed a different order, one that leaves a fair amount of gaps between the piles. He's found a map from somewhere, and it's spread out on the floor, the books stacked in their areas of geographical relevance, others that have no particular root floating like lone islands in the landscape. There's a few left open, and some loose sheets already covered in notes.
This is how he works. He hadn't found a table big enough out of reach of the sun.
"Which one?" Chantry, he means. He's gotten far enough in his reading to know there's two, and they're standing in different piles. But any air of hostility he might have been accumulating as the man approached - another library regular, and therefore one of the most likely to have a problem with his setup here - had dissipated at the offer. He can do a trade. Appreciates it, even, that the man had chosen that approach rather than simply demanding the title he wanted.
Around one of those shady corners, down a narrow shady street, a bent-backed old woman passes by in the other direction. Her little feet are wrapped in rags; her little hands are holding to a crooked walking stick. She smells like a midden heap and her face is covered by a hood pulled so low that, when she gets to the end of the street, her face remains obscured. But maybe someone observant might catch the flash of her eyes.
Thirty minutes later, down in the darker depths of Kirkwall--well, it's dark. And the bent-backed old woman is there. Well, a bent-backed old woman. As Richard passes by, she unsticks herself from a wall and hobbles--well, maybe just in the same direction as him, maybe after him. Difficult to say. But it's down further and further round shadier corners for certain.
Richard wouldn't be much of a thief if he didn't know how to watch his back. He shouldn't have to, though, because who would take a look at the image he'd been projecting and pick him for a target? He chews it over, a while, as he turns this street and that. He doesn't know this city, can't lead his tail to a dead end he'd know how to get out of, and the motive continues to elude him.
Which is why it's a long, empty alley that he stops in, finally. Halfway down, turning on his heel, something judgemental in the pinch of his expression.
"Either you've got a shitty eye for marks, or you're after more than a wallet."
Do they have wallets here? Probably not. The fact remained that any pickpocket worth their salt would know how to look for an easy grab, and Richard was not it. Which could mean he was about to get jumped, but he doesn't seem all too concerned about that possibility.
Will he though? Or will the reshelving be delegated to Abby, newest library assistant to Mobius, occasionally tasked with piles of returns. She eyes this new sculpture with open dislike.
"... Seriously?"
She's already got a stack of books in her arms, but it isn't the weight of them that's bothering her. To the unlucky artist, "This isn't a playground."
Richard has also procured a map from somewhere, and it's spread out on the floor, serving as the foundation for the various piles of books. Most of it's covered by books left open on certain pages, loose sheets of notes he's already taken.
Notes are what he's scratching down as she approaches, and he doesn't look up at the seriously. He'd been expecting someone to have a problem with how he worked at some point. But the second comment, well, that's just insulting, and incredulity scrunches his face as he looks at her.
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richie.
Seth said it a few times on the way back, venomous and livid as they were jolted around in the back of a wooden fucking cart. Richie hunched under someone else's cloak. Probably still pristine.
It's bullshit. They were supposed to be done with this B-movie garbage. Or at least, they were supposed to be dealing with it on their own terms. (Which is not at all.) Instead, here they are. Mopping up in a fucking stone whatever the fuck. Fortress. Dust turned to mud from where he'd been dropped out of the sky, caked across his suit, mixed with something. Sludge. Blood? Whatever oozes from the horror shows that had dropped out of that sky alongside with them.
Fucked.
"You see this?" is what he says now, draped in towels, sat on the side of the sunken tub. He lifts a palm, flashing green towards Richie. "You got one?"
Or is it something Richie's body can just reject, the same as he'd expel a bullet.
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Being dumped that thoroughly into the unknown grates on Richard, leaves him simmering irritation, but whether it was getting clean or the simple luxury of it, sinking chest deep into the warmth of the baths had started to help.
Until Seth abruptly interrupts.
Curiosity wins out against the urge to ignore him, Richard opening his eyes just enough to see what Seth's indicating before closing them again. Lifting his matching palm out of the water for Seth to see.
"Hit us both with that one, brother."
It wasn't just Richard getting inducted into the freakshow, this time.
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Seth refrains for a moment, scowling at Richie's palm before pressing his own thumb hard against the splinter of green in his own. Typical. Just when you think you're out—
"Maybe we should've tried to backtrack before we zipped that fucker up."
Nevermind that closing the rift had not quite hurt, but it had been uncomfortable. Plugging in to something big, sensation juddering down his arm. It figures the thing hadn't come together until Richie had put his hand up too. Semantics aside, it's the same old refrain: two Geckos are better than one.
They hadn't really gotten a chance to refine what that looked like when the dust Amaru had kicked up settled. Now they got a whole new situation to figure out at the same time they settle everything else.
Seth closes his hand into a fist, blotting out the light.
"How long you think we got to case the joint before someone starts asking questions?"
Because surely someone's going to start asking something. Eventually.
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Casing a joint was something they knew, something he could dissect properly. Even if the joints in question weren't usually medieval castles.
"Couple of days, at least." Drawing himself up a little straighter, watching the ripples in the water as he chews it over - snatches of conversation overheard on the cart ride back here, the sense of the place being slightly hollowed out, like a house waiting for a family to come back from vacation. But then, also - "If they start asking at all, the way they packed us up and shipped us down here."
Efficient and well-practiced to the point of routine. Like emergency workers, cleaning up a scene before rolling onto the next.
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seth / ota.
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It's been raining, so Ellie has her hood pulled up, hasn't bothered to pull it down yet, and by the mud and soot-smeared look of her she's fresh back from a trip. She looks like she belongs in this world, even down to the dull gleam of Fade-touched crystal worked into the body of the bow slung across her back.
"Fuuuuck me," she whispers to herself as she starts up, but doesn't pause, even when she catches sight of Seth at the top of the stairs.
New guy.
She pauses for a second, considering, and reaches up to push her hood down.
"Waiting for somebody?" she asks, and without waiting for an answer, gestures out at the retreating ferry. "That's the last one."
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Seth's counted up the circuits that boatman's been making, and it's imprecise, but better than nothing. Still makes him want to break something for want of a watch.
"Just killing time," Seth tells her, tipping the tankard in his hand back over his shoulder as he takes her in. Marks the bow. The cloak. Figures: local. "Not much happening on this rock after dock."
And there is, of course, the calculation Seth has been making frequently: who the fuck is going to stop him from getting on that boat?
But pushing the envelope just for the sake of it is a bonehead move. Seth comes to that conclusion time and again, despite the gnawing boredom that builds with every day sent rattling around the Gallows. (Nevermind worrying for Richie, how long he can hold out until his next meal.)
"Got a name?"
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Ellie's carried that feeling into every single place FEDRA put her since her memories began, into Jackson as a far too self-reliant kid, into the cellar beneath a bar where she had nothing but a hospital gown and a stolen dart from the game board upstairs.
She understands it, though that sort of thing doesn't always tip good when gravity pulls them down.
"Ellie," she says back, without the smartass comments she could make about him not offering his name first. God, she misses Lance. He'd know what to do for the new people who fall through the Rifts. She always feels worse than useless, but he'd say that the fact that she feels that she had to do anything at all is more than most people.
She trudges her way up, stops just across the landing from him and leans against the handrail, giving him the up and down. Nothing sexual about it, though he's a good looking guy, if she's going by aesthetics.
"Scouting," she adds, and holds up her left hand. The fingerless gloves do a good job of covering the anchor shard, so she tugs back the edge, giving him that flash of green.
"When'd you drop through?"
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"Oi."
She's in a leather vest that leaves her arms free but for the thin, training gambeson underneath. They're like that so she can swing her mace all the wilder (not that she's going to be using it against this guy, cuz. What an intro, right). "Wanna spar?"
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An unnecessary stipulation, probably. It can be assumed they are on the same team, after all. But still.
One last swing before Seth brings the sword around in a lazy arch to meet the training dummy's side with a loud thock. The blade sinks in, and sticks.
Hold that.
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quarantine - the training yard.
Tiffany can regularly be found in the yard. Riftwatch life is life without a schedule--which she's mostly grown used to, now, or at least as she used to it as she's ever likely to be. Still, training makes for a good set of markers to the day, like waypoints on a map.
She's been working at it for some time. Sweat stands on her brow and small bits of her hair have escaped her once-tight plait. She flicks the length of it over her shoulder and gives a little smile. One elbow keeps her sword upright, with the point of it planted in the soil of the yard.
"They can't have any limbs lopped off accidentally, which is quite a large plus when you're training with live steel."
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The aimless looping swings come to a halt. Seth hitches the sword up to rest the flat of the blade on one shoulder.
"Thanks for the pointer."
Only a little dry over the words. Seth assumes every single thing he's done since showing up in this spot has telegraphed how little he knows what he's doing. Medieval weapons, not really his wheelhouse.
"Any other hints I need to know? Hands off the sharp spot, aim for the head, all that good shit."
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deal me in.
Why not? You need to lose money to lose money.
"Nah," he says, as he flags down a server for a refill, tone quiet but tempo up. Adjacent accents. "Everyone's just having fun here, in the criminal poverty-stricken underbelly of Camelot. Why, you planning on winning, now?"
welcome.
Though an equal draw: anyone with a vernacular that feels familiar, and not straight out of Beowulf.
"And this stipend's only going to stretch so far without a little help, so."
A gloved hand tipping cards up, the black and gray pattern on the back on display. Gambling. Because what, was Seth going to get a real job?
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RICHARD | OPEN
This isn't the first time that Richard's found himself in a place where his only relevant knowledge is from genre movies and the kind of books no one wants to call classic because they don't want to shelve the elves and monsters next to Austen and Dickens. Part of him is still aggravated about it, days into their confinement, because who would seriously think they'd have to do this kind of reality expansion twice. But there's only one way for Richard to get over that - throw himself into it, full tilt.
Which is why he can mostly be found:
- in the library, building himself a fort of books in one shady corner. He'll reshelve them all later, maybe.
- exploring the gallows at night, attempting to find the highest accessible window to get the best view of the place.
- looking through the armoury, picking up various weapons, examining them, judgementally putting them back.
KIRKWALL
He'd thought it was a joke at first, the way this place was named. First at his expense, then maybe in the kind of way where really tall guys landed themselves with the nickname "little". Hightown and Lowtown, rich and poor, and Richard knows which side to learn the lay of the land of first.
There's no point trying to be subtle, not when he doesn't know what subtle is, here, yet. And especially not when he's stuck wearing a cloak low over his face to keep the sun off his skin, looking about as discreet as a cape-garbed villain. So he looms, and he lurks, and ignores all the suspicious looks cast his way as he watches the crowds and how they move, listens to snatches of conversation and gossip here and there.
Gravitates, slowly, to the mentions of Darktown, curiosity drawing him further and further round shadier corners.
WILDCARD
Hit me with whatever, but I may need handholding with setting stuff!
Quarantine
He is a newcomer, one of the pair that showed up this past week. While Ellie's not one of the effervescent welcoming party (she doesn't have Adra's effusive warmth or Derrica's steadying presence or Wysteria's gift for carrying on an entire conversation by herself) she isn't shy or unfriendly.
And she knows all too well what it is to feel trapped in a place, to be new and penned in and untried and untrusted, and to want to get the lay of the land.
Ellie's a wisp of a twenty-two year old who could pass for a teenager, if it weren't for all the scars. She's wearing a big cloak pulled over well-worn, light leather armor, and fingerless gloves that hide the anchor in her left palm. Nothing hides the missing fingers on that same hand, though. The last two are shorn off at the first knuckle, long healed.
"Can't sleep?"
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"Something like that," he says, finally, just as the silence was stretching into uncomfortable. It's a non-answer, but he doesn't seem particularly evasive, letting go of the door and stepping onto the tower proper. He's not totally nocturnal. It's just easier, for things like this.
"Looking for something?" He doesn't outright indicate the telescope, but it's clear he'd noticed it.
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it's me.
"Are you trying to go out onto the ramparts?"
She can spare a moment. She doesn't recognize this man at all, and the newness of him requires some kind of welcome, even if it's just showing him a way to get in and out without having to do battle with a door.
hi me
But she hadn't, clearly. She's just another stranger who knows this place better than him.
"If that's where this goes." There's still some bite to it, but it's directed at the door, at the ramparts apparently behind it. He looks at her again and actually sees her this time, the cup in her hand, the soft touches of disarray.
"I can find another way." She's heading to bed. He shouldn't take her out of her way.
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that's a good icon js
they all are
true
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library jail
For example, Laurentius feels he could name a great majority of the people who share the floor on which his and Lalla's loaned room are located. And if he couldn't name them, he could almost certainly describe them. He knows the people who make a habit of taking their meals in the dining hall at similar hours, and the one of them is a member of Forces who almost always makes directly for the ferry and that the other is a member of Diplomacy whose work must be primarily practiced in the division office given their post-meal trajectory. He has memorized the ferry schedule. He has marked which, out of the faces he recognizes, he has seen more than once roving around the corridors and courtyard late at night.
(He wasn't so observant in Vyrantium, he thinks. But the eye makes a habit of dismissing what it expects to see.)
That the same can probably be said of him—that to anyone stuck in slightly similar straits might have already earmarked him in their mind—is a less present thought. Still, it's highly possible that Richard recognizes the tall, severe looking man who is present cutting a very purposeful course to intrude on his shady library corner. He's the tall, severe looking man who has been in this library every day since Richard arrived. He is the tall, severe looking man who seems to know exactly what he's looking for when he arrives at Richard's fortress looted from the surrounding stacks.
He tilts his head promptly sideways, locates the volume he's after, and then produces a similarly titled book from where it was heretofore tucked under one arm. It's offered across the barricade.
"I need the Griswold. This covers the same period of the Chantry's history."
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This is how he works. He hadn't found a table big enough out of reach of the sun.
"Which one?" Chantry, he means. He's gotten far enough in his reading to know there's two, and they're standing in different piles. But any air of hostility he might have been accumulating as the man approached - another library regular, and therefore one of the most likely to have a problem with his setup here - had dissipated at the offer. He can do a trade. Appreciates it, even, that the man had chosen that approach rather than simply demanding the title he wanted.
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kirkwall.
Thirty minutes later, down in the darker depths of Kirkwall--well, it's dark. And the bent-backed old woman is there. Well, a bent-backed old woman. As Richard passes by, she unsticks herself from a wall and hobbles--well, maybe just in the same direction as him, maybe after him. Difficult to say. But it's down further and further round shadier corners for certain.
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Which is why it's a long, empty alley that he stops in, finally. Halfway down, turning on his heel, something judgemental in the pinch of his expression.
"Either you've got a shitty eye for marks, or you're after more than a wallet."
Do they have wallets here? Probably not. The fact remained that any pickpocket worth their salt would know how to look for an easy grab, and Richard was not it. Which could mean he was about to get jumped, but he doesn't seem all too concerned about that possibility.
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library (like bloomingtide i am also late)
"... Seriously?"
She's already got a stack of books in her arms, but it isn't the weight of them that's bothering her. To the unlucky artist, "This isn't a playground."
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Notes are what he's scratching down as she approaches, and he doesn't look up at the seriously. He'd been expecting someone to have a problem with how he worked at some point. But the second comment, well, that's just insulting, and incredulity scrunches his face as he looks at her.
"Does this look like playing?"
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