Richard Dickerson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nonvenomous) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2022-05-16 10:08 pm
nonvenomous) wrote in faderift2022-05-16 10:08 pm
Entry tags:
catchall
WHO: Richard Dickerson, friends, enemies, and neutral parties
WHAT: Closed starters, hmu if you want some Dick. Wildcards ok.
WHEN: Before Antiva, during Antiva, after Antiva.
WHERE: Thedas
NOTES: Long overdue for some CR building, ping me if you want to scheme out a reason for them to hang or hit me with a wildcard.
WHAT: Closed starters, hmu if you want some Dick. Wildcards ok.
WHEN: Before Antiva, during Antiva, after Antiva.
WHERE: Thedas
NOTES: Long overdue for some CR building, ping me if you want to scheme out a reason for them to hang or hit me with a wildcard.
BARROW. we can assume this was wysteria's fault somehow.
Hours ago, when the sun still pushed sallow light through creases in the cloud cover, a muddy river bank collapsed beneath the bridge back to the rest of the research party. The next bridge is two days walk downriver, and the rapids are too wild to swim.
So here he and Barrow are in a cave on either side of a damp fire with a hobbled mule snuffling in the darkness outside.
Dick Dickerson with all his gear has reclined himself against the mule’s pack brought in out of the weather, where he bides his time scraping scraps of meat from the hide of the rabbit they shared for dinner. The great bristling black hawk perched on his knee leans in to help here and there.
He has not been conversational.
most things are
That and any meaningful form of stimulation other than watching the rain piss down outside the cave, which Barrow is doing with a bland impatience, trying not to think about how hungry he still is after eating half a rabbit. It's too early to sleep, too late to be useful in any other capacity, the damp is fucking with his arthritis, and there's little to do except resign himself to a miserable situation cozied up with one of people he likes least in the world.
It's after a long silence that he finally snaps. Taking a charred stick from the fire, he uses it to draw a small, haphazard grid on the stone floor, which he marks with an X in one box. Then, wordlessly, he tosses the stick over to Dick's side.
_|_|_
_|X|_
_|_|_
no subject
And, one long feathered leggy at a time, she steps down from her perch to close one talon around the stick’s base, drawing it in close enough for Richard to twist from her grasp.
He studies the grid for longer than is polite before tracing out an oblong mark of his own.
When he’s done, he passes the stick back to his terrible bird, and she wobbles it back around the campfire to Barrow like a baton in her jaws. Richard watches her go in silence.
_|_|_
_|X|_
O|_|_
no subject
After he's made his mark, if she's still there, he passes it back to her rather than tossing it.
X|_|_
_|X|_
O|_|_
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She is waiting when he’s finished, the stick snipped up and galloped back across to her master.
X|_|_
_|X|_
O|_|O
Leathery, feathery scuffling marks Thot’s return a moment later. The fire hisses and spits where Richard’s flicked a glob of fat from his rabbit hide into the flames. It’s a pointless exercise, really. The rabbit was scruffy. They don’t have salt. He’s already poked two holes in it.
I know you've been waiting for this with bated breath
X|_|_
_|X|_
O|X|O
yes
that he will not winSer Barrow’s latest mark.He will put his O in the northeast socket and Barrow will put his X dead east and there will be nowhere left for either of them to make any mark that matters. A glance across the fire prickles with contempt; he lifts the rabbit’s hide and Thot weeble-wobbles over to take it from his grasp on her way to bustling back out into the rain.
The kind thing to do would be to suggest an alternative. Instead he produces a rag from his person and creaks to his feet to wet it at the cave’s entrance. The better to scrub rough between his fingers and along the blade of his knife
no subject
There's no overt hostility in the question, but it's not entirely friendly either. Having come to the same conclusion as Dick, Barrow heaves a sigh through his nose and leans forward to smudge out the attempt at the game.
no subject
“Do you know your letters?”
no subject
ADRASTEIA. fwd dated.
Helping.
Through the peephole, if there is one, Dick Dickerson is a disheveled shade of his daytime self. His collar is dark. His vest is dark. His pants are dark.
The rest of him is rawboned, ginger, and listing hard to one side while he reflects on the uncanny speed with which time got away from him this evening. The torn ear, the nose, the stick up his ass that keeps his shoulders stiff while he sways are all familiar. He waits.
no subject
"Hello." She's still not sure if she should address him as 'Silas' or 'Richard', after his gift to her for Satinalia was signed with the former name. Something they probably should have spoken about by now, but. "Have you missed the ferry?"
Thot gets a gentle petting before she moves from the door. "Come in."
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Hello. Yes, he did miss the ferry. The line of his mouth crooks sidelong, self-reproach softened by relief for his having found her here at home.
Thot slides all silk and bones beneath her fingers, purring, pleased for the attention from bat-like ears to the cord of her tail. She doesn’t wait for an invitation either, happy to slip herself in around Adrasteia’s ankles as she goes.
Silas is more polite. He also smells worse, wine sharp on his breath, drying ale blotted across one pant leg. An errant trace of piss stings in there somewhere when he turns to close the door after himself, fumbling dimly (helpfully) after a lock before stepping aside to let Adrasteia rearrange her own door to her liking.
no subject
The item that goes before the door is a small stepstool with a bell in the center beneath its platform. She's too short to reach the door's peephole on her tiptoes, and the use of an object before the door, especially one that sounds a slight alarm, means she sleeps a little easier.
This is Lowtown, after all.
"I would rather you come here than sleep rough in the street." She does wonder if the poor man ever isn't near to drinking or just finishing with it, though she supposes that announcement made with Wysteria he was probably sober for. She also supposes that's an unkind sort of thought.
no subject
But he’s not so sorry that he didn’t turn up here, conscious choice acknowledged with a turn of his palms out open away from his sides. Tatty as he is, Lowtown streets are dangerous for a lone Rifter. And inns pull coin from his pockets that’d be better spent on maintaining his wardrobe.
So.
Here he is.
Staying put near the door, following her lead, proverbial hat in hand.
Thot, again, has no such compunctions and is already crawling her belly over some cushion or pillow or other piece of furniture she took a liking to the last time she was here.
“I never asked you why you decided to leave the Gallows.”
no subject
Thot climbs onto one of the various heavily cushioned seats in the main room and Adrasteia leads Silas in that direction, where there is a fire merrily going along, a book open in one of the chairs, and tea on a small side table.
"Privacy." She makes her way toward the tea, reheating the teapot with a hand pressed flat against its side. "I'm... seeing someone, and I felt that the shared walls of the Gallows were not the best for that endeavor."
no subject
Thot has claimed a seat and he hooks her up into his arms to take it for himself as a matter of course, man and cat folded in together, her long legs draped slack across the crook of his elbow, eyes narrowed to contented slashes of green before the fire.
“Congratulations.”
The crook to his mouth returns once Silas has settled in, a shade more salacious this time. Something about the slant of it, sidelong. Congratulations on your too-noisy-for-the-Gallows-sex-life.
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It dies there, and she blushes instead.
She could ask him a personal question, like 'do you have anyone here?' but she knows the man well enough now that she recognizes it would not necessarily be a comfortable conversation for him.
Instead she just pours him tea and hands him a cup.
"Thank you." A breath, as if she were to say something else, and then a little shake of her head.
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It’s all a lot of sentiment for one snake and he’s still deep enough in his cups to be caught up in an aimless muddle between them.
“Good tea,” he says. And, in lieu of elaborating on his permeating relief for what must qualify fully as a rescue at this hour and in his condition: “Were you going to say something?”
no subject
She gives a little shrug and pours herself more tea.
"I am curious, though: why do you still stay in the Gallows? For housing, I mean."
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It’s easy to agree in this case that it should wait; he doesn’t press the issue. It’s late. He’s beat. Every part of him feels heavy against the seat he’s sunken into. The inkblot flop of his cat is palming biscuits wherever her cold beans can reach.
He breathes out, a great puff of air pressed out flat under his mustache and over the rim of his cup. This is what letting go looks like -- a physical dropping down to the question she’s asked in return.
“If there is another incursion I’d rather be in the Gallows in a position to assist than stranded across the bay.” Provided he isn’t locked up in the infirmary healing from whatever other drama. “It’s also safer there. For a Rifter.”
He sips by way of punctuation.