faderift | all of nature wild & free

It's one of those days that Ellana feels she has to fill with something productive, but for someone like her who isn't a skilled craftsperson, her help boils down to fetch and carry most of the time. Which is fine. Every little bit helps the Inquisition, after all. And here it looks like her latest drop off has left her at the right place at the right time, as she rushes forward to help Ruby.

"Here, what can I take? Some off the top?" Already she's reaching for the top of the stack to alleviate some of the weight on the bottom.

"Off the top," Ruby confirms, bending her knees to lower the uppermost boxes to a more reachable height. The top crate is the most delicate collection of fruits - berries, largely, and beneath that is a layer of peaches. It's not so much that everything is too heavy, at least not to a person with Wolf strength, more that the boxes can't quite cope with the other boxes on top.

Her smile is sheepish. "You're a lifesaver. Thank you," she continues, even as she glances around the crates she still has in hand, and awkwardly uses her foot to push open the door she'd been headed to, leading down to part of the cellar. "How've you been?"

She wraps both arms around the box to keep it safe and sound, and resists plucking a berry from the pile to eat. This is obviously for storage, and if Ellana starts with one, she may not be able to stop.

"You're welcome. I've been well. Things have been better since we left the Western Approach. It was a bad time for all of us there." She'd nearly died, for one.

"No kidding. The Western Approach was..." Ruby trails off as she heads down the stairs, glancing back at Ellana for a moment. "It sure was something. I've been trying to work on a couple of things to help people kick back and relax after all that."

Those words could have sounded bright and optimistic, but instead there is something far more rueful in them. She hasn't really told anyone about the whole impaled on ice thing, it was a weird, bad time. Still, Ruby musters up a smile, and holds open the next door at the bottom of the staircase for Ellana to follow her. It's not a long trip, just a weird and kind of inconvenient one - she was able to secure cellarspace by going to the cellar space with the more awkward access, basically.

"Just this way. Watch out for those bottom steps, they're kind of, uh. Broken. There's just one more hall to go and we're there."

Edited 2016-07-10 10:57 (UTC)

"Have you?" she asks, curious as to what those things might be. There's no doubt in her mind that people do need to relax after the things they witnessed in the Fade.

"Thanks for the warning. I'll be careful." And when she gets there, she turns her torso a bit so she can see past the box, and then carefully steps down to the floor.

"Yeah! Well, some of it won't be ready for a while." With a nod to the boxes Ellana's carting for her, she continues, "and may not be wise to consume if you're in need of a clear head for working. I'm still figuring out the best ways to make gin and schnapps and everything. The theory I've heard a lot about but the practical side is a little new."

The way she says a little suggests that it is, in fact, very extremely new. Her grandmother made cider and all sorts. Ruby? Ruby was more about the mixing of drinks.

She watches a moment, just in case Ellana needs a hand with that one treacherous bit of stairway, and then happily continues down the hallway, turning the final corner and opening the door to her office, if by 'office' you mean 'brewery.' Her obsessively cleaned underground brewery with an uneven roof and some areas too low for her to stand up straight, while others she couldn't reach for the ceiling even if she stretched her arms above her head and stood on her toes.

It's a weird room, but it's the space no one else was using, so she's glad for it, and carefully sets her own boxes of produce down. "The other idea is one Adelaide-- ah, Councilor LeBlanc kind of inspired. Big snow fight. Ice forts. Getting everyone to sort of... just be people for a while, instead of being Templars or mages or whatever. Do you know what I mean?"

Ever so slightly apologetic - she's not so sure she's articulating this well. She was never the one giving inspirational speeches, that was Snow's wheelhouse.

Ellana enters the room, amazed that it exists in the state it does. Was in constructed this way, or has the ceiling bowed after long centuries? She can't imagine the ancient elves taking shortcuts with the construction.

The set up for the brewery catches her attention briefly, before she follows Ruby's lead and sets the box down.

"When one thinks of Adelaide, they do tend to think 'ice,'" she says, before nodding her head. "I think so. You'd like a big snowball fight like we had on First Day?"

Ruby, for her part, is moving over to a couple of candles. The light in the room is limited, to say the least, and though there's a lantern in the corner that made getting in here safe she has no particular desire to lurk in the dark.

Ellana's observation gets a smile out of her... Although she's heard more than a couple of people complain about Adelaide, so she clarifies (albeit casually, brightly) "I tend to think of laughing, when it comes to Adelaide, but the ice stuff is pretty amazing."

One of the candles is being stubborn about not lighting, the wick spitting without catching, and she frowns at it a little before it registers that Ellana had a question, and she still hadn't answered it. "Um, yeah. I mean, Adelaide was telling me about it, a little. I wasn't here, but it sounded like a good way for everyone to be able to relax a little."

"Laughing, huh? That's different from the times I've seen her. It's in Council meetings and it's always stressful." She walks up to Ruby and the candle, offering her a smile.

"May I?" she asks, nodding towards the candle. She lifts her hand, palm up, and a small flame erupts on her fingertips.

"For sure." She holds it out without thinking, and laughs - quiet and started and pleased, all mixed together. "Hey. Remind me to hang out with you when it gets cold around here."

Not that Ruby gets cold easily, but hey. Banter is important. After a moment of pause she adds, "I'm pretty sure politicians are required to look serious all the time. It's like a thing."

Ellana lights the candle with ease and lets the flames on her fingertips go out. She lit the fires back in the clan, and fire magic comes the most naturally to her, so this was a breeze.

"Probably why I'm no good at being one," she answers with a bashful smile.

"Thanks." That was much, much nicer than aeeing fireballs thrown around. Regina might be changing, but Ruby? Well, for Ruby fire always had some unhappy associations. Ellana's help draws out a smile, though.

"I wouldn't worry too much. Politicans seem to very, very tense. I say go with what makes you happy." With that said, Ruby pauses in the midst of setting the candle in the stick. "Do you like politics?"

"Not really," Ellana admits with a shrug. "But it's more about what I can do for mages than what I personally like."

all of nature wild & free

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject