[ OPEN ] I'm Floating in a Most Peculiar Way

[universal_charm]

WHO: Jim Kirk & Anyone
WHAT: Catch-all for the month
WHEN: June/Justinian (after the Justice Ritual #4)
WHERE: Around Skyhold
NOTES: Possible language, probably kittens, wounds, probably demon-talk, shenanigans, maybe some other heavy subjects, possibly some amorous action, everything goes here

[ Class Is In Session - Math + Self-Defense ]
Hearing of a school going up, Kirk naturally offered himself up as a teacher - not least because it gave him something to do here other than be a pretty helper to Sam's forge and a jack-of-all trades laborer.

He taught all levels of math, and any new students who came to the class would be asked to complete an exam that had problems ranging from simple addition and subtraction all the way up to the higher maths such as Calculus to gauge their skill. From that, he did his best to improve upon their skills and further their understanding. A little hard with a range of people, but he did his best, and he was more than willing to answer questions both related to math and to other subjects as well.

When he was not teaching maths, he taught Self-Defense with hand-to-hand combat - or at least he started to once he was physically well enough given that the Ritual had done a number on him. He took to the training area for this class though, and new students were told to fight him as their practical exam. It's not meant to be a hard fight, more like just a quick assessment of their current skill. He welcomed everyone from children to adults, but as a fair notice - expect to walk away with some bruises.

[ Stables ]
If the Western Approach and going after Servis had taught him anything, it was that he really needed to learn to ride something. Being able to hike and run was all well and good, but travel would be much, much easier if he could ride astride something with a longer stride and a touch faster than himself. Motorcycles were a long way off in this world.

So Kirk was being taught to ride, mostly by Sam and on a horse used with permission, though if someone else offered correction to his form as he practiced he would accept it. At this point, everyone was more the expert than himself. At least, so far, he'd avoided falling - for which his ribs were grateful.

Sometimes, though, he could be found around there just enjoying some time with the animals, petting and murmuring to them (and maybe sneaking a carrot to a tiny pony named Bill).

[ The Tavern ]
Most nights Kirk can be found here - work is done, and where else is there to hang out at night in Skyhold (that doesn't make you look incredibly suspicious)? But he liked the crowds and the warmth and the music and the laughter. He could usually be found with a pint of beer in front of him, slowly acclimating to the stuff, and sometimes he would hang out at a table with a chess set in front of him, waiting for a challenger. Other times he had a deck of cards, willing to play Wicked Grace or teach the good folk of Thedas some poker.

And maybe, just maybe, if he'd had enough to drink and laughed enough - he could be convinced to sing a song from a far away land or tell a tale of the same.

[ The Gardens - Specifically at Night/Very Early Morning ]
Even having found a steady place to sleep and steady companion, Kirk's nights were not always quiet and dreamless. He tried his best not to bother Sam on those nights, when sleep would not come, or more accurately he did not wish to close his eyes and see what his mind might twist together when he was not paying attention.

So on those particular nights he would slip out of bed and head to the gardens, sometimes late and sometimes in the early gray before dawn. He walked the paths, breathing in the scent of flowers and the earth. Sometimes he would find a space to sit and fold his legs and rest the back of his hands atop his knees, attempt to meditate in the ways Spock had initially taught him - though more often than not he simply created a numbing tingle in his legs and frustration.

Company, no matter the hour, was always welcome.

[ Around Skyhold - Usually Morning + The Hot Springs ]
Part of Kirk's daily routine was to run and run a lot. He could easily be seen jogging around the perimeter of Skyhold, sometimes with a shirt and sometimes without. Afterwards he usually went to the hot springs to rinse himself off, and in the early days after the Fourth Ritual to clean his wounds as well.

[ The Library ]
Kirk could be found here on and off, mostly coming to return books he had taken for comfortable reading back in the loft with Sam, but now and then he could be seen sitting at a table, taking notes on papers or in a journal he had secured. He was taking more or less everything he read in historical accounts with a grain of salt, but it was still important, he thought, to read such accounts even as he asked others about them.

[ Wild card me! ]
Because there's probably tons of stuff I didn't cover.

Comments

[universal_charm]

"Yeah, I can see how that hobby would make you a popular pick," he snorted. "I've jumped off several cliffs into water, I've nearly been eaten by a giant red crab-thing, I did a halo dive form upper atmosphere onto a live planetary core drill, and I did dive between ships where my HUD went out," he ticked off his fingers. He left off the part where he actually DID die, but he had this feeling that no one here would take well to that information. "Yeah, I don't see myself dying quietly, to say the least. And yes, I'm friends with him, though he is not the cause of my leaping fetish."

Kirk stayed on the ground, mostly, except when he was in his space-ship and ordering laser barrages.

"And the Avvar are known for their bear wrestling, are they?" he teased. "Or is that just you in particular?"

[hlif]

"What the fuck is a planuh--planeh-- the thing? And the hud. And where do I find giant crabs because giant to us is only big enough to eat you if you were dead or unconscious and they started on the throat first, not anything that'd be a challenge." Somewhere Mal Reynolds is making a fluttering hand gesture of no, Asher, just no, do not attempt to find the giant people-eating crab, honeybadger don't do it. As for dying well, Asher would probably shrug it off but then he's most famous for ripping off his shirt in a crowded tavern before announcing his intention to just go out and find a bear to wrestle (he won) and downing dragon's blood without knowing and surviving (and waking up three days later as a Reaver).

"Some holds have a long and storied history with bears, but for me?" He sighs fondly, moving up enough to show the tattoo on his arm of a bear roaring, holding a shield, arrows sticking out of the bear. "There's just something about bears, makes you feel alive when you've got them in a headlock and then you suplex them."

[universal_charm]

"A planet?" he clarified and then motioned around them. "A planet is the world. It's just another word for it. And HUD is... well, never mind, it doesn't exist here," he said, thinking it would be harder to explain a heads up display than to just let the whole thing go. He didn't have the analogies at hand to properly explain such advanced technology.

"Hopefully a very, very far way from here - the crab, that is," he chuckled. "And I hope to never meet it again. Getting nearly eaten once is more than enough for me, thank you. And I don't think you can wrestle that one - it had to weight at least a ton, at least twice as tall as I am, and about as many teeth as a shark with a prehensile tongue."

He might not have much of a survival instinct, but he did have one despite what people thought.

Kirk lifted his head to get a glimpse of the tattoo, smiling a bit at the artistic styling. It was certainly an impressive bit of ink. "I'll have to take your word for it," he laughed, pushing up out of the water enough to turn his side and show off his own tattoo - thick and black and running down his left ribs: NCC - 1701, with the symbol of Star Fleet separating them. "This makes me feel alive."

[hlif]

"Just because it doesn't exist here doesn't mean I don't care, might not understand, that's true but where most people here don't venture too far beyond their own town or village? I've been nearly everywhere in Thedas that's on the map that isn't Tevinter or up where the Qunari are." But he shrugged; he was relaxed enough and the wheeze that rattled around in his chest had eased off in the steam had finally eased off too. "What was the drill thing? Can you do that to a world? Must be a bloody big drill, Kain'll be jealous, if you ever tell him about the jumping, I want to be there to see his face."

It would only be fair since Asher was Kain's teacher after a fashion.

"Avvar mate, my gods are Korth the Mountain-Father, Hakkon Wintersbreath, the Lady of the Skies, Sigfrost, Imhar the Clever. So long as I honour them and the rest? My gods wouldn't let harm come to me in taking on such a challenge as that, not when I could give the bones to Korth after and Hakkon would have been pleased by what would surely have been one hell of a fight." That was what came of the combination of being a mercenary from the age of fifteen, a Reaver for close to a decade, and an Avvar who carried his gods and his beliefs with him: a potent combination always ready for the next ridiculous challenge, especially if it'd bring him and the Boneflayers glory and renown.

Squinting through the steam, Asher titled his head to get a better look - it was a strange sort of thing but then the rifters came from places he couldn't even imagine though one of the shapes maybe looked a little familiar. "The bit in the very middle, that's a star, right? Something to do with a constellation where you're from?" Asher had a few like that on his arms and back himself, the ones he'd seen during important battles, and Belenas for Korth.

[universal_charm]

Well, he felt a little abashed and that. What was the harm in trying to explain anyways? It wasn't as if one could be made here anyways, and the idea of one had appeared in Earth science fiction long before they were even possible. "A HUD stands for Heads Up Display. It shows data and other information in front of your eyes during a task, to help you," he explained. "Think numbers and words and symbols floating in the air in front of you, but only you can see them." That made it sound a little crazy, but it was the easiest explanation. "As for the drill - yes. And it was bloody big, as you say. I'll be sure to make sure you're there when I tell him though - because it was a long jump. I had to use a parachute and everything."

Not that he necessarily enjoyed jumping off high places. But he didn't hate it either. It was merely coincidence that a lot of his exploits seemed to involve that particular activity.

He tilted his head as he listened to Asher recite his gods, finding them far more interesting than those of the Chantry, though what he heard of the Chantry so far made him inclined to like just about anything better. He had no particular faith himself and didn't plan to take one up, but he found faith - singular or a pantheon - fascinating in its own right. The way these things evolved, the way people found their ways to worship them, how so many worlds had them at all. In some ways it was a unifying thing between worlds, that need to make sense of the world around them and pantheons arising as the explanation.

"Yeah, that's right, it's a star," he nodded, sinking back down into the water. "And it's not a constellation, it's more like a shooting star." That wasn't entirely correct, but better to keep it simple, he found. "It's meant to symbolize what it is my ship, the Fleet I serve stand for - exploration among the stars."

[hlif]

"That...that sounds amazing! It's just--it's just there? You see it and no one else? The possibilities..." Asher was likely imagining the dirty possibilities because his mind tended to go charging straight into the gutter to roll in it but for his line of work, it'd be invaluable to have something like that instead of hoping they'd all be able to stay on the same page without anyone else picking up what was going on. Usually it worked but when Orlesians wore masks and hated his second because she was an elf? Well he was envious, shaking his head slowly as he imagined it all.

And in battle? The Boneflayers relied on Asher being able to lead from the front; never losing a member to death or injury in all the seven years they'd been around was damn good but people still got hurt. Asher took the brunt of it, recent injuries a testament to that but he still worried about them each time they got hurt, about the day something happened that he couldn't account for. The day his gods didn't just punish him for not doing right for them and decided to take it out on his company too.

Never cruel but capricious, something lowlanders never understood with all their harping on about the Maker.

"Among the stars, surely you don't mean up there do you?" Did that sound as mad as it did to the man as it did to Asher? Asher said mad things all the time but how could anyone go up there? He sure as hell didn't see any wings sprouting from him but the idea of it was something. That sounded about right too since what sort of word did you give to that? "We name all our constellations. Usually it's got a Tevinter name since they ruled so much because they were arsehole slavers lording it over but there were other names too. You can find things out there that you might like, things that let you see them - astrariums, might want to check the library for more but I think you'd like them. I know I've seen them in the Hinterlands near where I grew up."

[universal_charm]

He couldn't help but laugh at the other's enthusiasm for the things he described, wishing he could make it true for Asher, but it just wasn't here. Even with magic, he didn't see a way for it to be done, which might be just as well. The current state of things with advanced tech would be a nightmare.

"Well, you can transmit sometimes so others can see - that way everyone is on the same page, you know? Other times no. It depends on the equipment and situation," he explained.

Kirk's face remained impassive, though he was used to this particular reaction from people when he said it by now. Here he was sure it did sound strange and ridiculous, but regardless of what they thought he knew where he came from and what he did.

"Precisely," he nodded. "My people have built ships that can travel between all those points of light and find new worlds outside of this one." He smiled a bit at the rest though. "I'll look into that. It would be nice learning more about the stars out here, and getting a closer look if I can." Even though he highly doubted they had high powered telescopes that would allow him to see to very far beyond this planet's moon.