faderift | ( open ) every girl’s got a moon inside pulling tidal waves to her heart

Staring is observing. It's at least part of it, whether it's rude or not.

"Hardly."

He has been painted before -- sometimes by artists he favored, other times by artists who were only able to recreate his likeness because of stories and rumors. It was a lovely rendering of the lady Galadriel, but jealousy didn't spur him on as much as curiosity did.

"No, I am far more interested in the motivations of the author."

Her lip curls, slightly, which -

bodes well for the author's motivations, the damage on that front done before she measures her response out with careful precision. The curse of an expressive face; the masks she wore in Orlais never helped as much as one might imagine. For starters, they tended to cover only half of her face, and for another thing ... she just isn't that subtle.

"The Inquisition requires support," she says, evenly. "I hope to encourage those outside of it to see that, and do so."

And they won't support people harboring demons, for whatever good cause.

It's a pretty motivation. It sounds nice, at least. The Outsider tilts his head, pamphlet abandoned -- literally, as he lets go entirely, letting it flutter down to the floor.

"That tells me what you want to happen, once those in far-off places read your work -- one of the things you want to happen, at least. It does not tell me why you chose to do so in the fist place."

Pretty words for a pretty face, but there is always something else. There is always something selfish.

Her brows pull into a frown, watching the paper drop. It's both the untidiness of the gesture and the casualness with which her work is discarded that irritates her, and the fingers of one hand clench hidden in the folds of her skirts, resisting the impulse to do anything about it. To comment on it at all. It feels immediately like a weakness, and -

She has enough of those already.

"Well observed," she says, succinctly.

It looks like he's touched a nerve. He doesn't smile about it, of course, but he does give a little twitch of his fingers.

The paper whisks back up into his hand, caught carefully between his fingertips. This time, he sets it down properly.

"I have had a lot of time to observe a lot of things." He's observed, for example, that she hasn't answered his question.

"Observe that I am under no obligation to entertain your presuming to question me," she suggests, avoiding by the narrowest of margins an involuntary step backward at an equally casual display of magic - foreign magic, when she is not even yet accustomed to the sort Thedas is naturally home to. "It is of no interest to me in the slightest what you 'are not told'. I expect it's many things."

She considers for a moment, tilts her head, and finally-

"Grow accustomed."

"And yet you haven't left."

A challenge, in five words -- does she stay or does she go? Is one considered winning? Is one considered giving in?

She is correct in that there are a great many things in Thedas to grow accustomed to, not the least of which is the fact that he does not perceive on the same level as he did before. But that is part of the challenge.

"Perhaps you would like to question me, instead."

"Why should I?" is her immediate, blunt answer, less defiant than an unfashionably frank assessment of the situation as he sees it. This stranger is nothing to her. Why should he be permitted to influence what she does in the slightest? It's always Gwenaëlle's preference to dig her heels in when she feels pushed, her first resort rather than her last. Being driven away from going about her affairs as she'd planned because some nothing person asked her a question -

No. Absolutely not.

As for questioning him, her expression turns from bemused to skeptical;

"Are you a member of the Inquisition? You've joined, officially, as a soldier or whatever it is you're supposed to be good for?"

Edited (i no word) 2016-06-24 00:21 (UTC)

"If you want to continue speaking to me, be my guest." Or being observed (stared at) while she does what she'd like, or- whatever it is that will end up happening. He can see snatches, if he tries, but only about a minute into the future. It's maddening for its brief existence as much as the lack of it any other time is maddening.

But again, his hand motions toward the pamphlet -- the hand with the shard in it, this time.

"I am a Rifter who has volunteered to use my shard when it is needed." Because it suits him, being able to travel to different places in Thedas -- to see different things and meet different people. Being bound beyond that does not, and so he has not officially joined, whether he participates or not. "Unlike other Rifters you have written about, I am told I am rather unnerving."

He smiles, eyes glittering and black, teeth brilliant white. He looks like a shark.

"As an author who wishes to promote the Inquisition, would you be better served revealing the presence of those like me or hiding us? We will not be stifled and hidden, if it does not suit us; already I have assisted in unlocking a temple bound by time magic, and the mages within."

By the time he's finished speaking, the roll of her eyes is entirely involuntary; it's a bit fucking late to hide them if she wished to, not when he's already read an internationally published work on what she has to say about their (off the record, infuriating and thoroughly unhelpful) presence. It isn't that she's somehow immune to finding him unnerving, it's just that he's - firstly, so dramatic.

And secondly, Gwenaëlle's response to people smiling at her like predators is ... not what her father might prefer it was.

"You've read what I care to say about the subject of rifters on the whole."

Not what she wished to say, but what she believes will best serve the Inquisition.

And the Outsider's response is- perhaps not when she would rather it is, but thoroughly him.

He laughs, reclining back in his seat.

"Ah, they would love you in the Empire. Love you and hate you, of course; it is all they know." They being those left of the nobility, those with their hooks in politics and in the Academy. Sokolov would probably be beside himself in a fit of professional envy and personal lust and get spittle in his beard.

"Of course, they likely wouldn't lift a finger for a cause as noble as the Inquisition. Problems as large as what the Inquisition faces are rather wonderful cover for their political machinations. A distraction and an easy way to rid oneself of rivals."

The way her lip quirks is the beginning of some awful smile, quickly suppressed; this is not banter or an exchange of pleasantries, he is not her friend and he is very strange, he does not get smiled at just because what he said is just so -

It sounds rather like Orlais. She doesn't fool herself that her countrymen particularly care for her.

"How unbearably unique of them."

(Hard to cast too large a stone, when neither would she have done if not forced by circumstance to confront the issue.)

"Human beings are predictable." It's said with a lazy wave of a hand; what can you do? "A majority are, at least; it's those that do the unexpected that are interesting."

That are worthy of his time.

And sometimes circumstance is what makes it so. It had certainly been the case for Corvo.

When she asks, "Do you hear yourself speak?" it's with almost morbid curiosity and before anything in her kicks in to prevent it from coming out of her mouth -

and in for a penny, in for a royal, so she sails past common sense and docks at 'doing an impression of him grandly waving his big dumb hand about like he's so superior to everything silly and mortal'. (There is no good reason why Thranduil has not yet had his obnoxiously large and unnecessarily aristocratic mannerisms lampooned by the smallest and least credible impersonator, it's probably only a matter of time.)

"Oh, those humans. At it again. I can draft the entirety of any interview I might conduct with you off that all by myself, you sound like a twat."

By the time she's got to actually calling him a twat to his face, she sounds much less hostile than when they began speaking.

He laughs again, all low rumbles like distant thunder, but there's no shark-smile with it as there may have been before.

"I tend to assume that, while I may be heard, I am very rarely listened to. Where no one else will, I must." There is a pause and then, as an afterthought: "Besides, I rarely speak to so many people in such a short amount of weeks, let alone days."

Congratulations, you found a weird hermit Rifter twat!

"Still, I suspect that after over four thousand years, you may feel the same."

( open ) every girl’s got a moon inside pulling tidal waves to her heart

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