[OPEN] A dwarf out and about

[ragweed]

WHO: Kit and OPEN
WHAT: Kit recovering from the injury he sustained in the Deep Roads, and then exploring the Gallows a bit.
WHEN: The latter half of Solace/July.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: This post is open to anyone who might have reason to drop by the infirmary, or interact with a slightly lost looking, ripped a f dwarf limping around the Gallows after his convalescence.

Kirkwall has changed since Kit was last in it.

He'd landed in the City of Chains the first time 'round the same summer the Arishok's warship ran aground and the Qunari themselves were camped out in their compound by the docks like dread sentinels. The dwarven mercenary band he'd been a part of at the time had been serving as a guard retinue for a Merchants' Guild caravan, and business had brought them into the city to settle old debts, and generate some new ones, all in the name of profit. The city had looked like a right shithole then, with the poor, the dead, and the dying right under the noses of the nobility, sitting pretty in their decadent Hightown estates. Chantry Templars and priestesses could be found at nearly every level of the city--save Darktown, of course, where they never set foot except in pursuit of apostates.

It still looked like a shithole--but at least the Gallows had a forest right in the middle of it now.


I. THE INFIRMARY


The cot he's been laid up in for the past couple of days is clean and comfortable; the blanket is a bit scratchy, and obviously cut for someone about a foot and a half taller than your average dwarf, but it gets the job done and keeps the chill out. A competent physicker has seen to his wounded leg, though after many failed attempts at cajoling Kit into accepting it, she finally accepts that he's just not going to tolerate a mage healer taking a look at the wound.

It means his leg still aches terribly days after his misadventure into the Deep Roads... but all things considered, he's definitely had worse.

It's a cool, early morning when he takes the crutch that has been left at his bedside and limps his way just outside the infirmary to roll himself a cigarette and have a smoke. Leaning against the doorframe, he squints his eyes against the morning light and enjoys the quiet, interrupted only by the drowsy sounds of the Gallows personnel as they wake, and the cries of seabirds.



II. THE LIBRARY


He's never been in a library before.

No, really. The casteless dwarves certainly weren't allowed into the Diamond Quarter back in Orzammar, let alone into the hallowed halls of the Shaperate with her many mysteries and memories of the dwarves who came before. As a dead-eyed duster kid looking up at the Diamond Quarter from the stifling ruins of Dust Town, Kit liked to imagine that there was, at one point, a Gandir dwarf who'd had a name, a caste, and a life recorded in those memories. Before he'd been reviled, and then forgotten, and then reviled again.

It was a stupid thing to waste energy daydreaming about, when he had no idea where his next meal was going to come from. And with the Legion, the only books he read were the ones that his fellows used to teach him his letters.

So it's not academic curiosity that brings Kit and his crutch limping into the Gallows library, each awkward step resonating with embarrassing noisiness throughout the cavernous chamber. He grimaces, and tries to peg-leg along more discreetly; does this place have anything on dwarven history? Probably not. He looks anyway.


III. WILDCARD


[got a better idea? go for it, man, I'll roll with anything as long as it's set in the Gallows]

Comments

I

[aforethought]

"You taking off, then?"

It's not that she's appeared from nowhere. It's just grey mornings like this, the fog still settled low over the water, they make it easy to fade into the background of things; to skulk around like every other restless servant and soldier, bundled against the early light.

So it's not that she's appeared from nowhere. One might be forgiven, even, for suggesting she's been hanging around this stretch a little more than strictly necessary. One might be forgiven — one might still be best off not venturing that guess aloud.

Arms crossed tight over her body, she regards him from the wall she's leaned herself up on, tries to sound patently disinterested. She almost manages.

Re: I

[ragweed]

Her voice doesn't quite catch him off-guard, but he still wasn't expecting it--at least, not from her. The lifting fog reveals her rangy form, all sharp lines and hunched shoulders, leaning against a nearby wall, looking for all the world like this specific location means nothing to her, just like everything else in the world. Hers is a face and a voice Kit recognizes--but her expression has been worn by countless others throughout his life.

She helped to save his life. Kit offers her an open smile.

"I was thinking about it," he admits, shrugging one shoulder. He reaches for his crutch, tucks it into place under his arm, and takes a few limping paces towards her. "Think I might stick around for a while though; looks like your outfit could use an extra axe or two. You smoke?" He reaches for a sachet of smoking herbs tied to his belt.

[aforethought]

Melys doesn't answer, just slips a pipe out of some pocket. It's not a smiling mood she's in, but her posture slips a bit, joints shift looser in the blunt agreement of lowered guard.

"Pay's alright," She considers, "Do better with a company, but it's steady here. Soft. Ain't seen them toss no one out yet."

Soft's one way to put it, desperate's another. Way Kit's own face looks, he knows something about one or the other. Not many top-side you ever catch wearing that sort of ink. Not so many at all. But only a dozen years ago, and all sorts of things swam up from the ground.

"Full of fucking mages,"

Casual as can be. She casts him a look from the corner of her eye, appraising: Didn't spook with bat-ears back down there, but if that limp's any indication, he hasn't gotten any more eager. That it's become her problem to keep ahead of,

She fiddles with the pipe at the end of her fingers (call her glove a lost cause after that fucking thing's blood), ignores the faint shimmer of green that follows beneath. Better to know, before putting any undue effort in.

[ragweed]

She takes out the pipe and fiddles with it, but doesn't yet offer it out to be filled by the herbs. Kit keeps hold of them just in case.

"Pay's alright. Do better with a company, but it's steady here. Soft. Ain't seen them toss no one out yet.

"Full of fucking mages."

It's that last part that gives him a moment's pause; the rest he can more or less shrug off as being inconsequential. He's done well on his own for years, and the last time he regularly ran with a company of any kind, he was miles underground and entombing friends and loved ones every couple of years.

He finishes off his cigarette, exhales a column of smoke out the corner of his mouth, then drops it down onto the ground to grind out the ember with the toe of his boot. "They're all right," he says conversationally, "the mages, I mean. Only had one shit-for-brains here spell me without my permission; the others have been fine."

He glances up at her, considering his next words, then adds, "Thanks, by the way. For helping me back there." Through the haze of pain he'd been suffering through during the journey back to Kirkwall, he can't remember whether or not he even thought to thank Melys for helping him get out of the Deep Roads.

[aforethought]

It'll do. She lifts the stem of it out to him.

"Yeah? Weren't the skinny ponce, were it?" They're thinking of entirely different skinny ponces. Even so. "Scares easier than he lets on, he tries that shit again,"

That Melys also scares pretty easy at times, well. Better to neglect that particular detail. She waves an empty sleeve at his gratitude, dismissive, shifts her shoulders like it'll let her shake off the discomfort of the words.

"Not like it was my plan." Half-surprised he didn't leap in after that damn head. "How long you been fixing doors?"

As though that were all the Legion entailed. She may not know much; she knows enough.

[ragweed]

He takes the pipe when she offers it out and fills it with enough herbs to get the job done, then hands it back.

"Weren't the skinny ponce, were it?"

She probably means Vandelin, which makes Kit smile in a way that is decidedly not mocking. Seems like he's got a fairly high opinion of him; then again, it takes a lot for him to outright dislike someone. "No, not him," he says, then loses the smile and sends an annoyed look towards the Gallows library. "Some smug shit who's set himself up like a king in the library. He's a--what do you call them--a rifter, I think."

He takes a quick drag from his cigarette to listen to her next question, then pauses. Fixing doors; well, that was part of it.

"Um," he says, just a noise to fill the gap while he thinks, frowning. "...about twenty years, give or take. It's hard to know; time gets funny down there."

[aforethought]

"Who'd you think I meant?" She takes it with a nod, fiddles flint from her pocket (and if you think that’s a trick to manage on five fingers, you’ve not spent enough winters piss-bored guarding forts). "Human, demon, whatever. Talks flash enough you wouldn’t need the fucking hand to find him come nightfall. Probably'd try to stick his cock in a book to mark it."

A snort. Melys watches him from the corner of her eye as she fumbles with the pipe. You don’t last twenty years any kind of soldiering by being shit at it, though she's not sure these ones were meant to last at all. Guess dying once doesn't have to enamor you to round two, Maker knows she's not keen to try again.

Time gets funny, have to try that one come collections day. Bet it'd go over just a peach. Sparks catch, smoke curls; she shakes her head.

"Gets funny up here too, you know? Never think you'd lose track of it, cut out all bright and dark and bright again. But it's like them ghost lights — you ever hear of those?"

[ragweed]

"Ghost lights?" Kit repeats, and the look of combined confusion and slight dread on his face is enough to answer that question for her. No, he's never heard of them--and judging by the sound of them, they come complete with enough other-worldly magical weirdness for him to know he doesn't want to see them close up. "No, don't think so." Reluctantly, he adds, "What are they?"

[aforethought]

"Yeah," The slit of her mouth curves up at the edges, into a bit of a grin. Maybe it’s wrong, to go putting the fear in folks, but that’s the whole point of haunt stories, ain’t it? You don’t listen, don’t ask, unless there’s not some part of you that wants to know. "Used to see ‘em out in the swamp. But you find them in woods too. Ruins. Lonely places."

She chews on the stem, in mock consideration. Just because it’s a story, doesn’t mean that she doesn’t believe it. You grow up near woods old as the Brecillian Forest, you see some strange things. You learn plenty well what happens to those that travel unwary.

"Starts out like a light in the distance, nice and comforting — especially if your lantern’s gone out. Only the closer you get, the farther it goes, out and out. Lead you until you're lost: Right off a cliff, or somewhere worse.”