[CLOSED] oh, the sweet sound of survival

[ragweed]

WHO: Kit Gandir, Vandelin Elris, Myrobalan Shivana, Melys, Anders, the Medicine Seller
WHAT: Kit coping badly w/ shit.
WHEN: The week after Kit gets back from Orzammar.
WHERE: All around Kirkwall.
NOTES: Probable discussion of child abuse, murder, mercy killings, death more broadly. Will update as needed.

I.  THE HANGED MAN (VANDELIN)


Kit loses a game of Wicked Grace. (It's not a common occurrence, but it's been known to happen.)

The direct aftermath of the game sees Kit shelling out the last of his coin to the Antivan deckhand with a poker face like a slab of granite; with that miserable task taken care of, Kit finds a quiet corner of the Hanged Man's taproom, slouches into an empty chair, and swallows his pride.

Out comes the sending crystal; fiddling with it, he calls Vandelin.

"Hey, um." Grimacing his eyes shut, he rubs at his eyebrows. "I need a favour, salroka."



II.  DARKTOWN (THE MEDICINE SELLER)


For a mind already predisposed towards dark melancholy, boredom is dangerous. Thankfully, Darktown provides plenty of opportunities to alleviate that--as well as unexpected familiar faces.

He recognizes the Medicine Seller easily; the strange elf would stand out even in Hightown, and in Darktown, his strange attire and mannerisms are a beacon for stares and trouble.

Taking a drag off the cigarette he carries, Kit threads his way through the dingy road towards him. "You turn up in the weirdest places, salroka," he says by way of greeting.



III.  KIT'S HOVEL (MELYS)


The hole in his wall where the desiccated corpse had been residing for only ancestors' know how long was an eyesore when it had a body inside of it. It's still an eyesore now, but at least letting it air out has gotten rid of some of the mouldering corpse stink.

(Hopefully Vandelin has a cast iron stomach.)

The first level of his home now looks a bit like a stone mason's shop, with mortar and stone and building tools strewn about while Kit goes about making the necessary repairs to his dwelling after the ash wraith debacle. It's been over a month; time to deal with it.

The front door has been left open.



IV. THE GALLOWS (MYR)


Shortly after his call with the rest of the Other Powers project members ends, Kit can't stand the confines of his office anymore. He heads outdoors for a smoke, stares across the water back towards Kirkwall, then detours towards the training grounds. When in doubt, when you can't keep your demons at bay, best to try punching them instead.

Barring that, swinging an axe at a training dummy can't hurt.



V.  DARKTOWN (ANDERS)


His appearance outside Anders' clinic isn't entirely by happenstance; recalling his last chance encounter with the (rather unpopular) Warden mage, he's taken to strolling around the area in the evenings, maybe just to discourage anyone else from trying to take a second stab at the guy living on his own.

This time when Kit shows up, it's in the middle of the day, and he's rubbing at his arm like he's injured it. "Hey, salroka," he greets Anders with what he hopes is a casual smile, "hope I don't need an appointment or anything."

Comments

[aforethought]

Rent's cheap.

"So's an urn."

But that sounds about half the way they got here. She tosses the bundle in the fireplace before taking a match and stooping to light. The smoke trails out sweet and cloying. Melys picks out a sign over her chest and turns back to him.

"Whatever it is," Shit-looking elf, or demon, or something in-between. "Kid stories that it's been running around after nightfall, dead dwarves skipping after. Didn't figure you for missing the dark."

And the knives waiting in it.

[ragweed]

"Didn't figure you for missing the dark."

"Yeah, well, I'm just full of surprises like that," comes the teasing retort, but there's a ghost of truth to it. They'd met in the dark; he still seems to carry a bit of it around with him, wherever he goes.

He puts some of his tools away into a roughly fashioned cabinet affixed to one wall, then dusts his hands off. When she mentions the stories, though, he grimaces and rubs the back of his neck. "Hope those tales don't get back to Madame de Cedoux. I'm trying to keep a low profile."

[aforethought]

She snorts, and not for the obvious joke on low —

"You been doing alright on that." It's less accusatory than it's blunt. For someone with a face you can't miss, Kit's been missing often enough. He gets around; she knows. People talk; she knows that as well. But he hasn't gotten around to talking himself, any. Not on his own. "She gotta hunt you down, too?"

[ragweed]

Well that's one way of getting right to the point, isn't it?

Kit has the decency not to look startled by her forthrightness; there's no point in hiding it, but that doesn't make speaking about it any easier. "Yeah," he says, in a way that isn't agreement, exactly, so much as acknowledgment of what she's really saying--he's been making himself scarce, on purpose.

"Just had, um." A pause. "...a rough month."

Bit of an understatement there.

[aforethought]

There's more than one way to hide. Melys has always favoured the kind that comes with a crowd. In the crush of it, the mass of so many other lives, you can fade back to look like nothing at all.

It's how the world sees you anyway, might as well use it. This kind of thing, it's hiding too, just another breed. It isn't that she hasn't got that much figured, can't feel it well herself: How fucking hard it is to think about anyone else. Pain narrows your view, frames the picture small.

(But maybe it's a little bit of a disappointment, that Kit's not better than all that. There's a real joke for you, just another version of that kid's tall tales. This isn't some Dead Skull come grand and flat and free of his own shit to deal with.)

"Yeah, well. Rough Age." Her hand shuffles up to a pocket, fiddles loose with the flap. "You wanna talk on it, or wanna do something ain't this?"

Two options — leaving just now isn't one of them.

[ragweed]

No, it most certainly isn't. Melys--and Vandelin, and Yngvi--have made that abundantly clear. The old instinct to find an exit, even if it's just a flippant excuse, rears its head. Kit looks past it, with difficulty, and meets her stare head-on.

"Let's do something." Maybe a predictable answer; Kit says remarkably little for a guy who can talk up a storm when he feels like it. "Shit, this is a big enough city. Must be some trouble that needs getting into, somewhere."

an hour or so later

[aforethought]

He’s been cajoled into carrying the buckets, because of course he has.

Melys can lift one fine, can manage two if she’s careful about it, but why bother when there’s a perfectly fine Kit right there? Call it payback for the ogre — or for up and disappearing off the bloody earth — but he’s got the buckets (full of butcher’s bones, fishskin, and sundry gore) as they round the top of the tower into the aerie. A deep animal musk smothers out from the shadowed entryway.

She whistles.

It’s silent a moment, before there comes the click and scrape of claws across stone: Steady, slow. A deep sucking hiss, then, as if some great throat’s inhaled,

And several hundred pounds of shrieking white bowls itself at him, talons extended, feathers shot up in full display. Monster lowers her face to Kit's and screams, before turning her attention to the buckets. The press of a leaden paw shoves her off his chest and on to her task, beak clacking against metal as she gorges.

Melys has collapsed backward from the scene, staggered prone now on her knees. Tears work from the edges of her eyes, her sides quake —

— With laughter. A howl fit to match the griffin's follows.

[ragweed]

Look, he's got some ideas about what qualifies as a good time, and carrying these buckets full of fish guts, bones, and viscera of unknown origin doesn't qualify. But they're friends, sod it all, so he's going to go along with this plan because he likes Melys--

Then Monster prowls into view and screeches at him like some nightmare emissary covered with feathers and fur, and he practically chucks the buckets at her in his hurry to scramble backwards, toppling over in the process. "--sodding fuck--!"

That's when Melys' wheezing laughter reaches his ears, and he whips his head around to stare at her, gobsmacked. "Are you fucking serious--" he blurts out, before the completely reckless absurdity of the adventure hits him, too, and her laughter, contagious, spreads to him. He laughs weakly before thunking his head back onto the ground, covering his face and his broadening grin with one hand.

[aforethought]

Monster's head snaps up at Kit's laugh, and her ears flick forward — press back again with a low rumble. Evidently, it'd be best if he stayed right there. She dips her head once more to check the buckets for anything that's escaped her notice, rattling one experimentally before turning yellow eyes upon Melys.

"Easy," Between snorts, she staggers up once more. "That's all you get, y'great lump."

Whatever Kit's been thinking on lately, she has to reckon this wasn't in the mix. Call it a victory for now. Monster rattles her beak, puffs, lets loose an odd gravelly whine. Melys staggers a little as the griffin slams her head against chest, still rumbling in the back of her throat for attention.

"Just don't move too quick without her lookin' at you."