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faderift2018-05-03 10:38 am
wheretheferngrows) wrote in faderift2018-05-03 10:38 am
Entry tags:
[OPEN] May catch-all for some side characters
WHO: Fern, Romola + you??
WHAT: Fern and Romola do things in May, and maybe you're involved in some of them. Come meet a small elven apostate, and an introverted dwarven lampworker-by-day, strange Andrastian cultist-by-night.
WHEN: Throughout May.
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall, outside Kirkwall, /gestures vaguely Around
NOTES: A bit of violence in one of Romola's starters. If you'd like a specific starter for either of them, hmu on plurk @ ragweed or discord @ middlemarching#9936.
WHAT: Fern and Romola do things in May, and maybe you're involved in some of them. Come meet a small elven apostate, and an introverted dwarven lampworker-by-day, strange Andrastian cultist-by-night.
WHEN: Throughout May.
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall, outside Kirkwall, /gestures vaguely Around
NOTES: A bit of violence in one of Romola's starters. If you'd like a specific starter for either of them, hmu on plurk @ ragweed or discord @ middlemarching#9936.
FERN
i. a picnic!! (closed to Chloe)
The landscape around Kirkwall isn't especially scenic, but it's more enjoyable to explore now than it was a few months ago when everything was covered completely by snow and ice. That's probably why Fern suggests to Chloe that they venture out a bit into the surrounding area for a picnic; the weather is pleasant enough, for once, and everyone needs a break from work in the Gallows occasionally.
She probably neglected to mention that they'd be venturing out on Rooster. But it's not difficult at all for him to support the weight of two skinny girls and a neatly packed lunch--and mercifully, he doesn't give Fern too much trouble as she guides him through the countryside to what passes for a grassy hillside, here in this part of the Free Marches.
So that's where they are now, with Fern setting out their simple lunch on a blanket beneath the sparse shade of a spindly tree while Rooster forages nearby. She's just settling in when she peers across at Chloe with an uncertain smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "Have you told anyone?" she asks at length, then gives her head a knowing little tilt. "About, you know. Us."
Given how new this arrangement is for them, she doesn't expect so--but she figures she'd better ask anyway.
ii. out and about (open)
Fern is fairly easy to spot around the Gallows for the most part, and her schedule has changed only slightly with the arrival of the warmer months and, ahem, some recent developments in her personal life; most of her daylight hours are divided between tending to the growing needs of the Gallows' herb garden, or practicing her magical competency on the training grounds. It's her late afternoons and evenings that she's taken to spending more in the company of a particular blue-haired rifter girl (though she probably thinks she's being quite sneaky about it).
However, it's still not uncommon to find her in the Gallows' stables tending to her mule, Rooster, or out wandering about the Lowtown markets or within the alienage, searching for small trinkets to purchase for herself, or for the garden. (Or for the mule. She may or may not have tied little blue ribbons into his mane for the season.)
ROMOLA
i. The Lampworks (open)
Romola Kader's shop in Lowtown sticks to its regularly posted hours; if the dwarven proprietress herself isn't there to see to patrons, then normally an elderly elven woman is there in her place. The works she has on display are of exquisite quality, begging the occasional question as to what she's doing running this shop in Lowtown rather than in the neighbourhood of the Merchants' Guild in Hightown.
She can usually be found standing behind the counter within her shop quietly sorting through inventory, still wearing her leather apron as well as a pair of glass goggles pushed up to rest against her forehead.
ii. Lowtown at night (open)
She may live and work within her shop, but that doesn't mean she never leaves it.
On this particular late spring night, Romola appears to be making her way back through the labyrinthine Lowtown hexes towards the narrow, back alley entrance to her shop, and she isn't alone. Someone--an opportunistic mugger, perhaps--has been hounding her steps for several blocks.
These sorts of encounters tend to follow a particular script. When the mugger reveals himself, accosting her from the side, she startles and is momentarily caught off-guard; but when she drops whatever small parcel she was carrying, it's not to pull herself free from her assailant's grip, but to grab for a belt knife and slash the sharp blade of it across his arm.
This achieves the desired effect of making him stagger back, but the altercation is far from over. Someone should probably intervene.
i. a picnic!! (closed to Chloe)
The landscape around Kirkwall isn't especially scenic, but it's more enjoyable to explore now than it was a few months ago when everything was covered completely by snow and ice. That's probably why Fern suggests to Chloe that they venture out a bit into the surrounding area for a picnic; the weather is pleasant enough, for once, and everyone needs a break from work in the Gallows occasionally.
She probably neglected to mention that they'd be venturing out on Rooster. But it's not difficult at all for him to support the weight of two skinny girls and a neatly packed lunch--and mercifully, he doesn't give Fern too much trouble as she guides him through the countryside to what passes for a grassy hillside, here in this part of the Free Marches.
So that's where they are now, with Fern setting out their simple lunch on a blanket beneath the sparse shade of a spindly tree while Rooster forages nearby. She's just settling in when she peers across at Chloe with an uncertain smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "Have you told anyone?" she asks at length, then gives her head a knowing little tilt. "About, you know. Us."
Given how new this arrangement is for them, she doesn't expect so--but she figures she'd better ask anyway.
ii. out and about (open)
Fern is fairly easy to spot around the Gallows for the most part, and her schedule has changed only slightly with the arrival of the warmer months and, ahem, some recent developments in her personal life; most of her daylight hours are divided between tending to the growing needs of the Gallows' herb garden, or practicing her magical competency on the training grounds. It's her late afternoons and evenings that she's taken to spending more in the company of a particular blue-haired rifter girl (though she probably thinks she's being quite sneaky about it).
However, it's still not uncommon to find her in the Gallows' stables tending to her mule, Rooster, or out wandering about the Lowtown markets or within the alienage, searching for small trinkets to purchase for herself, or for the garden. (Or for the mule. She may or may not have tied little blue ribbons into his mane for the season.)
ROMOLA
i. The Lampworks (open)
Romola Kader's shop in Lowtown sticks to its regularly posted hours; if the dwarven proprietress herself isn't there to see to patrons, then normally an elderly elven woman is there in her place. The works she has on display are of exquisite quality, begging the occasional question as to what she's doing running this shop in Lowtown rather than in the neighbourhood of the Merchants' Guild in Hightown.
She can usually be found standing behind the counter within her shop quietly sorting through inventory, still wearing her leather apron as well as a pair of glass goggles pushed up to rest against her forehead.
ii. Lowtown at night (open)
She may live and work within her shop, but that doesn't mean she never leaves it.
On this particular late spring night, Romola appears to be making her way back through the labyrinthine Lowtown hexes towards the narrow, back alley entrance to her shop, and she isn't alone. Someone--an opportunistic mugger, perhaps--has been hounding her steps for several blocks.
These sorts of encounters tend to follow a particular script. When the mugger reveals himself, accosting her from the side, she startles and is momentarily caught off-guard; but when she drops whatever small parcel she was carrying, it's not to pull herself free from her assailant's grip, but to grab for a belt knife and slash the sharp blade of it across his arm.
This achieves the desired effect of making him stagger back, but the altercation is far from over. Someone should probably intervene.
fern - i.
The question surprises her, though, and she looks up with a brow arched. Us. It still brings a small smile to her lips, makes her feel a warmth in her that she can't credit to the spring sunshine. "Oh, yeah. Loads of people. I'm little Miss Popular around here and I just couldn't keep it to myself for too long." Sarcasm really shouldn't be a default for any conversation.
She shook her head finally, though, once she'd gotten the knee jerk reaction out. "I mean, there's only maybe... two people I'd talk to about it anyway, but I wasn't sure if you wanted anyone to know yet."
no subject
"...I wasn't sure if you wanted anyone to know yet."
A good point--one which makes Fern's stomach flip a little with anxiety. (Nevermind what Finch will think, what about Beleth and Sorrel--? Or Nari?)
"I don't want to keep it a secret," she decides abruptly, chewing at her lower lip, "but I also... I think I told you, once, that people here don't like elves very much?" A pause, searching Chloe's face, before she admits, "Well they--they really don't like it when elves and humans are, you know. Together."
no subject
The worry was understandable, though. She didn’t know how hard the backlash could be, but if there was one thing Chloe Price was good at, it was not giving a fuck about what other people thought about who she loved.
“I’m used to it,” she said after a moment. “At home, girls dating is kind of a... frowned upon thing in general, and then on top of it I was a poor kid around a lot of rich people. I’m used to my relationships being the kind of thing people get their noses all out of whack over.”
no subject
But it's what she said just before that which really holds Fern's attention, and she fiddles absently with the edge of a bit of wax paper folded around a savoury pastry. (There's a little ant crawling across it, which she rescues with one fingernail and returns to a blade of grass.) "You know, not having very much never really bothered me, until I came here. Not that we were as badly off as some elves are," she adds hastily, lest Chloe think she's trying to make her circumstances out to be worse than they were, "you know, we had the farm to work and the sheep to tend to, and Farmer Heinrich pays my parents fair. It wasn't like it is here in the alienage. But..."
But, she could say, it's hard not to think of how Nell described her own childhood in the Circle, and all the education and training she received, the potential that was nurtured within her by her peers and mentors--even if it all came tumbling down later, that she even had those opportunities fills Fern with bitter envy when she lets herself think about it for too long.
"...still, people look at you differently, once they find out you can't read. Or you don't know some simple creation spell that all apprentices get taught in the Circles, because you weren't raised in one." She snorts. "Not that any of them would know the first thing about how to sheer a sheep, or what to do to prepare for lambing season." Quieter, "That didn't stop them from being quite awful, at first."
no subject
It's still strange to think that the things she took for granted are things only people with more money could afford in this place; but she gets the general sentiment, remembering how out of place she'd felt among kids with top of the line paints, and cameras that cost more than her entire wardrobe, and smart phones while she'd been stuck with out dated technology and whatever was on her parents free upgrade list. She knew how terrible people could be when you were remotely different in status and how badly it could hurt.
She paused in thought, before going to lace her fingers with Fern's. "Well, I hope they eventually realized what they were missing out on."
no subject
Chloe's hand in hers is warm, and Fern ducks her head with a shy smile. How is it that such a little touch coupled with some tender words can make her heart flutter like this? "Well they stopped saying those things, at any rate," she says, absently stroking her thumb across Chloe's. Fern brings their hands up to kiss her knuckles fondly, then shifts across the blanket to rest her cheek against Chloe's shoulder; it's still such a delightful novelty for her, not only to have this intimacy, but to actually want it at all. (No offence, Finch.)
For a few minutes she seems more than content to enjoy a spell of companionable silence with Chloe, interrupted only occasionally by reaching out to make short work of the food they've brought with them for today's outing. She's nibbling on a carrot when she muses aloud at last, "I thought I might tell Nari first. She and Sina were from the same clan; I think she's taken me under her wing a bit since she died." A pause, before she chews at the corner of her mouth nervously. "She seems to like humans well enough, I don't think she'll be upset."
no subject
"She's... nice." She hadn't talked to her much, but enough to have a good impression. "She helped me make some dice that I wanted once. And watched my back when I uh - ... did some shit I wasn't supposed to." Like vandalizing an entire wall. Yeah, she was definitely a Nari fan. "I hope you're right. It'd suck if she was."