[OPEN] falling through what's left of the fractions

[esquive]

WHO: Marcoulf & YOU
WHAT: Keeping busy and getting re-acquainted with Kirkwall's hot goss
WHEN: Early Bloomingtide
WHERE: All Over Kirkwall
NOTES: Can be before or after phylactery shennanigans.

I. JUST HORSIN' AROUND - THE STABLES

Tang! The sound of a hammer on iron rings in the courtyard.

Early on, Marcoulf had made the mistake of refitting one of the roan mare's shoes in sight of someone with a keen eye for putting new faces to work. Meaning his afternoon has been filled with putting bits of metal on an whole assortment of hooves - a number of which belong to animals not half so patient as the roan he'd ridden in on. The struggle to keep his subjects still has begun to plant an ache in his lower back and bruise the inside of his knees. The muggy pending-thunderstorm heat has the whole yard sweating.

Tang! He twists the cold shoe on the anvil horn and wails on it once or twice more, allowing himself to be purposefully finnicky over the shape. Anything to delay putting the nearby horse's leg up between his again. A moment ago the stupid animal had tried very hard to pull away while Marcoulf had been driving nails and nearly put its foot where it emphatically didn't belong. When he can put it off no longer--

"You." Yes, you. "Hold his head a moment." Marcoulf gestures to the horse with the hammer and jams a few nails between his lips.

II. GUARD DUTY - WHEREVER THAT HAPPENS

The rain falls so thick that come evening, visibility relies entirely on pools of barely sheltered lamplight. The weather's so heavy that it's surely driven even the most dedicated Inquisition sentries have retreated into doorways and into whatever shelter can be eked out of the shadow of Kirkwall's imposing walls.

Marcoulf certainly has anyway. His cloak, once waterproofed, has become sodden enough that the damp has begun to penetrate and the rain is so bad that he can't imagine anyone would choose tonight to cause trouble. No need to make themselves more miserable than necessary.

At some point, he produces a paper packet from a pocket. There's cheese in it. He offers it wordlessly to his companion. Sharing is caring.

III. A LONG LIST OF TO-DOs - MISC.

He sits poorly. Marcoulf can be found in a variety of Kirkwall's corners, quietly fussing over some task or another. He has a sword in need of sharpening, a pittance of coin in need of spending (new shirts, please and thank you), and some good old fashioned gossiping to eavesdrop on. The city's rife with talk and he intends to take in some part of it.

Need a note run? A sparring partner? Looking for an escort through shady back alleys at night? Despite what the scraggly appearance might suggest, you could pick worse.

((ooc: I'm good for whatever, but if you're thinking of something in particular that you want a starter for just shoot me a PM and I'll scrape something together.))

Comments

ii;

[earthbones]

Usually in the evening after she's sluiced off the filth of the smithy, Brónach heads back to the Templar tower to do some reading with Galatea, but these evenings she's too restless to inflict that on a girl. (For all that Galatea has done, she's a girl, a girl with goodness in her or the intention to it, to do something else with herself.)

So outside. Hood low. Thieves guild leathers are made for every eventuality not that they're known here and she's been curled tight to a wall for who knows how long, pressed into the shadows. She could go out. Go thieving.

Her heart isn't in it, there's no Nocturnal to nudge her here as she tilts her head to let the water run off her hood and--

"That's-- just cheese? Nothing else?" Hopeful. Maybe a little too hopeful but some people (some elves, she's a little taller than most but that left hand glows beneath the gloves) are really into their cheese.

[esquive]

Cue a low noise of apparent affirmation. As far as he's aware anyway. That said, it's clearly the cheap kind that crumbles. There are reasons why he's been keeping it in the little wax and paper packet and all of them are to avoid it turning to paste in his pocket and nothing to do with keeping the lint out.

"They've a kind with rosemary, but this isn't that." That sort doesn't belong in a pocket even if he could afford it (ha). This isn't terrible though. It certainly beats standing in the grim, rainy evening staring at the cramped through-way leading into the Inquisition's dock space without cheese.

Simple pleasures.

[earthbones]

That means there's always some sort of food when you're up shit creek and reduced to rummaging in your pockets. Everyone's been there at some point or another, surely. Even here. Maybe especially here, who knows.

"Who ruins cheese with plants in it?" Pushing the hood back as she says it gives a better glance of how her mouth curls at the idea of it because Skyrim had the decency at least to be filled with people who kept the cheese simple. Wheels. Wedges. Near exclusively from goats. "I've got--venison or rabbit, cured. No salt."

Not hard to imagine why, Inquisition stipends being what they are.

"Haven't seen your face before, new or good at keeping it out of the light?"

[esquive]

There's a cant to his head that says 'Both,' but what comes out of his mouth is: "The first. I've been here in Kirkwall before, but not for some time. Or," --with a gesture up the narrow avenue leading deeper into the Inquisition's end of the docks-- "Like this." New to the Inquisition, but no a stranger to Kirkwall; fresh to this post, but not unfamiliar with standing in the rain making small talk with a partner who is a stranger. Even the Inquisition and its strange company can't change the city so much, and one job where he's expected to stand guard is much the same as any other.

(That said, she'll have to forgive his attention for straying now and again to the sickly green glow leaking from the edge of her glove. That part is irregular.)

Marcoulf tucks a piece a cheese into his cheek and adds, "The venison would be fine." If neither's salted, he'll take that over some stringy hare.

[earthbones]

Standing out as she does with her hand, wary enough to be marked as stranger and outsider this is the rare sort of opportunity that doesn't so often land in Brónach's lap. "Then you know how much Kirkwall has changed since all of this?" It's not a question, not really. Arriving in Skyrim after the High King's death with the civil war brewing is as close to this as she might get. The same ugliness. The same hard look when someone calls her knife-ear when they'd call her elf there.

Her gaze flits down, back up to him, decides to address the mammoth in the room. Overhang. "I've finally gotten used to it when I'm aiming; these things and archery, not a great combination to start. Or out at night without good cover."

The meat is passed over (one day she'll get to venture further) but right now she's careful with what she takes, no one wants to reach spider jerky and despite the curiosity, it'll probably cause some incident if she guts one of the halla.

[esquive]

He hums, a sound of assent. Sure, he knows something of what Kirkwall was like before the Inquisition put roots there. Or maybe he's just acknowledging the inconvenience of a glowing hand in the dark. Or both or--

"Does it do something to affect your aim otherwise?" He nods to her hand, setting the dried meat between his teeth and tearing. Does it hurt? Is it like a rift where the world gets strange and crooked around its edges? He hasn't had much reason to be this close to someone with a chunk of magic stuck in them, much less press them with questions to satisfy his curiosity (superstition).

[earthbones]

"Light in my eyes had me shooting off. Had to be good enough to shoot with the hunters at fourteen, then your hand isn't right. Needs to be changed." Over twenty years shooting with her hands very much her hands, so she can't keep the bitterness out of her voice by any stretch. "Didn't hurt so much but maybe some of the ones with these don't know what a hurt is."

Maybe they're children. Her ideas are skewed not only from knowing she'll outlive all but rifters with immortality touching them. Dragons, daedra, every wild beast, teeth made of ice: all of Skyrim tore strips from her, what's a stinging hand in the face of that.

[esquive]

That reasoning's straight forward enough. Here he'd been on the verge of thinking that maybe the shard in her hand wasn't keen on her firing on the things that come falling out of rifts - some strange combination of recognition and self preservation turning her aim. But no; just light in her eyes.

Sure, he could buy that.

Marcoulf makes a small humming sound as he works a bite of venison free. Unsalted, the meat is tough and demands some effort to gnaw into pieces. He mumbles around it, asking, "Been here long?"

[earthbones]

"Uh...shit."

This requires some math because when you do the whole living alone in the wilds most of the time you don't think about time, and now she has to think about it. Has to maybe consider - roughly - what it was when she got sucked out of Skyrim. (Or, whatever happened since there's this spirit thing, the shade thing. That whole plague to consider into the bargain.)

"Late in the year here? Fall...Firstfall!" Oh and she laughs because it's funny, Firstfall and falling out of the sky into the mud, into a demon, just about remembering she had to shoot as someone started yelling to use her hand; a strange time. "Six months passed now, feels longer and shorter you know? We got frozen in over the winter, I don't know how people were that useless, I've seen worse but it was...it was pathetic.

"And you? How long here this time? Are you in one of the projects?" There's a little derisive snort there, so not a fan but it's something to do, a way to pass the time, keep your eye on the people doing all sorts of shady things so at least there's a chance to be part of it even if it's minimal effort.

[esquive]

'Uh...shit.' He laughs, a dry bark muffled by the strip of venison clenched between his teeth. He can't help himself - it's funny. The whole of it is, maybe even right down to her assessment of the Inquisition's people. And it's a little heartening, isn't it? Because it would be easy, natural even, to stand next to her and that uneasy glow of the rift shard and feel some bone deep certainty that could be something terrible. But it's warming to be certain that people (elves) are the same all over, including wherever she fell through from.

The shard in her hand, he can't speak to. But the rest seems plain enough.

"Not one I've commited myself to. Getting my bearings." He finally swallows down that worked over strip of dried meat. Licks the residual taste from his thumb. "I came attached to a pair of Inquisition scouts who thought they might need an extra sword through Nevarra. They didn't, but the pay was fine and this looks to be regular."

Marcoulf shrugs. Nothing says security like a stipend.

[earthbones]

When people can make the Stormcloaks and Imperials look competent, it says something. Of course that'd take her trying to untangle religion and politics that start getting complicated along the way so that was probably enough. This is good. This feels like the old complaints.

"Any of them those weird mages," a careful swallow, coughing past a crumb and not her distaste, absolutely not. "The mages from there? The ones doing things with the dead? Types like that or the scholars always needed escorting someplace they had no business being. Ploughing into some ruin because a book said they needed to go there but they'd trip over their own sword."

If they had one. If they didn't set you on fire with the first spell they set off or alert every damned thing in the barrow to both of you because traps are indeed a thing.

"Food could be better for what they pay us," she says after a moment. "Shouldn't have to go hunting this often because they're hurting for meat on the plate."

[esquive]

"Neither of them mages." It's said with a clipped, distinctive quality that says he'd probably have avoided them were that the case. "Closer to the other kind."

Which had made falling in with them easy. They'd been free enough with what coin they'd carried between them and reasonably good company the whole way to the border, and said very little about his business in Orlais. Apparently one or both of them had said something that was convincing, or his curiosity had finally gotten the better of him, or--

Anyway.

"There's worse places to be with worse food--" He's picking a string of venison from between his teeth now, squinting through the sheeting rain. And pauses, attention fixing there at the mouth of the narrow roadway on which they've been posted. There are three figures traipsing along in this direction, all of them wrapped in oiled cloaks against the weather. Could be a scouting contingent in from their post beyond the city. Could be anything. It's hard to tell in the grim shadows of Kirkwall at night under rain.

Marcoulf stuff the cheese back into his pocket, dusts his fingers on his shoulder, then pulls up the hood of his own cloak. He snaps his fingers at her and steps out into the rain.

[earthbones]

A noise comes out of her throat, aiming for sympathy because Y'ffre's green-knotted bones has she watched scholars get in amongst situations they've had no reason to be in amongst. Or, more commonly, read their hopeful journals prised out of their skeletal and/or charred fingers. Poor Lydia living the glamorous life of a housecarl attending to all of those propped up on the shelves.

"We've amateurs here. Surveys. Medical one is being kept locked tight but if you want to skirt it…" If it does the rounds again, Brónach feels better for giving a warning when she was one third of that whole act, somehow. Maybe as the jumpy paranoid one hissing about it the whole time. The elf for any of the elves who didn't want two humans taking their notes. "And how's anyone meant to be fighting full of grains?"

But whatever else is cut off when her mood changes, the relaxed joking going out of her voice as she straightens out of the comfortable slouch to slide a hand over the dagger at her hip; without prayer, without charity and without celebration does a Nightingale serve Nocturnal so she moves to shadow Marcoulf, presses tight into the wall. She might be far from where she was, even so she knows how to step to keep herself quiet, unseen.

Taking a deep breath, she calls out three words, "Zul Mey Gut," the words a rasped whisper but thrown the other way from her and Marcoulf to distract the trio since it doesn't sound like it's coming from their direction.