faderift | Tall and tan and young and lovely

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Tall and tan and young and lovely | open

WHO: Luana Marcos and the good people of this world
WHAT: Open log for CR purposes
WHEN: Time is a construct and life a prison
WHERE: The Gallows and Kirkwall
NOTES: Save this child from herself.

Growing up in Rocinha does something to a girl; it makes her unable to trust things like hiring boats. Getting pushed around (to say the least) at least once a day by someone who is supposed to be your guardian probably doesn't help either, but if Luana were going to point out where did this shitty attitude come from, she would likely say it was growing up in the one of the biggest slums in Rio.

But after a few days of walking around the Gallows, she was getting stir crazy. Even in Minas, which was boring as hell, she had work to do. In theory she knows she can find work to do around here, but it's a new day and she's still not sure that she wants to. No one here has stepped up so far to prove that they were worth working for.

Getting to Kirkwall is, well. Not easy enough, but easier done than getting back. She spends the day sort of keeping a low profile, which is simple enough for someone used to places far more dangerous than this. She takes a few moments to check out the local dog life - always good to know what might be willing to chase her if she shifts - and the other things that a city might hold. She's doing that thing that people who know how to steal, borrow, lie, or sneak do, where she is clearly casing the joint, the joint, in this case, being the entire damned town.

Meeting her there is easy enough.

The not easy part is when she gets back to where she ditched the boat, and finds that there is no boat. No way back except maybe to swim, and she's not entirely sure she wants to do that; at least not yet. Meeting her at the docks is another thing entirely, because while in the city she looked casual, here she looks harried, annoyed, kicking rocks into the water.

What the actual hell.

[meet her in kirkwall or trying to get back to the gallows, either works for me! if you'd like anything specific don't hesitate to pm me. action brackets or prose both acceptable]

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“Missed the boat?” A voice calls would from behind her- a pleasant tenor, friendly and mildly concerned. Fingon thinks he can already guess the answer- he’s swum back to the Gallows fairly often himself- but it seems only decent to ask if she needs assistance. The Kirkwall docks at night aren’t terrible, but it still doesn’t hurt to be cautious.

“There won’t be another official one until dawn, but one of the fisherman might agree to take you early for a coin or two.”

She hears the person coming and manages to not turn until someone speaks, because she was trained to be as human as possible, and normal people don't twitch at the sounds behind them. She turns a little, her eyebrows up. Her hair is like a mane, wild and wooly over her eyes.

This guy looks local. She turns her head a little. "I'm kind of. New." The implication is clear. She's broke.

"I see. One of our new Rifters?"

He raises an eyebrow; the eyes that meet hers glow with an uncanny light. Perhaps she has not been in Thedas long enough to tell, but no native elf has such eyes, and most do not grow as tall as this one.

"No wonder you wished to stay out so long," Fingon says, giving her a slight, conspiratorial smile. "The Gallows is maddening no matter how long you spend there. But if you'd care to return now, I may be able to find someone to take you."

"Yeah, that's what they call it, right?" she says, holding up her hand. There's the weird thing, and it doesn't go away when she shifts, which makes it even weirder. She turns her head a little, looking at him a bit. He doesn't exactly smell like he's-

-well, who knows. Around here, people smell strange anyway.

She appreciates the offer. "How do you usually get back when you're out too late?"

Give him a patrol route any day. At least that involves some walking through the throngs of merchants and hawkers and traders and buyers and sellers crowding the Kirkwall harbor in afternoon, albeit in circles. But sentry duty at the outskirts of the Inquisition's dock space is ninety percent complete boredom, good only for working up an appetite on the account of having nothing better to do.

Nothing for it, though. The next shift doesn't come on for another bell yet, so Marcoulf finds himself stuck in the shadow of the old Qunari compound's formidable gate as the smell of salt and grilling something wandering up from the quay on the barely-shifting summer air. He's all but committed to starving to death (obviously) when he catches sight of a distinctly skulking girl making her way up from the quay into the tangle of the city proper. Marcoulf watches her as she goes for a moment, maybe two. Pickpocket, he thinks. Which fine: he isn't the Guard and she isn't stealing from Inquisition property, so no concern of his if so long as she's creeping along away from the Inquisition's dock and not toward them. But, all things being the same, there's no harm killing two birds with one stone.

As Luana passes by the dark shadow of the compound wall, a wire brush of a man in a light cloak with an Inquisition patch steps out from under the gate house's eave. He has a coin pinched between his thumb and forefinger and uses it like a signal light to delay her.

"Where are you off to, girl?" He speaks with a broad Orlesian accents, all vowels.

She hears the vowels like someone is from the very heart of Brazil, and she thinks for a moment that this is weird, it must be weird for him too. Her own accent, tinged with Rio and sharpened by the favela, is peppered with hints of Cariocashhhh. She slurs her s like it's going out of style.

She tips her head up a bit, even though she's a tall girl and he's not all that much taller than her, a very doglike gesture. He has a coin in hand. In the favela that means I want information, and she was a street kid not so long ago. Information was her trade. No one pays attention to a dog, she learned when she was young, although when she grew her legs out she couldn't shift and blend in as easily anymore. She looks him over. Hello, lover. "I was planning on pissing in the street. You here to change my mind?"

Her mouth is going to get her in trouble. It's even worse in a moment. "You need a shave."

"No I don't." He says it easy, off the cuff. It's as if she's called the sky an alien color and he's just assuring her that no, it's most definitely blue.

He turns the coin in his fingers, sliding it dexterously off his thumb and between two fingers - across the back of his knuckles and back again with a glint of the silvered metal. Historically, he finds that kind of thing to be good for quieting people who talk like that, nevermind that sneaky girls who like the sound of their own voice could always invariably do with some coin in their pocket.

"If you were heading up into the city, I thought I might have a job for you. But those plans sound important."

She lifts her head a little her eyes flitting over the coin for a moment, as if she's trying not to stare at it. She knows better. Keep an eye on that and his other hand will find a different task. She's no fool.

"What kind of a job?" she asks, because a job isn't a bad idea. She's taken dirty and dirtier work, unless what he's asking is for her to open her legs, because she won't do that. In fact: "I'm not a whore. In case that's what you're thinking. But I'll do most anything else."

"Noted." He doesn't have the time for it anyway. "I'd like you to go fetch me something to eat from one of the stalls in lowtown market. I'll give you the money for it. Go straight there and come straight back and I'll see your time's rewarded." He fits the coin between thumb and forefinger again, waggles it, and then promptly trades it out for a more reasonable collection of brassy coins.

"Fair?"

She looks at the coin, and holds her hand out. This doesn't seem to be a difficult task - in fact, this is downright simple, and she can do it. When she was a kid, there was an old lady who lived in one of the middle-class houses down in the city who would pay someone to go to the bakery and get her loaves of bread, and sometimes she would give one to the kid lucky enough to catch her.

But she isn't a cute little girl with big eyes and sad bare feet anymore. Men who offer this kind of thing are doing it for another reason.

Still. She just lifts her head a bit. "What do you want?"

"Bread and cheese. Smoked fish of any kind if you can find it." The occupants of the market stalls tend to shuffle around the markets, so there's not sense giving her further direction. He drops the coins into her upturned hand. "Be quick about it, and I don't want to see any bites missing."

It's a half hearted threat without any heat. If she's bright, she'll go straight there and come straight back - the silver piece is worth considerably more than the brass ones he's given her. If she takes off with the coin? It's not the first time he's made a bad bet.

She can do that. She looks at the coin, and then at him, and considers her options, but a moment later she's off. She doesn't quite know why she's like this, but he smelled honest, at least at this moment. There wasn't the stink of a man who might fuck her over.

She shifts about halfway there, and runs the rest of the way, fucking overjoyed at the sudden speed, at the way her legs move. She hasn't done this since she arrived, not really, not run. She manages to find a place to shift back that's private, although the rumor of a strange, long-legged dog that no one's seen before might start soon.

She comes back with what he asked for, her nose finding the best fish, the freshest bread, and cheese that might be considered perfectly adequate. She comes up, lanky and pleased at the sudden direction, and also slightly embarrassed by it. "Hey, old man," she says, her grin wicked. "Here."

By the time she returns, Marcoulf has settled easily back into the shadow of the heavy old portcullis. It's cooler there by a handful of degrees and a breeze ocassionally stirs through the passage. In the grand scheme of spending a hot day standing around professionally, there are worse places to do it.

He doesn't seem surprised to see her again, though a small piece of him is. Instead, he unhooks his wrist from where he'd had it draped across the silvered pommel of the fine sword at his side. He takes the bundle from her with only a skeptical sidelong look - he's not old, girl - and takes a moment to inspect the results.

The cheese gets a sniff, the pleasantly hard crust of the bread a hollow flick. Apparently satisfied, Marcoulf reaches for his purse. "You'll do me one more favor?"

She manages to bite back the initial response - as long as it isn't sucking your dick - a response that would have gotten her a cuff from Aluisio, for that matter. Instead she leans back against the same wall he's standing near, her long legs in front of her. She looks like a creature of habit, and she also looks like someone comfortable with this particular location.

At someone's side.

"What is it?" she asks, because she's not going to say yes or no without details. She might be willing but she's not stupid. She doesn't trust him yet.

The silver coin is indeed produced. He brandishes it, though doesn't yet hand it over. He fixes her with a pointed look, one eyebrow quirked.

"If you're going to be picking pockets, do it on some other street. I don't want to be bothered by it or the guard asking questions."

Her mouth flattens then, right away, and she looks deeply displeased. Aluisio would give her a smack to the head if she stole, but more importantly than that, stealing hasn't been her life for almost two years now. She gives him a long look. "First," she says, the growl deep in her chest, "if I were going to steal from anyone, only fools get caught."

She moves forward, and her hand catches the coin, fast. Faster than most people can move. Suddenly she looks like a threat. "Second, I'm not a thief," she emphasizes.

If he had suggested it, she might not be offended. But he flat out said it. Is it the color of her skin that makes him think that? Or her hair? Or the smell that lingers around her - that's not her fault. "Third-" she says, but then shakes her head and takes a step back. Whatever third was, she's not saying it. Instead she lifts her head, proud. "Fuck you."

It would be hard, maybe impossible, to not catch the jagged edge of her affront, pouring from her in a wave. But Marcoulf, with his hand hooked idly in his sword belt and his face cast in shadow from the imposing portcullis above them, has done a heroic job of ignoring or dismissing it in favor of simply looking at her, apparently unperturbed if not unconvinced.

Instead, he pulls a chunk from the bread and pairs it with a corner of the cheese. He tips his head to indicate the street, the stairs leading up into the city. "Go on then."

She takes a breath.

Memorizes the way he smells.

Points to her eyes, and then to him, and saunters off.

Hope you like the smell of maned wolf piss, asshole.

It's Darktown that Luca crosses paths with her, doing what he does for the majority of his job: people watching. Observing, blending into a background and soaking it in. Learning. Without all his Seeker gear on, of course, because it's like walking into a room and declaring out loud - I'm a spy! But this is hardly for work (well, mostly, everything is always at least a little bit for work), just reading the pulse of the district.

It's then that he spots her very obviously casing... the entire town, but at the moment, one of the market stalls.

"I wouldn't hazard it." Luca speaks up from the bench he's chilling on when she passes by, tilting his head to look towards her a moment, glancing over her while taking in smaller details. After a beat, he points back towards the stall in question.

"The dwarf clerk's kindly enough, but those are Carta goods." In case she's new enough that the statement alone doesn't make sense, he adds on: "They'll be after your kneecaps later."

She lifts her head a little and looks over at this boy - man? - and his goatee, which in Brazil is a way that middle class boys wear their facial hair to flirt with middle class girls. Luana knows, she's witnessed it with her own two eyes. She tips her head a little now, and smiles, the kind of smile that is ascribed to thieves everywhere. "Why is it always the kneecaps?" she wonders out loud, backing up from the stall. "They should go for the teeth. Or the fingers."

Both of those things are more valuable to her than her kneecaps. But the point remains - she needs her kneecaps too. She slides against him on the bench, her leg curling around his ankle from the back. "What's Carta?"

“A man or woman missing a finger or tooth could still find work fairly easily. But without the ability to walk? Not so much.” He is a man, and probably wouldn’t be allowed into the Seekers if he wasn’t yet. As for the goatee, well, he’s Antivan and it’s just genetics that his 5 o’clock shadow can’t be fought, okay, not his fault. The girl slides up to him and gets immediately cozy - not something Luca was expecting, but he neither shows surprise or disapproval, a small, easy smirk tugging the corner of his lips.

Oh, gurl. Are you trying to play him right now? He’s done that song and dance himself enough to recognize it, but there’s a lot of fun in this. Thieves and spies can really be some of the most interesting people, he thinks.

“The Carta is the largest and most influential Dwarven crime ring. “ The mafia, basically, but mafia isn’t a word that exists in Thedas, sooo.

She considers that a minute. She's dealt with drug dealers, and with dwarves - well, sort of - but the combination of the two is interesting. She bites her lip a little, thinking around it, and her leg stays where it is. If she's flirting more, she's not letting on. "So," she drawls a little, "you're saying not to piss them off."

She shrugs. "I can do that," she finally decides. "I wouldn't really steal anyway," she adds, and she means it, for whatever it's worth.

Flirting for purpose, or for none at all, is an atmosphere Luca's comfortable in, so if she is flirting more, it doesn't appear to bother him whatsoever. Luana's been fun company so far, and even if Luca gains nothing of real important from this conversation, it's been a good time, and that's worth it enough. Chuckling, he shrugs, and lowers his voice, ducking his head somewhat to whisper between the two of them. "I am saying, if you plan to piss them off, be very certain they do not catch you."

Excuse me, Mr. Seeker, maybe you shouldn't be encouraging illegal activity? But, he's not the city guard, so what's it matter to him? Not his jurisdiction. Anyway, it doesn't seem like it was her goal after all.

"Oh? You'd been watching the stalls very closely." And not very subtly, hence his remarking on it. Which is maybe another form of him letting her know to be more careful. Then again, Luca, given his trade, does tend to catch onto these things faster than most.

She shrugs again, and smiles now, flirty and cute. She really is charming, her smile bright and sweet. She considers what to do next, but she looks at the stall. "If I decided to steal," she begins, shaking her bangs out a little out of her eyes, "I would never get caught."

She was a thief, once, but she's not a thief anymore. She was a lot of things, once, that she isn't anymore.

"I like to keep an eye for people who might be willing to help a girl out. You know. Food. Work." She nods a little in that direction. "But apparently not those guys."

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