OPEN | i'll be working

[nadasharillen]

WHO: Rey, Kylo, Nari, Aro, Myr, whoever wants to get drafted into chopping stumps in the rain for a pittance come on it's fun
WHAT: Chopping stumps in the rain for a pittance! Possibly inadvisable trebuchet action! Nari open while she's being a bummer!
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: Wounded Coast, Sundermount, and Kirkwall
NOTES: CW: discussion of character death in III

I. Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies (Myr: first half of Kingsway, Sundermount)

Nari's been waiting to test this ever since she'd slammed open the door to the room she'd shared with Myr. Finally it's not blistering and oppressive enough that it's not a horrifying idea to take the materials for the small scale trebuchet she'd drawn up plans for to Sundermount—where theoretically nobody would be bothered by the repeated launch of magically enhanced exploding rocks—to build it. Plus, there are a lot of rocks to magically enhance to explode.

Myr is duly informed of her readiness, and since they're both early risers, out they go into the wild brown yonder early one morning. Once there, Nari claps her hands together and asks with some enthusiasm: “What should we try first?”


II. I'm Only Happy When It's Complicated (Rey, Kylo, Aro, and The Hapless Voluntold: latter half of Kingsway, Wounded Coast)

[one thread~!]

With the long periods of heat lessening, Nari decides it's finally safe to take her crew out for the heavy work of clearing. The space near the Wounded Coast the Seneschal had allotted them for the final home of the course they had built certainly had space enough. It was also, blessedly, flat enough.

It also had stumps enough. Stumps enough of trees that had been old and established enough that once they arrive with the cart of provisions, thick ropes, shovels, picks, pitchforks, and axes, the elf looks out on the studded field with a dryly amused look. Luckily they don't need to clear all of the area, but there's more than enough for a solid couple of weeks of work.

She eyes the sky with much the same look as she'd given the field. It responds with a quiet disaffected rumbling promise of rain.

“Well,” she says to those assembled, “we'd better get done what we can while we can. If you've never done this before, we'll be digging around them until the roots are exposed, chopping through the main roots and whatever else we can get, getting ropes around them, and getting the horses to do the rest.” She hefts a shovel over her shoulder. “Questions?”


III. Time Has a Funny Kind of Violence (end of Kingsway, Kirkwall)

One morning Nahariel wakes up and it's here: the sharp cool smell of the autumn wind and the promise of the winter to come. With it comes the body's memory of the beginning of the decline from which Sina would never recover, and with that comes sudden intermittent hunched shoulders. Staring out into even blue sunny skies with a dull and tired bleakness mismatched to them. A wet shine in her eyes for small reasons, or seemingly no reason at all. The stop of work for a long moment before she shakes her head and starts again. A false ring to her buoyant good nature, as if it's being forced.

It isn't always, but it's sometimes. Especially when the wind blows.

She can be found more often in the Memorial Garden. Oftener still in the fringes of the statue's grove where her clansister's trees still stand both new and ancient to watch the leaves of those trees that are not evergreen begin to turn for the second time; the first that Sina won't see.

She will still greet company with a small smile.


IV. Wildcard

Hi!

Comments

[provenforce]

Anyone looking in Rey's direction when Ben pulls the stump from the ground using the Force will likely catch her eyes rolling briefly skyward. She steps forward when Nari suggests her plan, nodding her head.

"That would probably be easier on all of us, because pulling the stumps straight from the ground will exhaust the both of us that much quicker," she says, with a somewhat pointed look in Ben's direction.

[letoldthingsdie]

He shrugs, not even remotely phased by the look he's getting. If he was used to anything by now it was Rey deciding he's being ridiculous. He picks up the nearest tool to chop free a stubborn root on the next stump before it seemingly flings itself away from him like a marionette with it's strings pulled.

"You don't have to do it this way." He looks pointedly back at Rey, daring her to challenge him. While he did become exhausted using the Force in this place, he'd had a few years more practice in using it. He wasn't going to let himself get tired quickly.

[sorcerised]

"I never get tired of seeing that sort of magic."

Aro casts an admiring look at Kylo. He remembers him from when they arrived together, in the snow. Those powers had been impressive then. They're still impressive now.

He heads over to one of the other stumps, drawing out a long knife as he does so. A young dragon, about the size of a wolf, is with him, and flaps around him at shoulder height, watching what he does. He starts cutting through, working his knife around.

"Makes me wish I had earth-moving powers. Can't do everything with lightning, can you?"

[nadasharillen]

"We don't have to do it any one way," Nari says with a grin, retrieving a second axe from the cart, and moving over to where Aro's employing his knife, "it just has to get done." She offers out the axe towards him when she gets there.

"Although, I think you'll find it's both easier and faster to have that way be taking an axe to those roots rather than a knife, even if the knife's what you're used to. I'll teach you the right way to stand and swing, if you're not familiar." She pauses for a second and then furrows her brow thoughtfully. "Korrin did tell me she split and felled a tree with lightning once, if you think weakening the roots that way would do as well or better for you."

At this rate she's going to be the only one out here using an axe.

And really, that suits her fine.

[letoldthingsdie]

"Exactly." He nods to Nari, turning his attention back to his work as he focuses on moving the second stump free with his outstretched hand. Eventually it comes loose with a few cracks as the roots snap from being forced apart. He takes a spade in his hands to dig up the rest of what didn't get pulled up.

"No, I don't suppose we can do everything with lightning or magic." He's loathe to call his abilities 'magic' but for arguments sake, he doesn't try to correct anyone. He didn't see it as magic in the same way that natives mages used magic, but the distinction was there if he chose to point it out.