[open] conceived sorrow

[notched]

WHO: Anna and Open
WHAT: Getting to know you~
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: the Gallows
NOTES: Very much explore the setting and meet some people driven. Put her to work, teach her a thing, etc. She won't balk, much.

GALLOWS

the courtyard
She dislikes the Gallows. It reminds her too much of the jail the snatchers would dump you out into if you were not quick enough to slash them apart first. Tucked away from the main city, where there would be impunity to do ugly things. She has not found proof of the ugly things in her head, but that does little to dissuade her from the idea that they are all here to be harvested for something other: their eyes, their blood, their minds.

She sits in a shadowy corner of the courtyard, watching the comings and goings around her in grim solitude. She had known the Hunt's ways like a ballet. She will have to begin all over again. Where to hide, where to strike, when to run.

She does not look at all natural, sitting there in her charred leather cloak and leather hat that covers most of her face, worrying away at the leather gloves she wears with her thumb. She looks tense and distrustful of everything. The fire-charred coat smells faintly horrifying and subtly intoxicating.

training & armory
The only thing that makes her less tense is the training yard. She sets up hay bale targets and decimates them with her notched whip. The trick weapon is unique, at first looking like only a bladed cane, but then she flicks its compartments loose with just the right gesture and suddenly a serrated wire butterflies around her, slashing, pulling, gashing. She does it until she can't anymore, breathing heavily and lowering her arm.

She repeats this a few times more, panting heavily and sweating between each round as she recovers herself. At the end of it all, she looks as frowning and tense as she started.

She goes off into the armory to look for some tools comparable to what she is used to. Its a delicate weapon that needs to be repaired and resharpened often, that is why she had chosen hay over wood for today.

infirmary
She's seen others come in here... It's been a long time since there were healers about. Healers that could be trusted. She doesn't trust these people either, but the inside of infirmary at least looks clean. When greeted here, she balks back with a frown, shaking her head and turning to hurry away.

"No, nothing."

She doesn't need anything. She has her blood.

'accommodations'
She is not interested in your accommodations. Comfort makes her nervous. She sleeps tucked away in hidden places at odd hours of the day. At night she prowls, looking for the hunt...

around
Anywhere she shouldn't be, you will probably find her. She mistrusts this place. She mistrusts anything it might call secrets.

Comments

infirmary

[justice_is_blond]

"Are you sure?" People don't come to the infirmary for nothing, generally speaking. Her hasty departure speaks of fear, but he's more worried about her possibly being injured than her being afraid.

Anders steps out to follow her. "I've seen you in the courtyard, I think. For a couple of days? Sitting there? It's the coat. If you've been hurt, I'm here to help."

[notched]

Her face twists, taking another step back. His voice doesn't have that saccharine reek of the Choir, half-mad with their own self-righteousness. She straightens her back, angry at herself for her skittishness.

"I came to see what you do in there," she answers, accusation in her tone even though she hasn't found anything that confirms her dread.

[justice_is_blond]

He stops following her, letting her keep her distance as she wants it. Now that she's stopped he can tell she's not showing any signs of injury or illness.

"I heal. I'm a spirit healer. I also put together potions for various matters as well. I can... I can't demonstrate the healing at the moment, we've no waiting patients, but I can show you the potions if you'd like." A short beat. "And the kitten. Do you like kittens?"

[notched]

"Kittens?" Confusion, almost as if she doesn't know what he's talking about. But more like anything resembling a 'kitten' had been eaten by the crows and the rats a long time ago. "I'm not a child."

Something she has been protesting since she was one, and even as she approaches 30 she still has a childishness to her , large eyes and a sullen bee-stung mouth in a round face. A face that hides its emotions poorly, the conflict obvious in her expression.

"What kind of potions?"

[justice_is_blond]

"I'm not a child either and I like kittens," he replies mildly as he leans against the doorframe. She's on edge. Is it magic? Medicine in general? Doesn't like men in robes? He dismisses the last one.

"The one I'm currently making to restore our stock is a salve for burns. But we've a great many various ones ready - healing potions, potions to prevent pregnancy, potions to deal with the aftereffects of wandering into rashvine or other itchy things, salve for open wounds, and so on."

[notched]

Everything she'd use the blood for. She has twenty vials of blood in her pouches, and awash from Yharnam she will find no more. She could die her. She purses her lips.

"What's in it? How do you make it?"

Someone had to suffer for such a convenience, didn't they?

[justice_is_blond]

"Plants, minerals, activating agents, magic in some of them. Would you care to see?"

What else would he make them out of? Perhaps the knowledge is restricted where she comes from. He rather likes going against societal restraints like that, though it's pure speculation right now.

[notched]

She has yet to stop frowning, all this time. But she did come here to investigate, she just hadn't expected to be given a tour. How can she trust anything she's shown when it's guided by the minister himself?

"Yes," she decides, the sternness in her voice is directed more at herself than at him, but he doesn't need to know that. She actually takes a few steps forward, at last.

[justice_is_blond]

Good. He likes stern, possibly angry and scared, people looming over him. Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he'll always be a bit intimidated by people watching him. Anders gives the woman a very wry look before tilting his head at the interior of the infirmary and heading in himself.

Without a word he sets back to work, lining up the empty vials again the kitten has poked a little out of order before resuming chopping a small pile of leaves.

"This is elfroot. It's used in most restorative things, potions and salves alike. And sometimes tea, though that... isn't just for restoration. Some use it for recreation as well."

[notched]

Her expression sets sternly at the look her gives her. She's not here to be bemusing to him. She doesn't know why she's here in this world, she assumes it involves some foul and psychotic sorcerer. She assumes this infirmary is full of poison and needles and stolen eyes.

Instead it is clean, lit, and inhabited by kittens.

She crosses her arms over her ribs, shrinking protectively into her charred leather coat. It's like the lack of evil-doing here disturbs her more than anything. She's lived in the depths of a stinking corpse pit for so long that fresh air and sunlight makes her feel sick and dizzy.

"These restorative properties... what is their root?"

Something nefarious!?