[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

Training and armory

[connorrk800]

Connor picks out a training bow from the rack at the yard and takes his place before the targets. His too-serious expression masks the calm he feels as he runs through the motions, just as Warden Howe had instructed him. He had observed the veteran closely, noting minutely how to handle the bow, the missiles. Now, he often needs to be reminded to stop shooting so he can tend to the needs of his new body. The need to master this weapon drives away all thought of sleep and nourishment.

There is something peculiarly exact and perfect about his form- almost unnaturally so. Likewise, his posture seems almost dancer-like. But he stops between each shot, peering intently as if he could pierce the target with his gaze as well.

After some time, as he's collecting arrows, he notices the others training in the yard. He tilts his head curiously at a woman using a strange cane on some hay targets. He walks over and watches from a distance, waiting for her to finish so he doesn't disrupt her focus.

"Hello. My name is Connor," he says from deeply ingrained habit. "What kind of weapon is that?" he indicates the cane.

[notched]

Anna certainly wouldn't find his repetetive perfection strange. That was the nature of the Dream, that even when you lost all will to fight... you simply awoke in the Hunter's Dream and were free to kneel before a tombstone and try again. The night was always the same night. The enemies were all the same enemies. One learned the dance.

She does, in a way, seem to mind his attention however. The expression on her face is distrustful, and she is hidden beneath layers of leathers and ratty dark hair that obscures most of her. She breathes heavily for a moment without answering, her shoulders rising and falling.

"We call it the threaded cane," she finally responds. "Many hunters carry them."

[connorrk800]

Connor twitches his head like a curious bird. "Hunters?..." he eyes the cane again. "What kind of animal would you hunt with something like that?"

[notched]

There's a hollowness in her eyes, the subtle sense of a shudder hidden in all the leather. What kind of animal, indeed. Her mouth is dry and she lowers her eyes.

"Not animals-- beasts," she mutters. "We hunt beasts... Among other horrors. The demons that attacked when I fell from the rift... not so different."

She does not always string her sentences together fully, so used to only having herself to muse to.

[connorrk800]

"Oh," he says with a note of understanding. "A different kind of hunter..." that's what he once was too. He was created to hunt. He hunted his own kind.

"We didn't have ...beasts or demons or anything like that, where I come from. I'm a rifter too," he nods. "I became human when I came through..."

[notched]

Became human... what an absurd notion, that it should be a desired outcome. Didn't everyone want to become some monstrous god, no matter who suffered for it?

"How do you like it?"

Being human, that is.