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Entry tags:
[open] conceived sorrow
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.
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.
no subject
"Another mouth to feed," she says instead, sounding skeptical rather than delighted. And as for that other bit.... "Or you'd need to be much burlier."
Anna has no sense of humor, this is not a joke so much as a logical conclusion.
no subject
"We don't feed them, really; not like a horse or a cow. They graze, or nibble leaves off young trees. We could never make a halla do something they didn't want to do. It'd hurt dearly if we tried." Their antlers were sturdy and their hooves could break a rib, if not more, if the halla so chose.
"Have you seen any of the harts that some members of the Inquisition ride? Think one of those, but- smarter. Smarter and much more likely to take offense if you take a heavy hand to them."
no subject
"Much too much fuss."
She'd had a better relationship with animals before things had gone wrong in Yharnam. She'd seen herself in them, the hungry forgotten curs in their packs. And then... She had continued to see too much of herself in them. It was something which had be struggled against, lest she join them. The dogs at least had remained familiar, but then were the rats, the boars, the snakes, the insects. All turned and changed, morphing into versions of themselves with too many mouths and teeth.
"I wouldn't make much of a Dalish, it seems."
no subject
Merrill shrugs before crouching down to reach under her aravel and scratch Barkley behind the ears. What the other clans think still bothers her - they don't understand. But Merrill knows who and what she is, and she knows what she has done for their people. Someday, they'll know it, too.
She hopes the Inquisition helps with that, but if it doesn't... well, it's still a good cause.
"My name is Merrill," she offers as she straightens, wiping her hands on her thighs. "That's Barkley, under there."
no subject
"I'm Anna, and I wouldn't know any better. You can be whatever kind of Dalish you like."
She says this without the warmth and empathy that might've made such a statement touching. Instead it comes with a self-aware disregard that it's not like her opinion on the matter would change it.
"Is your Barkley good in a fight?"
Wow, one track mind, Anna.
no subject
Merrill doesn't like taking Barkley out into battle. In Lowtown, where she's likely to be mugged, it's one thing; a dog is sometimes enough of a deterrent, even a little one. Barking raises an alarm, and he's got teeth that will latch onto ankles, tugging with enough pain to make whoever he's got a hold of turn their attention away from Merrill.
That's their mistake, usually; it's hard to dodge a lightning strike if you don't see it coming.
"Better at keeping rodents and such out and away from dinner, though."
That was when Barkley's ferocity truly shown. When she had been traveling, it had been a godsend; she imagined it would be much the same now that she was back in her house in the alienage.
no subject
"The rats in Yharnam, they're like this."
no subject
Merrill looks between Anna and Barkley, a quick back-and-forth like a startled bird.
"Well. I think he'd still try."
And probably get eaten for the trouble. Ugh. Though that begs the question-
"Goodness, how big are the cats?"
no subject
They'd had a little more sense than the rest of Yharnam, leaving the packs of men and beasts to hunt and devour one another. Or maybe they'd been the first prey of the first men who had turned. Anna couldn't really have said definitively.
"I wouldn't mind a cat," she adds thoughtlessly. After all her comments about other pets and companions being too much fuss, she could see herself feeding an alley cat.
no subject
Then again, other worlds were other. As much as everyone said that the Rifters were spirits - and maybe they were - that didn't mean their realities weren't other.
"They weren't very common among the Dalish, but there's a few in the alienage."
no subject
She's heard the word but not quite pieced together its implications, and Merrill seems keen enough to answer her.
no subject
The alienage was better than Darktown on the good days. On the bad... well. Maybe that depended on the city.
"Elves in Thedas are viewed as less than humans, at least among the Andrastian nations. Second-class citizens. Grouped together in our own section of town away from everyone else - so that we can be shut in or shut out, if they want. Conditions are... usually very poor."
no subject
"The cart seems preferable."
Not that Anna cared overmuch, she expected things to be terrible. But not everyone had to live in a nightmare world.
where did the month go
"Very," Merrill agrees, with a sad tilt to her smile. "But not everyone feels that way."
Some people preferred the slum, the illusionary safety of the walls of a city. Most of them didn't know anything different. Others were like Merrill, who were there because they felt they had to be.
no subject
"Well, now I know this world is as ugly as any other."
She hadn't actually needed that explained to her, she had assuredly assumed it.