faderift | [open]

The trouble with being determined about not looking like an idiot is that it's thoroughly exhausting. She's read more in the last few days than she'd usually do in a year - or, well, at least when it comes to geography and politics and history - and it's all rather draining and dry. Not that say that most of the essays she'd been forcing herself to consume in the last few months had exactly been riveting reading, but the substance was at least intriguing. The novelty of Kirkwall, indeed of Thedas, hasn't worn thin per say but it's doing its damnedest to exhaust her and there are moments like this one where Wysteria finds herself distinctly unmotivated by a pile of books in the dusty Gallows library.

Which is why she'd stuffed a few of the slimmer tomes under her arm and made her way outdoors. at the very least, she can get some fresh air as the information pours in one ear and straight out the other. That's the intention anyway. The reality is after an hour she's given up reading entirely and the books have been re-purposed as a tripping hazard for passerby as she's taken up a place on the stairs leading up from the broad, sun-baked courtyard. She's wearing a hat against the sun, but has taken to fanning herself with a sheaf of what were probably meant to be notes.]

"Good gods, what a positively stifling afternoon."

Let no one say Wysteria lets herself be idle for long. Some might argue that that's just the trouble, isn't it? A certain lack of commitment to the concept of for long in general speaking to an overall lack of well rounded-ness or maybe a troubling weakness of overall character, as only fools are prone from flitting from one thing to the next with such rapidity. But if books are of no interest, then she must find something to entertain herself with outside of walking up and down Kirkwall's seemingly infinite number of staircases.

She finds her way to the training yard - specifically to a stool which she has roused from somewhere and positioned carefully within view of the make-do archery range so she might watch from the shade of the high wall and ask a seemingly infinite number of questions of anyone who makes the mistake of pausing for too long or wandering too close in their search for a practice bow.

"Tell me, have you been practicing long?" She might ask. Or: "Did you shoot as a child?" Or: "Your aim is really rather good, actually. Have you shot in any tournaments?" Or: "Is there a particular way in which you must draw back the string?" Or--

And so on and so forth. It's no doubt delightful.

So much of Kirkwall is stone and high walls and towering dark cliff faces that Wysteria finds herself developing a great fondness for even the relatively cramped Hightown gardens. There's a certain soothing quality to greenery in any measure, she thinks. It helps too that there are city guards posted at nearly every corner in Hightown so she might forget briefly about the need to watch her belongings or a certain healthy suspicion about being followed or kidnapped or robbed as when she charges up through the Lowtown streets. Sure, there's a particular charm to that brand of excitement, but it's not exactly relaxing now is it?

And she could do with a bit of that, even if it comes at the price of Hightown ladies giving her clothes or her hair or her gods know what sidelong glances over hedgerows and planters. She isn't the only stranger in a strange land here; surely they'll learn to live with whatever offensive thing she's done. She does her resolute best to ignore them as she drifts along the strictly organized flower boxes and patches of lawn, her gloves hands tucked absently in the small of her back as she bends to smell this flower or that.

It's only when she's spent some minutes studying a particularly strange growth of what looks like some kind of peony that she happens to glance up across the planter and happens to find herself directly across from a woman behind an easel.

Wysteria starts.

"Oh! Pardon me. I'm in your way, aren't I?"

"Not at all," is the light and cheerful accented reply, "today is a day for sky."

And it is, really. Bright and blue in the way that belongs to the first stirrings of autumn, the air filled with the restless energy of the seasons changing and the light breeze with the promise of brisk evenings to come. Even if it hadn't been a sky day, Wysteria still wouldn't have been in the way; Alexandrie has been watching her wander about in the garden rather than painting for the last ten minutes or so, musing about all the many reasons why a lady would be out walking prim and straight enough for her very carriage to be a preemptive riposte of any disparaging look or murmur. New here, for a surety, but unattended so soon? Perhaps a titled woman, down on her luck, or a Rifter, newly let out beyond the boundaries of the Gallows. Or simply an eccentric and willful lady such as Freddie is. (Although no-one is really such as Freddie is, the rare gem.)

Whatever the case, Alexandrie's curiosity is piqued.

"Do continue to enjoy the greenery to your heart's content," she continues, her smile bright and painstakingly painted, "I shall not protest."

The Maker is not necessarily known as vengeful. That is not central in the theology surrounding Him. Yet clearly, on this miserable damp day in the Gallows, Flint is being punished for something. There's simply no other explanation. Because after a long and frustrating day in which very little seemed to go right, when all he wanted was the refuge and respite of a bit of hot water, he comes in and the baths are already occupied. Occupied, precisely, by one person. One grinning person.

"Hello, there."

Byerly's manner is perfectly reasonable and polite. Indeed, his general attitude stays friendly as he speaks - "I've been wondering for a while. What is it, precisely, that leads a man to take a childhood dream and decide to make it into a reality?"

She is moving, fast, and then faster, and there's a reason for this. In her hand is a squirming thing - it is, in fact, a pair of rats. Why Luana is holding a pair of rats is a mystery for now - she's heading pas the girl with a pile of books, and this isn't going to end well, because she literally runs past her, skidding on a stray leaf of paper, tripping over the books (who the hell put books there?), and then barrels over her with the grace of a creature whose legs are too long for her body.

That's not the case in this form, though, so they just end up tangled, and-

"Holy mother of god, what the hell-" she shouts, just as the rats squirm, one bites, and Luana throws the other into the air, and it lands on Wisteria. "Shiiiiiiiiiiit!" Luana manages, just before the rat scampers away. Both of them.

Her relief is instantaneous and written on her face as clearly as words on the page. She'd been expecting something of a lip curl and a poised, sidelong glance for so much as deigning to speak to the woman -- all perfectly manageable with a sharp look and breezing on her way with a flick of her skirts, but it's so much nicer not to have to resort to either. It's been a fine afternoon of avoiding sour looks and tart remarks and Wysteria finds herself pleased to see the streak unbroken for the present.

She tips back her head, the shadow of her hat falling away just enough so she might get a proper look at the patch of sky in question above them. It's-- fine, she thinks. Blue mingled with steel and streaked clouds, poked through by chimneys from the surrounding Hightown estates roofs and drifting streaks of smoke from unseen Lowtown industries. There isn't very much of it, is there? Not really. Kirkwall's walls are very high indeed. But strange, how it seems more pleasant for the fact that someone has decided to put it to canvas. That's a little endearing, isn't it?

"Yes of course, I see what you mean entirely. It's a perfectly pleasant view." She squints not quite at the sun. "Though wouldn't it be better painted from a tower or a high window than down here in the gardens? It might afford a better view of more of it, I mean."

Papers: decimated. Perfectly ordered stack of books: scattered down the length of the stairs. Her lap: briefly full of girl before said girl tumbles farther in a tangled knot of knees and elbows, and then, horrifically, full of rodent.

Wysteria slaps the rat with her make do fan, makes a strangled noise that isn't quite a shriek but isn't really anything else, and is well on her feet and two steps removed by the time the rat and its liberated friend have disappeared. She's making repulsed sounds, beating the front of her skirts with the papers like she means to knock the dirt from them and--

"Just what do you think you're doing?" It's unmistakably a demand, the brisk word of a young woman well used to scolding a younger cousin or five. "Running around like a child! You'll crack your head open on a stone like that if you haven't already!"

The rats are gone, and Luana is rolling back onto her back, her hair looking huge and manelike. She stares up at Wysteria and looks at the papers, and she manages, somehow, not to scream. Instead she just snaps. "Hey, I'm not the one who put their entire library on the ground!"

She flops over, then. "At least they're gone," she sighs, and her head is on the floor. "My head is fine. How can you be wearing so many clothes?"

He makes an appointment - not via sending crystal, but by way of exchanged notes couriered by one of the less sharp-edged Walrus men. It's both impersonal and not, equal parts painstakingly professional and absentminded. It would have been easier to contact her directly; it would have taken his full attention for a a minute or more. But he doesn't show up at her doorstep expecting a conversation, and that's more generosity than he's afforded a few other members of the Inquisition. That he brings a bottle with him is downright courteous, suspiciously so or otherwise.

But that's fine. Let no one say Flint is above making himself obvious. A certain clarity can only lend to the comfort of their situation, all things considered.

He at least waits until after pouring drinks to ask the first of his questions.

"Have you decided what's to be done with the Venatori ship yet?"

Note to self: next time come at the very start of the hours when the baths are supplied with hot water. It might be loud and crowded, but it's easier to avoid being corned when he can move to the opposite wall and put a half dozen more likely conversation partner between him and-- men like this one, apparently.

He slows as he takes a seat on one of the benches at the bath's wall, boots off and rings halfway from his fingers. After the briefest pause, Flint finishes removing the bits of metal and drops them clinking into one of his boots. "I expect it depends on the dream."

'Are you thinking of something in particular?' he could ask if he felt like inviting further conversation. He peels out of his socks instead.

"When I was a boy," By says, as cheery and as wonderful as ever, "I used to play pirates. Well, in a manner of speaking. My cousins, you see, were much larger and heavier than I was, and so very often they would play pirates, whereas I was compelled to play naval officer. Dreadful business, though it has taught me to hold my breath for a very long time. In any case, though, in the end, they moved on from it - one has become an officer in the armed forces, praying for the day that our cousin Pierre kicks it so he might inherit the bannorn, another has taken interest in a shipping business. They moved on."

He stretches out a little further on the bench he's occupying. His speech has been calculatedly slow, ensuring that Flint is well enough naked that to leave would be truly embarrassing - an admission that Byerly is annoying him.

"So what would lead a man to stand, fully grown, fully formed, still waving a black flag and swearing rules don't apply to a blaggard like him?"

Archery being one of the only combat-related things Cade is technically, legally allowed to do, he does it with the same religious abandon as he does with praying.
He's not used to being addressed by most, and looks a little surprised by Wysteria's question, reddening instantly and looking like a child called on for an answer he doesn't know-- even though the question was about his aim.

"I... um. Yes," he stumbles, "the Grand Tourney."

"Perhaps," Alexandrie replies with a light unconcerned lift of her shoulders, "but then I should not be able to properly add the trees, or the trellised vines, or the lovely flowers that attracted your attention so."

She's not all that bothered by the buildings or their chimneys. In fact, she is merrily editing them all out. Her sky is wide over the gardens. Her light, extrapolated, is unhindered by the grey dour walls.

"You are new to us, yes?" she inquires, wiping her brush and setting it down to indicate she'd be pleased to begin a conversation, her head tilting slightly towards the chair to her left that she has brought along for such eventualities as visiting with the others who regularly frequent the space.

By the time he arrives at the point, Flint has shaken out his shirt and folded it with some attention, tucking it under the heavy belt removed a moment ago. The methodical requirements of undressing has been distracting enough that with his ear only half-halfheartedly turned toward the plodding story, he could almost miss the barb if it weren't so well directed from the start.

Without looking up, he chuckles. It's a low huffing sound.

"I suppose you'll have to find a pirate and ask him." Flint fixes the man with a glance then, brief and flat and little else. Technically, he is a member of the Inquisition. Technically the ship in the harbor is in service of the same and flies no flag at all, black or otherwise. Technically any rumor that's been overhead or said or traded along the Kirkwall docks or otherwise is nothing more than gossip.

He finishes undressing, folding his trousers and small clothes with similar care, then pushes up from the bench and steps down into the bath.

She makes a short noise in the back of her throat - a scoff or a laugh or an affronted little sniff - and settles finally on stamping her foot on the stair. "My clothes are none of your business. And my books were there beside me - a perfectly reasonable place to have them if it weren't for girls running all over and in every direction without paying attention to their own feet."

Honestly.

Sounding just as offended, Wysteria asks to be certain: "You're sure you haven't hit your head? That you're not bleeding. Someone will want to know if you've bled all over the front steps, you know."

Byerly's smile widens just a touch, in appreciation of the man's sharp-witted response. How confident and level and easy he is in that wit. Is he slow to anger? That would be a pity; By loves a man with a temper, a man he can move this way and that as easily as a broken horse...Though, if he's being honest with himself, perhaps he actually loves a slow-tempered man even more. He adores a challenge. The best sort of steed is the one you break yourself.

Or, well, that's what he's heard, at least. He's certainly never done anything like horse-training. Maker, could you imagine? So sweaty.

"You don't know any?" By shifts easily to this new conversational ground. He knows the insult has been comprehended; he doesn't need to belabor the point. "You come from Nascere, after all. They say the men there are wicked and the women worse." He sighs, pressing his hand to his heart and rolling his eyes towards the ceiling in an exaggerated simulacrum of mourning. "Would that I could have seen the place before its demise."

"It sounds like you know more about it than I do. Last I heard, there was still fighting to be had on the island."

You know what Nascere has precious little of, though? Pipes with eated water being run through them. The company can't be helped, but the pools are better than a basin of salt water with its residual itching brine or a lukewarm standing bath where half his everything sits above the waterline. Here he can and does sink low enough on the submerged ledge to cover pockmarked scars, an aching knee, some pinched muscle or another.

"If you're looking for directions, any Tevene chartbook can tell you the right latitudes." The beard gets a thorough scrub. "If it were me, I'd stick with something dated no later than 8:60. The depths were largely revised when the Qunari landed Seheron."

"I might do that," he responds, arching an eyebrow. He moves his hands through the water, making little eddies. "I'm a grand sailor myself, you know. Phenomenally talented. Perhaps I'll commandeer someone's pleasure yacht. Take it to Nascere. I think I'd make a fine pirate king."

He sprawls out further, then, stretching out far enough that he can set his ankle on the ledge of the bath.

"Don't you think? I'm terribly dashing."

"I'm sure you'll do just fine," he says through his fingers without much of a second glance in the man's direction. "Though if you're any sailor, the Inquisition must hate to lose you. I understand there's a ship to be crewed."

You can put that leg down, Byerly. You'll pull something if you're not careful.

"Mmmmaybe," he sighs, and sinks down a little further, stretching his leg out even a bit more. Extreme flexibility is one of his many, many incredible skills.

"I don't do terribly well with being ordered about, though. When I say I'm a sailor, what I mean is I'm unparalleled in my ability to handle a catamaran. Not so much...swabbing, dying of thirst and hunger abovedecks, being whipped by a tyrant for my inability to hop-to-it fast enough. You know how it is, I'm sure. I suppose you must have come up being whipped yourself, no?"

Skyhold wrote. Not that their orders don't come from there but this one is enough that Araceli's lost track of the time going over it, a document that's not hurriedly stuffed back in the drawer when Flint arrives because that smacks of guilt or suspicion but shoved in there with something not unlike disgust. Last time she was out that way she finally saw a cetus and it tried to eat de Foncé.

From a large glass bowl on the desk several black arms reach out imperious and demanding. The remains of a wooden ship mostly crushed, the sails billowing sadly with the jostling of the body as it starts to haul itself up and out--

"Fernando enough. Ignore him." Araceli shifts the bowl to keep Flint out of the firing line, judges the distance, then moves it another inch. The range judged. "Of people in this project only three of us have the experience to do it: you, myself, and Charles. Everyone else is some level of sailor or swimmer but that's it. And you've the Walrus. Although I can hear it: either the rifter leader takes the ship or she gives it to a pirate out of Nascere barely arrived, I can sell it but this place falls over itself to shine up all sorts as if it doesn't know how the world works."

Or rather it doesn't want to know. Who wants to know what goes into the sausage after all?

"Oh, how marvelous! At least, I assume it is. One doesn't exactly go putting the name 'Grand' in a thing unless it's meant to live up to it, I suppose." Tipping her head to keep the broad brim of her hat between her face at the sun so she can look at him properly, she bowls on despite any and all hesitation her poor target might have about being interrogated.

"Did you do well there? You really must tell be everything."

[open]

[FLINT]

[WYSTERIA]

Afternoon Lessons

360 No Scope

Hightown Gardens (for lexie)

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baths

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naval presence office (for araceli)

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