[OPEN] there is a light that i leave on

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria, Marcoulf, Flint and OPEN
WHAT: Open post/catch-all/buries myself in top levels
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: Kirkwall and misc
NOTES: Prose or brackets are a-okay. Feel free to hit me up on DM or discord if you want something specific that isn't here. Just posting a wildcard and winging it is awesome too.

Comments

FLINT

[katabasis]

Ferry Slip [open]

[katabasis]

[It's full dark and long since the last ferry from the Kirkwall docks to the Gallows has loosed its moorings, but there's a still light burning here: a lantern perched at once on the slip's farthest anchor posts against the impenetrable black of an otherwise overcast, starless evening. There's a man in the light's pool at well, hand resting with his palm across the pommel of a belt knife but idly so - wrist easy, elbow loose, as mild about having a dagger at his fingertips as is reasonable when occupying a strip of the docks in the middle of the night.

It's clear from the direction of his attention that he's waiting for something to come creeping out of the harbor from across the pitch dark water with its running, pressing tide and dense blanket of fog. It's also abundantly clear that he isn't nearly so impaired as being out on the ferry slip alone in the middle of the night might otherwise indicate. The creak of footsteps on the dock draws his ear; Flint fixes whoever's approaching out of the mottled night with a keen eye.]

You've missed the last boat.

[shri]

Piss and blood.

[ Is the carefully pronounced, upper crust, all King's English, hiss of a curse as she realises the truth of it. Grouched up from behind her drawn veil ( even at this hour ), arms full of a wrapped bundle of cloth, rich from the look of it, though it is no more than a glimpse. The material that holds it is plain, allowing no more than the brief shine of gold to play in the half-light, bouncing about in moonlight a dull shine.

It's then she realises the echo of the voice, the familiarity of the shape that it calls from. Ah, well, that was a surprise, but perhaps not. Not if the stories were true about the man called Captain Flint. A man half made of the sea.

Oh, stop it, Manu, you are no girl listening to travellers stories. Fancifulness belonged to other women. ] - I meet you strange places, Captain Flint.

[katabasis]

[It's the Inquisition's slip; it follows that any figure on it even at this hour would be on the self same roster. But the odds of finding familiar - even if it's just barely - company out here in the slightly too humid, slightly too still darkness are bad enough yet that a voice he recognizes makes for a mostly pleasant surprise.

It helps that Lakshmi had found a way to be largely inoffensive the last time they were in a room together.]

Finding a sailor on a dock? Madame, you have an unusual definition of 'strange places.'

[Nevermind the dead of night. He motions with one hand toward the packet in her arms then; it isn't a question so much as it is an offer to temporarily relieve her of it.]

[shri]

Should a Captain not be on his ship, this time of night?

[ She steps closer, the slight chime of her heel on the ground. The faint clatter of anklets that are muffled in the thick weight of night.

Though - she considers it, a moment, watching his offer. Well, there was a start at least. Finding something beyond his and Kitty's talking, and her silence to their discussion she supposes this was as good as place as any to begin it. Getting both hands underneath the bundle, she gently places it in his hand, being mindful not to touch him in the process thereof. No closer than was proper, not more toward than was immediately required and respectful as she steps away.

It is a minor relief, to stretch out her arms. Prickled with sweat from her walk in the sticky night air, her hand lifts to press against the back of her neck, over her veil. ] Careful, it is my prize.

[katabasis]

[She's a funny thing, isn't she? All smoke and fire cut with enough doting affection to be practically maternal (he might have no opinion at all on the bulk of the chatter over the sending crystal, but at this rate it would take a quicker hand than his to quiet it before learning knowing Lakshmi Bai's doddering opinions on marriage and fabrics and Maker knows what else). Nevermind that she's bangled with enough gold to clink in the dark, but apparently doesn't mind having her hands full at night walking alone in Kirkwall. It might risk reminding him of someone he once knew - a not unkind comparison for Lakshmi, though maybe a simplified one for the other woman in question -, were she just slightly more one thing or less the other. The balance isn't right, which is good. The woman at his elbow now would suffer under a direct comparison.

He takes the packet and tucks it respectfully under one arm. There's enough heft there that it requires the support of his hip as well.]

I find a Captain can usually do what he pleases. You'll need a way back to your rooms, though; I hear they do a headcount in the Gallows these days. [It's hard to say in the shifting lantern light and the darkness that grapples with its edge, but there might be a flicker of sly humor in the look he gives her.] You wouldn't want to alarm anyone.

[rathercommon]

Ugh.

[ Kitty had known she was running that risk, but the tavern-keep had insisted she stay long enough to finish washing up, even as she'd told him she had someplace to be. How annoying. Now she's stuck here the entire night, not even a book to occupy her time, and tomorrow she'll be drowsy as anything because one simply cannot sleep well in the stables. ]

Last time I work a shift at The Frog and Cock. [ Then she turns to take in Flint, studying his face, trying to determine his mood. ] Did you miss the boat, too, Captain Flint, or is it your intent to be here?

[katabasis]

[It's difficult to mark in the flickering lamp light, the glow all hazy and shifting from the thick hanging fog, but he seems quiet there in the dark - occupied certainly, but not being actively sharpened by whatever's on his mind. He certainly doesn't seem bothered by her arrival.]

Different boat. I haven't missed mine. [He raises his eyebrows at her.] Hope you were paid in coin instead of a hot meal; I hear it's easier to hire a dinghy with the first one.

[rathercommon]

[ A little snort. ]

You ever been to the Frog and Cock? They ought to be paying their customers to eat there, not the other way around. Believe me, I'd not be there for anything less than gold.

[ And information, to be fair. It's a tavern that pulls, sometimes, Tevinter ex-pats. Good for eavesdropping on, good for learning about their mutual enemy to the north. But their hot water pastry is thick as her wrist, and it's like they've never even heard of salt. ]

Don't suppose your boat's going to the Gallows?

for anders;

[katabasis]

The back room of The Boar & The Bat is in the process of being vacated. Papers are being collected, charts re-rolled, books stacked and packed into a waiting and much worn sea trunk by the man who has occupied this back table turned office of business these many weeks.

--Not that Flint's in any particular hurry to get it done within the hour. Just as there have been benefits to being seen keeping the back room, there can be ones for being noticed leaving it. If they're meant to be part of the Inquisition, he can't very well keep doing business of out the back of a Kirkwall dock tavern. Best to do the thing properly at this juncture.

Besides, taking his time about transferring his things leaves plenty of opportunity for anyone intending some last minute bit of business removed strictly from under the shadow of the Inquisition's manner to find their way to him. Best to make room for such a thing if it can be allowed.

[justice_is_blond]

He's not out in these taverns very often. It's not like the chance of being recognized in the city itself is exactly low despite how he nearly always wears his Grey Warden robes so they're looking at the symbol more than his face, but there's a certain amount of control in those streets. Out here? Anyone could sail in, recognize him, freak out, and then mob's your uncle.

A contact had come in, however, so his usual avoidance has been abandoned. As has the usual robes. Anders is in very loose trousers with a tunic over them, and a hood over that. He feels naked without his staff, but there's nothing for it. At least now he can head out... until he catches sight of the man packing up through an open door and pauses. That's one of the pirates who have joined with the Inquisition, he's nearly certain. Steel? No, another one's got a metal name, Silver something. He frowns as he slowly walks over - the name isn't coming to him.

"You're... one of the captains, aren't you?" His voice is on the more quiet side. The tavern itself may be loud enough, but sometimes Anders remembers to mitigate risks.

[katabasis]

The back room only just warrants the name and open as it is, in the process of shifting things out of it and with no Walrus man left posted at the door, it's an easy enough approach. Flint's sorting through papers, putting them into stacks and rolling them into irregular cylinders as Anders approaches. He binds one with string, gives Anders no more than a cursory glance, and then finishes winding the cord about the packet.

"Flint. Of the Walrus. She's the galleon at the east end of the harbor with the stern carving." Without missing a beat: "What do you want?"

He could be anyone - Flint's bet is Inquisition, given the phrasing, but there's more than its stock roving these parts of the Kirkwall docks. Sailors and merchants and spies and thieves and poor bastards trying to make an extra coin or two of which he's made a reputation of being fairly free with for the right service. Make a habit of paying for little bits of intelligence and the man before him now could be literally anyone.

[justice_is_blond]

That's confirmation. Anders takes a breath, knowing this is a risk. Some pirates have been fine with him. Some pirates have even been fine with him, and that reminds him how much he misses Isabela. But that's neither here nor there.

"Flint." He probably looks like he's a bit slow, with the pausing and hiding his face. Or maybe he just looks really suspicious. That's likely the truth of it. "How do you feel about mages, Flint?"

At least the man hadn't asked his name. Yet. Though that doesn't rule out Flint hearing him on the crystals and hearing him called by it. "Particularly mages seeking a lasting freedom?"

for gwen;

[katabasis]

If the man's work with the Naval Presence office is any indication, this should be a task better suited to the likes of Charles Vane. Swimming lessons, putting children into rigging, teaching a half dozen useless parties knots and caulking and Maker knows what else - let no one say Charles Vane hasn't done his part to make himself useful to the Inquisition and it's effort to turn willing hands into seamen. It's largely nonsense, but maybe it looks good to the people Araceli writes her reports to. Written down, it probably makes at least one of the men who'd come from Nascere look reputable.

This has nothing much at all to do with being reputable though, on paper or otherwise, which is why it's Flint casting the skiff from the dock - kicking the bow of the little boat out and stepping aboard in the same smooth motion. Stepping down over the coaming as the skiff's nose turns slowly out from the wind, gathering tiller and sheet in hand, he tells Gwen: "Mind your head," just as the sail catches wind and the boom casts gently from its centerline. At once, the little boat - borrowed for the day with a few coins in the right waiting palm - leans to windward and cuts, zigzagging, out of the dock channel and away into the harbor.

The moment they have some real wind for their use, Flint alters course - cutting a line directly under the shadow of one of Kirkwall harbor's horrible chains and away, running East with every intention of running tight along the coast. As far as sailing lessons go, it's a sensible enough course - keeping close to the shore so as to avoid the real weather that runs through the Waking Sea even a few fathoms from it -, but he's less interested in the safety of the shoreline or in teaching her as he is in what else the rocky cliff faces might have to offer them.

Flint passes up spyglass to go with the chart and pencil he'd supplied Gwen with earlier. If they're meant to be charting what nearby caves can be found, she'll need all three.

hi i straight up fucking forgot to tag this my bad

[elegiaque]

Having spent more than ten minutes in James Flint's company, Gwenaëlle hadn't particularly been anticipating a straightforward sailing lesson alone—whether she would think of Vane first as an alternative or not, certainly there are people she'd think of before Flint. Which doesn't mean it isn't an opportunity to learn, just that it might be an opportunity to learn more.

Spyglass, chart and pencil in hand—

there are more conversations to be had than just about sailing or, indeed, nearby caves, too.

“Do you know much about elven myths?” seems like sort of an odd question, but there is a reason she's asking him and not another.

you're forgiven because it took me 600 year to tag it back

[katabasis]

"Some," he says, pulling in the sheet and shortening sail as they hack their way as close to the wind as the rig is able to go. "Though I wouldn't claim encyclopedic knowledge. This might surprise you, but they're not easy texts to find up North."

That much is, for better or worse, clearly a joke - clipped and dry in counterpoint to the sea spray flecking over the skiff's combing, pitched high by the boat's bow and snatched back by the breeze.

"Why?"

[elegiaque]

Whatever it says about Flint in making the joke, it cannot be ignored that Gwenaëlle laughs, short and sharp. She braces herself in the boat with her tools, but half her mind is still somewhere else, turning this problem over again and again—

“I met one, recently.” Unimpressive, by her tone. Not an experience she's eager to repeat, either, for various reasons. “It struck me that the only thing stopping her from benefiting from generations of Dalish brought up to revere her memory seems to be inclination. A decided lack of give a fuck.”

Fair enough; Gwenaëlle likewise generally does not give a fuck about the Dalish.

However.

“But if one ancient mage could find her way through the eons, having set herself up as a god...and they had an entire pantheon, supposedly dead or locked away or, whatever, but, she's supposed to have been dead, too.”

Who's to say where the rest are? Or what they might be doing? How any of them might intend to benefit from the chaos of Corypheus's rise, with a population of elves ripe for plucking.

for vane;

[katabasis]

The sea chest, filled with its papers and spare shirt and and charts and books, is deposited in the cabin of the Walrus with a definitive THUMP. It's been living these many weeks in the back room of a dockside tavern, masquerading as something of a beachfront encampment where business fit for neither the Inquisition's attention or for carrying out on the deck of a ship might be done. But the chest is back here now, taking up precious space in the aft cabin, and it's owner has come with it.

Not that Flint hasn't been around - off and on the ship, there and gone -, but he hasn't been here in the same capacity as is quickly evident he plans to be going forward. Which means, eventually, a conversation is inevitable. This one happens over drinks.

"I imagine your new role will keep you busy," Flint says, pouring himself a glass. He passes the bottle across the table to Vane. "Have you considered taking a room in the Gallows?"

[sclavus]

Vane knew, really, that Flint wouldn't let him stay in his captain's cabin forever. Does that make him any more willing to scoot along? Suuuure doesn't.

Though, in truth, Charles could pass out on top of the cargo crates in the middle of the pier and still be content, so it isn't as if losing the comfort of the Walrus's accommodations is the end of the world. Just an annoyance he'd rather not deal with, among many other annoyances Kirkwall brings along with it. But, one thing that does tend to soothe those is the drink Flint's pouring out, sliding the bottle across the table to him. Snatching it up by the neck of the bottle, Charles foregoes the glass to drink straight from the bottle, which really ought to be a surprise to no one at this point. You've known him long enough, Flint, if you didn't want him drinking from the bottle, don't give him the entire bottle.

"Considered. Decided against." Considered for all of about ten seconds before he slapped down a big 'fuck nah', and moved on with his life. He's already gainfully employed and resident of a city, Charles has no interest in taking up a quaint little room to chain himself to Kirkwall and the Inquisition even further. "Araceli does the paperwork. Nothing she needs me for requires being in the Gallows long."

[katabasis]

So much for any pretense of delicacy then. --Which is more or less as expected as the uselessness of the second cup he'd had brought along with the bottle, but hope springs goddamn eternal.

"I'm sure Bonaventura finds that riveting." The paperwork. But that answers at least one of his half dozen questions as to how Vane is managing any part of his new assignment: he isn't. That picture of the arrangement strings together more willingly than any version of events that involves Charles Vane behind a desk.

(Flint has, pointedly and perhaps uncharacteristically, made no complaints at all regarding the promotion - if it can even be called that. He'd mentioned the necessity of keeping the man busy and saddling him with a title and Maker knows what else is certainly one way to go about it.)

"A room in the city, then? Or have the repairs on the Tevene ship's cabin been completed?"

[sclavus]

James Bethany McGraw Hamilton Flint, did you literally just speak the words 'a room in the city' to him with a straight face? He should stab you just for that. That is the look he is being given right now over the rim of this bottle. Who do you think he is, someone who owns tea cups and books and shit for fun?

There it is again, though. Finding places to stay that aren't here, and Vane narrows his eyes while taking another swig from the bottle in his hand. Because Vane gets what this pushing about looking for places to settle in and the demands of his new position is about, and because Flint isn't just saying it, this means Vane is going to be a petulant little tit about it.

"No. Cabin's still being fixed." That's... sort of not really true. It's livable at the moment, and maybe there's a split board or a broken window or a spot of chipped paint that needs tending to, but that is not the point here. The point is being a bitch to Flint. And clearly he's not interested in a room in the city.

As for the paperwork, honestly, he's only barely literate on a good, sober day. They would be months behind if he was really expected to be the one getting all of that done. But give him technical work and manual labor, and he'll have things in such order the Tevene naval admiral would weep. "She's been doing it by herself up 'til now. All I'm changing is taking out the other chores."

for silver;

[katabasis]

The boat is borrowed, as is all its kit, though he doesn't expect the latter to get much use at all except as a reason for taking the skiff out in the first place. Where've they gone so early in the morning? Out on the water. What fucking for? Fishing. Which is irregular and stupid enough to end all conversation and gives them every reason to slip out under sail in the chilly predawn gray, letting the tide suck the boat out and run it down the coast until the jagged shape of the Gallows and the black cliff faces collapse into a shared anonymous smudge.

It's cold, the breeze sharp, the boat's side chased by bitter foaming sea. Flint wears his coat collar high about his neck, gloves on his hands, an ugly hat pulled low. The sawing cut of the Harvestmere air and the tang of the salt sea on it, the early hour mingling with the fish stench sloshing in the boat's bilge reminds him strongly and unexpectedly of being a boy - the steel grey color of mornings of a grandfather's trade, of the stones of a beach on some distant shore where the boats had been run out over the rocks on their flat hulls and into the surf, of dark fish pulled in by gillnet - so that for a time they talk of nothing at all, much less the business he'd planned for.

When he does speak, he's mild and the conversation absent. "I learned to sail on a boat like this," he says as he sheets in the sail and cuts harder up into the wind, a grin flashing there gone again for how the skiff leans gamely over into it.

i'm still distraught about this

[hornswoggle]

As far as pretenses for secrecy go, fishing suits John just fine. He expects to be as dismal at it now as he has been since he landed aboard the Walrus. Unlike his cooking, this is one area that has not improved with time and instruction of varying patience. But there's no one to overhear them. That's important. John's not terribly worried about being spied upon yet; they haven't made quite enough of an impression to warrant that kind of attention. But Flint's caution isn't unwarranted. It wouldn't take very much for them to catch the wrong person's eye and overturn the image they'd been carefully cultivating.

Though as a rule, he'd like future private discussions to be held somewhere warm.

There's a moment where Flint looks briefly happy. John notes that, feels some echo of pleasure that Flint's enjoying himself, before realizing he has very little idea of what to say. He has no rejoinder to offer. What part of John's childhood could be measured against the picture Flint is invoking?

"Good thing one of us did," is John's contribution, likely dampening the sentiment somewhat. "That makes it all the more likely we make it back before they send someone out after the boat."

And the chances of John being able to navigate the sea in this boat without assistance are absolutely zero.

"Maybe next time we should be seeing about laying our hands on a spare room. Somewhere very noisy."

Ideally somewhere with cheap drinks and lots of drunk idiots. But that's a problem for next time, one that John can keep working on in the meantime.

regrets. I have them.

[katabasis]

The way certain things glance off Silver as a current around a stone could bother him. But he's decided it won't, so it doesn't. Or that it matters less given time; even rocks find themselves shaped by water. Instead Flint gives him a look with some stitch of wry humor living behind it. He looses the mainsheet, an an instictive adjustment for the gust of wind which catches the skiff a moment later - propelling it forward over the running sea rather than dashing it leeward.

"If you have a complaint, you're free to voice it."

you brought this upon yourself

[hornswoggle]

John is an absence. It's served him well for many years. Adapting comes easier to him than it does to other people; it's easier to shape himself into something pleasing when there's so little baggage to maneuver. It's made it easier to grow into his new role, and fit himself into the type of man at home in this boat.

It helps to have a leg severed at the knee. It left him fewer options to set against the blank space where a history should dwell.

But Flint is a man with many options. John's watched him balance them. John's helped him weight the scales. He rubs his hands together in an exaggerated expression of discomfort, as if to underscore his point before he's even spoken.

"Do I need to tell you it's cold?" John asks. "Here I thought we'd spend some time in the lap of luxury if we made ourselves useful to the Inquisition."

Not that they'd been all that useful just yet. Even John can't frame their minor participation in the Minrathous debacle as a resounding success.