open | tracks will fade in the snow

[libratus]

WHO: Ilias Fabria + YOU
WHAT: Open post + catch-all for the month
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: Around the Gallows, mostly
NOTES: Feel free to toss your own starter at this if you'd rather!

labs / infirmary;

[ A Mortalitasi walks into the Gallows. There ought to be a punch line, is what he thinks while he does it. Clio would have given it a good punch line. He would have written her a letter, Today I sailed up the Waking Sea in a cabin the size of Grandmother's pantry, sick as you after that custard, and when I landed, they put me on another boat. "You must have been dying to get there." "Sounds like the perfect place to hang around." Something better. Cleverer. The rafters are quite high.

When Ilias reaches the laboratory space that is to be his new home, he still has a touch of pallor, grey to match his robes. But steady hands pull vial and jar from a travel chest, rod and hook, placing each one precisely in its place. The space is different. The people will be different. The work, too. But he can find ways to make himself useful here. It's why he'd picked the Inquisition — a safer place for him today than Nevarra City, even his Grandmother could not argue with that, but not a safe place. Not anyone's gilded cage.

Still, he'll need the tools for it. A bedroll, in case of late nights, is the last thing he pulls from the chest, but not the last thing he needs.

So it's to the infirmary next, by pale lamplight and cautious step. It's late, perhaps a little later than he ought to be poking around a building he hasn't specifically been granted access to, but his nosing is restrained— ]

Excuse me. [ —And his sheepishness is genuine, upon discovering he's less alone than he'd hoped. ] I meant no intrusion.

library;

[ He isn't here to judge the Gallows' library. Truly, he isn't. It's important to understand what one has to work with. The Necropolis would be an unfair comparison, he'd known that before he stepped through the doors, but even Nevarra City's Circle had its specialities. Its particular benefactors. The Gallows, he assumes, will have the same.

Fewer benefactors, he gathers rather quickly.

Still, Ilias cranes his neck to scan the shelves, top to bottom. Careful fingers ghost across the exposed spines, but it's his face that betrays his mind. A considering hover of the eyes over Beyond the Veil. A warm cringe at Enchanter van Heigl's A Life Among the Dead. A gentle raise of the brows at Our Honoured Dead: A Guide to the Mortalitasi Order.

Well. It's better than nothing. ]

kitchens;

[ It'd been late when he'd started; by the time Ilias finds his way to the mage tower's kitchens, it's well into the small hours, the time of night when quiet beings to take on a certain density, a heaviness in the dark. There's a bed somewhere he's not in, a room whose walls and ceilings he's not eager to get to know just yet. Instead, he has a candle burning down at his right side, a cup of tea at his left getting bitter and cold.

In front of him are just papers — pamphlets, Inquisition briefings, the things every new recruit should know about the state of the world, and a few about its future. A battle they know is coming and can't stop. His breath slows, just so. Knuckles tap-tap against the surface of the table like a count-down before he pulls away, abandoning the lot of it. Not forever, just— he could use a smoke. Fresh air. Stretch his legs. Something.

(Maybe he should have picked the cage.) ]

Comments

kitchens;

[aestivation]

Casimir doesn't keep to meal times.

Eating is mechanical, mundane; disquieting. It puts others off their own breakfasts, and if he's never quite intuited why, he's learned to plan around it.

It's not a ghost's face that presents itself at the doorway. Not quite. Casimir pauses mid-step, glowstone gleaming faint within his fist. There's always someone up late, but even so —

He hesitates. Ten years (more?) is a long time to recollect a face grown fuller, distant. Ten years, but not so different as that.

"I apologize to interrupt," It carries the pattern of something learned from a book. It carries no tone at all. "May I assist you?"

[libratus]

"No, please," is an automatic accommodation, a warm reflex grown out of familiarity with the question, and with the even tone that asks it. Of course there would be Tranquil here. Do not trouble yourself, is what comes next.

Only it doesn't. The cool light catches on brow and jaw, a pair of eyes he knows the shape of in late nights, and for a split second he looks grateful to see a familiar face.

And then-- less so. The brand stands out like a smudge on a painting, out of place. The room feels very large.

"Casimir?" is quiet.

[aestivation]

Without relief,

"Ilias."

A name pulled from deep water, some still interior pool. People move in and out of view: You think of them less, you think of them not at all.

It's routine to smile now. It sits at strange angle, placidly detached from his gaze. He might drop it for another, but there's too little to navigate upon here; Ilias' memory occluded long before the brand. You speak to people less, you speak of them not at all.

He sits, though — and that's an older reflex. Doesn't look to the papers (nothing he hasn't seen before), instead finds his eyes, unblinking. The switch to Nevarran is automatic.

"Have you just arrived?"

[libratus]

Ilias sinks back into his own seat more slowly, unmoored. Ten— thirteen years ago is his cousin's laughter, always too loud and too bright. It's Leander's breath burning against his ear. It's questions that seemed vital and brave to ask instead of sickeningly dangerous, moments he's gone back over again and again and again in his mind so many times they've twisted their shape, contorted into something new. In this place he's tread to dust, Casimir had been barely a glimmer on the periphery, out of focus — but now, sharp. Present. So still.

"This evening," he answers, like all that's happened is the passage of time. Like Casimir's smile reaches his eyes. He should let it be, he knows he should let it be.

"—I'd heard you were Harrowed."

Heard, and checked it off in his mind. One more tie cleanly severed. One less loss to dread. One more excuse to continue as he was. Not this.

[aestivation]

“Yes,” He’s aware it was a subject of discussion — less, charitably, debate. If he’s aware too of where that unspoken question leads (a desert and a dozen inked books), he doesn’t give any sign. “I’d not heard from you at all.”

Of, a little more, less than he might. Rumour always flowed more readily out of the Circle than into it; after a while there’d been no purpose to trying. Casimir had always wanted to know what refuses to be known, but everyone has priorities. Even now:

“You came for the Necropolis?”

Rather, last year’s incident within. What else would draw him out? Casimir doesn’t travel, didn’t then, but he knows enough of what happened. A little more, a little less than he might.

[libratus]

Funny how words don't need solid form to pierce flesh; those ones slide past his rib cage easy as anything. Ilias swallows them down, something harsh in the forcing, because it seems so fucking selfish to not be able to control what he's feeling right now. Letters unanswered. Unopened. Left for months in side table drawers where his teacher had tucked them, For when you're ready, only he hadn't ever been.

Ten years ago, an apology might have been enough. An answer. Anything. Now, it feels cheap, unearned. A thumb turns at his temple instead. They're talking about the Necropolis. They're not talking about so much else.

"Not only that." It's on his mind, but not at the top of the list, even before Casimir had walked into the room. "I came to join the Inquisition. To help, I hope, with research or wherever else I can be of use."

"You are assisting as well?"

[aestivation]

"I assist the Provost."

It's not a correction (the Inquisition); it's more of one than there's been cause to test. There are others here who pull that same strange tangle, who glimpse the word as it breaks into syllables: Loyalty.

There are others — and if gratitude were any easier to imitate, he'd try, recollects how terrible it was once to be alone — but they're not his function. The Inquisition isn't.

Casimir palms the stone down, ghosting the table into dim blue light. It requires focus to chart the shape of a jaw, the heaviness of a brow, but he's had practice. Kostos speaks to him when necessary, Nell doesn't speak at all. And Myrobalan,

"I don't intend to disturb you." He hasn't thought to lower his voice, to try and alter the pitch. "I'm aware that it can be difficult."

Maybe that's progress. That he's aware.

"But if you came to help, we might both try."

crawls back to finish this tag 10 years later

[libratus]

How strange it is, to hear those words separated entirely from the emotions that usually accompany them. How strange it must be, to match one with the other again once severed. And yet, here is Casimir making the attempt.

"I would like that." Ilias gives a shaky exhale; a smile that is more a wretched gratitude than any measure of happiness. "I don't imagine it's only me, that it is difficult for."

Just him who's demonstrating poor command of his face. How much simpler for either of them, to continue not to think of the other.

"Stay," he says, pushing himself from the table. "I'll make more tea."

Maybe courtesy can be a place to start.