creeping while you're sleeping

[notched]

WHO: Anna and Wysteria
WHAT: Lurkin'
WHEN: November
WHERE: Literally outside your window.

She has been checking on Wysteria regularly. It wasn't any particular concern for her, she didn't think the girl was friendless nor totally helpless. It was simply a habit, the people and faces she knew became a pattern to Anna, so she went to those places observed those people in a kind of ritual. Clambering all over the Gallows in the dark, watching, learning as if the fort's activities might at some point make sense to her that way the Hunt had after the many deaths and retreads.

She's sitting outside of Wysteria's window now, her leg swinging on a ledge.

This time, she knocks on it and waits.

Comments

[heirring]

What a fundamentally terrifying thing to hear through your window in the middle of the night. --Well, no. Not as terrible as something like 'An enemy and I'm coming through this window whether you like it or not', but still. Maybe there's just no such thing as an unexpected whisper in the dark that's comforting.

Wysteria sits for a long, terrified moment considering the window and the dark shape of the figure beyond it. She has her blanket clutched against herself, drawn so high it's almost touching her chin. Does she recognize that voice? She doesn't know. It's not enough words. Her ear is bad. Her mind might be playing tricks on her. Someone might be deceiving her--

"Where--" Oh, that's hardly more than a croak of fear. She raises her voice to be hear through the window. "Where did we meet, friend?"

Better safe than sorry.

[notched]

"Falling through a hole in the world," she answers with a total lack of whimsy. After being nested into a dream within a dream within a nightmare, such a thing really felt banal and obvious. "You spilled birds from your traveler's case, and twisted your ankle."

She leaves out the part about the being a terror in death-stinking leathers tearing about terror demons with a holy-imbued serrated whip and a canister of fire. Those didn't really seem like the sort of thing one should jog a civilian's memory with. They were better off forgetting. That was their luxury.

"But that healed up fine."

She knows. She's been lurkin'.

[heirring]

Regardless what the figure in the window means to remind her of, Wysteria thinks immediately on demons anyway. You see, she's been reading quite a lot about them recently, and there's nothing quite like waking up in the middle of the night to a shadow in your (very high up, actually) window whispering things about knowing you from when you fell into the world surrounded by monster to make a person jump to the wrong conclusion entirely.

Demons can take all kinds of forms, can't they? Maybe one had followed them back to Kirkwall and has been watching them - watching her - all this time. If your enemies come for you-- Byerly had said and this is very strictly not what he'd meant at all, but Wysteria thinks of that too as she reaches behind her ear and plucks her pen from it. The point of it is probably the sharpest thing she owns.

"It did. Faster than I thought it might." She could rise from her bed and go to the window to get a better look at the figure there, but... "--Did we speak then? In the forest. You'll have to forgive me; there have been so many new faces and voices, you know."

[notched]

"Aye," Anna agrees lightly. There's something charming in Wysteria's fear. It's sensible, reassuringly sensible, and reminds her of women crying in their hovels: all you do is bring trouble. The guilt of those words had been as numbing as honey, making it all the easier to simply carry on with her troublesome pursuits. It was her fault. All she brought was trouble.

"You told me you were a heavy sleeper, but you seem alert enough."

Was that a joke. She's not smiling as she leans forward to make herself more visible to the window, but there is at least something pleasant in her dark expressive eyes.

[heirring]

Oh. The woman in the dark old coat. The details and the slightly clearer smudge of her face through the window make that clear enough.

The realization should, she thinks, be soothing to the nerves. But is it really? She doesn't really know anything at all about most of those people she'd met that day.

Oh stop being ridiculous, you don't know much of anything about anyone and when has that stopped you?

Which is emphatically true, but only now in the dark and quiet with a veritable stranger on the far side of the glass does she think that maybe she ought to reconsider such bad habits.

But at least she doesn't hesitate to raise her voice to speak properly now. And she might as well lower the blankets away from her chin while she's at it.

"Of course. The rifter woman. Er-- did we introduce ourselves? I really don't recall names very well at all, and I think I may have skipped past them entirely. Did I say mine is Wysteria?"

[notched]

"I wouldn't have mentioned it." It was still an oddity to return to addressing herself by her name. She was just 'hunter' to everyone, even Gehrman, even the doll. "My name is Anna."

While creeping outside the young lady's window is precisely the right time to introduce yourself after weeks of stalking her. Anna has the most impeccable social graces.

"Do you want to talk? Or would you rather sleep."

Why isn't talking in the daylight an option?

[heirring]

"Talking is fine." She says it automatically, then silently curses herself. Well, no. Talking is fine, it's only strange to do it through a window in the middle of the night.

"Though wouldn't it be more comfortable if you were to come inside, Anna?" Wysteria, you've just invited the woman inside your room in the middle of the night. That seems potentially ill-advised, doesn't it? A gentle modification then: "Or if we were to have a pleasant conversation over breakfast in the morning, perhaps? That sounds rather nice indeed."

[notched]

She almost points out that Wysteria really didn't answer what was a straightforward question. Most people just told her to fuck off because she was a hunter. Most people didn't invite her in because she smelled like death and was dripping with blood and gore. She isn't currently, although that coat of hers will always smell like the man who burned alive in it. She searches for the words, and remembers Wysteria laughing when she had used 'posh'.

"Another woman... invited me to tea," she finds herself musing without meaning to do so aloud. "Hunters are... a rough lot."

She's only hinted at what is in her mind. That proper things like teas and breakfasts with gal pals make her head spin with confusion.