faderift | [closed] when im on the road i see stuff going by

She has, for the record, never in her life felt any draw to the battle field. It's true that even magicians of her rank and ability sometimes find themselves operating in unglamorous positions fo support on the Empire's most distant shores, but it's very rare indeed for a sixth rate magician (much less one of the fairer sex) to see anything part of war that much resembles battle even during their commissioned years. At home, Wysteria had decided she wouldn't enjoy her two years as a field office secretary or messenger, but that she would survive the boredom and return home with her references and service history and simply be on her way. In Kalvad, there is no place for her on the combat lines and frankly she has never minded that very specific limitation.

Only an absolute fool would have much ambition to be out there getting themselves killed, she had thought, and been quite satisfied with that conclusion even here in Thedas. Besides, what good would she be there really? She doesn't know the first thing about treating wounds or killing anything that doesn't have antlers or feathers. No, the Gallows was plenty good for her and it isn't as if the endless paperwork to be sorted stops simply because the Inquisition's fighting force leaves Kirkwall.

That had been the plan anyway. And then she'd found Alexandrie gone, off along with the rest of the Inquisition's force, and at once staying behind had been fundamentally untenable. She has prepared her speech for when she gets there - it involves quite a few What in spirits name are you thinking?. What she has not managed is to secure the damaged latch on her traveling case very well. As she's hurrying down one of the Gallows' staircases the day after the Inquisition's forces have left Kirwall, it pops open and spills all its contents at the feet of the man coming in the opposite direction. A change of clothes, a blanket stripped from her bed, a satchel of coins and a strange collection of miscellaneous objects - sticks and twine and vials of water that smash on the stairs - scatter in every direction.

"Oh! Damn it all! I'm so sorry, Messere!"

Edited 2018-11-24 00:40 (UTC)

In the days leading up to the march on Ghislain, and especially this, the day after the soldiers have gone, Samson has been struggling with a fool's inner turmoil. He should be out there, on the fields, the same as the rest of them. Doing something, at least, if not alongside his own men—but are they his men anymore? Would they tear him apart on sight, or open their monstrous arms to welcome him back, even after all these months away? Would he even want such a welcome? He'd be a fool to believe, or even just to think, that he might be valued by anyone here or in Skyhold. As a source of information, perhaps. But that information has all but run dry, and soon they'll throw him back in a hole, or perhaps show some mercy after all by taking his head. Stick it on a pike in the city square, maybe. Such a sight would no doubt boost Kirkwall's morale.

But always his thoughts drift back to that fortress in the mountains, and the man there, his oldest living friend. Or whatever the word should be. The one who decided he should live, who bawled him out until he raised his eyes and straightened his spine, who made him get up and work. Samson realizes, though, that Cullen was only yelling at himself, only because it would have been so very easy for their places to end up reversed. He didn't really care; he was only afraid.
A fool, any way you look at it.

And so it goes, around and around.

And then a woman nearly crashes into him on the stairs.

Pelted with all manner of... stuff, little things all clattering about his ankles, he stops awkwardly in mid-stride, nearly loses his balance, and in regaining it steps down hard on one of the unbroken vials. It breaks.

"Whoopsie-daisy," comes a friendly voice from several stairs down: a short man tailing the tall one by several paces. He's armed. The tall fellow is not. Unless you count a surprised glare as a weapon, that is—and when deployed by these particular eyes, pale-and-red in their sockets, it had might as well be called such.

"Maker's arse, woman, what're you doing tearing around like that? I nearly broke my neck on all your," a flustered gesture, searching for words to describe this mess, "bits and pieces."

Tall fellow's voice is a touch less friendly.

Wysteria ducks literally and metaphorically, the edge of that weaponized look slashing far above her recognition as her attention cuts away from him to the shattered vial with a croaked out sound of dismay. "Oh, the glass--! Mind your footing, messere."

By the sound of it and how carefully she begins plucking shards off the stair, it's more out of concern for his foot than for the vial - but oh, there's that too isn't there? Damn it. She'll have to find some replacement container for it and fetch more water from Kirkwall's horrible dark harbor while she's on the ferry. And what will the oarman think of her? Maybe she can simply make her way down to the ferry slip and collect what she needs before the boat even arrives or--

"My apologies. Oh, sir, collect that shoe for me won't you?" This to the shorter man farther down the stairs. A boot has gone heel over toe halfway down to him. Back agian to the tall man immediately at hand: "I have a boat to catch. I'm so sorry. I'll find some way to make it up to you. I really had no intention of trampling anyone at all, but it took me far longer to decide on which things to bring. I'm sure you know the feeling. It's a terrible thing, isn't it? Looking at all your belongings and trying to guess which of them you'll need before you go a place. Maybe the weather will turn. Or maybe I'm taking more than I need or-- pardon me."

Mortified, she shoves a pair of small clothes into her case without looking at them, much less folding them. If she's red in the face, it might as easily be from a lack of oxygen as it is from embarrassment. "Anyway. I always find I'm struck by sense a sense of indecision in those instances, even here where there really isn't much at all to choose from."

Of course, the gent in back is about to say, but as Wysteria hardly leaves room for him to open his mouth, he merely smiles and does as he's asked. Job done, he catches up with Samson and slaps the boot lightly against his belly—Samson's belly, bravely—by way of passing to him. The u wot mate quality stare he gets in return is met with a fearlessly cheeky smile. Go on, then, he gestures. Hand it back to her. He'll just be over here with his hands folded. Think of him as furniture.

Despite his apparent mood, Samson does clasp said boot to keep it from falling, noting vaguely how small it feels in his hands, and even manages to reduce his death glare to a convalescence frown by the time Wysteria's squared back up in his field of vision. She's saying so many words right now. If he's meant to follow them all, that's too bad, because many of them have flown right past his head, never mind in one ear and out the other.

"Here," he interjects, and waves the boot at her—not to hand it back, exactly, but to shoo her off from the worst of the mess on the stair. "Here, now, I'm all right. Just leave the glass." That one big booted foot of his is, in all likelihood, fine, but he does lift and step it carefully back anyway, for the benefit of her concern. Apart from that, he seems prepared to loom there, big and awkward, while she fusses with her scattered belongings.

The guard clears his throat to get the general's attention, conveys a message to him with an arcane movement of his blond eyebrows.

Samson sighs raggedly.

He then stoops to assist the frazzled young lady in sorting the less, er, delicate of her fabric effects. The blanket, perhaps. That seems harmless enough. "Come on, then," resigned as hell to the effervescent company he's about to keep, "let's get you off to your boat."

She pauses mid-way through stuffing some fair colored skirt back into the case and lifts her face to him, at once bewildered and dumbstruck both. "What?" And then, without pause: "Oh! Oh, thank you. That's very kind of you, messere. You and your friend are of course not at all obligated, particularly after I victimized you so. But of course I appreciate the sentiment. --No, the effort. It's very considerate of you. I really will have to find some way of demonstrating my gratitude to you when I return. Is there anything you and your friend are especially fond of? A cheese, maybe. That would travel well and I've heard lots of good things about the cheese in Orlais. --Oh, careful. There's a hair pin there near your heel. Could you fetch that before it's stepped on and bent out of shape?"

This, said as she tucks everything back into it's rightful place - clothes more or less all folded, a series of remaining unbroken vials carefully wrapped in a pair of stockings and tucked inside one of the boots.

"A cheese from— er... yes, I'll..."

Maker's balls, this girl's mouth moves more quickly than he can think. This must be what it's like for old folks around younger folks all the time. Wait, does this mean he's old? Shit. Maybe it does.

Frowning, for that seems to be his default expression anymore, he locates the hairpin and pinches it—pinches it between—pinches the bloody thing between index and thumb, and thusly presents it to her, un-trod-upon. His is a large hand with long fingers, pale and cold, cold as autumn.

"There. Anything else we've missed?" After looking all around the stairs by his feet, he twists to look at Ser Derry, who shakes his head.

"Looks like that's the lot of it," Derry says, pleasant as ever. Why the hell's he always in such a good mood, anyway. "Shall we?"

The hairpin, she pockets. She has a feeling she'll need to resort her hair in short order. With a decisive snap, she latches the case closed - and bangs on it with the palm of her hand for good measure before she stands and hefts the case up with her.

"An escort too! How lovely." With a deft weave, Wysteria navigates about the tall gentleman on the stairs. "I don't suppose I could convince you to run along ahead to keep the ferry from going, could I?"

He looks fit and quick - the kind one, not the man nearest to hand. No, he has a rather rangy, ill look about him - recovering, she thinks, and maybe that accounts for how sour his disposition is.

Yes, maybe it's that. Maybe it's that he's directly responsible for the creation of the most widely destructive of the factions in this war, and that people he knows personally are fighting on both sides, and everything he touches becomes a mess, and he hates himself. That could be it. Or, maybe that's just how he looks. Resting bitch face isn't just for women, you know.

Anyway, he lifts up an arm to let Wysteria pass without bumping him—whether she was about to or not, considering how they've just met, he'll not take any chances—and turns to follow thereafter. "He can't," he grunts.

"That's right, messere. 'Fraid I'm meant to keep an eye on this one." Note, for example, how Derry never wanders further than a few paces away from the man in question. He's letting Samson walk ahead of him now, in fact, rather than taking the lead himself.

"Ser Derry here's got to follow me wherever I care to go. Like a faithful hound. Only, if I step out of line he gets to put a bolt between my eyes." Samson taps himself on the forehead, helpfully, and finally cracks a smile—or something approaching one, anyway. Crooked, like. "Or would get to, had he bothered to bring his crossbow."

"There's always next time."

Edited (words >:V) 2018-11-30 03:01 (UTC)

Well. That certainly raises a few questions, now doesn't it? Allow her a momentary, not quite weighty (she's rather bad at that sort of thing) pause to consider this as they make their way down the stairs. Perhaps it's not the sort of thing one asks questions about. Politeness probably dictates she smile and nod slowly and simply be about her business seeing as the gentleman - no, that seems unlikely doesn't it? Though there's really no rule that men being escorted about with armed guards couldn't be some kind of blooded - seeing as the tall man hadn't signed himself up for a discussion of his circumstances simply because he'd been unfortunate enough to fall prey to her traveling case.

But to hell with it. She's curious.

"Is there a reason you might be expected to step out of line, sir?"

"Nah," he answers, casual as you please. "I'm gentle as a kitten these days. Ain't that right, Derry?"

"Indeed, gentle as. He's adorable, really."

"All right, get off it." Hers is a serious question, though, and should be respected with a serious answer, for which he clears his throat as though to dispel any bits of banter still remaining. He's keeping his strides a bit short, so as not to overtake her while they all travel—and keeping a cordial distance from her person, outside of arm's reach. "The truth of it is, I'm a prisoner of the Inquisition. Have been for the greater part of two years, in fact. But you needn't worry any. Truth is, my lady, I'm lucky to be where I am. Hang on," he interrupts himself, and raises his arm to signal a pause.

While Ser Derry's hand doesn't move to his sword, he tenses in the moment, and his friendly expression grows tight. He knows better than his muscles do that this isn't a hostile gesture—but only just.

Samson's only pointing to a certain doorway. "That's a service passage, there. It'll be quicker down to the docks."

She pauses there at his behest, though despite the the questionable quality of her company, she hardly seems wary. She instead perks up considerably - "Oh, how marvelous," - and sweeps past him to lead the way through the doorway. Just by a half step or two, mind you. It would be strange to lead while she's enjoying the pretense of being escorted.

Ha. Escorted by a prisoner and his escort. If she were more of a wit, there might be a joke to be made there. Unfortunately:

"You must be a very useful sort of prisoner to be kept so long, Messere. And to be allowed outside of your cell. I wasn't aware the Inquisition was so generous. Well, no. I suppose I did." They give her things to wear and sensible shoes and she thinks they would have done all those things even if she hadn't officially put her name on the books. Granted, the shard in her hand has something to do with it-- but still. No one is making her pay off what she'd been given out of her stipend and they very well could. "Have you been here in the Gallows all that time? I confess I've never noticed you. Which isn't unheard of, I suppose. But I pride myself on having something of a keen, observant eye."

She'd planned to hire a fast horse once she reached Val Chevin, but if the unexpected addition of Luana's company hadn't already ruined that plan, then the state of the city's stables upon arrival had certainly eradicated the prospect entirely. Every fit creature had easily tripled in price and the only animal inside her laughably small budget had been a particularly surly mule.

Which has bitten her twice already and now stands tied to a tree alongside the road to Ghislain, watching with a sour expression as she and Luana struggle to erect a shelter against what looks like rain.

It's cold, it's miserable, the fire they've managed to build is pathetic, and they are at least a day if not farther from where the Inquisition is meant to be. Her skirt hem is all muddy and she is, quite officially, starving to to death. But they are doing this thing, gods be damned. She is quite determined. With a last tug of rope, Wysteria secures her side of a leafy evergreen bough they'd rigged up between two trees. A few more of these and they'll have quite nice lean to to spend the night in and--

Her knot unravels, the bough slips, and the whole thing collapses slowly to the ground like a deflating wine skin.

"This is hopeless," Wysteria all but wails.

Luana had decided to not let Wysteria go alone, which was unlike her, since Luana usually goes to the side of sitting it out when it comes to war. War, it turned out, was nothing like what she was used to in Rio, where gangs went to war too often to count. But that was different.

And Wysteria, she was more - well. Not innocent. Maybe delicate? That was a sad way to think about it. And Luana spent some time as a wolf and some time as a girl; she freaked out the mule, who was already surly, into practically being intractable. Now they were stuck, and there was a storm, and Wysteria was still trying to get the bough up.

And Luana was holding the other side of the bough as it deflated away. Ay, puta merda. Luana looks over Wysteria makes a noise, and her mouth flattens. "Planning on dying here today? Get your hair up, girl."

"My hair is up," she snaps back, razor sharp despite all the abject misery. Which, yes, it technically is. Mostly anyway. A vast majority of her little metal hairpins have gone missing since leaving Kirkwall and it's been a struggle to keep the shorter hairs in place. The rest she has bound in a tragically sensible braid, bound in a knotted ribbon and tucked down the back of her traveling coat.

"It's been up this whole time and I don't see why now is the instance where it's suddenly relevant to talk about." It's not about the hair. She knows Luana isn't even being literal about it. But after a few days of sleeping in nauseating ship holds and dirty barns, her temper has become quite short indeed.

With a vicious shove, Wysteria hoists her side of the tree bough back up into place.

Luana didn't mean it literally, but now she wants to tug at the tendrils that are hanging from her messy hair. Luana's own hair looks more like a mane than usual, the curls frizzing up and getting huge, too big to be pulled back. She shakes her head and snarls. "Stay there a minute," she commands, and goes to the tree the bough came from and looks up.

It's a pine tree, and it's not too tall - it's probably not that old. She starts climbing, then. She's only seen Aluisio do this once, and it wasn't a pine tree but a guava tree. Her strength is no joke, though, and she hauls herself up until she is at branches that look like they might bend, and takes a grip. She's only about ten or fifteen feet up, and she grips the branch and falls, holding on.

The tree groans as soon as she hits the ground. It resists, and she presses more of her strength, until it groans more and bends. "Fuck," Luana says, huffing her breath. Already the pines are coming down and making a cave, but she needs the tree to-

-she hears the snap and moves fast to get Wysteria out of the way, and the tree settles, not fallen, but snapped and bent so that the top comes down to the ground, covering the ground, and keeping the wind off them. Luana huffs again. "Shit," she says. "That was harder than I thought."

For whatever it's worth - and after a few days in one another's unremitting company, with Wysteria's ceaseless chatter cedeing into a propensity for bickering, it probably isn't worth much -, she does as she's told: holds that bough high in place with her arms over her head as Luana goes scrambling up the tree even though she doesn't see the point. They have plenty of things to cover themselves with. The problem is making anything out of them. At this rate, Luana will fall out of the tree and do some fool thing to set them even farther back like break a leg or something equally horrendeous and annoying.

At that thought, Wysteria watches as Luana drops from the tree. Her heart leaps into her throat accompanied with a wild flash of regret - what a horrible curse to wish on someone! --That dies the moment she realizes her companion isn't falling at all. Not on accident anyway.

The tree comes slowly, inevitably downward. And any pleasure Wysteria might have found in the prospect of simply crawling into a shelter instead of constructing one, is traded in favor of-- "You could have warned me! Next time you're going to bring a tree down about my head, at least give me the benefit of telling me beforehand!"

Also she was sick with worry for a split second there. But that's neither here nor there, thank you very much.

Luana breathes through her nose, huffs. She eyes Wysteria for a moment before she speaks. "Are you going to hit me?" she asks, but then she's grinning, laughing. Holy Jesus, she was worried. Luana crawls into the space made by the dense leaves, and stretches out on the ground. It's warm here, buffered away from the wind and the chill, even with the ground being cold.

She grins up at Wysteria. "You can't complain too much. Even the mule from Hell can't complain too much." Oh, but how Luana hates that mule.

"I might." She certainly could. There is literally nothing to stop her, save maybe for her own faint sense of dignity.

With a grumble, Wysteria fetches her traveling case from where its set high on a nearby rock. From it she draws what is now a very familiar and not entirely clean blanket no doubt brought with her from her room in the Gallows. She shakes it out and passes it through the branches to Luana.

"Spread that out on the ground."

She grins a little, but takes the blanket, obedient as ever, and spreads it on the ground, moving to sit on it. It's not clean, but it's warm and dry from being carried in Wysteria's pack for so long. Combined with the warmth and pine-y smell of the little spot, it makes it almost nice here.

She looks at Wysteria for a moment. "I can shift before you sleep. I'll be warmer to sleep against," she clarifies, but she knows that the smell can be a little overpowering. "And I'll go make a perimeter."

"You'll go make a--" Oh.

She fights down the effort to wrinkle her nose. Yes, well. Fine. If it keeps the other animals of the wilderness at bay, then she doesn't see the harm in it. What she does see some harm in, however--

"I don't suppose you could find something to eat while you're out, could you? We're running low." On the dried fruit, salted pork and crackers she'd brought along. Spirits, she really hadn't anticipated this delay. They were meant to be with the Inquisition by now, sharing in whatever meals were being prepared around a fire far bigger and more comfortable than the one flickering away in their little camp here.

[closed] when im on the road i see stuff going by

THE GALLOWS → Closed to Samson;

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CAMPING → Closed to Luana;

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