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Entry tags:
open.
WHO: The ex-bard currently known as Édouard & you
WHAT: Moving in, making friends
WHEN: Mid-Haring
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: :V
WHAT: Moving in, making friends
WHEN: Mid-Haring
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: :V
I. CENTRAL TOWER
Another casualty for the Inquisition's records: a type case belonging to Édouard Almary, which, after scandalously bumpy journey from Val Royeaux that wore without mercy on its rickety old joints, expired in the corridor of the Gallows' central tower in an overdramatic explosion of rune-stamped tiles, mere feet from its final destination, leaving its owner holding only two narrow pieces of its frame.
Très tragique.
He is sure that the various pieces of the type case are now pieces small enough he can carry them himself, however, and the printing press is already where it's meant to be. So he drops the two sticks in his hands onto the wreckage, flips the dockhand who'd been waylaid to assist him him a silver for his service, and sends him on his way.
The he stands there for a short while, frowning at the riot of sorts and splintered wood. One of the long, shallow drawers has skidded several yards back toward the stairs, like it was making a break for it. Is this a bad omen? Does he believe in omens? No, he doesn't. Yet—possibly.
But there isn't anything to do about it now. He's here. He isn't carrying the damned press back down the stairs. So after that short while of frowning he begins picking up the pieces, beginning by pushing the drawer that made a break for it along the floor toward the rest of the mess with one foot, sweeping tiles along with it, and humming "Girl in Red Crossing" to accompany the sound of skittering metal bits on stone.
II. DINING HALL
"Were you there, in Ghislain?"
The question is Orlesian-accented and aimed at whoever is closest: someone he sat down next to for lack of empty seating elsewhere, someone he sat nearby because they looked like they could use the company, someone who is left in his vague proximity after the other people around them have finished their meals and left. When he asks it, he glances up, long enough for a flicker of a friendly but appropriately muted smile for the subject matter.
Many deaths, as he's heard it, and a disheartening degree of chaos. Asking about it is possibly not the best way to go about making friends. But on the other hand, they are soldiers and spies; it might be the only way.
III. TRAINING GROUNDS
It is not so cold here, in his opinion, especially in the fortress, where the walls break the wind. On one of the brighter days during his first week he spends midday outside, watching those who don't have the luxury of letting their training lapse for the winter practice swinging swords or loosing arrows while he reads through a short stack of documents.
He's a safe distance away, but not so distant he can't make a single pitying tsk when one of the cloth and straw training dummies is thoroughly obliterated.
"Brutal," he says. "Did it have a name?"
IV. WILDCARD
Another casualty for the Inquisition's records: a type case belonging to Édouard Almary, which, after scandalously bumpy journey from Val Royeaux that wore without mercy on its rickety old joints, expired in the corridor of the Gallows' central tower in an overdramatic explosion of rune-stamped tiles, mere feet from its final destination, leaving its owner holding only two narrow pieces of its frame.
Très tragique.
He is sure that the various pieces of the type case are now pieces small enough he can carry them himself, however, and the printing press is already where it's meant to be. So he drops the two sticks in his hands onto the wreckage, flips the dockhand who'd been waylaid to assist him him a silver for his service, and sends him on his way.
The he stands there for a short while, frowning at the riot of sorts and splintered wood. One of the long, shallow drawers has skidded several yards back toward the stairs, like it was making a break for it. Is this a bad omen? Does he believe in omens? No, he doesn't. Yet—possibly.
But there isn't anything to do about it now. He's here. He isn't carrying the damned press back down the stairs. So after that short while of frowning he begins picking up the pieces, beginning by pushing the drawer that made a break for it along the floor toward the rest of the mess with one foot, sweeping tiles along with it, and humming "Girl in Red Crossing" to accompany the sound of skittering metal bits on stone.
II. DINING HALL
"Were you there, in Ghislain?"
The question is Orlesian-accented and aimed at whoever is closest: someone he sat down next to for lack of empty seating elsewhere, someone he sat nearby because they looked like they could use the company, someone who is left in his vague proximity after the other people around them have finished their meals and left. When he asks it, he glances up, long enough for a flicker of a friendly but appropriately muted smile for the subject matter.
Many deaths, as he's heard it, and a disheartening degree of chaos. Asking about it is possibly not the best way to go about making friends. But on the other hand, they are soldiers and spies; it might be the only way.
III. TRAINING GROUNDS
It is not so cold here, in his opinion, especially in the fortress, where the walls break the wind. On one of the brighter days during his first week he spends midday outside, watching those who don't have the luxury of letting their training lapse for the winter practice swinging swords or loosing arrows while he reads through a short stack of documents.
He's a safe distance away, but not so distant he can't make a single pitying tsk when one of the cloth and straw training dummies is thoroughly obliterated.
"Brutal," he says. "Did it have a name?"
IV. WILDCARD
IV Hightown??
She stops in the mustached man's way without intending to, but sets herself up for a collision either way: her slippered foot has landed in a freezing puddle, the damp of which is now spreading over the entire shoe's fabric.
It's the worst.
no subject
"Ah," he says.
He doesn't move to collect the books just yet. They're garbage, actually. Leftover gardening treatises and some noble's novelty project, which he's tried everything to get rid of short of using them as kindling (practically sacrilege!) or paying one of the merchants lining the street to take them, please, and they can use them as kindling, as long as he doesn't see it happen. Now they're soggy, hopefully with their ink running together beyond repair, and it's a relief to have them both literally and figuratively out of his hands. Fate has spoken. Etc.
Her slipper, however.
"You must position your foot how you like it best, quickly," he says, "in case it freezes that way."
no subject
Tilting her head, she steps back out of the puddle and gives her foot a balletic little shake, and keeps her eyes on Bastien as she bends to pick up the basket once more.
"I know you," she says, and her voice is a bit wary, but not frightened. Where has she seen his face before?
no subject
But he smiles like it's nothing, and before he's finished trying to place her face, she shakes her foot, and he places that.
(Not in a weird way.)
And that's a relief. He says, "You do," and dips forward a few inches. Not quite a bow, because this is Hightown, and she's an elf, and he doesn't want to draw attention or spark gossip at this particular moment—but the cheerful suggestion of one. "I once collapsed—" slight hyperbole "—trying to keep up with you in a bourrée."
no subject
She steps safely away from the puddle and looks Bastien up and down, smiling fondly. "What brings you to this lovely place?"