[OPEN] lets say its like the sunrise

[esquive]

WHO: Flint, Wysteria, Marcoulf + YOU
WHAT: Guardian Catch-all
WHEN: Right Now
WHERE: Kirkwall, unless otherwise noted
NOTES: Hit me up if you want a specific starter!

FLINT

I. BIRD'S EYE VIEW
Somewhere in the Gallows, there is a narrow interior courtyard. It's shielded by much of the weather if not the chill by the high walls surrounding it which makes it more conducive to loitering than most. In this courtyard, a minor noblewoman from Ostwick and a merchant of some middling means are carrying on a conversation while the noblelady tosses a ball down the length of the narrow yard. Her dog, long-legged and mad from hours locked away in a Gallows apartment, races after it - digs up the winter bare planters - rolls in the ice - while his mistress is saying:

"--It could be done, of course. But the price would be astronomical."

The shape of the conversation wanders upward, carried by the cold air and the narrow walls of the courtyard to where on the balcony above, a man in a dark coat is taking some air. Flint stands far enough from the balcony's wall that it would be difficult to see him from the courtyard below. He's nursing a steaming cup of something and is absolutely not eavesdropping.

WYSTERIA

I. INDEPENDENT STUDY
There's a young woman with possession of an entire table in the library. Frankly speaking? That's rude and unfair to the six dozen other scholars jockeying for any available study space to be found in the Gallows. And yet Wysteria Poppell persists with her charts and papers and open books sprawled about her in every direction.

For the most part they're awfully boring sorts of books - natural history and long, dry examinations of the Fade. But one of the books - in fact the one that sits open over top of everything else - is at least interesting for the fact that it's so comically massive and seems to be all but crumbling under its own weight. Wysteria's isolated a section in the back and seems to be studying this book very carefully indeed, pausing frequently to make chicken scratch notes in the sheaf of papers at her right hand.

(Yes, she is technically avoiding her work for Base Operations by hiding out here. No, she'd rather not discuss it.)

MARCOULF

I. WICKED GRACE
The weather's miserable to the point that they're no point in spending any more of it than necessary out in that cutting harbor wind or through the rain and sleet slick the plagues the higher reaches of the city. Between patrol assignments along the Inquisition's harbor space and work in the Gallows, Marcoulf spends any spare scrap of time available near whatever fire is most convenient.

Translation: he's in a tavern, nursing something warm to drink with a hot plate of doesn't-really-matter-as-long-as-it's-warm while losing hands of Wicked Grace. Hemorrhaging the coin this way should bother him (it does); he shouldn't be spending it in the first place (he is).

"Ah," He makes a low noise, then turns the card he's just draw face up on the table. There she is: Lady Death. Time for a show of hands.

II. MUD WRASSLIN'
Kirkwall is no city for a horse in the best of weather. It's all miserable stone roadways and twisting stairwells, made incalculably worse by the rain and the freeze and the melt and the rain and-- All the sand and dirt pulled down into the Inquisition's stables compound and training yards have only turned to mud in winter. The creatures there - exercising fighters and unused mounts - are the worst combination of restless and caked with filth. Trying to keep anything clean and happy is a fool's errand.

But here Marcoulf is, religiously making an attempt anyway. The little roan mare keeps shifting around and stamping her feet, mud-clumped tail thrashing irritably while he scrubs at her mud-caked haunch with a stiff bristled brush. He keeps having to raise an arm to fend off the WHACK! as she swings it like a mace.

[[...or wildcard whatever you want/shoot me a PM for a starter. I'm not the boss of you.]]

Comments

[notched]

She tilts her head to look back at him, the leather that laces up around her face loose enough to see inside. A drowsy, placid look.

"Did-- for a bit," she agrees. There's some small amount of pleasure in her tone. The horses had been comforting, shifting and huffing beneath her, great bodies of warmth. It had, for maybe a moment, taken her back to a forgotten childhood when she and her sister had huddled into the hay together when they'd had nowhere else to go. Perhaps her daydreams weren't so terrible this morning. "It was nearby."

She wouldn't want to give the impression she would be returning.

"I could hold her tail for you," at the very least. Maybe give her a reassuring pat or two.

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He makes a low sound - hm - that might be for her sleeping habits as easily for the rest of her offer. But after a moment's consideration, Marcoulf cocks his head to indicate back up into the loft. "Fetch some hay. She may stand if you're there and feeding it to her. Holding the tail won't do any good."

In the meantime, he knocks the thick bristles of the brush against his knee to free some of the collected mud and dirt.

"Did the cats keep you company?" In the autumn, the loft had been home to a litter of kittens. They're grown now, wandered off or swept up mostly, but sometimes he sees the piebald mother and one of her dark girls.

[notched]

"Cats?" she's already turned away to head back into the stable. "Why are people always asking me about cats?"

Maybe it was a normal topic of conversation and she just didn't realize that. All the cats had fled Yharnam. The dogs and rats and crows had all mutated as they consumed more and more infected flesh, but there wasn't a cat in sight. Not even the corpse of one. Apparently they had realized long before any others that something was amiss in Yharnam. The loss of them had not been a primary concern as more and more dead bodies had piled up in the streets.

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Maybe because she seems like one, all well bundled in her tatty old clothes, making a habit of wandering in strange places and sleeping in hay lofts. He thinks it, but doesn't say as much - just scrapes the mud out of the brush and spends a few minutes scratching the roan mare high behind the ears as Anna fetches handfuls of hay.

When she returns, Marcoulf has the horse by her headstall. He's scratching her mud flecked cheek.

"Mind her teeth. She'll nip your fingertips if you don't."

I GUESS THAT SEGUE WILL DO HUH

[notched]

"Aye," agreed with a yawn. "Lakshmi says the same about her elephant."

Anna had been in favor of euthanizing the elephant and using its bones for weapons and armor, although she had certainly not voiced that opinion to Lakshmi. She'd been giddy with blood and hadn't much cared what was going on around her.

EYES.emoji

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Marcoulf makes one low skeptical noise that has nothing to do with the elephant's ability to chew fingers off - a whole hand, even - and everything to do with everything else that is wrong with the creature in question. Eats too much. Shits too much. Takes up too much space. Were Anna to voice her opinions on the creature, he might very well agree with her

"I'm sure she does." He resumes the task of scraping dried mud from the mare's sides. The roan resumes the flick, flick, flick of her tail accordingly. It's a small, threatening gesture, but hasn't yet escalated back to full scale beatings. "Does Madame Bai have you working for her too?"

It's an uncharitable question - as if Lakshmi isn't allowed to have friends.

[notched]

"Mmm," her own vague note of disapproval and skepticism. Rather than let the silence drag on indefinitely while she thinks about what to say, she starts with the simplest part, which is: "No." She is not working for Lakshmi.

The rest is more complicated and she takes her time feeding the horse, not paying any attention to her nipping teeth. Even when she does snip at Anna, she doesn't much notice through her gloves and through her heavy thoughts.

"I see a Hunter-- In her." She licks her teeth, still rolling the words in her mouth with reluctance. Being a Hunter is so many complicated things she isn't entirely certain she's made clear to Marcoulf, but she doesn't want to talk about it. Giving it words made it all real again. She regrets how much of it she'd spoken on when the veil had been thin. She wishes she could choke it all back down, take it back, and keep the poison buried. "I asked her... to take charge of it, should I turn."

Well. There's. That.

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It seems right - to see a Hunter in the woman in question - even if all he can parse is that the name is for something between Templar and mercenary. That's what's so infuriating and offputting about Lakshmi Bai. She's too many things all at once and shouldn't be. Queens aren't meant to be selling their swords just like people aren't meant to be falling out of tears in the world, just like--

It would be simpler if there were no Rifters at all, present company included. But he could say the same for all kinds of things. It would be simpler if Orlais had kept its peace; it would be simpler if Tevinter fell into the sea; it would be simpler if there was no war at all. But it isn't, so sort it.

"Turn?" It's a mild question, made half absent by the meandering of his own thoughts and the task of chipping away the mud.

[notched]

"Few Hunters die in combat," she begins to say. Even as she has been explaining things to Lakshmi Bai, she has spoken about this fate as a collective. It wasn't something unique to her. This was the Hunt, this was how it ended unless you were somehow able to rise above. "We carry vials of healing blood, and it cures the most terrible of injuries."

People in Thedas have seen her use them. She had smashed one directly into her mouth in front of Thor of House Asgard. The blood had healed the wounds from the glass shards so quickly all she'd needed to do was spit them out. She regrets that.

"Most of our deaths come when the blood begins to change us. Most of us go insane, and then some of those number turn into beasts."

She's run out of hay. She stares down at her gloves, dusts them off and then looks over to Marcoulf.

"I said-- what the blood did to the city. It's worse in us. Worse in those who fight."

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The lines of his face don't alter significantly, though maybe the rhythm of his arm as he scrubs the mud from the roan's side gives some pause. He regards Anna with a mild expression, head tipped cocked faintly as a listening dog might. Thwack, says the mare's tail, flicking hard against Marcoulf's side.

"What sort of beast?"

[notched]

She wishes she believed the placidity of his features. Wouldn't that be nice, if it were that simple. If you could confess such a thing and everyone would go about their business, secure in the knowledge that she's already contracted someone to murder her when the time comes.

"Larger and stronger than a man. Hungry." She takes her hat off with a sigh, pushing her hair out of her face. "She wants me to confess to Ser Coupe as well."

[esquive]

A soft, contemplative noise punctuates the resumed motion of his arm. His attention - or at least his eye line - returns to the horse's side, to the process of scrubbing loose the mud and brushing it away. The mare however has no such reservations with making her study known; she lips expectantly at Anna's sleeve, ears flicking impatiently backwards.

"It seems wise to. If you've already said at much to Madame Bai, I see no reason why the Commander shouldn't be made aware as well." Confession is a strange word for it, he thinks. Never mind that there's plenty he has told Ser Coupe himself. But that's different. He isn't a mage; he isn't going to become some abomination or beast. It isn't relevant at all to the tactics of the field, to who he's paired with on work, to considerations that must be made for rosters and assignments.

(For the safety of the Gallows. For--)

"Is there a reason you're hesitating to?"

[notched]

She looks down at the impatient horse, and decides she needs another moment to consider her words. She pats the roan's nose and goes for more hay. By the time she's returned, she has some idea of what to say.

"It wouldn't be out of place to kill me now."

Fuck knows she'd done it herself enough times. As the scourge of beasts had spread through Yharnam, the Hunt had become less and less discriminating. Any little sign and a Hunter could drag you away to have your throat slit. It was no wonder the people of Yharnam had hated and feared them.

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The mare's happy to see her back, lipping eagerly at her fingers. Her master seems no different from a minute ago - just as quiet, a kind of singular steadiness that comes out of force of habit.

"Mm." It's a low noise, as meandering as it is meant to sound thoughtless as he works the brush across the horse's hide. She's a strange color, the horse is, and it's hard to say what's grit and what's coat. "Ordinarily, yes I'd say that's so. But the Inquisition's forces in Kirkwall are..."

Eccentric. Strange. Dangerous. The sort of thing to chase reasonable people into the hills, he thinks.

"Well, every mage here could be a monster just as easily and they've not executed any of them in the Gallows yet."

[notched]

Every mage could be a monster, better not to let them. In that way, she probably aligns with certain Thedosian sects perfectly well. All mages aspired to touch and change things that were not theirs to touch or change, at the cost of everyone around them. But this isn't about mages. It's about her. It's about where all her best intentions have led her-- a dead end with no recourse.

"I'm sorry." In a general sense, she is sorry to have wasted anyone's time on this road leading nowhere, but there is also something more specific, "I'm not as reliable as I said I was."

She had wanted to be. She had wanted to leave Yharnam behind her and start over, but maybe that had been naive. She has that in her, for all that she's terrifying and ferocious, she's ill-equipped in her own human skin.