[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

Flint, Naval Presence Office

[justice_is_blond]

A few hours after one particular conversation, when he's found some time to breathe and slightly gather his thoughts, Anders heads out to try to find Flint. The pirate hadn't helped the first time they'd spoken, but Anders needs something to actually do so even if this fails at least he's out trying.

He raps on the open door and comes in, briefly rubbing the back of his neck to relieve a little tension.

"Do you have a few minutes? And do you mind if I close the door?" It's probably a little more direct than he should be, but Anders has walked here on nervous energy and it's not dissipating yet.

[katabasis]

The interior of the Naval Presence office isn't quite a disaster, but it's close enough to it to warrant the descriptor. Papers are scattered over every flat surface, a series of book and charts stacked waist high in the window so as to block out a considerably portion of light meant to penetrate the room. Someone, it appears, is going through a considerable backlog of paperwork and record keeping. Between the abrupt departure of Bonaventura and Vane's aversion to anything resembling real work, there's quite a lot of sorting left to do even now.

Flint, sitting behind the desk with a pen in hand, raises his face toward the open door, to Anders, and then past him toward the corridor beyond. It's a flickering look - one that casts back to the mage there quickly enough when no one else materializes behind him. The fact that Anders is somehow not followed at every point of the day by an armed guard still somehow comes as a surprise. Could anyone blame him for looking, really?

"If you like." He doesn't set aside the pen, but he does pick it up from the sheet of paper under his hand and set the edge on the waiting inkwell. "Is this conversation a new one or are we back to tackling the old one again?"

[justice_is_blond]

"New. Mostly." He closes the door and leans against the wall as he's not been invited to take a seat. He wants something from Flint so there's no reason to push his luck. Also, the glance out the door had perhaps suggested Flint was expecting someone. Anders might not have much time.

"The rough rumor is that your group got out from under some serious thumbs. Once the Divine election happens, no matter who wins, there will be focus on putting us back in Circles." Even Elise only wants serious reform. She hasn't said anything about abolition. "I'd like to pick your brain on how one starts fights among factions, or finds a way to get their people out. And then what happens after that."

Because the next question is 'out to where' and he's not taking them to Blood Mage Central, Tevinter. They don't want power. They just want to live.

[katabasis]

"Rumor says all that, does it?"

Vane is saying so. Or the men from the ship are. Or-- he'd nearly said as much himself to Bonaventura in this very room. What does it matter? It's isn't wrong and they'd never made anything but the hollowest of overtures to hide it. If they'd wanted to, the Walrus wouldn't have sailed into the Kirkwall harbor flying only her sailcloth and no flag or marker.

That said, they've been playing this game for long enough now that it's something of a habit to be start coy even behind a closed door, especially in unknown company. Not that he denies the man his beliefs - no, Anders has made those quite clear -, but his discretion? That much seems questionable.

Regardless, Flint does set aside the pen and nods to the spare chair across the desk. For Maker's sake, come away from the door.

"Pick away."

[justice_is_blond]

"Well. Rumor also says you can't cook and you've tried making soup from your boots three times now," he drawls as he takes the indicated seat. "I tried to be selective with which ones I gave any weight and felt were worth repeating."

There's a thousand rumors about anyone who has made any waves at the end of the day, really. His problem is that he jumped in and made a great deal of waves without knowing how to swim in these particular waters. Death might have really been easier. It's certainly easier than reading Flint's face. Oh, he can guess that the man isn't exactly happy to see him, but that's about all Anders can get. He, on the other hand, is clearly a little nervous - little lines at the corner of his eyes, the way his fingers drum on his knee. There's nothing like the selection of Divine candidates to emphasize that people will soon be trying to put a cage back around his people.

"I guess the biggest thing is that they don't seem to be chasing you. Was there some sort of... diversion you caused, or did you find a way to be more trouble than it's worth to lash back at you?"