OPEN | they've given you a number

[hassaran]

WHO: Open to all, plus a couple specific closed starters
WHAT: Moving into the DH quarters, general routines, and kicking off some particular intel-gathering ops
WHEN: Now-ish
WHERE: Around the Gallows, but if you'd prefer somewhere else hit me up on plurk and we can work something out.
NOTES: n/a, will be updated if that changes

Yseult's move into the Scouting office and Division Head quarters isn't immediate. There are Beleth's things to be packed up and new chosen to replace them, options scavenged from unused quarters or dusted off after years in storage. Gallows staff come and go, bearing away rolled-up wall-hangings and grumbling about how to get the old desk back out through the doorway (they got it in here so there must be a way without sawing it in half), and Yseult can be found "overseeing" the minor commotion. This appears to mostly involve her ignoring it, except to shift from perching on this windowsill to that end-table or crate corner as needed, rotating around the emptying rooms as she reads through a stack of files, occasionally making notes with a stub of pencil otherwise tucked behind an ear or rolled absent-mindedly between knuckles.

When she runs out of reading material she might instead be found even further up the central tower in the aerie, visiting with the griffons. One of the adolescents, a white female with grey-tan markings on face and wings, seems to delight in prowling on tip-toes behind her, attempting to discreetly sidle up and steal things out of her pockets as Yseult pretends not to notice, only to coincidentally shift out of reach just at the key moment. When this game grows old there are others: a version of Find-the-Lady played with three wooden cups and a hidden treat, or catch played with bits of food or a leather ball and other random objects tossed around the aerie, griffons darting between rafters and racing to beat their siblings to catch it.

The training grounds are another common haunt, though she prefers odd hours--at dusk or dawn, or during mealtimes--when they are at their emptiest. She trains most often empty-handed or with knives, obviously a favored weapon whether thrown or wielded against one of the straw-filled bags hung from the ceiling. But sometimes it's a long staff, or two short ones, a whip-fast rapier, occasionally even a regular longsword or mace if she really wants to sweat through a challenge. Most sessions begin and end with her scaling the walls of the training hall building up to the roof, light on her feet across the ridgeline to a far corner within leaping distance of the isle's outer wall and from there across parapets and rooftops and forgotten banner-line ropes back to the main towers. She usually chooses her moment carefully to make this climb without being spotted, but can occasionally be caught dangling from a gutter on her way up or down. With the Scouting suite in flux, she can still be found in the common baths in the Templar tower afterwards.

After a couple days, the dust settles on the eighth floor, and from then she can be often found in the re-fitted Scouting office, its door always cracked open to eavesdrop on the hallway invite a knock unless she is in conference with someone. The space has been rearranged, but some of the spirit of Beleth's office remains in the pair of armchairs and tea-table now set in front of the fire and in the bookcases that still line the walls. The desk, large but simply carved on its solid front, is already accumulating files and missives neatly collected in stacks around the central blotter and pewter inkwells. The walls are bare, but that seems likely to be temporary, a few rolled tapestries in a corner and paintings in frames propped against the wall. When not bent over a report, pen in hand, she might be found flipping through them, or contemplating the merits of a seaside landscape in various positions on the wall, frowning thoughtfully over a cup of tea late into the evening.

Comments

[katabasis]

[A pause, all shot through with a genuine look of surprise. It's a very tactile point in comparison to the rest - a question rooted here in this room, specifically about him rather than someone or something somehow five miles distant.

He chuckles, grin flashing briefly wide behind the line of his knuckles. With an air of downright boyish conspiracy:]

Have you?

[hassaran]

[ Caught off-guard by this shift in expression and manner, the like of which she has never seen or imagined on Flint, Yseult smiles back without thinking, and leans as if to share a secret. ]

Once. It took two whole chickens and the risk of my fingers but one of the older ones agreed to take me. It was incredible.

[katabasis]

[There's an undeniable appeal to it, isn't there? Never mind the practical applications, the whole concept of being so removed from the world entirely on the merits of an animal who's trust requires earning tugs at the imagination. It's a good story.

He laughs again, and the grin must tug wide again but he's turned his face away and in the moment after, one of the juvenile griffons at last loses interest in with wrestling in favor of loping back on its mismatched gait. She chirps once then throws herself under Yseult's feet with a blustering sigh. Flint tips his face back. Some of that good humor still survives there.]

I happen to like my fingers where they are, but two chickens? Might be possible.

[hassaran]

[ Yseult reaches down to the griffon beneath her, tall enough now to make her draw one foot up onto the sill, and busy flexing her claws grumpily into the battered floorboards. She sits up and regards the approaching hand for a moment before allowing Yseult to ruffle the short feathers that tuft around her ears, the last lingering bits of baby down, soon to be shed. ]

Worth the investment. And who knows, one might take to you. I suspect in a month or so when she's grown enough Pockets here may let me ride her without trying to relieve me of my fingers at all.