honey, don't feed it | closed

[aforethought]

WHO: Assorted + Various
WHAT: Catch em all
WHEN: Thedas April
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: HMU if you want one, etc.

Comments

julius + petra

[aforethought]

Mage tower (who can bloody tell), floor six; middle of the hall.

Not the first place she looked, though maybe it ought have been. That was the other tower, floor five, and if she's got her numbers mixed before, Melys trusts her feet to know a path trod that often; stones worn as the scrape of some big copper tub.

Julius took a bit more work. Not a lot, mind you, but it's near dawn by the time she's slunk her way into a chair opposite the bed. The observant might take note: That silence is, against all odds, in her reach. It's easier to spy the dog is. Vysvolod drowses in her lap. It's sort of an effective strategy — he must more or less outweigh her — but the lazy prop of fingers along fur doesn't indicate alarm.

She doesn't sleep. A little soon to get that familiar. So it's through eyes half-lidded and fixed on the tidy-edged sheets (their tidy-edged pair) that she sits.

And waits.

wysteria

[aestivation]

He hasn't left the tower. He'll need to, sooner or later,

Maybe. Maybe not, maybe never. Never had to in Hasmal or Nevarra. Of course, then he'd left his room, walked the grounds — but the crystals render that unnecessary. Books, letters, runners. He doesn't need to leave, not until (he supposes) someone knocks off Thranduil, or the old elf finally has enough of him and,

He knows things that elf doesn't want said, he doesn't need to leave this tower. Not for a while, anyway.

But it's been a while, and so maybe it's time that he get matters in hand; can guess from the outside how insane this hermitage must look, except that it's definitely going to look more insane the second he opens his fucking mouth.

"Hello," Is what he says, instead of my fucking mouth. "That is — Casimir. Lyov."

A stumble of an introduction, but it'll do. He tries something like a smile (half marks), gestures her inside the little office. Books are neatly shelved, the desk squared into a pretense of organization. The piles may not mean anything, but it's great strides, really, and all overshadowed by a ticking monstrosity the length of the wall.

"My name, I mean." That's probably unnecessary. "And this is the clock."

[heirring]

She had spent the afternoon preparing for this. She'd created a list of questions over lunch, written on a piece of parchment now folded safely in her skirt's pocket. She'd done some last minute research between uselessly shuffling papers around for Salvio. She'd made a nuisance of herself down in the Inquisition's smithy for nearly a half mark, familiarizing herself with an assortment of hammers and levers and so on and begging to borrow an assortment of the smallest pieces.

What Wysteria had not been prepared for was for the person answering the door to be the vaguely familiar man from the Research office, the vicious edged of the sunburst brand painted across his forehead. The shock of it prompts her to swallow the cheery greeting that had been bubbling up onto her lips and for a moment, she pauses there awkwardly in the doorway of the neat little office and just-- fumbles around his introduction.

So in some way, the clock saves them both from prolonged mortification. Wysteria's eyes slide past Casimir to it. She promptly sharpens.

"Oh! Would you just look at it." This, bright and cheerful as she'd been intending for her intial Hello. There seems to be some restorative quality to it as well, for when she returns her attention to the man before her, the cloud of awkwardness has cleared from over her.

"I'd shake your hand, Mr Lyov, but I'm afraid I'm rather over burdened." She shifts the twin bundles under her arms - one wrapped in weathered, slightly greasy leather and the other a neat packet in a clean, pretty patterned handkerchief. "I'm Miss Poppell. Wysteria. Miss Poppell is fine. Or whatever you like is, I suppose."

[overharrowed]

Julius is generally a fairly light sleeper, though he's been working longer hours than he should lately. His transition from sleep to waking is, therefore, a bit slower than it might have been at first, and his groggy brain registers the dog and then gives him a bit of shake, and he's abruptly sitting up before he gets all the way from a person in the room to a person in particular that he has met before.

Instead of saying anything instantly, he gives Petrana's shoulder a gentle but firm shake.

[ipseite]

He is met, initially, with a sleepy grumble—Petrana is something of a morning person, but that doesn't mean not being resistant to being woken by something other than her own internal clock. It takes a moment or two longer for her to push her hair from her eyes (and there's a great deal of it, a mess that she should have braided before she slept but—), and then:

“Melys?”

She has questions, of course, and why are you in here watching us sleep should be one of them, but her first reaction is simple pleasure—the relief of reunion. The blankets are flung aside, perhaps a bit more enthusiastically than Julius might appreciate, dragging a sheet off around herself for some semblance of modesty,

Melys has seen her undressed, it's fine,

and flinging her arms around both friend and mildly startled elderly dog.

[aforethought]

She grins at Julius.

And then Petra's up, and she claps a palm up around, to tangle at hair and shoulder in turn.

"Watch your tits," Is a half-hearted mumble. "Gonna get one in his eye."

The dog's probably used to that too. Slumped in a chair like a pile of limbs, oughtn't be any way to relax further, but something in the angles of her face eases for the contact.

"Reckon you two lasted then."

crashing back in, ty for your patience

[overharrowed]

"So far so good," Julius said, faintly, deeply unsure what is even happening and thus unsure how to respond to it. (His brain has, at least, caught up to probably not an immediate threat, and it should maybe worry him that it's always the first place it goes... but then again, nearly 40 years in Thedas hasn't suggested to him it's an unfounded concern.)

"Have you been back long?" he adds, after a brief pause, because he feels he needs to say something else.

[ipseite]

“You can't have been,” Petrana says, at once, settling herself comfortably in the pile of women and dog, too pleased by Melys's evidently safe return to immediately query what, precisely, she's doing in Julius's room at this hour of the night. It had become natural for Melys to make free with hers, and she has made free with his, and so—

“You've come at once?” —lilting into a question, as if she expects a particular answer.

You two lasted, and her still sleep-fogged brain summons up a memory of the last time (also the first time) the three of them had been in a room together, and just as suddenly sets it aside again.

This is a reunion, and she's glad.