cats on rooftops

[notched]

WHO: Anna & Marcoulf
WHAT: Untalkative people not talking about anything.
WHEN: A time
WHERE: A place

There is a smudge on the roof of the stable, too big to be a cat but perched like one: knees bent up and body leaned forward through them so she can keep an eye on the yard below. She hadn't really decided if she was going to talk to him about the discussions to splinter, but if there was anyone she would speak to about it, it was him. He'd keep it brief and wouldn't be emotional about the considerations. She had figured she'd hang around, do some chores, and decide if she wanted to open the subject later. If she felt like it. He hadn't been there though. So she'd posted up, chewing mouthfuls of jerky and wine and listening to the horses shift and shuffle beneath her. She was half coming to like their heavy smell and their loud, warm breathing was soothing.

She doesn't wave when he appears, and doesn't immediately unfold from her perched position either, just watches like a carrion crow. He looks ruffled. That's something new from someone she considered a paragon of pragmatism, but they were all human in the end; unfortunately. She chews on her stick of jerky and takes her eyes off him, gazing off at a cart clattering past. He can have a few minutes to himself before she comes down into the yard.

Comments

[esquive]

There's work to be done. It's late in the morning, but the Inquisition's managerie of animals must be run about the singular paddock and there is always dirt and mud to be brushed from a coat, and there are loose shoes and saddles in need of cleaning and the loose hatch on the granary bins in need of mending.

If there's any place in the world to keep busy in, it's this one.

What he does instead is fetch a stool. The little roan mare is mostly clean today, her tether left long enough for her to lay in the straw with her legs tucked up beneath her like the clumsiest parody of a cat. Marcoulf sets up beside her with a wide toothed comb. He works his way through her shaggy dark mane, picking out knots and tangles and beginning to rhythmic process of pulling her mane out by its longest strands. He's still at it whenever the little not-cat comes slinking down from the rooftops, sitting near to the mare with her neck nearly in his lap like some great mabari.

[notched]

He's putting more effort in that horse's mane than Anna puts into her own. Then again, she'd have to be a liar to say she didn't notice he put more effort into the horses than most things. How else would she have known to come find him here. Was that his little secret? His little ritual that kept him human. All the Hunters had them, the fastidious work of honing something to perfection.

Marcoulf's never struck her much like a Hunter.

She wanders through the stable collect saddles to brush clean before oiling, thinking on this. Maybe having work in your hands was good for everyone's heart, regardless of the circumstances. She sets up her work near enough to be seen, but far enough off not to invite acknowledgement.

Even trying her best to separate this new hobby from the relentless past, she has trouble not to think on the workshop where they had all toiled and tinkered together side by side. Each Hunter focused on their own craft; surrounded by the smells of leather and iron. All knew their work well enough that a simple word and a gesture would grant them a pair of hands or a desired tool.

They hadn't needed to talk, they all knew they belonged together. Now she doesn't belong much of anywhere, but the horses haven't rejected her so far.

[esquive]

It's funny - how it's so easy to become accustomed to certain dark shadows lurking at the margins of a room. Maybe that's why Anna materializing into the space doesn't immediately draw his attention. Or maybe it's because his mind is elsewhere. Or maybe it's because he has focused all his energies, all his attention on this: finding the longest of the roan mare's bristly hairs, wrapping them about the comb two or three at a time and yanking them free. It's an easy, repeating motion. It's the kind of thing that's good for consuming the rest of the world.

But eventually awareness of her finds its way through it to him. The pattern of pull, wrap, pull pauses. His head cocks in Anna's direction, but his gaze doesn't follow.

And then the pull, wrap, pull motion resumes. Or does until the roan mare raises her head out of the mountain of pale grassy hay and twists her narrow little face around - snaking the line of her neck out from under his hand until he clamps a steady hand down near her withers. Don't stand up, you--

The mare looks at Anna, low dopey long ears pricked forward. Then she makes a low whickering noise: Hey, you're a person with food sometimes, are't you?

[notched]

She does not immediately respond to this plea for attention. If nothing else, because she's opposed to the idea that an animal's plaintive huff can command her to any action. She continues her brushing and scrubbing, but it will be scrubbed well enough eventually. She gets up then, brushes dirt and grit from her pants, for all the good it does the worn things she wears.

She might just possibly have a few wrinkly carrots in one of her leather pouches. They could be handy, when one of the horses was feeling sour and uncooperative, and a Hunter was never unprepared. Although the horse still isn't the one in charge here: she comes closer and holds the carrot out to Marcoulf. The look on her face says his roan is a spoiled girl, the smallest smile pursed on her lips.

[esquive]

Any other horse intent on that treat would shake Marcoulf's hand off and get to its feet to better maneuver after it. But the roan is satisfied where she lays, perfectly content in the inevitability of her reward. Marcoulf, who up close looks as if he hasn't slept whatsoever, hums of a low noise, takes the carrot from Anna and makes good on seeing that the spoiled princess of a horse gets exactly what she wants.

"She's ruined," he says matter of factly, patting the horse high on her neck before he returns to the comb, the long strands of her mane. Wrap, pull. Wrap, pull.

[notched]

Ruined, and yet it has been his pleasure to ruin her. Sometimes it's hard for her to think about anything but the skeletons of horses who had died trapped to carts as mobs had growled through the street brandishing fire in all directions. Her brows pinch, wondering if she'll ever stop thinking about those things. Doubtful. Kirkwall lives, not so different from Yharnam, and it could just as easily die.

She crouches down to rub the mare on the nose: "Aye."

She could get back to that saddle now, it still needs to be oiled and then there are others than need to be wiped down from when it was their turn days before. Instead she lingers, watching the comb in her mane and feeling breath up her sleeve.

"Alright then?" Her brief and distant way of asking a cranky, sleepless man if he's ok. Might as well while she's here, while everyone's calm and quiet and close.

[esquive]

He makes a low humming noise in reply, smoothing away the loose hairs from off the roan mare's bent neck. It's fine.

Wrap, pull, wrap. The mare makes soft sounds against Anna's fingers, her long winter whiskers prickling against skin.

"Do you know anything about riding?" Marcoulf asks without looking up from his work.

[notched]

"Mounts are too cumbersome."

The beasts would have just gone for the horse's throat anyway. They weren't swift enough to dance around a clawing werewolf or other mutilated monster.

And they hadn't let little orphan girls ride ponies, as much as she remembers Grace always wanting to.

[esquive]

Wrap, pull, wrap, pull.

"That's said, if you ever cared to learn--" He shrugs. It's only the edge of a fuller thought, but it hardly seems necessary to say much past it. Or maybe he's just tired of saying much at all, all the real words scraped right out of him with only bits and pieces left behind to make useless conversation with.

(Or maybe he just thinks better of it. Stop doing this; stop giving people things they aren't asking for. What a stupid habit to have formed.)

[notched]

"Can't walk everywhere," she concedes. Already some of the excursions the Inquisition have sent her on have been longer than her explorations of the areas surrounding Yharnam proper.

Although what did she care. She had walked from the mountains to Yharnam, all those years ago...

[esquive]

A soft sound of ascent: No, you can't.

"She's good once you have her under saddle. A little snob without, but she knows when she's working and when she isn't. Anyway," he says, sweeping loose hairs from the mare's long neck. "It never hurts to learn on a horse with a temper. It makes the kinder ones seem more pleasant."

Not that she's a bitch, only a small dopey looking princess.