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]

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.