faderift | [open/intro] gimme shelter.

WHO: Laura Kint + YOU
WHAT: Laura shows up for...work? Kind of work. She shows up to stab things and eat food and maybe frown at ghost costumes.
WHEN: The first week(ish) of August
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall
NOTES: Please consider filling out Laura's permissions if you haven't already. CW TBD.

all souls.

Laura has never celebrated All Soul's Day before, which makes her first night in Kirkwall...unusual. People dressed as ghosts, bonfires everywhere, the smell of sweets masking some of the city's riper odors. Tomorrow, she'll go to the Gallows and demand entry, payment, protection--whatever it is she can expect from them at this point. That Riftwatch is no longer the Inquisition hadn't been carried as rumor to her corner of Cumberland (or if it had, she hadn't noticed), but it sounds as though they no longer have the same kind of favor they once did. It is a concern.

But a concern of unknown quantities, and that means it is for tomorrow. Tonight, she is in Kirkwall, where everyone around her seems to be pretending to be dead.

"Is it always like this?" she asks in slightly accented Trade, frowning at a huge pile branches about to be set afire.

eyrie.

She's never seen griffons before, either, and she's not sure she quite believes her eyes. Laura smells them first and follows the scent--an animal, clearly, but one she doesn't recognize, feathers and fur all at once--up and up stone steps until she's at the top of a tower, in the middle of a doorway.

One of the creatures looks at her, and she looks back levelly, her tentative fascination nowhere close to her face. It's like something out of a fairy tale, stopping her in her tracks. Hope you weren't planning to get through: she's going to be rooted to the spot for a bit, wary of getting too close to the beasts but evidently fascinated by them.

dinner.

She has, however, eaten before. And around other people, no less, though she gives approximately no care toward others' sensibilities when she's presented with food. It doesn't matter what it is, only that it's there and she hasn't had to do anything to get it except promise to fight for Riftwatch.

Coming to Kirkwall was a long walk through endless forests, one she's still hungry from. While she'd eaten reasonably well at times--nugs, mostly--it wasn't quite enough by the time she'd actually arrived at the Gallows.

At every meal for the first few days, she eats with determined speed. The claw over her right forefinger comes out, ghostly and terribly dangerous all at once, every time she needs to slice something or jab a morsel off a serving tray.

sparring.

It's no surprise that she ends up at the armory complex--someone probably told her to go there, for one thing, and for another, fighting's one of the things she knows intimately. And she stays in that area for some time, watching sparring matches with grim fascination, as if she's memorizing each move.

Ask her if she needs a weapon, and she'll shake her head. One hand goes up, two not-quite-there claws shimmer from between her knuckles.

Ask her if she wants to try a round, and that will get a nod. Having replaced (possibly by stealing) her worn, ill-fitting skirt for pair of black breeches, she's even more ready for a fight than usual.

around.

Laura's a small, human woman around sixteen or seventeen, who dresses entirely in black and skulks around the Gallows like she's still not sure she belongs there. She spends a good deal of time at the tops of towers, near windows, climbing things that probably shouldn't be climbed, and lurking in dark corners. She might enter your room to investigate it, without thinking about the fact that it's yours. Or she might stare a little too long, like she's trying to understand something or decide something. Maybe you're the person she took a pair of breeches from, or a pair of boots. It's not so hard to find her in the library, near the herb gardens, or perched on windowsills. When she's actively trying to conceal herself, she's more difficult to pick out from the rafters.

If you want to plot something specific, please reach out! Let's make your dreams come true.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“For All Soul’s Day,” Bastien says, “yes—to commemorate the death of Andraste. Do they not have fires in—” A moment of hesitation before he commits to placing her accent. “—Nevarra?”

He sounds surprised. He is surprised. The costumes are what are strange to him. Or at least new, if not strange. Perhaps it is because northerners are so adverse to costume and theater the remainder of the year that they have to find excuses for it on holidays. But Nevarra, at least, has its ancestral pageants and dragon dances. He’d have assumed they were as much into the drama of it all as anyone else.

"There are fires everywhere," she points out, and if it's meant to be sarcastic, it isn't said like it is. There's a furrow between her eyebrows as she tries to remember. Do they do this in Nevarra?

She hadn't learned the holidays at the estate, or anything about Andraste beyond the occasional curse. And in Cumberland...holidays happened, she knows that much. Inevitably, she listened to them through windows and doors; people always wanted to spend money when something special was happening.

There is a pause, a too-long one that she doesn't know quite how to fill. She watches him instead of trying, green eyes intent.

Bastien watches her back, for a moment, and then for another moment narrows his eyes just a smidgen to echo and exceed her intensity—smiling, in the meantime, because it is meant more or less in the spirit of sticking his tongue out at a child who's done it first. In the third moment he's moving over on his wall, making space if she wants it, and not inviting her to sit in case she is not in the mood to be invited to sit beside an unknown man at least twice her age.

"Not everywhere," he says. "There was an island off the Feral Fjords populated by people who did not seem to know anything about it. The Sister who discovered them thought they might be recent descendants of shipwrecked children—gone feral, you see, and thus the name. They did not cook anything. They pulled fish from the sea and directly into their mouths."

It's mostly nonsense. Not entirely, though.

"But these fires," to get back on topic, "remind us how Our Lady Redeemer suffered. If you want to grill anything, we will have to wait until the keening stops."

She isn't sure how to interpret the face he makes, nor the things he tells her. Fire seems like a difficult thing to miss, even to a girl raised far from larger society--but she's eaten enough raw meat to know life is possible without it. (It was a long walk to Kirkwall, and sometimes, it rained too hard to cook the nugs she caught.) So she assumes it is the truth, and that his smiles are merely strange.

"I have already eaten today." And even if she hadn't, she has no food with her. A pause, not so long or awkward. "Your lady redeemer--that is Andraste."

Her voice goes up slightly at the end of the sentence, not quite decided on being a question or not.

Bastien nods, readily and mildly enough that it could be the sort of thing it's normal to need to confirm, while beyond them someone finally produces a torch and sets an edge of their assembled debris aflame. Watching the fire begin to crawl over the wood gives him a brief moment to decide what, exactly, to try asking her first.

Are you traveling alone would be creepy, even if it would be out of concern—she seems old enough for it, but perhaps not informed enough for it—and were you raised in isolation on a mountaintop would obviously be impolite.

Perhaps: "What brings you to Kirkwall?"

Laura's satisfied with the nod she receives, turning her attention back to the soon-to-be bonfire; her interest in Andraste involves no genuine curiosity, only a need to explain the world around her. The flames licking up the heap of boughs, on the other hand, are strangely absorbing. Lively and lifeless all at once, eating slowly up the surfaces of the piled wood--she suspects she could watch it all night.

She does not move closer to the man on his ledge, let alone seat herself beside him. But when he speaks again, she does not mind it.

"The Inquisition." That mission has, technically, been a failure. An edge of dissatisfaction comes into her voice, her brows drawing down. "But their name has changed."

And that may not bode well. She isn't sure whether it indicates a diminished organization or an increased one.

"Ah, what luck," Bastien says. "I work for them—Riftwatch."

Work for them seems a small description, for something that's subsumed so much of his identity now, for something he was there to help birth. But nothing better comes to mind, if he is to avoid dramatics, and for the moment he would prefer to. The fire is enough drama.

"The Inquisition has not changed its name," he adds, "but we are no longer exactly part of it. It is not a bad thing, I think. There was some debate. But we still work with them, toward a common purpose, and in the meantime we are allowed our differences of opinion—I am sure that does not interest you." Or perhaps it does. She's welcome to ask. But first: "Did you come to help, or because you need help yourself?"

Her expression changes when he says I work for them. Sharpens, perhaps, focusing more intently on him rather than taking in the night's crowd as a whole. Normally, she's looking everywhere at once--or as close to it as she can--assessing everyone for the possibility of a threat.

Brows drawing down, she listens to his explanation. It tells little, only that they are not the Inquisition. What the change means for this Riftwatch's power, she will have to ask. But first:

"I can fight." Something that becomes evident as soon as she is challenged and therefore to say aloud in public. Even Laura Kint, whose knowledge of the world does not include such subjects as the Chantry, knows better than to tell a stranger in a strange city that she recently murdered her procurer.

"I do not doubt it," he says. It doesn't answer his question, exactly, but it's perfectly believable. She has that look. "If there is trouble I will hide behind you."

There won't be trouble.

"Hide behind something that will not move," she advises him. If he hides behind her, he will have a difficult time remaining hidden. Even if there won't be trouble, he should be prepared effectively.

[open/intro] gimme shelter.

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