[open/intro] gimme shelter.

[justashotaway]

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.

Comments

[inkindled]

The quiet that has fallen between them is a few notches shy of perfectly companionable, but that's all right. Matthias was born affable, the sort that made friends easily before he set the stable on fire and got packed off to Tantervale. Managed to keep that trait, even amid the darkness of the Circle and the war and all.

And living through all that meant you never did knew who you were sitting next to, not properly, or where they'd been or where they were going or any of it. Someone might well be your friend, so leave them be until they demonstrate otherwise. Weather silences and fill in the gaps of conversations when you need to. She's not walked away from him, so she's not rejected his company entirely. Didn't look exactly as if she believed he could hold his own, but that's all right. Or at least, that's what Matthias tries to tell himself. If you're underestimated, you can prove everyone wrong. He's always being underestimated, is the thing.

Anyways, when Laura does speak, Matthias brightens visibly. The acknowledgement might be good enough, but he's keen enough on the topic as well. He swallows his last bite of porridge as well and wipes the back of his wrist over his mouth.

"Um," somewhat thickly, still with the gummy porridge, "well, I went to the Circle when I was about ten. And then that all fell apart, and the other mages and I fucked out of there, so... since I was eleven, maybe. I think. And it's sort of been all along since then, right. Every once and awhile they'd call a truce and things sort of would go quiet, or we'd hear there's big things being discussed elsewhere, this Grand Enchanter's meeting with that big cheese templar bodger. They had the Conclave, and we were camping out in the snow, still. Fighting, still. Eventually we heard the Inquisition was headed for Ghislain so we figured, all right, join up. Then--"

Well. This part he's far less keen on. Matthias screws up his face a little as he works out what to say next. Everyone died and the people left weren't worth a damn. No. There's something far too pitiful about that, and he never wants pity. Not that Laura seems inclined to be offering him pity. And anyways, everyone knows people who have died in this war, or another. And you don't fuck off from your group, even after a load of deaths. So he can't say that--or rather, can't admit to it, not without explaining, and if he's got to explain, then he's going to sound more pitiful, and more of a coward.

So. As steady as anything:

"Then I reckoned I'd see what the Inquisition was up to, so I headed off on my own to Kirkwall. By the time I made it here they were halfway to calling themselves Riftwatch, which is all right. Same idea and all. I mean, s'ppose that's why I'm here, isn't it. Because--well, the Inquisition, Riftwatch--they're doing things. Like," and he turns to look at Laura again, full on. "Why are you here?"

[justashotaway]

Laura, for her part, is vaguely aware of the fact that Matthias changes beside her--straightens up, maybe, his eyes different--but it does not seem particularly relevant. Listening to him, though, is. He speaks animatedly (which she's in the process of deciding is not animated for him, since it's how he always speaks) of the last few years of his life. Smiles and frowns and the hint of many more stories hidden in the broad strokes he paints. She has no idea what a Circle is, but that does not matter: she knows well what it is to have to hurt people, and to have to hide. Every word, she drinks in, and all the little shifts of face and body that go with.

His question runs right through her skin and under her ribs, burying itself into one of her lungs. For a moment, she can't answer with anything but a dark look with eyes turned away; her chest feels strange, like she exhaled without realizing.

(This had been a breakfast she had enjoyed, up to the point that Matthias asked about her. He caught her unawares, something she has yet to grow used to. And somehow, it seems that being asked to speak has spoiled something about the easiness with which she'd listening to every flicker of thought that came through Matthias' head.)

"I," she starts, then closes her mouth. She is not going to tell Matthias why she is here. That much, she knows. After a moment, she falls back on an answer she gave someone else: not a lie, not the truth he's looking for. Her eyes meet his again, her face uncertain. "I can fight."

That is why.