[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

Around

[reshapes]

He's on a mission.

Well, no. That's not actually true at all. Mission implies a certain level of official, non-personal business which he has been pressed into doing. It suggests a general baseline of bickering and complaining with someone has gone into the preparation of the work, and it infers that should he fail in Charge that the tenderest parts of his loosely defined anatomy may learn to regret it. No, this is more like a personal project. What that implies, Bartimaeus doesn't much feel like putting sustained consideration into. The fact that it's necessary is troubling enough in the first place.

He's spent the morning beetling about the lower dungeons and workshops and the courtyards in the guise of Kitty Jones. He'd spent the afternoon making his way through the baths and the towers and the libraries in the same. And here, in the falling dusk, he'd at last taken the aerial approach.

Which is more or less how he'd spotted her - a slim black shape on some eave where slim black shapes aren't meant to belong -, and why there is now a great big owl with sickly green rift light flashing between its talons coming to rest on the parapet above her. For all that the bird flies on silent wings, it isn't subtle. It leans out from its perch, head twisting around nearly 180-degrees to peer at her with its glittering saucer sized black eyes.

And then the owl says, "Don't tell me you're up here getting ready to assassinate someone. There are easier ways to go about it."

[justashotaway]

At first, she ignores the bird. It is large, and it has an odd greenish tinge, but it is not relevant beyond the fact that it exists. (It is also one of the first creatures she's seen in Kirkwall besides rats and fish.)

But the bird does not let her ignore it. Swooping down, stretching out, turning its head--Laura catches it from the corner of her eye. She only shifts when it speaks.

That is when she whips around, still crouching. When her claws appear, hands and feet both, and a low growl comes out of her throat. She hasn't pounced yet, but her legs are bending further, threatening to spring up towards the parapet, to kill whatever demon came from the Fade to torment her.

[reshapes]

Which is a funny trick, but it's not like this is is his first rooftop assassin with a plethora of knives at their disposal. "The between the toes thing is new though," says the owl from its perch. "That's almost impressive. Your feet must be very dexterous."

Not impressive to send him flapping, though. No offense.

[justashotaway]

That doesn't endear the demon to her--and she's certain now that it's some kind of demon, because birds only speak in stories. That limits her options: she can run, which is cowardly and puts the Gallows at risk, or she can fight.

Launching herself up at it, she slices her not-quite-knife claws out at the bird's broad breast.

[reshapes]

Which, look. It's not as if he doesn't understand the impulse, but at this point wouldn't it be better to adapt the whole 'stab the problem' plan? Honestly. It's always as if the only option on the table for people is hacking willy nilly with something sharp when it comes to tripping over the unexpected. No wonder they've never gotten very far.

In the instant that the young woman lunges, all pointy bits, the owl becomes-- well, to tell the truth he isn't quite certain what the owl becomes. The instinct is to go small, to become a sneaking housecat or a bounding fox or a bangled cobra coiled and ready for a strike of its own. And then at the last moment, he recalls the extreme discomfort of small in conjunction with the rift shard gnawing at the end of his limb and so changed his mind so abruptly that he doesn't really have time to think on the result.

Which is how he ends up with a pair of knobbly (and hairy) person shaped legs attached to an owl everything else. The legs are just tall enough to straddle the air into which the knives plunge.

"Hey! Now that's just unnecessary!"

[justashotaway]

Laura comes up short, eyes wide, her stance wobbling a hair's breadth as she takes in the all-too-human legs that suddenly grow from the bird's body. Shifting shape is something she has not witnessed before, in battle or outside it. There's something horrific about it to her, the knowledge that this creature's flesh could become anything, if it wanted to. It is unreal, nightmarish, potentially a thousand different

As soon as her footing is sure again, she swipes at one of the ankles. Cut the flesh above the heel, and that will end things. It will feel pain long enough to lose its balance, and she will ensure it loses everything else, too. She's still thinking of the demon in flesh-and-blood terms, of muscles and tendons to be flayed, unaware that she won't get far with that conception. What matters is that a demon is at the Gallows; everything else can come after she has removed it.

[reshapes]

Well he's not just going to wait there, his two legs doing the foxtrot to avoid getting poked and prodded. With a bark of indignation and an especially quick two step to avoid the razoring edge of her-- whatever --, he hops back into the air. The legs are a drag (literally), but he can tuck his knees up with the best of them.

Dignified? No. Picturesque? Only if you've a particular fondness for Hieronymus Bosch. But it certainly gets him out of the infant assassin's immediate reach and that's all that really matters.

"I could report you for this, you know."