faderift | [open/intro] gimme shelter.

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[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.

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Matthias eats as often as he can get away with--which is to say he's nearly always in the hall at mealtimes. First in the door, comes back for seconds--thirds and fourths, too, if they're easy to fold into a napkin and pack away to be eaten later. He's hungry always, could stand to gain some weight--gangly, skinny, with his wrists and ankles always peeking out from the hems of shirts and trousers. That's not a fault with the food, or even the fault of Riftwatch's kits. There's nothing that fits a sixteen year old of Matthias' frame. Too tall in some places, too short in others, all mismatched and not quite grown together yet.

He's seen Laura about by now. It's still too familiar, the way he bangs his plate down near to her and settles in to eat this phase of his dinner, which is peas porridge ladled over a thick trencher of bread, and chunks of ham. Not so close that she'll feel obligated to talk with him, close enough that he can start talking with her without it being weird.

Which--after a few minutes of sidelong observation--he does.

"What is that?" Not very polite, maybe. But she's the one with a bloody ghostly claw, right. There's still a little color in his ears after he's blurted it out, and Matthias washes down the question with a big gulp of ale. Then, for context, he raises one hand and points to his fingers, which do not sport any ghostly spirit claws. "The, uh. This. I've not seen it before on anyone."

“Is what always like what?”

There’s nothing light about the accent that answers her. It’s Orlesian—Royan, more specifically—to a degree that eliminates any possibility of extensive time outside of Val Royeaux, let alone outside of Orlais.

Before now, obviously. Now Bastien is sitting in Kirkwall, watching them carry on with their fascinating Northern display on a low wall that leaves him close to eye level with the young woman he’s answering. Or not answering. Questioning. But he does it with a smile, because is what always like what isn’t meant to be intentionally difficult, or an indication he thinks that the question is stupid, or anything like that.

Laura's too intent on cutting down one of her pieces of ham--if they're all small, there'll be meat in every bite--to pay attention to his sitting down next to her. She knows him, by smell and sight especially: he always moves a little too much, a little awkwardly, and his clothes pull around his limbs.

(He's not unkind. She knows that much.)

At first, she's not sure he's talking to her, mostly because she's only halfway paying attention to him, but he gestures with his hand, and it becomes clear. This.

"This?" She holds up her hand, a chunk of ham dribbling porridge down towards her hand. It's a misty thing, smelling faintly of lyrium, there between them. For a moment, her eyes meet his. "A claw."

Obviously. She returns to her dinner.

"Right, but how does it--"

No, try again. Matthias screws up one eye in concentration. The effort tugs up at the corner of his mouth, and there's his teeth. Average teeth. The Circle was good for health, anyways, better than he would have had as a backwater Free Marcher.

"I mean, what is it. It's shaped like a claw. But it's not a proper claw. Animals have got proper claws. And they aren't foggy like that is. I'm not asking 'cause-- I dunno, 'cause I want to offend you or anything. I think it's brilliant. Can you do more than one? Double, like?"

He makes fists of his hands and holds them up close to his chin. If he had claws, he'd be stabbing himself in the face.

By the time Matthias is finished asking his question--question, explanation, more question--Laura's moved on to actually eating. Which means that claw's disappeared into the air, and her hand's a little busy with a spoon.

But the other one's free, and that's the one she lifts up for him to see. Two claws manifest, as though pulling the air into something slightly more solid, from a loose fist. He's right that they aren't much like animal claws: they're too long, too sharp, more like blades than anything that comes from a wolf's paw. But that's what they are.

Somewhere at another table, someone's staring with a look of confusion, or maybe disgust. Laura doesn't notice. She's mostly focused on eating.

"This." She raises a hand, gestures at the mountain of sticks in front of them. There are others closer to it, humans and elves and a few dwarves, and several of them are wrapped up in pyre shrouds, their faces chalked. It's nothing she remembers seeing before. "Do you always have bonfires?"

You being relative. He sounds Orlesian, though she only knows the language, not the country; she can't place his accent any more closely than I know those vowel sounds. But he seems at home here, or at least less out of place than she. It might be his city as much as anyone's.

"Whoa."

Matthias is staring as well, but without confusion or disgust. It's more an awe, like. His mouth has dropped open a little, and he realizes it, and hastily closes it as he scoots closer to Laura, and to her claws.

Claws. How, and why, and can anyone are more questions that crowd forward, clamoring to be asked, but Matthias pushes them all aside as he reaches out one finger toward the two misty-yet-solid shapes just above Laura's fist.

"Can I-- I mean, they're real, yeah, as you're eating with them and all, so it's not like I need proof--wouldn't be asking for proof, even, 'cause it's not like I'm owed anything--but, can I." Touch. He scrunches his finger at the second knuckle in a kind of wave. Touch with this finger, here. Politeness, or a crude version of it, means that he hasn't yet touched.

He puts a finger near them, and Laura's spoon pauses on the way to her mouth. There are only a few reactions her claws usually merit. Fear, mostly, or anger, or a kind of possessive intrigue. I can make her kill someone or I can make her hurt me, while we--, someone else's thrill bound up in her bones.

But his curiosity is...it's innocent, almost. Trifling. He talks about them like they don't exist for any especial purpose except to be interesting. He doesn't want to use them, only to know what they feel like. And not, she's guessing, in ways that might bring him pain or pleasure.

Laura sets down her spoon and looks at him for a long moment, weighing his interest against the likelihood of deception. (Can he deceive people? He doesn't smell like he's lying, and he doesn't sound like he could.) Her answer isn't relenting--she doesn't move her hand any closer--but it doesn't shut the door on the possibility. "They are sharp."

“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.

Derrica's breath catches, watching Laura's hands.

She's had her go in the ring, emerged sweaty and pleased with herself. She'd traded her staff for a light wooden stave; she won't need magic for this type of sparring. Having lost a partner, she'd drawn to the side to wait for someone new to present themselves, but this girl's hands—

Laura had been watching. Derrica might have introduced herself properly at some point, but she has questions now. It takes her a moment before she draws a few steps closer, eyes flicking up to Laura's face.

"I'd like to go another few rounds today, if you'd like a partner."

It's likely rude to lead off with immediate questions about how this young woman acquired those possibly-claws. Not everyone encourages curiosity. That's one of the first things Derrica had learned when she'd been driven out of Dairsmuid.

"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.

Laura's claws disappear into air as she turns her attention towards the woman approaching. The question of weapons is not relevant for the moment, and the man who'd asked her about them is walking away--she doesn't need them out anymore.

Silently, she glances over her potential sparring partner. Potentially already tired but clearly strong, from the look of her upper body. Worthy as an opponent.

"Yes," she decides, nodding curtly. "Do you want a weapon?"

"Usually this chaotic, though not always actually on fire." The answer comes in a bone-dry Orlesian accent; the man who spoke is dressed finely, though it would take a second look to notice just how finely. His mask doesn't cover his mouth, though the rest of his face is hidden.

"I take it you aren't here expressly for the festivities?" he adds. He hadn't planned to venture out himself, but it had occurred to him that it might be useful to keep an ear to the ground since he's decided to linger in Kirkwall. He's judged it safer for his grandchildren than Orlais, but if that judgment is wrong... well. (And where better to hear loose tongues than at this sort of party.)

"S' okay," Matthias says, bracing and cheerful and entirely unafraid or any sort of nervous--and still with his finger waiting, not touching any bit of the terribly interesting misty claws that are just right there. "I've touched sharp things before, I know what they're about. I'm a mage and all, but I've worked with knives before. Skinned rabbits, things like that. Threshers. Had to have a go at those when I was a kid. Swords. Wish I was better with swords, really--"

No, hang on. Now he's just talking to talk. His grin goes a little sheepish, and he drops his eyes to the table for a second, giving her a break from his scrutiny.

"Sorry. I dunno how to shut up--it's a problem. Everyone says. Anyway, it's all right, if you say no. I can keep my hands to myself just as well. I've just never seen anything like 'em before--not like, claws, right. They're brilliant. You haven't got to sit around wishing you were any good with swords. All in one, you."

Laura glances over at the old man, too Orlesian for his surroundings. She shakes her head.

"No. I am here for the Inquisition." Saying as much gives away too little to seem worthy of concern--it is not a small group, from what she understands. And he does not look like a threat. After a moment, she corrects herself, "Or Riftwatch."

For whatever it is this Riftwatch is worth.

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."

He talks more than Laura's ever known, but there's a certain novelty to it, at least this morning: it has the same feeling as the sound of cups rattling or footsteps on the flagstones, of an inevitable part of her surroundings. At some point, it might become annoying. In this breath, she's grateful she doesn't have to talk, just decide if she'll let him touch her claws.

In the end, it is not a difficult decision. Matthias says she can say no to him. And that is why she chooses to say yes--though she doesn't actually say it.

Laura covers his hand with hers, holding it firm and steady as she guides it. Long experience has taught her exactly how much pressure is required to cut, as opposed to simply threatening to. Under her grasp, his finger moves across the surface of her claw and rests lightly against the razor edge for a moment.

(She's not sure what it'll feel like to him--he says he's a mage, while Laura was only a mage's project--but for her, it's only the edge that truly feels like anything. The rest of the claw is more like a buzzing without sound, raising hairs on her forearm but not providing any solid shape. It isn't real in the same way.)

Drawing his hand away, she lets the claws disappear. All through it, her eyes have been on what she's doing, hair falling in her face, but after she lets go of him, she meets his gaze again. "Your breakfast will get cold."

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.

Maybe the hair on the back of his neck stands up, when she guides his finger to her claws. Maybe he feels something, that deep-down-gut feeling that he's gotten before, like being on some great swing when it's given a proper push, and feeling the world fall away. Maybe there's a prickle, a sensation, something--and there is--but a lot of it's lost on Matthias, at least at first, because he's still reeling from a girl having grabbed his hand.

Now, that's something.

But then there's: the claws. The tingle that comes of touching them passes up his arm, and he gives a little bitten-back shiver--but he's grinning a moment later, brilliant--and even once the claws are gone, the echo of that feeling is still thrumming away in Matthias.

And under that, there's such a directness in the way that Laura is looking at him that he feels funny about it. Not bad. Just, like, being looked at, that's good. And like maybe there's a lot to her. He's known people like that. Someone with disappearing claws, they're as like to be intense as all get-out. And he wants to tell her that he gets it, probably--maybe not exactly, but vaguely, the shape of things--because things are fucked right now, but that's why he's here, and maybe why she's here, too--that part of him that's always looking for other halves, people with questions and troubles and confusions, all best untangled with someone else--

So then it's funny to be talking about breakfast, like it matters. Matthias looks back at his bowl and swallows. Grins, again.

"Probably already is cold, honestly. I don't mind. I'll eat bloody anything. Look--" And he turns his hand about so he can grab for hers again, emphatic, trying to hold her attention, the focus of her gaze on his face. He likes the intentness he sees in it. Someone looking at him, like he's interesting or important or at least worth paying mind to. "Look, those're brilliant. Likely you know, but still. I've never seen anything, anything like that. Never felt anything like that either. They could have a slice off of a gnat or a druffalo, just as easy. They're-- lyrium, right? Got to be. That's, the feeling," and with his free hand, he wiggles his fingers in the air. "They don't hurt, do they? I mean, they're just there or not there, depending on how you want 'em. Bloody hell, you could fight anything with those. Demons or deepstalkers or Vints."

Laura, mistakenly, assumes this will be the end of it. He has touched a claw and smiled at her like she offered him his weight in gold, and he has breakfast to eat; his interest will obviously drift from her and into the rest of the day. He must think as he talks, flitting from one subject to another, ever driven onwards, if only to the next meal.

But that seems to be incorrect, because--as she starts to shift back to her own cooling meal--he catches her hand in his. Laura looks over again, intensity gone too sharp out of surprise; she can't remember ever having her hand held like this. Not to drive home a point, not with Matthias' particular ruddy-faced excitement accompanying it. She still half expects him to give a sharp tug, try to pull her arm out of its socket.

(But he doesn't do things like that. Her instincts are ready for someone crueler than Matthias.)

He means it all as a compliment, she can figure that much out. And it is...complimentary. More so than what she usually hears about them. The level of his interest is starting to feel more like a concern than it originally did--more like other mages, like there might be a desire to pick her apart and understand how it works--but she is not prepared to walk away from this conversation. Her breakfast is here, and Matthias is...he does not, she doesn't think, mean to sound like that kind of mage.

So she nods, silent, at the question about lyrium. When he finally stops talking, she lets her hand slip out of his and takes a breath, looking for an answer that doesn't feel like self-dissection.

"Not anymore." Getting them had hurt. Reis had strapped her down and told her he was doing this for his father, and she understands it no more now than she did then--and nothing has ever come close to those long weeks of flaying and healing and flaying again. But now, there is nothing, just the itch of something cousin to magic. After a moment, for reasons she can't explain to herself, she adds, "It is hard to hurt me."

She does not want him to think otherwise, and she does not know why it feels so important that he doesn't.

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.

Monster lowers her head; heavy, hooked beak tilting like a clock about Laura's slight frame. She chuffs, ears flattening back, stalks a pace aside. White wings lift, uncertain, lower again. Straw gusts about the broken stone.

Then she spies the glint of something — perhaps a shirtbutton, or the glint of metal — and screams.

Melys rockets up from behind a hay bale, sleep-muddled to shout back,

"Oh, give it a rest!"

Too late. Laura's already backed into a fighting stance, claws glowing in the dim light of the eyrie. She growls, staring up at the creature's heavy beak and trying to guess just how much damage it can cause a person.

The sound of someone else's voice is only a peripheral consideration at this point, something to take edging steps toward. If the beast attempts to strike, two on one will be better odds.

The griffon hisses back, eyes widening for the gleam of lyrium. Its neck lifts --

Is caught, abruptly, in a headlock.

"I said, give it a," There's a woman hanging off the end of that bird, now pacing back to try and shake her. "Fucking,"

Melys finally notices Laura.

"Put those away." Has not, exactly, clocked what Those are. "Wants the bloody things."

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[open/intro] gimme shelter.

dinner!

all souls!

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sparring.

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all souls

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eyrie;

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