WHO: Yseult, others tbd WHAT: Catch-all post WHEN: Now-ish WHERE: Kirkwall, probably NOTES: Setting up some threads I've discussed. If you want something let me know!
There is no respite from the oppressive heat and humidity that remains settled over Kirkwall, but if there were it might be here. The watchtower faces the harbor's mouth and the Waking Sea beyond, its pitch gentle enough to lie comfortably propped toward any scrap of breeze, and the wall-walk below near enough to break a fall.
It's just after dusk, but that brings little relief these days. Yseult has brought a tankard full of ice with her, a chip set in the hollow of her throat and left to melt, another tucked into her hair just above an ear.
"You're welcome to join me," she says without opening her eyes, "But it's nearly as still up here as the courtyard."
Either she is immune to the threat of company (likely, given all the time she spends with it between the little card playing cabal she's seeded and her habit of idle chit chat during the work day) or Fitcher is simply too sweaty and too committed to the task of clambering out onto the watchtower's roof to reverse direction. She hardly bats an eye at Yseult presence, shimmying out onto the slate with reasonably sure footing.
"What a miserable place the Imperium chose to build their city in. Is Minrathous even half as forsaken? Perhaps we can blame it on bad habits."
Pop! goes her knee as she lower herself down. Fitcher croaks out a soft, laughing groan.
"Not in my experience," Yseult replies, with a quick glance over at the audible pop, mouth curving sympathetically at the laugh. "They were wise enough not to build their capital in a sinking swamp. Ice?"
She swings an arm over to offer the tankard, which for better or worse appears to hold only ice, no drink. Priorities.
"I'd prefer an urgent mission to the Sunless Lands."
"Ah. You're a blessing." A few chips of ice are fetched from the tankard and applied with the curve of her palm to her neck and held there. It's a very minor form of relief, but beggars and choosers and so on. "Is that not under your purview, Scoutmistress? For all we know, there is some secret object out there waiting to win the war on our behalf."
There would be no mistaking her as being serious even if the suggestion itself weren't so absurd. There's an overplayed quality to the whole thing - the curling tone of her low voice, the quirked eyebrow used for punctuation - that suggests the real joke is that fact that she'd bothered to make a pass for humor at all.
"I'm told they've already been," Yseult replies, with a similar sort of tinge to her otherwise lightly-conversational tone, like this sort of small talk is all a joke in itself. "Before my time. According to reports they destroyed a red lyrium mine, rescued some rifters in a crevice, along with a giant green chicken. I hope that wasn't it."
She laughs at her own joke as she rearranges her limbs: legs drawn up just high enough to rest her straightened arms out over the knees. It's a vain attempt to coax some breeze through the sleeves of her shirt, but sometimes pretending after comfort is a small step toward actually being it.
Take this conversation, for example. They might continue in this vein for some time if they cared to.
There is an uncomfortably long pause in which Yseult appears to be trying to determine whether she can actually confirm that nobody ate the giant green chicken. She shuts her mouth with a click of teeth just before Fitcher changes course. In comparison to the prospect of eating bizarre rift beasts, murder's a positively savory subject.
"I'm afraid he fell ill," she says, with every impression of genuine sympathy, "All very sudden. Nothing to be done, according to his doctor."
There s no sympathy there, just plain satisfaction as Fitcher surveys intervening landscape between their perch here in the harbor and Kirkwall. A small fleet of boats scurries along, for all the world like a swarm of jumping water bugs from this vantage, and the smoke from the city proper softens some of its less fortunate features. The weather might be just as miserable here as it is elsewhere in the Gallows, but at least the view is pleasant.
Fitcher gives the woman beside her a sly look. "How fortunate for his family."
"Indeed." Yseult's smile is of a kind with Fitcher's. "Fortunate too that he took the time to reveal where he'd concealed a... portion of their inheritance, before he died."
A thin sheen of sweat is the ubiquitous fashion in Kirkwall these days, and she reaches up to brush a wisp of hair back where it's stuck to her forehead. "Is that what brings you to Riftwatch? A new friend?"
Her smile twitches slightly wider. It's the sort of tugging expression best accompanied by a chin set grilishly in an upturned palm, but Fitcher doesn't bother with it.
"I suspect that if I said no, it wouldn't be very convincing."
There is a pause which follows - a moment in which Fitcher gives the thought genuine consideration. The answer, the proper one, would be complicated and unpleasant. So she settles for, "Not yet. But I'll let you know if something begins to alter course and in the mean time, I'm rather enjoying myself here. The work is pleasantly ridiculous."
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for fitcher
It's just after dusk, but that brings little relief these days. Yseult has brought a tankard full of ice with her, a chip set in the hollow of her throat and left to melt, another tucked into her hair just above an ear.
"You're welcome to join me," she says without opening her eyes, "But it's nearly as still up here as the courtyard."
no subject
"What a miserable place the Imperium chose to build their city in. Is Minrathous even half as forsaken? Perhaps we can blame it on bad habits."
Pop! goes her knee as she lower herself down. Fitcher croaks out a soft, laughing groan.
no subject
She swings an arm over to offer the tankard, which for better or worse appears to hold only ice, no drink. Priorities.
"I'd prefer an urgent mission to the Sunless Lands."
no subject
There would be no mistaking her as being serious even if the suggestion itself weren't so absurd. There's an overplayed quality to the whole thing - the curling tone of her low voice, the quirked eyebrow used for punctuation - that suggests the real joke is that fact that she'd bothered to make a pass for humor at all.
whoops
no subject
She laughs at her own joke as she rearranges her limbs: legs drawn up just high enough to rest her straightened arms out over the knees. It's a vain attempt to coax some breeze through the sleeves of her shirt, but sometimes pretending after comfort is a small step toward actually being it.
Take this conversation, for example. They might continue in this vein for some time if they cared to.
"But tell me, how is our mutual friend?"
no subject
"I'm afraid he fell ill," she says, with every impression of genuine sympathy, "All very sudden. Nothing to be done, according to his doctor."
no subject
There s no sympathy there, just plain satisfaction as Fitcher surveys intervening landscape between their perch here in the harbor and Kirkwall. A small fleet of boats scurries along, for all the world like a swarm of jumping water bugs from this vantage, and the smoke from the city proper softens some of its less fortunate features. The weather might be just as miserable here as it is elsewhere in the Gallows, but at least the view is pleasant.
Fitcher gives the woman beside her a sly look. "How fortunate for his family."
no subject
A thin sheen of sweat is the ubiquitous fashion in Kirkwall these days, and she reaches up to brush a wisp of hair back where it's stuck to her forehead. "Is that what brings you to Riftwatch? A new friend?"
no subject
"I suspect that if I said no, it wouldn't be very convincing."
no subject
no subject
No offense.