bury it and rise above | closed

[hassaran]

WHO: Yseult & Darras
WHAT: Sometimes Riftwatch is a frustrating place to work
WHEN: Now?
WHERE: Scouting Office
NOTES: n/a

The office door is locked, but Darras has a key. Opening it draws cool fall air rushing past him from the windows thrown open at the other end of the room, fluttering curtains and rustling papers, tugging against the paperweights holding down three maps of Nevarra on the table, markers scattered on their sides, gathered into piles.

Undisturbed by the breeze is Yseult, her head ducked down low out of its path, ear pressed to the round door in a big metal box set in the center of the room. A dwarven-style safe by the looks of it and brand new, with neat gold-painted piping and POLLANDER & SONS SINCE 8:24 on the side. On top is a glass, nearly empty of wine.

Yseult doesn't look up, or even open her eyes, just holds up a hand with one finger extended.

Comments

[staysail]

As one of the selfish members of Riftwatch (if personal cause could be summarized by a single person, especially, one who he's sat next to now), Darras holds his tongue there. He'd throw over anyone or thing for Yseult. Not the thing she wants to hear. Certainly she'd not see it as some grand romantic gesture. He's slow, but he's worked that out. And it's beginning to take shape, like something glimpsed far off that you're now closer to. What matters to Yseult has to matter to him as well, even if it's just that she's the lens he sees it through. If it matters to her, then it matters to him.

She likely won't want to hear that either, this crude way of understanding the causes she'd champion. He follows her gesture instead, thinking this through, all the players in this game and how they move, and are moved.

"And what's his way look like, now?"

[hassaran]

"Supporting the Van Markhams in their coup," Yseult says with a shake of her head, "I don't know beyond that. He's made some deal with them, or thinks they'll suit his ends in some way."

She looks back at the safe for a moment, but concedes that she's not going to be continuing with that just now and instead pushes to her feet, pacing toward her desk. "I want him out, but it won't happen. And there's no one to replace him. I don't know if the others will even care. They could approve. They could be inspired to do the same!" She lifts a hand as if to gesture and drops it, turning to sit on the side of the desk, arms first crossed and then just as quickly uncrossed, hands pressed once again to her forehead. "This is why I work alone."

[staysail]

Darras' smile is one more of commiseration than anything else, with a bit of a wince. Throw it over, he might have suggested at another time, leave them to it, who needs it--if it's a bloody hassle, let them sort it--but he doesn't, this time, say it. Yseult has left her wine behind; Darras takes a sip of it, then shifts so he can sit with his back against the safe, facing Yseult where she's paced away.

"Find out what the others think," he says. "Or what they'll confess to thinking. There's no one better at reading people than you. Even if they say one thing, mean another--you'll have a hint at it. If you want Flint sorted, and you've got to work with the others, might as well know their measure."