[OPEN] not good with words.

[justashotaway]

WHO: Laura Kint and YOU
WHAT: How's Laura doing? WELL, SHE'S BEEN BETTER. If you'd like a closed starter with something more specific, please drop me a line on dw or elsewhere o/
WHEN: Various days mid-Harvestmere, after the initial messenger drama
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall
NOTES: TBD

first, a wildcard.

It's not exactly the easiest these days, finding Laura. She doesn't linger in common areas and frequently takes food away from the dining hall to eat privately. It's possible to catch her in corridors, however, or loading up a plate to run away with, or holed up in the corner of a nominally public room. (The library is a good place to try, Laura trying to be as unnoticeable as possible while reading fairy tales and other decidedly-not-war-philosophy books.)

But occasionally, things work out differently.

and then the ferry.

Early one morning, she strikes out for the first ferry of the day, with what she's hoping is unimpeachable logic: The messenger gave no description of her, and the townspeople have no reason to know who she is. In a way, is she not safer there?

(More importantly, walking through the Gallows is suffocating. People here know who she is and what she has done. Whether they care is immaterial.)

She wears her hood and tries to stay near enough others that she looks like she belongs here at the water's edge, waiting to go away from the Gallows for a time. It might not entirely work.

or the memorial garden.

The green, dying scent of plants draws her into Hightown despite her best efforts to avoid it. (If the messenger is still here, if the diplomat she answered to is here, they will both be in Hightown. Laura is nearly sure of that.) She hasn't spent much time there in general--it does not seem especially welcoming--but when she does, she goes to the garden that used to be a building. So it goes today.

"What is this called?" she asks the person near her. The plant, that's what she means, but anyone even mildly familiar with her could be forgiven for assuming she's referring to the garden as a whole.

or the market.

Normally, she goes to the market to examine the jewelry and spices available. Today, she is looking at boots and sacks and water skins and trying to determine which might be the best purchases to consider. She is not here to buy, only to think.

And to follow a sound down an alleyway--someplace in the shadows between buildings, a person is being held up at knifepoint. Laura stops short, heat in her gaze, and gives a flat, "Leave," to the would-be mugger.

or the ships.

Some of the ships are huge--others, little more than fishing boats--and in the months she's been in Kirkwall, Laura has taken notice of them for the first time. (She does not like water, in her defense. There has been little reason to acknowledge the possibility of sailing.) She does her best not to gawk, but it is difficult not to feel some awe at the sight of a ship in the harbor, nearly tall enough to scrape clouds.

And she occasionally asks others questions, people who look like they belong in this place. "Where is it going?" and "Does it take travelers?" and "What does it cost to travel?"

She promised Matthias she would stay until she couldn't. When that day comes, she wants to be ready.

Comments

[propulsion]

There is half a smile to himself at this first answer, but giving it a second pays off as she does him one better. A little bit.

Tony keeps his focus on his food, anyway, breaking thick crusted bread in his hands which he uses more or less like utensils to get at the root vegetable based substance that was served this evening. He's almost certain that if you requested something vegetarian, it'd come cooked in lamb fat or whatever, from the taste of things.

"Uh huh," he says, between bites. "Do a lot of that before? Warrioring."

This conversation might become a round of twenty questions, but god knows that Tony's had a lot of conversations just like that since arrival. He's ready.

[justashotaway]

Laura, meanwhile, starts most meals--this one included--by stabbing all the chunks of food with a claw, dicing the potato or parsnip or rutabaga or whatever it might be into the smallest pieces possible. The food lasts longer that way, and there are no dull bites.

That it gives her something to focus on while he talks is a side benefit. He asks a question she would prefer not to answer, and for a long moment, she doesn't. But eventually, she does relent.

"I was not a warrior." He knows that, she suspects. Everyone is aware now, to some extent, what Laura was before she came here--if he is pretending otherwise, she isn't sure why. "Were you?"

Subterfuge, and perhaps not subtle. One thing she has learned from observing others is that asking a question sometimes stops others from asking about you.

[propulsion]

Okay that's a little. Well it's a little weird. Tony glances and then glances again, and kind of tucks his chin in as if to disguise the glancing. If she starts to catch him, he's looking straight forward again and cronching noisy into stew-wielding bread crust, bowl held up high near his face as he does so.

If there is some subtle play happening about her past-- well, it doesn't come in the form of trying to catch her out somehow. She could have been a warrior and also a mass murderer. The younger generation is so ambitious, these days.

"Kinda," he says, easily distracted anyway with questions about himself. "Superhero, actually. I mentioned to you about the armor, um, before." He picks up the small tankard of ale he'd brought with him, swishing it around before bringing it up to sip from. "Forces not a great fit even if I had it -- I don't really punch on command."

Dot dot dot.

[justashotaway]

If Laura notices him looking, she chooses not to acknowledge it. The claws disappear a few moments later, and she picks up a roughly carved but well-worn spoon.

"I do not, either," she agrees, even though it hasn't historically been true. From here, she does not punch on command--that is what matters. "What do you want to do?"

If not Forces. He uses a lot of words to get across a point, similar to Matthias; if she finds the right subject, he might carry the entire conversation the same way.

[propulsion]

"I mean, gosh, where do I even begin with that."

Kind of the reverse of Laura, Tony can derive just about any answer from a question plainly stated. He speaks a little too quickly and frequently to eat in and around it, so winds up just holding his food as he talks. "And assuming you mean besides claw my way back to where I came from, obviously, which you can feel free to assume is my constant state of being. But Research has like this, uh. To-do list, of stuff we should invent to solve problems. Sanitation, medicine, transport. Underwear.

"And obviously something like plumbing would be pretty great but the sewerage system in Rome wasn't built in a day. And, not what I'd call glamorous."

Now he pauses to take a bite, tidy around flaky crusted bread and gravy. "And I'd like to figure this thing in my chest out before Christmas."

[justashotaway]

"It is lyrium." What else is there to figure out? Lyrium simply is, in stones or on bones or--in his case--trapped inside his chest. It might not make sense, but there's little more to know about it. Anyway, you're welcome, Tony, she just figured out your deal.

The rest of his goals are genuinely interesting, if things she hasn't considered before. All these goals already exist; if there could be a more effective way to travel, or to heal people, she's never given it a thought. She's hardly thought about the possibility that they're different outside of Thedas, for that matter. Her working assumption was that places beyond the rifts were essentially the same as places on this side, only with different names.

So, once she's assisted him with the lyrium problem, she asks the inevitable question, chasing it with another mouthful of food. "What is it like, where you come from?"