[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

*in a monotone voice* this is so wild

[sulahnan]

Her plan was to look for Matthias, in the hopes that he would know where Laura might be, but nearly running smack-dab into Laura in the corridor kind of cuts out the middleman in that equation. Sorry, Matty.

"Oh, hey," Athessa remarks, once she has narrowly averted the collision and recognized the girl. "I was actually on my way to find you. Heh, convenient."

oh em gee.

[justashotaway]

Laura comes up short, her brows drawing in slightly as Athessa talks. They do not know each other--not in any meaningful sense--but Athessa spoke up when the messenger came. That means this is almost certainly related.

Her voice is guarded as she responds, "Why?"

[sulahnan]

Well she's definitely not going to wax poetic about how she empathizes with Laura, or how even through limited and second-hand association, Athessa sees something of her younger self in Laura and feels a little protective because of that, so she says:

"To see how you're doing, since the whole...murder accusation thing." She makes sure not to say the words murder accusation too loudly, though it's hard to imagine anyone in the Gallows not knowing about it already.

memorial garden

[writteninblood]

Sorrel, too, doesn't come here often. It felt too much like a grave, for all that death lingered here only in the way it lingers in all forests, however small. And it was a small one; the trees were slender, and likely to remain so, the plants somewhat tended, and yet...

Well. To all life comes an ending.

But for him, the garden represented the small forest that had stood in the same place, once. And, of course, the mages who'd grown it from the ashes, one in particular. What is this called pulls him out of silent reverie like a thunderbolt; Sorrel startles a step away from Laura. He hadn't seen her there, hadn't been aware of anyone or anything else at all. That was dangerous, in Kirkwall, Hightown or otherwise.

"Uh..." He says stupidly, then blinks and follows her eyes, and forgets to do anything but just answer her question, "...Royal Elfroot. It's stronger than the ordinary kind. You can tell them apart because the, uh, the silver... The leaves. See?"

[justashotaway]

Laura's mouth is a pinched line. This is not a question she wishes to answer--but it is not, at least, bad news. If there is anything to report, Athessa does not know it.

(And she spoke up when the messenger came. It is evident that she gets along with Matthias. That means something trustworthy, something worthwhile.)

So she provides a status update, if somewhat stiffly. It hasn't precisely occurred to her that this is a question about something besides her place within the organization. "I have continued to assist Riftwatch. But I am staying near the Gallows."

Mostly.

[justashotaway]

Laura crouches down before the leafy stalk and sniffs at one of the leaves. After a moment, she nods. "It smells like elfroot. But sweeter."

Less bitter, perhaps. There is something about it that seems gentler to her. When she straightens again, she looks up at the man's face. "Where does it come from?"

[sulahnan]

"That's not--" She starts, stops herself, backtracks. "I mean that's great, and all, but I don't really care where you're staying or if you're--" Wait, that sounds worse, doesn't it? That sounds worse. Athessa huffs, pressing her lips together and once again, backtracking.

"Let's start over." Literally backtracking, Athessa retreats a few strides back the way she came, then pantomimes herself bumping into Laura again.

"Oh hey, Laura, just the person I wanted to see. How are you? Feeling stressed at all? Hungry? Sleepy? Bored?" It's all very lighthearted, and jokey, but not mocking. If she's mocking anyone, it's herself. "Just wanted to check on you and make sure you're OK. And if you're the kind of OK where you need to yell and break something, I know a place where you can do that without getting in trouble."

There. The offer is out there, the concern is rephrased, and it wasn't the smoothest but the important thing is she did it.

[writteninblood]

"It is Elfroot," He protests quietly, baffled. Who is this woman. Why is this woman. This seems unusual— isn't it? Has he seen ehr before, somehow? "It likes rivers, I think. There's a lot of it around the Hinterlands, and the marshy areas of the Marches."

He's not entirely sure what to do with her abrupt, direct manner. Except answer to it, of course.

[justashotaway]

It is not the elfroot she's accustomed to, and that makes the difference. Slight changes to scent, appearance, and name are enough to require its own category: other elfroot.

Laura regards the plant with mild interest, plucking one of the leaves at the top of the stalk, so she can rub it idly between finger and thumb. If it prefers rivers, she doubts it enjoys growing high on a cliff above the sea. But it is growing. "The Hinterlands are in...Ferelden?"

[justashotaway]

Laura can see, as Athessa talks--then steps back, forward, and pretends they have not spoken--why Matthias likes her: this is something he might do, too. It is absurd, but it is meant kindly. She thinks, at least.

It is also somewhat bewildering to know how to answer. The questions are much more particular as Athessa asks them, one after another, and all of which pertain to Laura specifically. She is not opposed to indicating whether she is hungry, of course, but stressed is another matter.

After a too-long stretch of thought, one in which the cogs are nearly visible as they turn in her head, she responds with a dodge. But a well-meant one, something she's genuinely curious about. "The training yard?"

If there's someplace else that allows yelling and breaking things, she cannot draw it up.

[sulahnan]

Well, that's a win in Athessa's book. She doesn't expect Laura to want to talk about feelings because Athessa never wants to talk about feelings, either. But there are ways to work out feelings without talking about them, and she has just the thing.

"Better than the training yard," she says with a grin, and lowers her voice to conspiratorial tones. "An abandoned warehouse. Nobody does any upkeep on it, and all the stuff in it is junk that nobody cares about. Plus, for some reason," that reason being her own charlatanical ghost-tours, "Everybody thinks it's haunted, so any noises are chalked up to that."

[justashotaway]

This sounds...intriguing, not least because Athessa doesn't try a third time to assess her state. While Laura is not currently in need of breaking things or screaming, she is genuinely curious. (She is also aware that she might need such a location in the future.)

"Show me the warehouse." Nothing she was doing had held importance, to her or anyone else. A venture away from the Gallows--are there warehouses to speak on the island? she cannot imagine where they would be kept--will not be too much interruption.

[sulahnan]

"Fuck yeah! If we go now we might be able to catch the ferry. Otherwise we'll have to wait for the next one."

She starts to turn, intending on heading straight to the docks, but pauses. "Unless you'd rather go later? I'm easy."

[justashotaway]

"No." It's easy, too, immediate. "I would like to catch the ferry."

As though to underscore the point, she starts walking.

[sulahnan]

One brisk walk, a slow ferry ride, another brisk walk and a detour past a bar brawl (that has breached the boundaries of the lowtown pub it started in) later, they're at the warehouse.

The doors are bolted shut, many of the windows that are too high to hop through are broken, and Athessa holds out her arms in a tadaa gesture by way of introduction, then leads the way around to a hole in the wall that some smart person has covered with an easily movable bit of wood.

"Watch out for rats, last time I was here there was one as big as a dog." And it breathed ice, but that's neither here nor there.

[writteninblood]

"Yeah. South Ferelden. There are.... a lot of bears?" He doesn't sound confident; Sorrel hasn't spent much time there, but you hear stories. Mostly horrible ones, which is odd for such a supposedly farm-choked place, "I'm sorry, but who are you?"

Please, who are you.

"Not that I'd prefer a regular mugging, mind. Gardening lessons are nicer. I'm just confused."

[justashotaway]

Laura's expression shifts three times in succession, perhaps too rapidly (or too minutely) to register for someone who doesn't know her: confusion, then something like hurt, finally to something studiously flat.

This is not someone who knows what she has done, unless he is lying about knowing her name and claws. This is somehow worse. He looked at her, and listened to her, and thought she seemed like someone in the process of...an irregular mugging? (She knows what muggings are. They happened in Cumberland, too.)

So she is disinclined to provide information beyond a stiff-backed, "I am not here to steal from you."

[justashotaway]

She can see immediately the benefits of the place: large, underused, easy to imagine haunted by old spirits. There's approval in the way she nods at it, and at Athessa's grand gesture.

"Who else knows about it?" she asks, following Athessa through the hole after it's revealed. Does it have other entries besides this one? How crowded are things inside? The primary danger of it is the potential of coming here and finding someone else, so far as she can tell; in a location prime for illicit dealings, that has the potential to become dangerous. (For other people, that is.)

[sulahnan]

"Lots of people, but only a few who'd actually come here. Me, Matty, you," she counts down on her fingers. "One of the street gangs used to come here until the ghost rumors started. Cleared out right quick after that."

A well known place to locals, virtually unknown to anyone else. It's not a location that would be convenient for bandits at all, but it's conceivable that an illicit shipment could be stored here for a spell, if the sailors get over their superstitions first.

The interior of the warehouse is sparse, in part due to its size but also bearing the signs of having been cleared out of anything valuable ages prior. What is left is covered in dust and dirt, cobwebs and some fresh spider webs complete with eight legged tenants, though blessedly of the smaller-than-your-hand variety. No giant ones.

Crates, pottery, a lot of broken glass that Athessa easily avoids stepping on with her bare feet, and various bits of furniture that people may have dumped here as trash or stored here and forgotten about. Oh, and of course the aforementioned rats, all of reasonable size.

[writteninblood]

"That's...good," He says, after the moment of further incredulity has passed, "I don't actually like setting people on fire, and I don't have much worth stealing."

Sorrel lives a life buried in the past. It's a natural tendancy, for him, very Dalish. More than that; it's his job. If it's less than a thousand years old, or didn't have points to its ears, he's likely to have missed it entirely. Bookish, you might call him, if he hadn't spent so much of his life in the out-of-doors.

He doesn't know who Laura is, that is to say. Nor what she's done. There has now been something of a pause. It is not a particularly comfortable one.

"...I'm Sorrelean Ashara. And, you are...?"

first, a wildcard.

[propulsion]

Laura almost makes it out of the dining hall, with her plateful of food, a pitcher of water, when suddenly her path is interrupted.

Tony, likewise, is holding a plate of food. There, the peak of blue glow and the scent of lyrium escape the front of his chest, and are probably just as quasi-familiar as the man who wears it, which is to say, it's been like a month of ships in the night behaviour. Not wholly active avoidance. This seems to be the opposite of that, right now.

"Sup, Evanescence," he says. "Cool kids not letting you sit with them?"

[justashotaway]

"Laura," she corrects him, even though he is doing this purposely, for reasons she cannot begin to guess. (Evanescence is not a pet name, it is a state of existence - or lack thereof. Laura has never had a pet name, anyway, or never one she enjoyed.)

The temptation, of course, is to sidle past him, and even with her hands full, she thinks she can do it without much trouble. But she does not expect he will make it easy for her, and she does not want him to follow if she leaves. It would be better, she suspects, to state her intentions here, if she must at all. "I wish to eat alone."

first, a wildcard.

[heorte]

"That's a good one," comes a voice from the space where the shelves open into this alcove. "I read it myself when I first arrived."

There's a few books under Ellis' arm. He's spent some time reading in the very spot Laura's occupying, but he doesn't make any move to try to and oust her from it. Instead, he selects and offers her one of the leather-bound tomes from his stack.

"Here. For when you've finished."

[propulsion]

"Or."

Not that Tony's gonna push the issue, but sometimes a moody teen needs a gentle shove.

"I'd rather not, and you could help me out with that." He doesn't wait for her to refute this before he adds, "Hey, we got off on the wrong foot, and-- that's a people term for doing a bad job at meeting for the first time, so why don't we reset. And then you can go be a recluse until your twee heart's content."

Deal?

[justashotaway]

Laura does not want to give her name to him, this man who assumes she would let him set her on fire without consequence, and who still does not appear to believe she wouldn't steal from him. If he did, would he tell her he was poor?

She existed in the last long moment between when she spoke and when he did, and she exists now in this space of deliberation. If the silence is uncomfortable, she does not notice. She does not care.

"It does not matter." She did not come here for the garden, only stopped to smell it. Staying is beginning to seem like a waste of time--so, royal elfroot leaf in hand, Laura turns to go.