[Closed] Got A Light?

[sulahnan]

WHO: Athessa, Leander, Colin?, Benedict??
WHAT: Walking the parapet aka trying to get that cigarette case
WHEN: the days before Satinalia
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: following this plan, loosely

Despite all the planning, plotting, scheming that's been happening, when Athessa comes across Leander on the ramparts of the Gallows, it actually is by happenstance alone and not because she was looking for him.

The unfortunate part of this is that it means she's not as prepared as she'd like to be, but maybe that's a blessing in disguise. Maybe that's the elfroot talking. If elfroot could talk, what would it say?

"See any red birds?" She asks, the game they played while traveling a while back well remembered.

Comments

[sarcophage]

"Oh, yes—the profanity is fantastic. Would you like an example?" Of course she would. "When a Nevarran man doesn't care about anything you've just told him, he might say," a few crisply plucked words in another language, "which means he plans to write it on his balls. That's tame, of course—there's some astonishingly filthy stuff. I'm not sure I could bring myself to speak it in front of a young lady."

(A young lady named Clio taught him most of it.)

[sulahnan]

Athessa laughs, hoping she'll remember that useful phrase when it's pertinent.

"Luckily there aren't any young ladies about. Let's hear some of the filthy stuff!" She leans forward, elbows on her knees, a rapt audience.

[sarcophage]

While taking one of the last pulls from his diminished cigarillo, Leander looks like he's ready to laugh along with her; instead he exhales around a smile.

"All right, one more." After he clears his throat, he pronounces a brief phrase, pointing at her once—lightly, with the hand holding the smoke—for emphasis. "Literally: I shit in your mother's ribcage. Extremely offensive. Sounds pretty, though, doesn't it?"

[sulahnan]

"It did before I knew what it meant." Now all she'll be able to hear is the meaning, not the melodic cadence of the language. She takes in some more smoke, holds it, and lets it go.

"I didn't know you spoke Nevarran."

[sarcophage]

"I lived there for a time."

It's conversational, the way he says it, but for him the attachment runs much, much deeper than that—and not only for the reasons with human shape. He never stopped writing Nevarran in his journals (most of which he burnt as they filled up), never stopped thinking in it privately, conversing with himself in silence or murmurs, even when he was otherwise immersed in Rivaini sounds. (He developed a reputation for it, ended up having to explain to a group of senior mages that he wasn't conversing with demons. That was less distressing than it should've been.)

If he had to lose everything else of Nevarra, he could keep the language, at least.

"Kostos Averesch has been helping me keep it up. Not the profanity," he's quick to add, as if Averesch would care either way. "That I kept from earlier."

[sulahnan]

She snorts. "That's a surprise. I would've thought he'd swear like a sailor."

It's mostly a joke. His temperament is right for the swearing but his demeanor is more tight-lipped, at least around her. Sure, they get to talking about this and that over drinks or a smoke, much like this, but the idea of Kostos offering up vocabulary when he uses a fraction of any language is still very funny.

[sarcophage]

"In Trade, certainly. Nevarran profanity is a little more... severe. They don't tend to throw it around so casually, especially in the Circles. It's a bit upper class that way—they raise their children to be proper." Obedience in all respects. The strange, semi-privileged oppression of magical boarding schools. "That's only my experience, of course. Averesch could well have grown out of that—I'm not personally acquainted with his proclivities."

With a particular glance aside, mostly through his eyelashes, he murmurs through smoke, "Not all of them, anyway."

[sulahnan]

Her only answer to that is a shrug. Just because she fucked him once doesn't mean she's any more acquainted with Kostos' proclivities, whatever that means.

Athessa sits back, propping herself up on the heel of one hand while the other holds her gently smoldering joint. "Dalish swearing is pretty much the same as swearing in Trade, far as I can remember."

[sarcophage]

Leander's response to that is a vague hum with a falling tone of polite acknowledgement to soften his disinterest in wandering any further from the text under his arm. Shortly, he draws his last from the depleted cigarillo, and breathes the smoke back on it while he snuffs it with a few calm, bare-fingered pinches to the cinder. (It's only halfway showing off; this is his habit even when alone.)

"Have you ever thought to combine one of these with one of yours? It's quite common in Rivain."

[sulahnan]

"Nah, never liked the smell," or the taste. Sometimes, back when she lived and worked in Rivain, she'd get stuck in a small room with multiple people smoking cigarillos or their hybrid spliffs, and end up ducking out as soon as her business was finished. It would turn her stomach and spin her head, if she wasn't careful.

"Did you live in Rivain, too?"

[sarcophage]

"At Dairsmuid, yes."

Once he's tucked the stub in his pocket, Leander stands there holding the book in as plain a fashion as he can manage without losing that casual air. Perhaps if he makes himself less visually interesting she will become bored with him and wander away again.

"You're familiar with Derrica, yes? We were there together."

[sulahnan]

If Leander wanted to bore her into leaving, mentioning Derrica was the wrong tactic. It only makes Athessa look more interested, and she leans forward.

"Really? What was that like?"

[sarcophage]

Her interest is met with its opposite: a polite shuttering.

"It was all right, as far as Circles go, until they tried to kill us."

[sulahnan]

"That does tend to put a damper on things..."

[sarcophage]

"Indeed."

Andraste save him from this conversation. Leander abruptly smiles, scoops the book back into hand, and gestures with it meaningfully. Soft thump of his fingers on the cover and all.

"Anyway, if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to it."

[sulahnan]

She gives a dismissive wave: go on, then, but doesn't move from her perch. She takes a long, slow drag and tips her head back to blow the smoke out almost vertically.

[sarcophage]

He will go on, then, and press his smile a little thinner as he tips head and shoulders her way. Such a snide gesture is less nettling when performed by an arm he's already fractured. He wouldn't feel bad, he reckons, even if he were the type. Look at her, she's healed well enough. Bones don't even keep scars—even when misaligned, the result is deformity, not scarring—he's seen cases of beautifully strange, sculptural ossification—caused it, even—

His train of thought continues thusly as he meanders toward the opposite battlement, intent on returning to the same state in which Athessa found him: pacing, hardback open in one hand, cigarillo in the other, trailing smoke. The carved wooden cigarette case shortly makes an appearance, lingers there while he creates a little flame, held prisoner to the moment by his care for the book pressed under his arm.

[sulahnan]

Finally. That's the proof she needs: he keeps the case on him, uses it for its intended purpose, no less.

He's just not its intended person.

She leans forward again, interest clearly piqued. "Wow, that case is beautiful. Looks hand-made, did you make it?"

[sarcophage]

Maker's tits, this girl. He finishes lighting up, draws and sighs a mouthful of smoke—you aren't supposed to inhale these little cigars, they say, though often he does—without too much obvious exasperation, and finally turns to eye her mostly sideways.

"Lovely little thing, isn't it?" Fingers clap the box shut, close around it. "But, no; I bought it."

[sulahnan]

"From where? That doesn't look like anything I've seen in the market stalls."

[sarcophage]

"At an auction."

Calm neutrality settles on him like a layer of ash. This cigarette case is more popular than anything else he owns, lately—while suspicion hasn't properly snagged him, neither does he seem eager to show it off.

"I'm going to read my book now. If you'll excuse me."