WHO: six, marcus, marcoulf, barrow, matthias, laura & derrica WHAT: escorting some stranded orphans back to ostwick WHEN: firstfall 9:45 WHERE: on the road to ostwick NOTES: n/a.
If there's one thing she's certain of, it's that they will need to keep watch at night. Many of the orphans have the hard faces of children who have survived on the street, but they aren't so capable that they can be relied upon to defend themselves.
(Besides, if she keeps watch, she doesn't have to attempt to entertain their charges.)
So she sits at one of the edges of their camp, curled up inside her cowl and a cape she borrowed from the Riftwatch stores, and tries to stop the children from coming to speak to her.
"No. Your mission is to sleep," she tells the one who is supposed to sleep in her tent. "You will be safe--there is a knife in the tent."
"A knife in the tent, she says. Do you know how to use a knife, little one?"
The orphan in question, some snub nosed boy who can't be older than seven, makes a face as his hair is ruffled and his head wobbled around on his thin neck before Marcoulf withdraws his gloves hand, spins the boy about by the shoulders and swats him back in the direction of the tent he'd crept from.
As the boy grudgingly stumbles back toward the tent, Marcoulf turns his face toward Laura in the dark. His tone drops by a few notable degrees. "You ought not to give them knives."
Using a knife is simple. He must know how. That certainty colors her answer as she looks up at Marcoulf, stone-faced. "We are supposed to protect them."
If they don't have weapons, they will not be able to protect themselves. And if the adults are overwhelmed, they will have to be able to protect themselves. The logic of it is obvious.
You and I are, says the way he points wordlessly first to her and then the center of his chest - distinctly unimpressed with the justification.
"Just because you are accustomed to the business doesn't mean they ought to be acquainted with it. And if they are," he mumbles, fetching a glance over his shoulder back to the tents. "Then all the more reason not to arm them."
No telling what some half wild child from the street might do with a blade.
"If they are," she replies, "they will be helpful."
At what age do children start learning to use knives? Laura's observed enough to guess that it's older than she expects, but she hasn't managed to figure out (or bothered, for that matter, thinking too hard about) when they make their first kills. Some of them are clearly capable of reason, though; there's no reason they shouldn't also be capable of stabbing something, if asked.
As a supporting argument, she adds, "And she might need the knife for something else."
He holds his attention there on her, then hums skeptically low noise in response. Her tent, her rules; if, when Laura is not posted up as a make-do sentry, some wastrel opts to poke her with something sharp in the night in service to the immediacy of the security provided by whatever is in her pockets versus the unknown of the place they are being fetched to, then who is he to argue?
"If the seven of us can't manage," he opts for instead. "I expect they won't have much luck either."
If she is poked, she will poke right back--neither hard nor in a vital place, but she is not opposed to the judicious threat of claws, should the need arise. (She is not, perhaps, a model childminder.)
"If we are killed, they can run." It is not the ideal outcome to this mission for a number of reasons, but it is within the realm of possibility. And it seems to her reasonable that the children might be able to survive on their own, if required. "They are small; they can hide."
"A knife in the hand won't make them faster or smaller."
It's said dismissively while shifting the lay of the cloak across his shoulder. Then, because the disapproval has been clearly stated and he isn't here to debate the finer points of arming orphans, he cuts to: "A rotation has been decided, and I'm to post up on the other side of the camp opposite this one." Their party being large enough that it makes more sense to keep two sets of eyes open. "Should you need anything, call out."
"But it will let them cut things." They will be able to move quickly, stab nugs, cut firewood, and dig little lines in the dirt. There are reasons to want to do all those things, if they want to survive in the wilderness.
But it does not matter. Marcoulf sounds as though he is uninterested in talking further; if he was, he would not bring up the fact that he is supposed to be standing someplace else. "I will," she tells him, and then adds, "and you should, too."
(They should teach the children to manage for themselves, she decides. If the worst happens, at least one of the group should know how to survive. She will start to give the orphans advice in the morning, once they are awake again.
The look he gives her is narrow. Or maybe that is just his face - faintly pinched and drawn, the corners of his mouth turned faintly downward behind the scratch of his ginger beard. It says nothing at all except for perhaps 'Noted.'
The, with a nod and a leading tip of the head, he is off. Opinion and purpose stated, there's no reason left to linger in the girl's company.
There's a clear awkwardness to Six as she begins to usher children here and there, trying to get them into bed and settled. Her Mabari does his best to help as well, wiggling here and there and trying to herd them as if they were sheep, but it seems that she's closer to exhausted than she'd like to be by the time they're done.
She remains terrible with children.
All the same, she is the one who has to come and quite literally lift children over her shoulder to take them back to bed, tucking them in with an awkward pat - she might be an older sister but she hardly grew up with Adalia - and return to settle down and watch, a frown on her face.
"I did not think they could be as exhausting as fighting."
"They are worse," Laura mutters, which is unfair of her. She does not dislike the children--but neither does she know what to say to them or which things she should expect them to be capable of doing. After a moment, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders, she asks, "Are all children like this?"
Incapable of defense but aware of things Laura only learned in the last few months, by turns desperate for attention and insistent that they want to do things for themselves. Every time she thinks she understands one, it turns out she is wrong.
"I have not spent a great deal of time with children," Six admits quietly. She was barely one herself until she fled her home and it feels strange to consider herself anything like these strange creatures; she was never as carefree as they are, surely. She cannot imagine a world where there is no weight on her shoulders, no burden for her to carry.
She finds it slightly unnerving how excited they are by a large blade.
"I imagine they must be, since no one else has said otherwise."
"Neither have I." She suspects that is already evident. Laura has never met a child before, only seen them on streets and followed orders to hunt them. (One, she killed. One, she saved. She does not wish to think of either and finds it difficult not to, under the circumstances.) As a result, she does not know how to talk to them or answer their questions, or what to do when they stare at her and whisper to each other. "They are...confusing."
Does this mean that the world at large simply tolerates that fact? She does not mind the idea that these children are what they are supposed to be, but she wishes she had some certainty.
"I think they are aware. Perhaps they're trying to be kind but do not know the best way to do it." It's a half-hearted, awkward suggestion, born of someone looking for hope rather than trying to believe in it personally. It's as if she is in another world, especially when they stare up at her with their big, wide eyes and poke at her arms and her holy symbol and try to touch her sword.
Silly, dangerous, wild and irresponsible things. She cannot remember ever being that way herself.
"Perhaps because they are allowed their youth. I know many are not given such a chance."
But Laura can think of little she'd like less than to talk with a near-stranger about the ways childhood is stolen from children. There are too any answers, all of them unpleasant, and most reflect too closely lives that look like her own.
As a result, she falls quiet, her arms hugging around her knees. She's content, for a moment that might feel awkward, to sit in silence, right up until her attention snaps toward something ahead of them, slightly off to the left. "Did you hear that?"
She's already standing up, not bothering to brush the dirt from her trousers.
Six knows that she wasn't given it, that her childhood was ripped from her. She knows that it pains her, even now, to think back to what her family did, what her father did to her - the wicked, dangerous echoes of her own childhood. Some people here have borne witness to it, seen it, knew it, but she had to keep it close to her breast for fear of more judgement and more shame.
It's better to bite her lip, to keep her mouth closed. Better and easier.
She tenses at the noise, lifting her head and gritting her teeth, hand immediately going to the her sword.
"Yes. Ahead." She pushes herself up a little higher, eyes narrowing as she stares forward.
"You'd better listen to her, mate. She knows knives. And if she says you'll be safe, you will be."
Matthias has a cape to match Laura's. Mere coincidence. He'd raided Riftwatch's stores just as she had. Stands to reason that something as simple as a cape would be there in bulk for them to take and use. It fits him well enough. Capes are difficult to get wrong, even on someone half-grown half-done-growing as Matthias is.
He grins at her orphan as he unbuckles the strap that keeps his staff fixed to his back. Doesn't like kids very much, mostly as he has to try really hard to distance himself from them, so as to remain wholly and very visibly separate, lest he risk being mistaken for a kid. He's not. Neither is Laura. They're in charge here, and that aspect has given Matthias a certain authority to be the bigger one here.
Physically, and, you know. Metaphorically as well.
"Tell you what. If you're particularly lonely, you can kip in my tent, and Laura can come by after her watch is up and take you back. 'Course, you'll have to wake up, then, and go out in the cold... and it'll be cold by then. So maybe you'll want to just stay. Dunno."
"But it's dark--" the boy starts, as if it is not dark around them at this very moment.
"Do not argue." Laura looks at him steadily, her mouth firm, and while she has no idea what she has done to convince the boy to turn tail and go back to the tent, it seems to have worked. His expression seems to her like a mix of displeasure and worry.
And then it is her and Matthias, and she realizes she doesn't want him to go to his own tent quite yet, if the alternative involves him sitting down beside her.
"I do not think they like me," she tells him quietly, reaching up to take one of his hands and tug at it. Stay.
Matthias cranes his neck a little so he can watch the orphan make his way back to the tents. Nothing's likely to befall him in the short distance between here and there, but then again, you never know, do you.
With this distraction of duty, Laura's tug at his hand comes entirely as a surprise. Matthias looks down, but the startle passes quickly, replaced by a pleased smile. It'd be awkward if he tries to shift his hand about and grip her fingers back, right--at least from this angle, stood over her as he is--so he crouches down beside her instead, and all without moving his hand from hers.
"I like you," he says, easily. "So you've got one vote here at least. Anyway, if they really didn't like you, you'd know. Wake up to beetles in your boots or something. He went off and he's not gotten revenge yet. That means respect, if nothing else. S' a good thing."
And this is why Matthias is good, with the children and in general. Laura did not think to keep an eye on the child until it became clear that Matthias was. In retrospect, it seems obvious. Necessary. But only one of them knows that instinctively.
He is also good for the fact that he does stay for the moment, giving her an easy smile and promising that she might be wrong. I like you. Laura doesn't smile, exactly, but there's something warmer there in her eyes, something softened in her jaw.
"It is possible to obey without respect," she points out, because she knows that fact personally. But she does not argue further, preferring Matthias' idea of what qualifies dislike; if they have not committed petty vandalism of her things, they have not yet made up their minds. And, reviewing the facts now, she realizes--"No. They are afraid of me. They are afraid of my claws."
Which means they are afraid of who she is. Adults are, too, sometimes, but their fear doesn't snag in her mind and stay there. She doesn't know what the difference is.
"See, that's why we ought to show 'em off or something. I know that's complicated," he adds, quickly, and gives her fingers a little extra squeeze to demonstrate that he's on her side. "So I'm mostly taking the piss, all right. But the best way to get kids on your side is to show 'em something brilliant. And since you are brilliant... it'd be easy."
He does know that respect isn't necessarily bound to obedience, or vice-versa, for that matter. Went along with a load of orders as a kid while hating the templars, so Matthias knows that well. But he also knows about being an impressionable kid--something Laura (all coolness and quietness and loads of trauma, never having time to play at impressionability) wouldn't know.
"When I was them, all we ever did was talk about how incredibly wicked the older mages were. Like--Marcus Rowantree. He's here now, joined up with Riftwatch, and came along the mission with us and everything--we used to piss ourselves trying to get a glimpse of him when we were at Andoral's Reach. He didn't even have to show off for us, we just knew a squillion stories about the brilliant things he'd done--and Voss, she's with Riftwatch as well, dunno if you know her but she's this," he sighs, and holds up his free hand, empty, "force, and we'd go on about her as well--oi, there we are! What if I tell them tales about how brilliant you are? Then you wouldn't have to do anything and they'd be in total awe. It'd work, trust me."
Laura knows, as he speaks, that this is an area in which she has no useful experience. Even if she'd been a child, with time to stare wide-eyed at other people, she'd never met other children; she would not have known whether her experiences were universal. (As it is, she's found that they are not, as a rule, commonly shared.) So she's willing to consider the idea, even without all his justifications bolstering the suggestion.
"What would you tell them?" she asks, when he's explained himself and seems to have come to something like a breath. There are things she would dislike the orphans to know about--most things, she realizes, that are true about her--and while Matthias would never tell them unpleasant stories about her, there are few stories that aren't.
But if it would work...perhaps they could know something of her. She looks down at her free hand, the one that isn't clutching at Matthias', at her knuckles. A bruise is ground pale on them, but they are otherwise unmarked. Perhaps they do not have to be quite as frightening, if she knows what Matthias wants to say about her. He could tell them she is not frightening, and she could attempt to be...not frightening. Friendly? Willing to kill for them, at least, which is more important.
"I would tell 'em you're brave." Easy answer. He smiles over at Laura after he's given it, letting that reply have a moment before he goes on to the rest. "And clever, and that you can get people for 'em, if they need it, 'cause you're good and you aren't afraid of much. Or anything, maybe. I dunno if you are. It doesn't seem like it, to me. And I'd tell 'em a little bit about your claws, but just enough so they know that they're brilliant. Like, you could cut an apple in half, in the air, if someone threw it at you. So imagine what you could do if like, a bear came along and tried to tear us all to bits. You could fight a bear and win."
There's no reality in which Laura would lose, so Matthias says that with great and assured confidence, and gives her fingers another little squeeze for good measure, and another little smile. She'd murder a bear. He knows it.
"And maybe you could show off a little bit as well. Not competing with anyone or anything. Not even like on purpose. Just, stand somewhere, and then, oops, claw. We ought to work out which one of 'em has the biggest mouth," he adds, thoughtfully, "and make sure they're the one that sees it, 'cause then we're guaranteed that the story'd get out quickly. It'll be easy, once we get that going."
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Laura / ota
(Besides, if she keeps watch, she doesn't have to attempt to entertain their charges.)
So she sits at one of the edges of their camp, curled up inside her cowl and a cape she borrowed from the Riftwatch stores, and tries to stop the children from coming to speak to her.
"No. Your mission is to sleep," she tells the one who is supposed to sleep in her tent. "You will be safe--there is a knife in the tent."
no subject
The orphan in question, some snub nosed boy who can't be older than seven, makes a face as his hair is ruffled and his head wobbled around on his thin neck before Marcoulf withdraws his gloves hand, spins the boy about by the shoulders and swats him back in the direction of the tent he'd crept from.
As the boy grudgingly stumbles back toward the tent, Marcoulf turns his face toward Laura in the dark. His tone drops by a few notable degrees. "You ought not to give them knives."
no subject
If they don't have weapons, they will not be able to protect themselves. And if the adults are overwhelmed, they will have to be able to protect themselves. The logic of it is obvious.
no subject
"Just because you are accustomed to the business doesn't mean they ought to be acquainted with it. And if they are," he mumbles, fetching a glance over his shoulder back to the tents. "Then all the more reason not to arm them."
No telling what some half wild child from the street might do with a blade.
(She might know though, wouldn't she?)
no subject
At what age do children start learning to use knives? Laura's observed enough to guess that it's older than she expects, but she hasn't managed to figure out (or bothered, for that matter, thinking too hard about) when they make their first kills. Some of them are clearly capable of reason, though; there's no reason they shouldn't also be capable of stabbing something, if asked.
As a supporting argument, she adds, "And she might need the knife for something else."
Not just defense. Laura is not sure what.
no subject
"If the seven of us can't manage," he opts for instead. "I expect they won't have much luck either."
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"If we are killed, they can run." It is not the ideal outcome to this mission for a number of reasons, but it is within the realm of possibility. And it seems to her reasonable that the children might be able to survive on their own, if required. "They are small; they can hide."
no subject
It's said dismissively while shifting the lay of the cloak across his shoulder. Then, because the disapproval has been clearly stated and he isn't here to debate the finer points of arming orphans, he cuts to: "A rotation has been decided, and I'm to post up on the other side of the camp opposite this one." Their party being large enough that it makes more sense to keep two sets of eyes open. "Should you need anything, call out."
no subject
But it does not matter. Marcoulf sounds as though he is uninterested in talking further; if he was, he would not bring up the fact that he is supposed to be standing someplace else. "I will," she tells him, and then adds, "and you should, too."
(They should teach the children to manage for themselves, she decides. If the worst happens, at least one of the group should know how to survive. She will start to give the orphans advice in the morning, once they are awake again.
no subject
The, with a nod and a leading tip of the head, he is off. Opinion and purpose stated, there's no reason left to linger in the girl's company.
no subject
She remains terrible with children.
All the same, she is the one who has to come and quite literally lift children over her shoulder to take them back to bed, tucking them in with an awkward pat - she might be an older sister but she hardly grew up with Adalia - and return to settle down and watch, a frown on her face.
"I did not think they could be as exhausting as fighting."
no subject
Incapable of defense but aware of things Laura only learned in the last few months, by turns desperate for attention and insistent that they want to do things for themselves. Every time she thinks she understands one, it turns out she is wrong.
no subject
She finds it slightly unnerving how excited they are by a large blade.
"I imagine they must be, since no one else has said otherwise."
no subject
Does this mean that the world at large simply tolerates that fact? She does not mind the idea that these children are what they are supposed to be, but she wishes she had some certainty.
no subject
Silly, dangerous, wild and irresponsible things. She cannot remember ever being that way herself.
"Perhaps because they are allowed their youth. I know many are not given such a chance."
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But Laura can think of little she'd like less than to talk with a near-stranger about the ways childhood is stolen from children. There are too any answers, all of them unpleasant, and most reflect too closely lives that look like her own.
As a result, she falls quiet, her arms hugging around her knees. She's content, for a moment that might feel awkward, to sit in silence, right up until her attention snaps toward something ahead of them, slightly off to the left. "Did you hear that?"
She's already standing up, not bothering to brush the dirt from her trousers.
no subject
It's better to bite her lip, to keep her mouth closed. Better and easier.
She tenses at the noise, lifting her head and gritting her teeth, hand immediately going to the her sword.
"Yes. Ahead." She pushes herself up a little higher, eyes narrowing as she stares forward.
no subject
Matthias has a cape to match Laura's. Mere coincidence. He'd raided Riftwatch's stores just as she had. Stands to reason that something as simple as a cape would be there in bulk for them to take and use. It fits him well enough. Capes are difficult to get wrong, even on someone half-grown half-done-growing as Matthias is.
He grins at her orphan as he unbuckles the strap that keeps his staff fixed to his back. Doesn't like kids very much, mostly as he has to try really hard to distance himself from them, so as to remain wholly and very visibly separate, lest he risk being mistaken for a kid. He's not. Neither is Laura. They're in charge here, and that aspect has given Matthias a certain authority to be the bigger one here.
Physically, and, you know. Metaphorically as well.
"Tell you what. If you're particularly lonely, you can kip in my tent, and Laura can come by after her watch is up and take you back. 'Course, you'll have to wake up, then, and go out in the cold... and it'll be cold by then. So maybe you'll want to just stay. Dunno."
no subject
"Do not argue." Laura looks at him steadily, her mouth firm, and while she has no idea what she has done to convince the boy to turn tail and go back to the tent, it seems to have worked. His expression seems to her like a mix of displeasure and worry.
And then it is her and Matthias, and she realizes she doesn't want him to go to his own tent quite yet, if the alternative involves him sitting down beside her.
"I do not think they like me," she tells him quietly, reaching up to take one of his hands and tug at it. Stay.
no subject
With this distraction of duty, Laura's tug at his hand comes entirely as a surprise. Matthias looks down, but the startle passes quickly, replaced by a pleased smile. It'd be awkward if he tries to shift his hand about and grip her fingers back, right--at least from this angle, stood over her as he is--so he crouches down beside her instead, and all without moving his hand from hers.
"I like you," he says, easily. "So you've got one vote here at least. Anyway, if they really didn't like you, you'd know. Wake up to beetles in your boots or something. He went off and he's not gotten revenge yet. That means respect, if nothing else. S' a good thing."
no subject
He is also good for the fact that he does stay for the moment, giving her an easy smile and promising that she might be wrong. I like you. Laura doesn't smile, exactly, but there's something warmer there in her eyes, something softened in her jaw.
"It is possible to obey without respect," she points out, because she knows that fact personally. But she does not argue further, preferring Matthias' idea of what qualifies dislike; if they have not committed petty vandalism of her things, they have not yet made up their minds. And, reviewing the facts now, she realizes--"No. They are afraid of me. They are afraid of my claws."
Which means they are afraid of who she is. Adults are, too, sometimes, but their fear doesn't snag in her mind and stay there. She doesn't know what the difference is.
no subject
He does know that respect isn't necessarily bound to obedience, or vice-versa, for that matter. Went along with a load of orders as a kid while hating the templars, so Matthias knows that well. But he also knows about being an impressionable kid--something Laura (all coolness and quietness and loads of trauma, never having time to play at impressionability) wouldn't know.
"When I was them, all we ever did was talk about how incredibly wicked the older mages were. Like--Marcus Rowantree. He's here now, joined up with Riftwatch, and came along the mission with us and everything--we used to piss ourselves trying to get a glimpse of him when we were at Andoral's Reach. He didn't even have to show off for us, we just knew a squillion stories about the brilliant things he'd done--and Voss, she's with Riftwatch as well, dunno if you know her but she's this," he sighs, and holds up his free hand, empty, "force, and we'd go on about her as well--oi, there we are! What if I tell them tales about how brilliant you are? Then you wouldn't have to do anything and they'd be in total awe. It'd work, trust me."
no subject
"What would you tell them?" she asks, when he's explained himself and seems to have come to something like a breath. There are things she would dislike the orphans to know about--most things, she realizes, that are true about her--and while Matthias would never tell them unpleasant stories about her, there are few stories that aren't.
But if it would work...perhaps they could know something of her. She looks down at her free hand, the one that isn't clutching at Matthias', at her knuckles. A bruise is ground pale on them, but they are otherwise unmarked. Perhaps they do not have to be quite as frightening, if she knows what Matthias wants to say about her. He could tell them she is not frightening, and she could attempt to be...not frightening. Friendly? Willing to kill for them, at least, which is more important.
no subject
There's no reality in which Laura would lose, so Matthias says that with great and assured confidence, and gives her fingers another little squeeze for good measure, and another little smile. She'd murder a bear. He knows it.
"And maybe you could show off a little bit as well. Not competing with anyone or anything. Not even like on purpose. Just, stand somewhere, and then, oops, claw. We ought to work out which one of 'em has the biggest mouth," he adds, thoughtfully, "and make sure they're the one that sees it, 'cause then we're guaranteed that the story'd get out quickly. It'll be easy, once we get that going."