closed.

[raas]

WHO: Raas (raas ), Deimos (hemitheoi )
WHAT: spiderman meme .jpg
WHEN: Early Haring
WHERE: Gallows basement
NOTES: n/a

The shard in her hand was a puzzling, dangerous thing, but it did not change her circumstances overmuch. This she knew, accepted, and set aside, and moved on.

She had been pleased with the baths, overzealous with the opportunity that she had scrubbed her skin raw, and the patches that had already been wind-raw and chapped were scrubbed bleeding. But her nails were clean, finally, and trimmed, and she had been fed, and given new warm clothes. All her needs for the past month had been immediate, and narrow, and to have them met all at once was overwhelming. She had needed to calm herself, stepping into in an alcove off the baths, her own tama’s voice murmuring suffering is a choice, and then what serenity she had returned to her.

She assessed her situation.

She could find some small purpose here. They had no children, and perhaps she was not fit to care for them anymore even if there had been, but she was strong, and good with numbers, so they would find something for her to do, even if she was not and could not be infantry. But for now, in this moment, she might sit on the small bench and then go find someone to give her a task. In her hands, she turned over the small tin of horn balm, shoulders hunched as she thought, her nails clicking against the metal.

Comments

[hemitheoi]

He has heard a word - which is not quite a word, it is more a series of questions, where he is asked if he knew the other Qunari here? As if all Qunari simply knew each thing simply as that. But that was Bas, for you.

So he follows the trail of questions back to where they stem from. It was something at least to do, and maybe, if he is lucky, a threat to stamp out. Who knows what else otherwise. Cutting his way through the crowd with ease in the natural way that prey gets out of a predator's way.

Until he stops in front of her, feet planted and looking her up and down with obvious curiosity. The in the language he speaks rarely here with Eshal still missing, and speaks to her: "You. What are you?" In the way that purpose matters always, always more.

[raas]

Sick-sadness creeps into all the hollow parts of her, but she says, “Tamarassan,” before she can overthink it. Maybe it’s the Qunlat. Maybe it’s the fact that fear—an otherwise and frequent response to so much, now—isn’t something that occurs to her ought to be felt around other Qunari. She couldn’t have done her job if she felt fear—if she showed the slightest inclination for slack in her spine when it came to bigger and larger males. Even now, when she is forced to look up at him, tin tapping against her nails, it is only—she cannot be bothered to stand.

“Sten?” she asks. They wouldn’t have bred him half as tall if he wasn’t, or perhaps he laid tile, without need of a ladder.

[hemitheoi]

He breathes out in utter relief. Finally. Finally. Someone, anyone else. Not the half measure of Eshal. Not the confusion of running headlong into the stupid rules of this place that made no sense at the best of time, where value so often meant nothing of use. Left him barking up the wrong tree and feeling a fool.

Something simple and direct he could answer with a curt nod of his head. "How long have you been here?"

[raas]

"Days," she says. Not even a full week, barely enough time to feel out the rhythm of this place, if it even has one. She has never seen so much chaos. Perhaps a battlefield would feel the same, all frantic churning energy and vicious emotions, all of them moderated by good sense.

"Are we," alone a foreign concept to a Qunari, she chooses another word, "-the only ones?"

[hemitheoi]

He nods, stiff and the once. A feeling well understood, that there is no order to this place, no stability.

"They are all Bas. Only the Commander Eshal but she has been - gone. Has not returned."

[raas]

Raas is a civilian (in the Qunari sense) through and through. She would not know what to do with a commander. Soldier is simpler. Easier. She interacted with those. Children set aside to become commanders might not reach those heights.

"What have you been doing?"

Something productive, or close to it, she hoped. That he was still so steadfast and hungry for connection indicated as much.

[hemitheoi]

"What they let me. I guard, I stand around being bored, I get to fight when they deign I cannot be of any harm to anyone. Little else."

He does his best to be useful, perhaps not entirely altruistically, or not at all, but at least to do what he was supposed to. To do anything at all.

"They trust no Qun, here."