[CLOSED]

[esquive]

WHO: Bastien & Marcoulf
WHAT: A Very Orlesian Adventure
WHEN: Now
WHERE: The Orlesian Front Line
NOTES: Will add if necessary.

Were suitability for the role of captain measured by personality alone, the fourth son of the illustrious Comte Reynaud Melcendre Alfonse Descoteaux would be perfectly fit. He is the sort of handsome and brash young thing one expects among the ranks of the chevaliers (never mind that they have been thinned considerably first by the war within Orlais' borders and then by the one without them). Unfortunately, clever jokes and good looks have proven to be something of a blunt knife on the battlefield when not accompanied either by any legitimate skill for leadership or any brains for strategy not within the length of the man's own arm. And so a request, issued in secret by a ragtag assortment of his peers: might Riftwatch invite him to entertain some occupation elsewhere and so save them the trouble of figuring out how to demote Descoteaux the Youngest without risking giving his company, a drafted force who has been grumbling for months, the sense that their whining got them anywhere.

It's as good an excuse as any to get a good look at the Orlesian front lines with their own eyes instead of reports from sympathetic agents or allied contacts with an interest in making themselves look competent.

The griffon touches down with a great backwing of dark grey feathers just before the treeline in haze of dusk. From his place just behind the joint of her wings, Marcoulf spies two figures cutting out from the camp in the muddy field below. They bear a light between them and are heading in this direction.

"Here is the welcome party," said mildly as he unclips himself from the harness. He kicks his leg over and slides from the griffon's back.

Comments

[cozen]

Bastien’s dismount is slow and careful, capped by a moment spent staring at the griffon after his feet reach the ground. “Ah,” he answers vaguely in Marcoulf’s direction, but when he turns from the griffon his eyes are more bright than dazed. First flight. New favorite thing.

But the light and its bearers are closing in, so he straightens his coat, flattens his hair, and leaves Marcoulf behind to squelch through the mud to meet them, before either of them can get within uninvited griffon-petting range.

A minute later all three squelch closer. “Marcoulf de Ricart,” Bastien says, introductory; “Corporals Pasquier and Sedaina.”

Both fairly young—Sedaina the younger, but either impatient or wary in the way she hangs a step back, while Pasquier manages to look boyish under the sharp beard he probably grew specifically to avoid that.

Bastien asks on his behalf: “Would she tolerate a closer look?”

[esquive]

"She will."

Now better than she had back in the Gallows eyrie where she'd fussed and shook herself in irritation and nipped at fingertips while Marcoulf had struggled to harness her. The hen's been working, laboring under the combined weight of two men, for hours now and though she might look sharp and imposing in the failing light to an unpracticed eye, she is quiet and doesn't yank or lean against her lead lines as Marcoulf posts himself up by her big head as Pasquier drifts in closer to inspect the animal.

Corporal Sedaina evidently doesn't share his interest. "We thought to expect a raven," she offers, something in the phrasing hanging open like a question.