open

[keenly]

WHO: Colin + YOU
WHAT: Returning from the jungle
WHEN: Current
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES:

I. The Return

All Colin really wants at the moment is to flop down into his bed. Not because he's particularly tired, at the moment, but because he wants to be reassured that it still feels as good as he remembers. He drifts among the crowd at the docks, reunions happening all around as people greet their friends, but manages to stick closely to Athessa and limit his greetings to people he's close to. Not tired, but overwhelmed. There's an aching hollowness to him, and the pressing crowd only increases his discomfort.

II. Home

It is not Colin's presence anywhere in the Gallows that might be noted now, but his absence from it. His typical silence on the crystals and the journals now applies to his own life. For several days after returning, for as long as he can get away with claiming to be ill, he is closed up in his apartment in Hightown. If you want to speak with him, make him stop hiding, or get him to cook anything for you, you'll have to meet him here.

III. Wildcard

Comments

[keenly]

"It's an open invitation," he says gently, "and if he writes to let you know he's coming back, we can move you back very quickly. Though really, there's not much you'd have to move at all. You could just...sleep here. If you ever feel lonely without him. Or not, if you don't want to, it's fine either way."

[coquettish_trees]

"I am always lonely without him," she says, bends down to kiss Colin's head for his sweetness.

"When you are gone, and I miss you, I come here and bake a loaf of bread and imagine you laughing kindly when I am too impatient for it to rise. When he is gone, I go to the garden and plant something I can show him upon his return. I leaf through his books and write to him on what I have learned along with my next move." She huffs a laugh through her nose. "We are playing chess very slowly.

"This is to say, it helps me to keep the estate, because I keep it for him as much as for myself, and we are together a little that way."

[keenly]

"That's adorable."

[coquettish_trees]

She leans in and whispers at his ear.

“Tell no-one.”

[keenly]

"Promise."

[coquettish_trees]

“C’est bon. As you know, I have a very fearsome reputation to uphold.”

She kisses his cheek in demonstration of her terrifying nature, and laughs quietly.