[closed]

[heirring]

WHO: Dorian, Benny, & Wysteria
WHAT: Ghostbusting in Hightown
WHEN: August
WHERE: Science Clubhouse, Hightown, Kirkwall.
NOTES: So many bare shoulders.

The house in Hightown is, as many houses in Hightown are, a grim stone faced building with exceptionally narrow windows and a forbidding front door behind a heavy iron gate. But they are not entering through the front door (indeed, they have been explicitly warned against it), but rather have been invited around to the narrow side gate which is of a far more pleasant design which leads to an even more pleasantly shaded garden in the full blood of late summer. The wide double doors leading into the horrible old house's kitchen have been left wide open to encourage the flow of air and Wysteria Poppell - for certainly she somehow looks more or less exactly as she had sounded on the sending crystal - is sitting in a chair leaned on its back legs against the doorframe with the heels of her fashionable little half boots (the leater all embossed with patterns of flowers) hooked up on the edge of a planter box.

There is also a snake in her lap, which she is doing her best to ignore in favor of working her way through a sleeve of crackers and thumbing through a little paper booklet on popular Orlesian hairstyles for the season.

She doesn't withdraw her heels from the planet box or snap the chair back onto all four legs when they appear, but she does promptly shove the last cracker in her mouth and stuffs the wax paper wrapping into the pocket of her skirt. She shields her mouth with her hand--

"How was the library? Was your guide everything you'd hoped?"

Comments

[ungovernable]

All in silver-threaded shades of Mortalitasi grey—paler designs standing out against her olive skin, and a great deal of olive skin bared to the warm air in the intricate drapery of a dress that looks more like a great idea some scarves had with some enterprising chain—Benevenuta makes for an excellent counterpoint to her companion, using her own staff for a place to lean (it is a skill, to lounge while upright) and looking about Wysteria's home with frank, keen interest.

“Has it a name?”

The snake. Ellis is named Ellis, they did take the time to establish as much.

[heirring]

It is rather pleasant, she thinks, when people look more or less exactly as you anticipated they might - which is to say, rather fantastically exotic. She might take advantage of their appearance there before her to give them both a rather thorough examination if not for the subject of the snake which she drops her attention and for a staunch moment seems to have only just recalled its presence there.

(They are not yet friends, her and the serpent in question.)

She tucks the styling booklet under one arm and delicately fetches the reptile from her lap with her other hand. Rather like someone who doesn't quite know how to hold a baby and very aware of it, she gets to her feet with the snake at a slightly awkward angle before her.

"So it is. I have yet to learn her name, however. But come, you must let me see you inside. It's far too warm to expect you to hold a conversation out here."

[liberalum]

Dorian doesn't insist otherwise, although casts a glance Benevenuta's way in private humour -- they call this hot weather.

But he follows the far more fair-skinned Rifter inside, his gaze lifting up to take in their surroundings as they step through the open doors and into the rather dreary little kitchen that looks as though it wants for gutting completely, and subsequent rebuilding.

"I had a snake," he says, cheerfully, as much as to the world as to the two women he walks with. "Some years ago, anyway. I'd named him Urthemiel, which I'd thought amusing at the time. They're more work than you'd think, what with keeping their vivarium just so. I don't recall him spending a great deal of time on my person, either. May I?"

She does look so awkward, carrying around the little grass snake, and Dorian offers out a hand.