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OPEN LOG: A beach party.
WHO: Everyone.
WHAT: A beach party.
WHEN: On a very hot day. At some point during the month.
WHERE: A beach just outside of Kirkwall.
NOTES: It is a beach party.
WHAT: A beach party.
WHEN: On a very hot day. At some point during the month.
WHERE: A beach just outside of Kirkwall.
NOTES: It is a beach party.
During a particularly hot and oppressive week in Kingsway, the Diplomacy division announces it will be diverting some of its funds to organize a party on a nearby beach. Kirkwallers are invited as well - a relationship-building sort of effort - but the party is mostly intended for morale boosting for Riftwatch itself.
The party features the following:
- Transportation to this lovely beach from the Gallows and from Kirkwall.
- Sunbathing and swimming in skimpy (or non-skimpy, if you're a fuckin square) bathing suits.
- Live music and dancing.
- Delectable grilled meats (and some vegetables, if you're a fuckin square).
- Rum drinks served in hollowed-out fruits.
- A sandcastle-building competition.
- A swim race.
- A few fun little sailboats bobbing around out on the water.
Does all that sound too wholesome? Great! There's also a cave system in the cliffs next to the beach. These little grottos are full of nooks and crannies and are perfect for a bit of sinful action after dark; in one cavern, there'll be some gambling games where some of Kirkwall's citizens are losing money; in another, you're likely to run into people making out.
Have fun! Soak up sun! Don't get in trouble! Or do, whatever, it's a beach party.
ellis, ota.
Children hijinks
“That boy says you’re his dad. And that one,” He points to a boy at a sandcastle, “says you slew a monster for him. Also, the girl next to him said you let her make you into a pretty princess.”
Edgard has a ghost of a smile, but folds his arms.
“I want to know how much of this information is true.”
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"All of it," he responds, crossing his arms as he watches the children. One has a small doll fashioned from seaweed by now, and Ellis assumes it's only a matter of time until the castle is either set upon by monsters or the site of a coronation.
For a moment, it seems that might be all Ellis volunteers. But in the interest of carrying the conversation onward, forcing out the looming memory of their last work together—
"Have they enlisted you?"
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He smiles at Ellis. “They’re probably right.”
It’s not until this moment that the irony of this topic of conversation, considering their last encounter, occurs to Edgard. His smile fades, but only slightly.
after;
Wysteria is also, it must be said, heavier than she looks and unaccustomed to being carried on anyone's back and only in the last dozen paces or so has stopped unintetionally trying to choke him out and settled into being hauled through Kirkwall.
When they'd left the party, she'd drunkenly insisted that there was work to be done at the Hightown house and that if he was determined to escort her from the party then it must be in that direction rather than back toward catching the last Gallows' ferry. They'd made it as far as the Hightown market district before her threats to lay down and fall asleep in the street were resolved and still have a various blocks and squares to go before they arrive at the club house.
It is dark and mostly quiet in the way a city is never fully asleep. She holds her slippers in one hand (they'd been falling off anyway and it's a good distraction to keep her occupied with as opposed to strangling Ellis with his tunic) and with her chin resting somewhere in the loop of her arms and his shoulder, Wysteria is saying: "—I have always thought the idea of navigating by the constellations to be very charming, but I knew almost nothing about them in Kalvad and even less here in Thedas. Did you know we only have the one moon there? Do you have a favorite?"
no subject
The first leg of the journey had been trying on both of them (so Wysteria told him, very clearly for someone intoxicated) but at some point Wysteria had relaxed enough that Ellis didn't need to split his attention between keeping her on his back and walking forward. If Wysteria recalls the handkerchief that slipped away some time back, he'll be in trouble, but for the moment it seems that the only obstacle left is making it all the way back to her home.
There had been a moment, early on, when the weight of her draped across his back had reminded him of another night, a long while back, when the mad dash away had been marred by the grind of metal plate and the spatter of blood and the wet rasp of breath in his ear. But the impression of the memory hadn't lingered. Wysteria crowded it out, and has kept anything that might follow at bay with lively critique and commentary. His input has so far been minimal, and it takes a few moments, and a minor hitch of her weight before he replies.
"No, but there's a constellation I liked best as a boy. I'll try to find it for you when we get to the house," Ellis answers, remarkably steady considering his present exertions. "If you're still awake."
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She shifts her grip on her shoes, and his tunic front, and then changes trajectory seemingly without realizing she has already posed one unanswered question to him.
"Did you have a pleasant time? At the party."
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"I don't think we can see my favorite for another month or so. It's called Megáli Arkoúda," Ellis tells her, weaving around a pair of tipsy Kirkwallers. They lurch one way, Ellis steps aside, shifting Wysteria accordingly to keep from overbalancing them into the street. "It's meant to be a bear, a very large one."
Did he have a pleasant time at the party? Who knows.
"I'll find the story for you in one of the books from your inherited library."
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She shifts a little in an attempt to be helpful with the distribution of her weight. The results are firmly mixed.
"When it is properly winter, we will all have to arrange for some evening to go outside the city in order to study properly. If either Misters Stark or Fitz can stand to lie still for a few hours at a time, that is. A clear winter night is, I have read, the very best time for such things."
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"The bear was the end of the story," Ellis says, considering the possibilities of winter star-gazing. He likes the proposition enough that it makes him want to stall against it somehow, but—
"And I think you could persuade them to lie still, but maybe not to stop complaining about the cold."
Ellis did travel with Tony in the Frostbacks last year. A beat, then as his hands readjust slightly where they've laced behind her knees, Ellis reminds, "I think we're almost on a year of having Fitz with us."
Had they not found him in the mud during the winter?
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Wysteria starts to gesture with both hands to mime the opening lid of such a pan, feels herself sway, and so resorts to using just the one hand clasping like a crab claw. Which is slightly less illustrative, but needs must.
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"I'd like that," is what he says, at last. "It's been some time since I camped out in the open, and it was always better in the cold."
Which sounds contradictory, but.
"Did you have a nice time at the party?" he questions, pausing at the top of the incline to catch his breath before starting down the side street. It seems most of Wysteria's neighborhood has turned out their lights. Potentially a good thing.
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"Oh, it was tolerably pleasant. It is the first time Lady Alexandrie and I had seen much of one another since her return from Antiva, and naturally I missed her fiercely while she was away." He smells like the sun and salt water, like the tang of something alcoholic—No, that last one at least is her own breath. "But truly, it is difficult to ruin a party entirely. I don't think even the likes of Byerly Rutyer could manage such a thing."
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"What has Byerly Rutyer done to you?"
A question Ellis may or may not regret asking.
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"Nothing, save perhaps delighted in my discomfort when I was very newly arrived. It is hardly my fault if I take him at his word when he insists on a reputation as an intolerable lech and a rogue besides. Yet saying so is liable to either get the man's back up or deflate him like—like a bellows with a hole poked through it. And gods forbid you say anything to imply the opposite, for then he will be truly irritating and sour tempered besides."
She takes a deep breath as if she means to continue, and then simply exhales it. At length, she asks,
"Was there no one who treated you as a child for longer than you wished, or were you born with a crease between the eyebrows?"
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There are two answers that come to mind, but one is closer at hand than the other. But Joppa hadn't exactly treated him a child, and the fleeting period before Ellis had proven himself useful and trustworthy in a scrape had come and gone very quickly. So the honest answer—
"No, I wasn't so serious when I was younger. I daydreamed a fair amount, and people remembered that about me," Ellis says at last, as the darkened windows of Wysteria's house looms on the corner of the street ahead of them. "I had a lot of things I wished to do that people thought were...fanciful, I guess, because they still saw me as a boy."
A small shrug, so as not to disrupt her position.
"I knew the Ambassador teased you. I didn't know he was so temperamental as well."
Steering back to safer ground.
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And for a moment as the dark house looms nearer, it seems as if that is the extent of what she has to say on the subject.
"Mr. Stark thinks I should tell the Division Heads about my project. But I know the Ambassador won't take it seriously until it's off paper, and the Provost will disapprove."
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But he's thinking about the blueprints spread across the table, Wysteria's pride over them. Will that be appreciated? He doesn't know the Provost and he doesn't know the Ambassador. The Commander is so practical that his only concern will be whether or not it can be fired and the Scoutmistress is...impossible to predict. One known quantity among three make him aware his advice is only so useful.
The gate creaks as he opens it. Inside the house there's a quiet clatter, as if the ghost has realized someone's come home.
"I don't think you should let their disapproval deter you," Ellis says finally, paused on the worn path inside the gate. He should put down paving stones. Maybe before the weather turns—
"Do you think it's ready for that kind of attention, the Ambassador aside?"
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The prospect of that makes her want to lie down on the ground, though she will concede to finding the concept generally rather attractive even without any frustrating motivation. Her face is very warm and lying down usually has a way of balancing out the temperature. But also, it must be acknowledged that it is so much more difficult to refuse a thing in practice than in theory.
—Which may be motivation for why she begins to wiggle free of Ellis' grip in an attempt to slide to her feet rather than simply asking to be set down.
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He doesn't drop her. That's the main thing.
"Then wait," Ellis says, as it seems easy enough to him. He pauses to stretch away the ache and cricks that have built up after carrying Wysteria all this way. "You have time. And maybe it'll all go quicker after you meet with the dwarven merchants."
Assuming that goes well, but it's a little late to question Wysteria, Tony and Fitz's people skills.
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wildcard. you know.
no, more precisely. benevenuta is only wearing a pair of very small, circular dark glasses. she had arrived, mostly-white war mabari in tow, in a flattering and elaborately draped dress pinned at one shoulder with a brooch; it had turned out to be one long piece of fabric, easily shed in its entirety and then secured into a cushion of fabric with that brooch and tucked at the back of max's (black leather, studded) collar. along with her satchel she brought a blanket, now spread out on the sand for both herself and max, who is not wearing a matching set of dark glasses in fact but it sort of feels like he should be, or at least that if he were no one would think to question it.
she props herself up on her elbows, with the obvious intention of making conversation easier. probably, it doesn't help. still, if ellis is avoiding gauging how visible her nipples are in this position and manages not to instead just stare at her bare arse, the eye may be drawn by the elaborate tattoo on the back of her hip—a skull with rose-vines weaving in and out of it in blue ink, and behind that (partially visible but clearly identifiable) the warden sigil, fresher. )
I couldn't persuade you to get me another drink, could I? We're very settled.
( what's the price for her not standing up, exactly. )
i sure do.
As he sinks into the sand beside her, he simply hands her the drink that he'd been carrying. It's so far untouched, and if he'd been walking towards the sea to surreptitiously discard the contents, well, who could say? ]
It would be criminal to make you get up.
[ Ha. ]
Where's your friend?
[ Said while offering a hand to Max to sniff, carefully choosing where his eyes come to rest in the meantime. ]
i
"It's relaxing, isn't it?"
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There is some minor confession he thinks to make: I've never spent time at a beach like this. There is a difference to seeing the sea from the deck of a ship as opposed to wading in the surf.
"You look content," he tells her, turning a little from the stretch of sea to look at her properly. "Have you been well?"
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"Well enough," she says brightly, and here, at least, there is no trace of the small and lonely Sonia from the end of her grand party. "I've had the fortune of good company even in trying times. And how about you? I'm pleased to see you came along."