closed | couldn't drag me away.

[poleaxed]

WHO: Butch Porkfist poleaxed & Final Fantasy's Amelia Bedelia archademode & Snidely Whiplash altusimperius
WHAT: I don't want to ride my chocobo all day. Neither does Benedict.
WHEN: Now.
WHERE: The stables.
NOTES: I don't actually know how horses work.

UNO.

Every stable has an old nag, so old and docile no one really uses it anymore. Some of them had names once, but when a horse gets old enough, they just fade into the background until they die. It'd be sad, if Jone gave a shit, but she doesn't, so it isn't.

Nag is a grey mare, born some time in, presumably, the Blessed age. She walks slowly and calmly behind Jone, who is holding a carrot. Nag slowly uses her flat yellow teeth to saw into the carrot.

"This," Jone says to the tower of metal standing before her, "is a horse."

DOS.

Later, at some point after Jone has menaced Gabranth with the platonic concept of equestrianism, she spots young Benedict in the distance. What he's doing doesn't really matter to her, and the fact that she might be about to make a fool of herself barely crosses her mind.

Without warning, she just shouts, with (practiced, but) real (sounding) concern in her voice. "Oi! Ben! They're coming, they are! Hide here!"

She waves her hand, looking generally distressed.

Comments

[poleaxed]

“Ch...ocobos,” Jone squints, and envisions something like a dracolisk. That’d explain Gab thinking about trying to feed the nag a cutlet. “We haven’t those here. And horses, not even them this big, don’t need training for war. Don’t ask me how that works, though; my folks were tanners.”

Which is to say, she grew up very poor.

[archademode]

Well, considering the origins of all things, Jone isn't necessarily far off, really.

"It was a matter of price in Ivalice as well."

When he was young— when he and his brother Basch used to run barefoot through the balmy streets of Landis without a care— the closest they could come to seeing the creatures was through fencing alone, or during the occasional procession.

"I'd not touched one until earning my title, and by then..." There's a faint scoff inside that helmet, his hand grazing the mare's side in a show of mild appreciation for her level behavior. "The beast I was given would have cost more than a hundred lives in worth alone."

[poleaxed]

“Ain’t it always,” she says, voice a bit dull. “Maybe if I’d joined the wardens, or pledged myself to the throne, but...”

“Having regrets just means you’re alive, I reckon. Oi, you wanna try’n ride her, Gab?”

[archademode]

He pauses there, his chin lifting slightly to better grasp the expression she wears as she speaks so candidly about wants...and regrets.

"You wished to serve the throne?"

He keeps his hands still as he asks, both of them pressed flat against the creature's shoulder, just where it angles up to meet the broad span of her neck. A sign of held intent— and a quiet inquiry, as unobtrusive as a man encased fully in armor could ever manage.

[poleaxed]

“Mac Tirs,” she says quietly. “They were peasants. Raised up in the occupation, made nobles, Anora’s the sodding queen. The first time a Theirin ain’t on the throne...”

And that moment of vulnerability is over, replaced with a sharp grin. “What poor little tanner’s daughter doesn’t gawp at a story like that?”

[archademode]

"Why did you not pursue it, then?"

She possesses the skill, no doubt. The armor, the weaponry— it suits well enough to make her case and pull away from a life without rank. In fact he can think of no reason as to why she would not be accepted, save for her initial declaration that she needed pain to perform.

Perhaps such tendencies were undervalued here.

[poleaxed]

“I was fourteen,” she says, “didn’t know how to do anything but fight me older brothers and spit in faces. And then the Blight hit, and...”

She frowns, bites her lip. He probably doesn’t know what that means.

“Blight is... happens every now and again, different places. Monsters everywhere. Ground poisoned for ages. Denerim got flattened, just destroyed, so I hear. Ran from home just a few days before. None too interested in returning, not for years. Were like the world’s ending, I swear it.”

[archademode]

"Much like a plague, I take it."

They'd had those in Ivalice. Part of the greater disasters: the Mist, the plague— and mankind's own avarice, setting entire nations to eradicate one another, until little more remains than bones. Difficult for most to say which end they'd prefer to meet, should it come to it.

Inside the helmet, there's a thin sort of sound, an audible exhale let out between teeth as he moves instead to brush a gloved hand along the mare's mane in an absent fashion. Different to feathers, of course, but not so much a stretch that there's difficulty in it.

"Could you not swear yourself to another now?"

[poleaxed]

“Yeah, but... worse. Ain’t important.” She doesn’t want to focus on Ferelden’s trauma, the same way she doesn’t want to focus on her own. What she likes about talking with Gabranth is how he doesn’t ever seem to want to either. She can say whatever she likes, so long as it’s true, and he’ll pack it away, never use it to prove something, needle some further kernel of truth out.

Except with Bede. But he was right to. And maybe he’ll find something else, some other broken bone and set it to rights again. Maybe that’s just who he is.

He called himself a judge, didn’t he?

So she tells the truth once more. “Be nice if I could. But I’m still a poor-fellow nobody with nothing to me name but a reputation for killing. That don’t make knights. And fuck being a chevalier.”

[archademode]

"The world is made by declarations alone."

Conviction drove a man without home— without country— to crawl hand over foot into the Emperor's shadow as if he were destined for it. So far from those memories now, they exist as little more than the lining of his armor, or the weight of his cape where it clings to his shoulders. Still, he feels it no less. Is no less certain of it here, now, in a world that should be more foreign to him than it is.

"Was it not you who said commoners could lift themselves up?"

[poleaxed]

Jone snorts, dismissive. The mare next to her does the same, which Jone assumes is an entreaty for more snacks. A few sugar cubes are held out, open palmed, and Jone speaks of kings and princes while a horse licks her fingers.

“Weren’t me. Nobles at the landsmeet rose the Mac Tirs up after the Orlesian Occupation, for all the good they did to help. Why, you planning a coup?”

[archademode]

"Not as of yet."

He's never been the sort for that, truth be told. Insurrection, deviation for a worthy cause, the few against the many— that was always Basch's way, and though Gabranth wears his face now beneath the shadows of his helm, he cannot bring himself to become any more like his twin. His reach was always lacking, his strides ever too short to keep pace.

...perhaps that's why he'd been left behind in the first place.

"But I will teach you, if you've a willingness to become more than yourself."

[poleaxed]

Jone cocks her head. “Teach me what, exactly? When we fight, it comes out a draw every time.”

[archademode]

That is not true, is the argument he seems to want to make, given the way his plated shoulders rise by degrees— only to stop halfway. In essence, it’s all pride. One stubbornly insistent ego with no bite or bark, and instead it’s chased by a tepid exhale, and the spread of his fingers along the nape of the horse's neck.

"The rules by which you will live, fight and serve. The very same that mark the difference between a man in armor, and a noble's chosen hand."

Chosen, as someone out there in the broad span of this world surely would, were Jone to fit herself well enough to play the part.

"I see no reason why you cannot take them on as your own, and serve as I once did."

[poleaxed]

Jone sighs, pinching her nose in a sign of frustration. “You can’t make my blood better,” she says. “You missed the point. Changing for them—”

She shakes her head, cutting the anger off as Gabranth did. She recognized something there, or she thinks she did. That control, she has it too.

“Do you wanna ride the damned horse or not, Gab?”

[archademode]

"Not for them."

Clarified with one last shake of his head— mirrored thereafter by the mare stood between them, likely for having to endure the push and pull of their mulish conversation.

"Fine. Show me how it is done."

Easier to observe than to bother with it himself, clambering over tack in heavy armor. That Jone hasn't demanded he remove any of it is a strangely specific mercy, and one he suspects is entirely intentional on her part, perhaps born out of knowing he would only refuse.

[poleaxed]

Jone nods, taking a moment to fight the signs of frustration and disappointment out of her expression, before coming around to Gabranth’s side of the horse.

“Right,” she says, and her tone isn’t as easy-going as it was, but it’s no longer granite ground in her windpipe. “Properly, most put the armor on after they’re on the horse.”

No comment on Gabranth’s particular fancies. She’s stopped demanding he take it off because the other talk they have is far more interesting.

“Even without, I’d still need a leg up.” She looks at Gabranth expectantly. Come on, then.

[archademode]

He does as he's bid— hardly surprising to anyone present— crossing around the horse's substantial frame and kneeling low, his gloved hands extended: palms up, fingers knitted together in as much of a makeshift stirrup as he can manage.

Go on, then, Jone.

[poleaxed]

And up she goes.

“Moira, here,” Jone says, patting the horse, “is precious gentle. No good for the battlefront, but she’s good for breeding, I imagine. S’why you can ride her without saddle for a little while.”

This, Jone reflects, isn’t probably the best actual demonstration, but then, she’s really trying to show him there’s nothing to fear, isn’t she?

Wouldn’t that be a laugh.

“C’mon, your Majesty, let’s trot.” Jone makes some affectionate clicking noises, moves the bridle in her hands, and Moira walks them around in a slow circle.

[archademode]

Impractical as it is in terms of form and accommodation, it does at least serve the purpose of letting him compare what trots languidly before him versus what he's familiar with from his own world: the differences in seating, the fact that her balance is more upright rather than forward-leaning to accommodate a creature with two legs, rather than four.

"Simple enough." He concludes, despite not having a hand in it at all.

[poleaxed]

“Been riding since I were fourteen,” she adds, “and Moira here is uncommon polite. Ain’t you, Your Majesty?”

Jone pets the horse’s mane, scratches behind an ear, and Moira makes pleased noises.

“Lucky for us both, Riftwatch ain’t much for horsed combat, so you’ll only need to learn riding.”

[archademode]

"Unless I desired to enter that tournament you spoke of." He counters, letting his arms fold while he watches her pad around in slow, steady circles.

[poleaxed]

Jone’s eyes light up, all excitement. “Would you really?”

[archademode]

"I doubt I'll be proficient enough by then," Learning to ride is one thing, after all. Learning an entire sport while riding on an unfamiliar breed of beast altogether might very well be too much for him.

And...truth be told, he still has far too much work to manage to even begin to consider matters of leisure.

"But should fate deign to allow it, yes. I would."

[poleaxed]

Joan continues to beam. She turns to get off Moira, leading her back to the stables, where one can find a saddle and wooden stairs that lead up to nowhere. Not everyone has a partner to push them up on the big horses.

“We’ll have to get you trained up, then.” The pleasure in her voice is impossible to miss. “Can I ask why?”

She says, affixing saddle and stirrups to Moira.