it is my duty to inform you that we took a vote all us women ( open )

[ipseite]

WHO: Petrana + ?
WHAT: Nuggalope training.
WHEN: Current-ish.
WHERE: The Gallows.
NOTES: No content warnings currently applicable. You are not hallucinating, this post does look familiar; it was originally posted end of last year, but mod plot took precedent so I have deleted the untagged original post and am recycling it for reasons.

It is rare, for much of the Gallows, to see Mme de Cedoux out of her office. Rarer still to see her out of her office and not presently engaged in being on the way to an office, possibly hers. Their respective obligations mean that more often than not, it is Enchanter Rowntree who takes Vysvolod for his constitutionals; her outings tend to be more Hightown-oriented than not. If she does take her nuggalope—yes he is named the Black Divine, no she doesn't see anything at all wrong with it—out for his constitutionals, it is typically somewhat further afield than merely nearby the stables and the docks.

And yet.

The physical exercise has done her a world of good, much as it has taught the Black Divine skills that she hopes will never be necessary and knows the sense in hoping; she is sufficiently confident, after some months, in both her own ability (less rusty than it had been) and his (unlikely to cause a catastrophe in front of an audience). So there is no need to take him as far as she's accustomed to doing for the sake of keeping both their hands in, and anyone nearby the dockside stables can,

if they so desire,

be treated to the unusual sight of Mme de Cedoux, in full skirts and corset but sans her sensible shoes, standing at her full five foot height atop the back of a saddled nuggalope, instructing him apparently by subtle shifts of her weight, and

there is a flurry of skirts. A running leap—and nothing beneath her bare feet but the opportunity that decent people will ignore to get a glimpse of knees and ankles until she lands hard and upright on her mount, beneath her at precisely the right moment, and precisely the right angle.

“Very good.”

Comments

[inkindled]

"Right, but--" Frowning as he parses all of this out, Matthias abandons petting the Black Divine so he can scratch at his own ear, a sure sign he's thinking hard. "But if we don't use the titles, 'cause people might think we're loyalists, then they get to keep 'em without a fight. The loyalists. If someone says, oi, call me enchanter, and incidentally the Circles are crap--that'd stick in your mind, wouldn't it? Not yours, obviously. I mean yours generally, like."

There's a lot to take in here. Witch, for one. The holy church. Enchanter Julius the loyalist.

"I don't know Enchanter Julius well," he confesses, "or at all, really. S'ppose I didn't much think of him. So maybe that defend your point better'n mine, 'cause if I knew he wasn't a loyalist, I'd have thought more of him."

[ipseite]

“Your point is not a bad one,” she says, to be entirely clear, “it is only that we are not yet in a place where yours might supercede it. As the Enchanter exemplifies — you did not know his position had changed, for his titling has not. You understand implicitly the meaning of such titling, in his case; that is the way it sounds to speak of Mssr Rowntree thus, when we do not know him well.”

She considers, for a moment, and then: “Here is a question. I do not expect you to answer it — I do not pretend to have an answer, whole and perfect, to give you. But why should they not have those old things? In leaving the Circles, can we only imagine mages thriving in the ways the Chantry determined they must or must not? Those things have not served you. Have not served Mssr Rowntree. It is one thing to wear the ashes of what has been burned down and call it victory, but we might build something better yet. It would be a true shame to miss the opportunity for cleaving to the past.”

She strokes the Black Divine's great neck. He seems peaceful enough with waiting while they wrestle with questions of philosophy and rebellion.

“But at its most simple, Mssr Rowntree does not care to be called Enchanter and Enchanter Julius does, and it pleases me to give each of them what best pleases them.”

(They're probably just roommates.)

[inkindled]

Matthias frowns. Then he frowns harder, and scratches at his ear again.

"Well, I reckon," he starts, but then stops, because he doesn't know how to answer the question. He thinks about the stale air of Tantervale, and the cold air in the mountains, when you'd wake up and crawl out of a tent swaybacked by heavy snow. Then it seemed like there were two different words for air. One was stifling and hard to breathe and the other felt good in your lungs. Even when there was blood on the snow, if you were still breathing after the battle, that was good enough.

So titles might be like that, then. The same thing in a word, but different. Only how did you explain that to someone who hadn't lived it? They couldn't know. Magic done with your head down, magic done to spite everyone, magic done to help--they're all different. They should be called by different things. That's what she means, maybe.

"I dunno," he admits. "I never thought much of what might come after. After the war, I mean. Not until recently." And because he cannot--cannot--think too long about what she's said, and he cannot wonder if that's something you might say of a roommate--then again, he hasn't got good roommates--but even so-- "What would come next, d'you reckon?"