faderift | O1 ♚ I'M IN NEED OF AN ANSWER

"J'ai perdu," she suggests, after a second of thought, stepping back a little once he stands and becomes all tall and such, swinging his arms about and displacing training yard dust.

At his question, Sabine shakes her head, but then stops, and bobbles it in more of a neutral way. "I suppose you are particular," she says, raising an eyebrow. "I thought I should come and see you aren't just a mysterious voice trapped in a necklace." And lo, here he is.

But she opts to elaborate, with a verbal prod of accusation; "You said you weren't human."

He absolutely did not say that, Sabine. But apparently, something he did say convinced her otherwise.

The dust that emanates from Marcel keeps to a fairly narrow radius. He isn't flexing or anything, sparing anybody from powdery eruptions as well as (maybe) the worst of the urge to roll their elf eyes (maybe). "Did I?" Marcel asks, not really thinking so, but not really minding. Elena is considerably more wary than he about disguising their nature, failing to observe that a disguise doesn't have to mean an explicit and wholesale denial.

Marcel has observed that magic has capital around here. "Is that what you look for in a guy?"

His smile is playful. Suggestive. But he doesn't look at her boobs, not even as he turns away. Instead, he squares his shoulders in a way that implies both readiness for conflict and a certain obliging good nature, a man with enough confidence in his abilities--or his pain tolerance--to make a joke about getting the tar beaten out of him by a giant horned fellow with skin that refracts light like metal armor. "You look kinda humanoid yourself."

"Or humans look elven."

Sabine isn't even sure what argument she's winning there, but most things she says is with a tone of conviction, and this volleying comment is no different. His glib remark around the middle, though, has her narrowing her eyes not in an excessively aggressive way, but a warning against being too cute with her. She might buy it, if he does, so don't. :E

She adjusts the sit of the bundle in her arms. "You said magic in your world is unknown by humans. But only a man who is not a human would know that."

Humans do look elven, Marcel decides, his back turned toward her but his mind still clocking everything she says, and in a timely manner. He was being a human elitest, which is a bit rude, even if he isn't human himself. He knows that's some thin ice, because her eyes got so little. Frighteningly little. A geometric contrast to the glorious volume of her hair.

"I am magic," he concedes, still not looking backward, because that's not what you do when you're the sort of guy he is, talking to a young woman that you are predisposed to in such-and-such a way. "And I hate to show off, but you're making it too tempting. Here we go. A'right?" and he crooks his head a moment, pitches his voice over his shoulder, his eyes still fixed on the Vashoth. The next moment, he vanishes.

It's akin to the magic she may have seen, before; the way that mages might issue a fierce glow, dissipate into nothing, only to corporealize seemingly out of the blank earth. Marcel's movement is like that, but qualitatively different. He snaps into view like a rubber-band, behind his giant opponent this time. He says something-- too far away, too quiet to tell, but it puts a brief twitch of a smile on the other man's horned head, before the horned warrior is abruptly hauled off his feet. This time, Marcel calculates the balance correctly. Pitches a throw, sending the massive man one muscular arm over the other.

The Vashoth hits the ground hard enough to tremor the plants growing nearby. Naturally, he won't be long recovering his feet, picking himself up, dusting himself off. But it's those precious few seconds that Marcel uses to smile at the elf genially from across the spread of flagstones.

By the time he looks back at her, with his handsome smile, Sabine has dropped her stick bundle as if to free her hands, although she's wearing nothing in the way of weaponry. At least, not where any can see. Her eyes are wide, white all around dark hazel, but more in the way a cat will make its eyes big when trying to closely watch something it doesn't know it should be afraid of yet. She's skittered back, in case the fight were to spill in her direction.

She herself hasn't seen enough mages truly in action to be cool and calm and collected, but she does force herself to lower her own guard back down, reflecting a crooked version of his own smile back at him, even if she's still tense around the eyes.

"Then it is humans who do not know of you."

Marcel's smile his wide and glittery, pleased to show off. For a moment, there seems to be some risk that he might fail to notice the Vashoth having restored himself to the upright, and bulling his way over again. However, in the last minute, Marcel turns his head around. A block is enough to absorb the worst of the other warrior's impact, although it sends him skidding backward a solid few feet. When he scrapes to a halt, he lets his arms fall, gesturing at the other man with exasperation. No real heat.

"Take five."

He gets a little bit of an insult in response, nothing that really cuts. Marcel shakes his head, dragging the back of his wrist across his mouth as he looks back at Sabine. He points at the load at her feet and asks a question that sounds idiotic in the context of the local technology and culture, but might be less so, eventually: "What's that for?"

Sabine tips her head to track what the Vashoth's wander off to take five, considering the sheer size and density of his kind against the human-shaped rifter and his human-proportions. Then back to Marcel, reminded of the mess at her feet, and she promptly ducks down to gather some of the sticks that have skittered away. They're skinny and pale, uniform in length and colour and straightness.

Selecting one, she waves it, tapping it once against her temple. "Arrows," she says, with only a raised eyebrow that judges the obviousness of her answer. They lack their heads and their feathers. "You use them to shoot things. Or maybe in your world, you just pick up your dinner and throw it at a tree?"

But her sass is mild, tidying, securing them back into their burlap. "Do you have a thing you are called? For what you are?"

Pick up what and throw it at what. Marcel's eyes crinkle. Realistically speaking, vampires do have a terrible habit of chucking each other, people, and things about in fantastic displays of supernatural strength. He has been known to launch people from the ground floor onto balconies, very impressive, but obviously not what she's on about. "Dinner comes in paper wrappers, walked over to you by somebody in uniform," he says. "Hamburgers are my favorite." Hamburgers are extremely medium, but as long as he's faffing around, looking as if he's had it easy all his life, snobby and content, he might as well lay it on thick.

In more ways than one.

"I'm a witch."

It's a harmless lie and exceptionally important. He's descended, on the vampire side, from witchcraft. He reaches out toward her bundle then, to grasp one stick and examine it. Unless, you know, she slaps his intruding hand away. But perhaps she notices then, the lapis lazuli ring sitting on his fourth finger, the gemstone bright on braided silver. "We had an ancient people called Vikings, and their power runs through my veins. There's one other like me here-- a girl named Elena."

Edited (+daylight ring) 2016-01-30 21:02 (UTC)

That sounds like an egregious waste of paper to Sabine, who squints at the idea of this particular conceit, but thankfully doesn't enquire further.

There's no hand slapping, anyway. The sticks themselves aren't valuable, even if he's holding several minutes worth of knife work, and painstakingly bending the curves out of it against her knee. Her smirk is more around her eyes than anywhere else as she watches him study it, and inevitably, her gaze settles on the ring. "I've never met a witch," she says, but there isn't really suspicion or doubt in her voice. Marcel hasn't chosen too badly, then.

"Is she from New Orleans too?" She goes to pluck the stick back into her keeping.

Marcel watches her subtly enough, wary to catch the minor tics of emotion that might suggest that she's more suspicious of him now than she was before. It's too much to expect that she might be less suspicious now. He'll settle for an unchanged degree of suspicion. It stands to reason that Rifter magic can't be rated all that worse or more risky than regular Thedosian magic. He knows that isn't setting the bar real high, but still.

"Naw. She's from some town nobody's ever heard of."

He folds his arm, stretching out muscles that feel very slightly mangled from his terrifying opponent. "Are you about to kill dinner, make stuff to kill dinner with, or are you gonna hang out?" Marcel's smile widens and grows slightly lopsided. Smirky. His eyes venture around the big red halo of her hair, speculatively.

"'Hang out'?" she queries, sceptically, pushing sticks back amongst other sticks. "I am going to make these into arrows, oui, but they will be given to scouts and hunters, some of which will look after them and others will shatter them, lose them, and I will have to make more."

Eyeroll. Amateurs.

"It is boring work, but if you wish to toss more qunari around where I can see, it will make it go quicker." She smiles, all teeth, as if biting down.

O1 ♚ I'M IN NEED OF AN ANSWER

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your icons are each like minimally 50% hair

she is herself minimally 50% hair

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