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

He boosts himself up, dark fingers on a narrow ledge, the coarse cut of his boots finding purchase somehow on the concrete. The first wall he scales is a low one; they probably used to stable horses in this building, single-story, rotted wood and blown-in bricking bearing little resemblence to stalls but failing to form much else, either. He trips over tiles on his way to the adjacent block. Three stories. Looks up.

Jumping it would be easier, but he doesn't. He's been as judicious about his powers as he can be, of late. Hunting itself, every two nights, represents enough risk of exposure and raw need that he knows to be pragmatic about it; a baby vampire in tow hardly makes things easier.

But were he to be entirely forthright, none of this is very difficult, by his measure.

At some point, he makes it up high enough that the masonry under his feet lends its function to not to horses or homes or any other recognizable function, but it looks to be braced against the sky itself. There's a tower not far away, small windows cut into the stone; he can hear ravens talking inside, their voices reverberating off of metal cages. The wind picks at his clothes, and he looks down into a courtyard that sprawls between him and the next he isn't going to make. He steps down over the stone, and his boot shifts a palm-sized fragment of -- tile? Glass? He isn't sure.

But it topples down, and he thinks to say, "Look out!"

"Why would I lie about coffee?"

Most of the jobs he's found thus far have been what he's looking for, insofar as he's been looking for jobs where you pick things up, carry them, put them down again. His reputation precedes him, the deeply inaccurate this and that about the Rifters' speculative demon heritage, but he does not flatter himself in knowing that he enjoyed worse back home, and when he was considerably more vulnerable besides. Maybe it makes him cocky.

But it gives him enough to talk about, and he's particularly shrewd about approaching Cabot. After all, he corresponded with another surface-dwelling dwarf lately who led him to understand that they tend to be a little less nervous about Rifters and than anybody else in Thedas. "That's just cruel," he says. "But you want to know what's really all the rage back home, and maybe you can use this. Infused cream. Infused syrups. There's a group called the Illuminati who came into power selling that stuff, and their coffee doesn't even taste like it anymore."

Mostly, he makes Cabot laugh. But he pays for an ale, and he's generous too, about looking a couple stools over and saying, "And for me friend here, too, who's--?" It's the kind of question you're supposed to answer with your name.

He's too quick to pass for human, which is why he's been marketing himself as a mage of a different ilk. The lack of spells, however, has left him to get his workout in with people who like beating things up with their hands and swords when he does volunteer.

Which is how he somehow winds up squaring off against an eight-foot tall albino kid built like an NFL recruiter's [something], violet-eyed, and with gigantic horns poking out of his head. The look on Marcel's face, when they see each other across the sectioned garden, is probably a little comical; big-eyed, a belly laugh running out in his rich, mellifluous baritone. Three minutes later, naturally, they're in the dirt.

Four minutes after that, he's flying across the air, pinwheeling. Lands like a cat, by which one means he scrabbles around, nearly splitting the seam in the ass of his pants to regain his footing, saying, "Fuck" a lot, but manages to regain his footing in time to meet his opponent's bellowing charge. It's something to see, an ordinary-looking man hoisting the young Qunari clear off his feet, off-balance, but game to throw.

And maybe it's a minute or two after that, when he rolls to a stop against your character's toes. Marcel doesn't look too much the worse for wear; his knuckles already scabbed, peeled, the skin underneath dark and whole. "Hi," he says.

Fwap.

Past the edge of Kitty's book, a sheet of parchment lands on the table, flattened by the weight of Marcel's hand. When he pulls back, the removal of his fingers reveals a drawing. It looks like nothing she's ever seen before. It has the mathematical rhythm of architecture, not as intricate as the symmetry at the heart of a gem, its straight edges and repeating parts unmistakably the product of a thinking people. "Combustion engine," Marcel says. Marcel—

would happen to be the dark-skinned man standing at the adjacent armchair. By now, his clothes look persuasively Thedosian; no anachronistic zipper flies or machine weaves. If one wonders where he managed to apprehend this costume, one should mind their own business, everything is fine, no one is particularly the worst for wear anyway. He could probably pass, if he tried.

But there is a seam of queasy greenish light in his hand that he makes no move to hide. More importantly, where Kitty is concerned, the deep pitch and cadence of voice probably rings a bell, even if it was weeks ago since they spoke. Weeks enough to apprehend parchment. Which was actually somewhat less tiresome than-- finding clothes. "If you aren't Kitty, the surface-dwelling dwarf," he says, smiling and gesturing down at the page he created for her. "This is going to seem very awkward."

"You're quite mistaken," Kitty responds wryly. She doesn't even try to sell the lie; instead, her voice is quite cheerily sarcastic, and she plucks up the page he's drawn for her without even hesitating. "I'm a titan who's suffered a terrible accident. - This is interesting. I can't make a great deal of sense of it, but it's interesting. I can pass this along to other people who'd know more than me?" And then she looks up at him, meeting his eyes.

She has a sweet face. She's a respectable-looking girl, to be quite sure: simple clothes, well-maintained, hair cut to her shoulders and shining with good health, expression bright and curious. An observant eye might notice just how intent her stare is. She studies Marcel's face with a gaze that lingers a little bit too long to just be friendly - there's some information she's seeking there - and her glance flicks very quickly to his hands, his belt, his pockets, sizing up the money he has, the weapons he has and the frequency with which he uses them. His shoes and how worn down they are - because you can often tell the state of a man's life by the state of his shoes. Up to his face again. But there's never a flicker in her sweet smile.

"I assume you're Marcel, by the way. If not, then you're one of the other people I have coming by to show me fantastical technologies from other worlds."

He's not here for company, or a good time, or to laugh and make friends. Normally he would be. Normally, that's why he comes here. A quick smile, an easy laugh, he'd join right in. Since the first of the new year, he's just felt dull and tired.

He blinks, head swiveling to the left. He'd only been half listening in on what was happening next to him, hunched over his drink, when the man leaned in. "Um, what? Oh. Salvatore."

Edited 2016-01-10 05:27 (UTC)

Marcel's clothes are telling. At least, insofar as that he hasn't lived a very exciting life since coming here, and the fabrics are clearly secondhand and reasonably well maintained. The trousers are of particularly solid make, actually-- and there's a telltale scorch mark near the bottom of the left leg that suggests that they belong to a ferrier. Which, despite the degree of interest his chickenscratches pose to dwarves such as herself, Marcel quite clearly is not.

He's unarmed. Or only has something small, maybe a knife in his boot. However, he moves with the perfect balance of somebody who has trained to have it upset by some form of attack for a long time, and a great deal of confidence besides that. He watches her watch him and smiles through the whole thing himself.

"Guess I skipped the line," Marcel says, wryly. But her rejoinder is friendly enough that he makes the move to pull back the next chair, set himself down in it. "I've gotta say, you're not making me feel too special. Even if that was a joke. I know Rifters are a dime a dozen out here, and there's a guy you might've heard of--" Marcel fails entirely to look threatened, sitting back in his chair. "Who's flown out to the stars. But you got me. Marcel Gerard, at your service."

Edited (hit send too early why mouse) 2016-01-10 09:19 (UTC)

"Salvatore," sounds Italian? By now, Marcel is well-aware that some of the European cultures back home map onto Thedosian nations, and it's of interest to him, a little, these connections between realities. Nonetheless, he thinks better than to launch into his quest for knowledge immediately. Salvatore looks rather out of it, and it's somewhat difficult to predict if he's going to be one of those more paranoid about Rifters or friendly, after the haze burns off.

Or, you know. He could just keep the haze going.

"You look like you could use a drink." Cabot looks toward the young man expectantly too, to see if the Nevarran is inclined to accept the offer.

The courtyard was something of a refuge for Ariadne. Surrounded by so many strange and different things, there was one constant for her: Plants responded to her gentle touch. Even if they were plants she didn't recognize, she still had a marvelous talent for making them grow. And as of late, the strangeness of Thedas had been getting to her. It was no wonder, then, that there was constantly dirt beneath her newly Human fingernails.

She was kneeling beside a bed of flowers that reminded her of Valerian violets when she heard a warning called from above her. Instinct kicked in long before thoughts of subterfuge.

For a slight, skinny girl who couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds, Ariadne was quick. Agile too. With what looked like almost no effort at all, she threw herself into a barrel roll, spiraling under a nearby tree. She didn't even need to look up to know where the lowest branch was and she grabbed hold of it, swinging her entire body up into a squat on top of it.

Only then did she look up, brushing the fringe of her hair out of her eyes to see the debris crash down where she'd been kneeling.

Climb high enough in Skyhold and the world melts away, only the wind howling down to drown out whatever racket there is in the courtyard or within the buildings. The scenery isn't much in her opinion but she's never seen the allure of a mountain before and she doesn't now but still, it's peaceful, tucked up on a rooftop an empty diary she's studiously filling in when she hears the shout and tucks it away.

Someone else is up, about as high as her and she clambers down, a concerned frown pinching her features as she comes to a halt. The clatter has her wincing, even from this height but when she doesn't hear the horrified screams of someone being injured, she continues her descent.

"All is well? The masonry has seen far better days." An advantage to being on the small and light side of things is that unless she really botches it, most of the stonework doesn't seem to protest to her climbing up it.

He huffs a humorless laugh. "Yeah. I could." He swirls the last bit of ale at the bottom of his mug and swallows it down before giving Cabot a nod, and another to Marcel. He turns on the stool to give the man a better look and more of his attention. It's only polite. "My thanks, ser...?"

...well. After Ariadne's incredible acrobatic display, really, the impact of falling rubbish is actually pretty darn anticlimactic. It's just a little hardened mud, maybe a few ounces of tile, tumbling off dusty and brittle into empty air. When it lands on the ground, the condensed dirt mostly vaporizes on impact, disintegrating into a fine dust that turns the shiny green leaves of Ariadne's plants matte and slightly brown.

Maybe a couple leaves get bruised, and that's it. Of course, by the time the literal dust has settled, Marcel doesn't even have a little bit of attention invested in the vegetation. No, his eyes are fixed, instead, on the girl in the tree, tucked into her mighty crouch, the branch steady under her surefooted weight. Humans do not move like that, at least not in his world. It's the vampires, the werewolves, the occasional spelled witch. It's the wrongness that comes of improvement on the original design.

"Sorry about that."

He pitches his voice across the distance between the elevated concrete and the tree below, and he has a voice that carries well in the brisk air. By sorry, one should note that Marcel doesn't sound like he's about to slit his wrists about it, but his voice is warm, and that passes for sincerity in most circles. Marcel cocks his head, shading his eyes. "I take it you're all right. Ma'am."

She recognized his voice before she looked up to spy the gentleman that matched Marcel's self-description. He had a pleasant, handsome face. One that definitely stood out in the strangely monochromatic world of Thedas. But really, it was his eyes which drew her attention. They seemed kind. A little sad, maybe. But it was wrong to read too much into someone's face.

Ariadne relied more on scent to understand people.

Curiously, she grabbed a branch over her head and pulled herself up, climbing up in the direction of the rooftop.

"Lord Marcel?" she asked, her voice light and innocent, like a child's, in spite of her decidedly woman-shaped body.

Marcel is waving his arm at whoever he cleared out down below. Checking they're all right, confirming nobody's-- going to get him in trouble too, although that's a secondary concern. Despite many warnings about the stigma that Rifters face, Marcel remains confident. Or overconfident, if you cast him in a certain light. It's less out of an expectation that his fellows will be reasonable, and more because he's so accustomed to having trouble to survive that the lack thereof hardly feels like living, sometimes.

He hears here before she speaks, but doesn't turn until she does. His dark eyes brighten slightly when he registers her voice, which is dimly familiar, although he doesn't correctly assess where he's heard it before right away. "All turned out," he answers cordially. "Be unfortunate if I made a first account of myself dropping concussions on the unsuspecting. I can't say I was expecting company up here, but you seem familiar, somehow." Marcel is somewhat more careful, this time, when he starts to approach her. It's not obvious, though. He enjoys grace inherent to his kind, and it looks effortless, the way he picks his way nearer across the stone.

"Do I know you?" he squints a little, as if he couldn't see her perfectly well from where he was. He's already extending a hand to shake, light flashing telltale from his palm.

Marcel nods in return, equally polite. He has a rather direct regard, usually, but he's well-mannered enough not to stare at this fellow who seems to be in an unhappy mood. "Marcel." He isn't inclined to be so careful, however, as to go through real lengths to disguise the mark on his palm. He offers Salvatore a handshake, and it glows, the seam of greenish light that marks his connection to the Rift. Not all who have it are Rifters, but then he goes ahead and adds:

"I'm not from around here. You?"

"Obviously not." Without hesitation, he takes the offered hand. He never really bought into the superstitions about the Rifters, and maybe they're demons, or maybe they're spies. Maybe because he's always felt a step and a half ahead of succumbing to a demon himself. Or maybe he just trusts that they're unfortunate strangers who need a little help.

"I'm from the Perendale Circle. In Nevarra. It's ... North."

Edited 2016-01-11 04:56 (UTC)

"Marcel. Don't think I can justify that... honorific," he says, even though he had once rather loudly and unironically announced himself king, and went to war over the power that he thought that held. That was at least a few years ago, at this point. Marcel hasn't yet figured out who all the Kings of Thedas are, but the world is sufficiently feudal that he suspects they and their squabbles exist somewhere beyond the concerns of interdimensional sky holes, demons, spirits, the Rifters caught in between.

A slight squint furrows his brow for a moment. Nothing serious, merely patching voice to face, remembering talking to her over a magic crystal once. The disparity between the way she sounds and the way she looks is mildly jarring, but considering he's fraternized with all sorts of people and creatures. "I spoke to you before, didn't I? Ariadne. You like gardens." He steps a little closer across the roof shingles.

Expertly, she perched herself on the higher branch, offering him a pretty, little smile. "That's right," she said mildly, pleased to be remembered. For someone who looked the way she did, with her wide gray eyes and long braid, she could easily be lost in the background.

It was how she'd been trained.

She tilted her head to one side, birdlike. "What are you doing up on a rooftop?"

Marcel places that in his mind-- somewhere. "Across the sea North?" he inquires. He nods at Cabot when the man provides him his own pint, and then makes a generous gesture at it when the second vessel lands on the bar-top close to Salvatore's hand. "Or on this continent? Your name sounds like one that's pretty common back home, actually.

"I'm wondering if there's a parallel there." He picks up his cup but doesn't drink yet, his expression warming with curiosity.

"Oh, I don't mind having you one bit," Kitty says with a smile. She likes his wry humor, she decides. She likes the way that he doesn't seem to talk down to her - there's still time for him to get all facetious and irritating, no question, but he hasn't yet even though he isn't accustomed to her or her people and she likes that. She doesn't know much about the Rifters. She doesn't know whether they're good or bad, trustworthy or not. But she knows she likes him.

And so she drops her teasing air to speak with a bit more sincerity, for just a moment. "Are you doing all right here? All things considered. As all right as you can possibly do, being even more of a refugee than the rest of us are."

Marcel looks around at the rooftop he's on, as if he'd forgotten where he was. Actually most definitely not the case; it's a Hell of a view, and a lady, fellow Rifter, with clever feet can honestly only improve upon it. "Oh, this." He shrugs, makes a joke out of it. Out of his own memory and decidedly peculiar behavior. At least, peculiar unless you happen to be some form of a cat.

"Exploring. You remember what it's like, right?"

And then he takes a running leap. His boots scratch off stone, and then he lands-- hard, impeccably, on the ledge twenty feet down. It's impossibly narrow, the strip that he hits with his heels, but his calculation is perfect. Not only physically. At this point, he sees little facility in people seeing him entirely as a mundane human being. Marcel snatches a hand on the grooved wall behind him for balance. They're nearer to each other now, a story or two for difference in altitude. He grins at her. "Being new."

She did little to disguise her surprise at his sudden display of physical finesse. A move like that was common enough among the Alastrians. But he still had the look of a Human to her eyes.

Just a little closer, she supposed, and she'd be able to catch his scent, perhaps.

There were Darucs who could do something like that with equal grace.

For the time being, though, she let her lips curl into a little smile. "It sounds vaguely familiar," she replied, inching up as far as she dared to move along the branch. "Although it seems to me, you're not exploring any more. You're showing off."

"Bonjour."

And like that, Sabine gives away who she is, having only communicated prior to this moment over Thedosian telephone. But it's a deliberate choice -- she knows who he is, observant enough and curious enough to cut to the chase on her own time, and now it is mutual.

Her boots, which from down there he is getting a good look at, are neat and probably the best made thing she's wearing -- the dark green skirt that ends around her ankles is peasant-made, the fabric worn and faded, a little mud spattered at the hem. In her arms, she's carrying a bundle of sticks secured in burlap, sticks that have been stripped of their flesh, trimmed down, straightened, obviously for a purpose. Her hair is left wild, a cloud of precise curls, golden-glinting red. Her long ears only just poke through.

Her expression is a little unimpressed. He looks very human.

"Across the sea. Ah..." He drags a wet spot on the counter out, roughly the shape of the Waking Sea and points to one side of it. "We are down here. Hop over the sea, and here is Cumberland in Nevarra. This is actually where I was born. But!" He moves his finger farther and farther away. "North" and a bit "West". "Perendale is somewhere way up here." He takes his own drink, leaning in, his interest sparked. "There are names like mine where you're from?"

“It would only add fuel to the fire that some of us are wicked things and not to be trusted,” she smiles as she says it though because it still sounds so utterly ridiculous to a girl who didn’t know about anything like this until her rather abrupt crash course. As she moves closer, she keeps up on her toes, away from some of the bricks she only really trusts when she’s pulling herself up and over.

Introductions then, before anything else though she misses the bow today on account of Skyhold falling apart further. “Araceli Bonaventura, I prefer using this way to get around instead of nearly having people run right over the top of me. We might have passed each other then. Or in the tavern maybe?” She’d remember, surely, if his was a face she’d gambled with because that’s why she’s good at cards and dice, her eyes always on more than just the hand dealt to her.

With a smile though, she shakes his hand, still excited from meeting another rifter that actually knew what a gun was.

O1 ♚ I'M IN NEED OF AN ANSWER

ROOFTOPS [open]

TAVERN [open]

MURDER PRACTICE [open]

CLOSED TO KITTY

i love them

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me too X(

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