faderift | closed | Busy old fool, unruly sun,

This is Loki's first excursion beyond the walls of Kirkwall and the Gallows, his first trip into a new country on Thedas' soil. He's excited in a way that shows somewhat in the constant rocking back and forth on his heels, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his heavy, long coat with its gold and green embroidery. They're quite the mismatched pair, he and Abby; the poor girl is still wearing borrowed clothes from the Gallows, but he imagines that will just make it harder for the guards to presume that they are together in this little venture.

He hears footsteps approaching and glances over his shoulder at Abby before resituating himself against the ship's railing. "So we'll need to buy paint... yellow, and quite a bit of it. I was thinking, perhaps, we could enlist local help in our art project."

Likewise, this is Abby's first mission too and the pair of them wear that brand-new notion in much the same way. Abby is itchy, and restless for new places, things to do. The boat goes too slow but offers such a spectacular view as they coast into Antiva at their leisure that she's mollified by it, her gaze on the approaching city when Loki turns to look at her.

He has no idea how to blend in, does he. He's very resplendent in his beautiful, well-kept coat, and Abby has no idea how he thinks he's going to move his arms properly in it. That's a problem for later, she supposes, if they ever have need to haul ass. Hopefully not.

"Think you're right. We could get somebody to buy the paint for us." She isn't too sure what the local scene is like, and whether they'll blend in or not, but surely Antiva isn't famous for its paints. Might be better if an inconspicuous purchase isn't tied to either of them.

Hopefully not; he needs to use his arms for any number of things, and while his coat is very fancy and new-looking it also was designed for a mage. So. Loki has faith it'll hold up, should he need to flee down a narrow alleyway or somesuch, though blending in (as she's noticed) is not his forte.

"Artists or house painters are probably going to be our best bet for that. Alternatively, we could buy several colors of paint from several vendors, to throw the scent off our tracks should the guard be capable enough to think to look into it."

He looks Abby up and down. He's sure the girl can fight, but: "How are your painting skills?"

It has to be yellow, doesn't it. The chances of finding some left unattended by construction is, therefore, probably low. Abby won't suggest just taking some then, though if the opportunity arises, she'll point it out in the moment.

"Is paint... expensive?" Abby's still wrapping her head around the economy, she isn't sure what kind of worth it might have over here. Back home you'd trade for paint, but not as much as you might a good, thick sweater, or extra battery for your flashlight. Maybe food? Maybe a good meal, or a decent favour, something like that. Doesn't really translate the same for a place that uses coin.

She never asked Owen about it. He had all that crap set up at the aquarium and she'd watched him work on murals for hours at a time... never asked him where he found his supplies.

"Dunno," she says eventually, shrugging it off. "Never done it before, but it can't be that hard."

Edited 2021-08-11 02:31 (UTC)

"It can be, depending on what it's used for."

He wonders, idly, if there might be some Chantry in Antiva that has some of the paint they need in their possession; if there was some way of asking without implicating themselves in the business to follow, it might be a good idea to look into that.

Once again he finds himself reaching for and missing parts of his magic he can't quite access easily; if he could just change his appearance easily, it wouldn't matter where they got the paint.

Loki raises an eyebrow at her. "Well, no better time to learn than the present, I suppose. What did you use to do in the world you came from? Other than survive," he says, gesturing at Abby. Clearly she is a survivor. He knows how to spot them.

"What do you mean?" It's paint, shouldn't it all cost the same amount?

Abby sees his raised eyebrow, and raises him... one of her own. He's quite perceptive. Either that, or he knows how to pick survivors, and that tells her something about him all on its own.

"I was with the Washington Liberation Front," she supplies, after a beat. "Paramilitary." The word 'soldier' is in there somewhere, but Abby doesn't like the sound of it, or the implication, even though that's exactly what she was. Didn't care enough to be anything else for a very long time. "We were at war too. None of this is really... new ground, for me."

"Paint for murals probably costs something different from paint for interiors which probably costs something different than the paint for portraiture. Not to mention paint for crafting. How thick it is, how fast it dries, how much rare pigment is in it... all of those things factor into the cost."

She must be from a very strange version of Midgard not to understand an economy around paint, of all things, but he just files that bit of information away.

What he thinks when she says 'paramilitary': aren't you a bit young by Midgardian standards for war? But war changes everything, and she might be from a timeline he knows nothing about, a future he's never seen. What he says, instead: "What was the nature of the conflict?"

She has to stare at him as he keeps talking, clearly bewildered, "How am I supposed to know all of that?"

Why does anybody bother knowing that... it sounds far too complicated for something as simple as paint. Maybe they should steal it. For all Abby knows, they've been sent to buy cans and cans of a rare pigment, or whatever the fuck.

She's still looking at him when it's her turn to answer a question, her brow furrowed as she mulls explanations over on the flat of her tongue. "Over land," she says, eventually. "My faction was in control of most of the area. Fucked up death cult had the rest. Got stuck in a power struggle for– years."

"Are there no craftspeople in your world?" Another raised eyebrow; now there are two. Where there are those that will make things, there are those that will charge them too much for the things they need in order to make things. This is the basis of many economies.

There's always the chance that Abby just doesn't... know anyone who makes things, or that she comes from a world that has moved beyond the necessity of such a system.

Loki is neither directly nor strongly opposed to stealing what they need, actually. That would probably be easier than trying to buy it, at this rate. He frowns, considering it, considering her answer.

"Is that who you were at war with, overall, or just a piece of the puzzle?" Hm, that's two questions, possibly unfair, but. He's asked them anyway.

"Course there are," Abby scoffs, blustering in an attempt to hide that she really doesn't know anything about paint or craft, "But we don't have money, where I'm from. We trade for things."

She's seen money from the old world before, it's not as if it's hard to find. Always in residential areas, stuffed into leather wallets, tucked away in folded wads underneath mattresses or curled into pairs of shoes, kept in house safes and locked up tight. Abby's interested in quarters, because her dad used to collect them, but the paper notes mean nothing to her.

That'll be why he says that. Why he looks at her, frowning, and asks her again who she's at war with. Abby holds the answer on her tongue, feeling odd; first time she's spoken about it to somebody who didn't already know.

"... We have a common enemy," she volunteers, finally. Her gaze is on him, gauging his reaction. "The infected. S'what we call the people suffering from cordyceps brain infection."

Barter? Nothing else? No... money, no coin, just material needs? Well. He doesn't think she's lying, so that's something, but it sounds like the full collapse of Midgardian society from here. Loki leans back a little in his chair, assessing her. "...huh."

Her explanation (if it can really be called that) of the situation back home for her doesn't really clear up much, for Loki. "Aren't cordyceps a type of mushroom, or something?" Wouldn't a brain infection just mean a lot of people are dead?

"Yeah," Abby says casually, glancing out across the water as the boat continues to pull them closer to the harbour. "It mutated, and infected a human for the first time around about... um, five years, before I was born.

If you're bitten, it gets in your bloodstream, and attacks the brain. Makes you hyper-aggressive. Takes over the host in a matter of hours after infection."

She gestures at her face, using her hand to indicate something– sprouting, out of skin. "You get this fucked up, fungal growth all over your skin, and then it completely destroys your eyesight, and removes all logic and reason. Makes you angry, and fast, and mean. It spread fast. Destroyed everything."

"Everything about that sounds like an absolutely shit horror show," is stated pretty flatly, because Loki had somehow managed to completely miss Midgard's cultural obsession with zombies and would equate the word with the lacking of free will in rather dangerous people who are in turn being magically puppeted by much more dangerous people.

You know. The classical definition. Or something.

"Gods, and they bite people?" He shudders. Sounds terrible, Abby. "Is there a cure, or a vaccine, or anything?"

"Tell me about it," she mutters, staring resolutely forward. Loki doesn't know the half of it. Abby hasn't explained even half of what the infected really are, how they move, like they're drunk, like they're in pain, or the sound of them. What it feels like when you're trapped in a dark space and you suddenly hear a volley of high-pitched clicks, and whistles ring out over the top of the spore-riddled air.

Absolutely shit horror show is a great way to describe it.

Her expression doesn't twitch out of place at his second question, but a muscle tightens up in her jaw all the same. Her voice is clipped, when she answers. Flat, matter-of-fact.

"No." And it's clear she's not about to elaborate, either. "There's no cure."

He notices that tightening in her jaw and wonders. He's not going to wonder out loud, however. Loki can have some sense of when it's best to just shut up instead of poking at something.

"Do you want to go back there?" That is what he asks instead. It's not a better question, on its face, but he remembers her asking him in the library if he was going to stay. At the time he presumed that she had nothing keeping her in Thedas, emotionally or whatever, and now? He's not sure he was wrong, per se, but it's an important question.

"Yes." It's easier to answer if only because Abby's completely sure in her conviction, but it does nothing to ease her tension. "I left somebody behind."

Her person, the only person that she has left, and every day spent here doing nothing feels like time ill-spent. She should be figuring out how to get back to him. The library in the Gallows had books about magic, but none of them had information on travelling across worlds. Even if they did, she wouldn't know how to use it.

Before she's able to think twice, it bursts out of her. "Does everything back home just... go on, without us?"

"I don't know," is Loki's honest answer, and he feels a little bad that most of what he has; he doesn't know anything for certain here, and it's very frustrating.

However: "It seems doubtful, really; for instance, I know some things about the future of someone here, things he didn't seem familiar with, though I don't know what year it was for him before he ended up here. If it is possible for two separate people to arrive from two different points on one specific timeline then it would make sense that there's a sort of... stasis effect, when a person gets pulled from their own reality into this one."

Abby can't decide how to feel about it: pessimistic, perhaps, because wouldn't they be reassured about this upon arrival if it wasn't true? Riftwatch needs people for their fight, and it might benefit them to keep the truth of the situation a secret. Hard to focus on a war when you're dedicating your time to trying to get out of it.

On the other hand there's hope. Hope that everything is fine, and that life back home is hanging in the kind of stasis that Loki describes. It's the same kind of feeling she gets when she allows herself to consider the existence of the Fireflies, something so sweet she can hardly bare to let herself taste it just in case it isn't real.

Abby sighs, and rubs her neck. "I know which one I prefer."

But she isn't keen to discuss it any further than that. "What's the first step, for when we get there. Split up?"

Loki would imagine those that run Riftwatch are in a strange position, wherein they can't confirm what actually happens to Rifters, and also, as Abby has surmised, they need bodies in this war.

At her question he nods. "I'll find us a place to stay while we're in town and will ask after painters in the area. We'll need to reconnect to figure out how best to get the trademaster out of his office, and sort out when makes sense for the other two locations."

"Kids," Abby says, because she's got an idea, "I'll see if I can find a couple kids who will help us out." Who else could get around without being paid a scrap of attention to. Who else is typically annoying like no other, and good at being distracting without that coming off as suspicious. Children, every time. Low stakes enough that they're not being put in any danger, either.

"Want to take an hour or two and then meet back in the middle."

"Street children would probably be best," he agrees. Granted, he doubts that Abby would go and find, say, a boarding school or some upper crust household and ask there.

Her plan is sound, for as thin as it is, but they're both in the same place regarding that so Loki nods again. "I'll find you."

Loki finds the paint, but Abby is the one who has to carry it. After having a peek she's quite appreciative of the colour: a buttery kind of yellow, warm in the afternoon light, and he's found a few brushes of varying sizes. They have everything they need to paint suns.

But Abby doesn't actually know how to paint anything, let alone suns.

"... Don't you laugh at me," she mutters, but she isn't talking to her present company. So far she's got more of an oval than a circle and some squiggles coming out of it, but they're of varying length. The effect that it has isn't very inspiring. Her tongue is sticking out of the corner of her mouth in concentration as she keeps going, trying to even out the rays.

Loki is taking the opportunity to causally glance at some of the paperwork on the trademaster's desk, while occasionally going to the windows to double-check that no one is headed their way. He hears Abby muttering and decides to go around to see how his compatriot is doing on her art project.

...Hideously, apparently, is how, and he gapes from behind her for a moment before he summons an illusion of the image they're supposed to be recreating and places it, shimmering and slightly see-through, above what she's painted.

"So..." He starts, because. What is that, Abby? "Do you want some help?"

"Nope."

She's pretending she doesn't see his pretty illusion, even though it ripples like actual sunlight might on the wall just above her head. Clearly, she needs some help. The effort to even up the sun rays is only making it worse, dare he believe it.

"Why. You don't think it looks good?"

Loki hums in consideration. The idea that she might take a swing at him or launch paint in his direction if he's too honest crosses his mind, and he'd rather not do either of those, thanks. "I think it looks very... dissimilar from what we are supposed to be portraying, here."

That's a safe thing to say, isn't it?

He's definitely within paint flicking range. Abby doesn't look at him while she keeps dabbing at her first attempt, and it's because she's trying to hide her grin.

"... Yeah," she says eventually, leaning back and taking in the full effect of her... piece. It looks awful. Especially now that she is comparing it to the sun projected just above it. There's a clear edge of laughter in her voice. "It looks like shit, doesn't it. It's harder than I thought."

Well, at least she's laughing about it. Loki shakes his head a little. "Here." He moves his illusion down so that it's overlapping Abby's art attempt directly. Then he makes it a little bigger. "Matchup what you can in, say, five minutes and we'll go from there."

He's so annoyed he can only maintain illusions for small bursts, now, but there's very little to be done for it.

"Thanks."

It's really helpful, it's like colouring in now that he's done that for her. Abby smooths out the body of her sun in moments, bringing it far more circular than it ever has been, and by the time she's finished the result is at least passable for what it's supposed to be. Though somebody would be forgiven for thinking a child did it.

"That's useful magic," she comments idly, wiping her paintbrush off on the sides of the can to save every drop, "Can you make a picture of anything you want?"

"You're welcome," comes the distracted answer. Loki has gone back to checking outside through the windows. They've been here for longer than he'd like, at this rate, but there's little to be done for it.

"Essentially. How long I can manage it depends on how complex and large it is, here; it never used to be much of a consideration." He dispels the illusion with a gesture, the sun dissipating into so much green and gold shimmer before disappearing completely. "Is there magic in the... Earth you come from?"

Yes, it's impossible not to notice that he's jumpy.

"We're fine," Abby assures him, gathering up their things all the same to put his mind at ease. It will take too long for her to paint another sun anyway, and hers is large and loud enough to be distinctly eye-catching. They can move on.

She glances back just in time to watch the illusion glitter away into nothing. It's quite beautiful, leaving not a trace behind.

"None," she admits. She's not a smudge of yellow on her cheek from where she rubbed at her face while she was painting, "Only in stories. Never real. This is all new to me."

"Mm, you say that now..." But watch, something is going to go awry. Something always goes awry with Loki's plans, even simple enough thinks like breaking into an office and painting a symbol on it's walls.

She says that she has no experience with magic, and Loki frowns as he glances back towards her. "I'd say that's unfortunate but I don't know if it is, or isn't." He shakes his head. "The world you come from hasn't sounded very pleasant, either way."

closed | Busy old fool, unruly sun,

on the boat to Antiva City;

i got a badge and the power to play

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I love how I mixed up our threads and had him in a chair for like one tag. now, POOF no chair

he's a magic man OK sometimes he has a chair!!

a deck chair and an umbrella drink, just for a brief, shining moment

god, good for him!

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in front of the trademaster's (vacated) office;

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wow I fell OFF THE TRAIN wrt this thread, I'm sorry, lemme know if you wanna wrap it oocly