faderift | [open]

For all that Wysteria had been among the triumphant heroes responsible for rescuing little Adrasteia II and Enchanter Squarebush from a thoroughly grotesque fate, and thus by rights ought to in this moment while looking upon their squirming progeny feel some swell of pride, she is remarkably blasé in her assessment of the litter. After a beat of observational quiet, silent save for some minor snuffling and soft baby sucking sounds and the rasp of straw, she remarks simply: "And so there they are."

She moves then to unbutton the cuffs of her cream colored sleeves, rolling them up and well free of the risk of— whatever it is a collection of baby nugs might threaten them with.

"Have you been at all successful in encouraging either of the grown two to breathe fire in captivity? I seem to recall it was a something of a...stress response, I suppose, when first they were collected. It would be a shame to frighten the little ones when they're still so young."

The sound of her voice recalls him back to his person; he looks down over to watch Wysteria unfastening her cuffs for a still beat before he says, quite ominously:

“I specialized in human behavior.”

He manages half a crooked smile as he leans to no scope the lantern onto a hook, and he’s rolling his own sleeves in deft mirror to turn them nearly to his elbows. This is science, right? This is what it looks like? A musty dungeon, more shadow than light, and a chunky brown nug standing on its haunches to paw politely up after Richard’s pockets.

He ignores it.

“Given the Warden’s expulsions if feeding time is in any way delayed I suspect simply removing them briefly might be enough to coax out a demonstration -- if they’re capable of one at this stage in their development.”

"That seems easily done. —You know, you might consider consulting de Foncé on this subject in the future should this examination prove fruitless. I believe he is very good with animals, and he took a great interest in your little snake when she was in my care."

She removes her gloves. They are delicate fashionable little things, ill considered for the handling of animals and more at home in some pocket of her skirts than fumbling about dirty straw. There had, presumably, been little time between the summons and now to go fetch her work gloves and so it is with the bare handed greenish glint of the anchor that Wysteria reaches down through the warm lamplight into the crate. She seizes immediately upon one of the wiggling tubes in Adrasteia II's shadow, and the shock of being touched must cause it to come detached from its mother for there is little levering or gentle prying to be done in order to lift the naked infant from its cradle.

Wysteria points both of its ends in nebulously safe directions.

Consult de Foncé?

“Your husband?” That de Foncé?

He’s too keyed into the peel of her gloves to bother stifling the impulse to prompt, pale eyes checked to her face just as she’s stooped away from him to collect the first of the litter.

“I’m not sure we’re on speaking terms.”

Wysteria has returned with a fist-sized wad of chewing gum before he says so; oily milk dribbles from one end. Dick has his hands open as if unsure whether she intends to pass it to him, or if he wants it to be passed to him. He thought he’d have more time to prepare himself. Mentally.

It occurs to him late that it might allow him to have a better look at her palm, and so -- he opens his hands out in more direct ask.

"I would be shocked to hear it for I can think of almost no one who he would refuse even to berate— Oh, unless he has offended you and not the other way around. That would be much more understandable."

The fleshy sausage is deposited with little fanfare into Richard's expectant hand. The glimmer of anchor light which accompanies the transition is brief. Is it irregularly bright? Are her fingers on the one hand slightly swollen in comparison to those on the other? Is she less dexterous with or more precious about it?

Not remarkably. And then she is bending down to detach and scoop up a second nugget.

"Only in such a case, I might suggest that it's unlikely he meant to deal you so severe an injury. Not that he didn't meant to offend you, mind. It's very likely he did. The man only seems to sometimes fail to grasp that one can do more than argue all day."

So it’s fine then.

It looks fine.

She seems fine.

She isn’t favouring it. She is chattering and opinionated and bright.

It occurs to him as he slips a stopped vial from the pocket Marius Squarebush is groping after that he will be annoyed with himself later if he doesn’t ask outright. First he must daub a little blot of black ink between his sausage’s haunches. Concentrating on the centering gives him time to think, the ink vial switched between fingers a little more stiff than were on that side when he arrived in Thedas. So it goes.

“I was at fault,” he says on the subject of de Foncé, succinct while he works.

The second nugget is less keen to yield than the first. It twists like a grub in its own skin and -- at the moment of its detachment -- sends a flashbulb snap of electricity clicking not only through Wysteria’s finger bones but through the trembling pile of its brethren. Two little spits of flame flare from the brood around it, dwarfed by a gout of dragon’s breath from Adrasteia II that scorches the ceiling and sparks a few odd patches of straw alight.

Whatever care Wysteria took to protect her gloves, Dick smudges ink soundly across the cloth at her shoulder when he reaches to haul her back from the blast zone.

Edited (disrespected marius) 2021-09-15 08:00 (UTC)

Wysteria's squeal of alarm might, uncharitably but easily, be misattributed to one of the nugs in the singed box. Before it can develop into a fully fledged honk of dismay, she is being wrenched backward from the belch of fire and there she hisses in somewhat exaggerated agony flapping her electrified hand around as if the movement of the air about it might minimize the fizzy sting in her fingertips.

In sharp relief to this outrage, her verbal assessment (once she has stopped squawking) is far more generous:

"Well I suppose that at least resolves the question of whether their unique traits could be passed down at all. Perhaps we might retrieve a glove from the work rooms. Or tongs from the smithy."

She does not ask whether he has considered the possibility that the full contents of the straw-lined might be well suited for making boots.

With one nug still cradled like a hotdog in hand, Dick sees that Wysteria is whole and steps sharply away to stamp out glowing filaments of straw before the entire room’s bedding can go up around them. Marius has vanished, quivering in some unseen corner behind another crate while Adrasteia II huffs and puffs and snorts over her brood.

“Retrieving both will give them time to forget their tempers. Are you hurt?” Asking is an afterthought -- there’s an eager spring to his step, excitement restrained (but bright) in a glance as he moves past. Of course some of them will be made into boots. “Did you see which one of them was the source of the discharge?”

He’s already retrieving his lamp, dud nug in tow. He’s forgotten he’s holding it. How can he be expected to remember why he brought her down here in the first place?

***

Richard Dickerson has been in and out frequently in the capacity of healer, but never as visitor. It’s difficult to find time alone at Wysteria’s bedside without Mr. Ellis or the Provost or some other empathetic do-gooder who will never be the same if they are unable to keep her alive crowding the infirmary, the air cloying with their worry. Too many horses in one pen. But the sun still cycles around their flat world and there is a war on and work to be done.

The hour is exceptionally early when he carries a healer's stool in past the sleeping form of Ellis and settles quietly at Wysteria's bedside, preceded by the goblin shadow of his cat. There’s a glow to the sky through the windows, not quite pre-dawn.

Whether she’s been awake or not, it’s his turn to make the air heavy, elfroot smoke rising faint in his wake, wreathed thick about his ears.

Edited (+ prop ellis) 2021-09-19 21:36 (UTC)

The hazy grey quality of the light is remarkably unforgiving to her. Wysteria is very pale and dishwater blonde and looks rather like a partially deflated balloon lain amidst the infirmary bed's blankets and pillows. Minutes pass. It's early, and she is definitively asleep. The one arm—one might say the arm—lies overtop the blankets. It is encased in an oven mitt of poultice and bandages, bulky to the point of comedy. Or to the point that it dwarfs her, painting Wysteria with a disquieting set of parody proportions that she would be loathe to tolerate under ordinary circumstances (and maybe even these ones).

"I have had quite enough of that already, Mister Dickerson," is a little croak. At some point, Wysteria's eyes have slit open just wide enough to regard the blur of him and his halo of pungent smoke in the not-light. "But thank you for the consideration."

At the sound of her voice, Thot leaps at once up onto the blankets, paws splayed wide to find purchase in the sinkholes between human scaffolding. She avoids The Mitt, past a curious check of pupils blown wide in the dark, crawling instead for the crook of Wysteria’s neck.

“If you’re certain.”

She might have been referring to the elfroot.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

He’s too matter-of-fact for contrition, the mild murmur of his voice leveled to meld with the creaking and whispering and shuffling of a fortress that is sleeping, but lived in.

Thot's slithering shape is more or less at home there on her pillow amongst the lank tendrils of Wysteria's loose hair. Wysteria shifts only a little in deference to her pointiest parts.

"It's perfectly well," she says. "They will come along to change the bandage soon," she says also.

How long has he been sitting there? is a question which slides sluggishly sideways into: "Have you been here before?" The smell is familiar, but yes. She had been referring to the elfroot. Not that she has been smoking it. Only, the tea tastes like the scent which hangs in the air now. Only, she can't remember whether he has sat in that chair previously, and the possibility that she's forgotten bothers her enough to actually ask after.

Mr. Dickerson’s bony face is grim in the blues and greys of the early hour, the cinder of his joint a prick of neon light at his knee, there and gone again as it recedes behind paper.

“Not to sit.”

There’s a rustle and scuff when he turns over his shoulder to regard Ellis dozing hard in his chair. He’s quieter in returning his attention to her, the scratch of his vest more forgiving in reverse.

“The space has been exceedingly popular.”

Even in her wrung out state, the flicker of relief which crosses her face is quite evident. Good, she doesn't say. But—good. It would have been a little dreadful to have been sat, to have probably chattered along at length, and then fail to remember any part of it.

It takes a little effort to worm her other arm out from under the covers, hand questing absently about her shoulder until it locates some part of Thot amenable to gently scratching.

"I forgot," she says. "That I'd meant to say how your Thought was such a good assistant to me at the tourney."

Despite the ruined glove.

Thot has coiled between her ear and her shoulder like a velvet rope full of chicken bones. Warm. At the scritch of nails to hide, she throttles into a noisome purr, a paw pressed to Wysteria’s cheek impossible to distinguish as hind or fore in the mobius twist of her.

Dick is a rocky slip of angles by contrast, shoulders slanted over his knees, posture abandoned in the dark. It’s too early and he is too high.

“She told me what happened.”

Top 10 anime betrayals. He doesn't seem to think anything of saying so.

“I’m sorry about your glove.”

Edited 2021-09-21 06:40 (UTC)

If this comes as any great surprise to her or if Wysteria is particularly offended by the little goblin's double cross, it is far too early an hour for it to manifest in any remarkable way in her expression. Instead, her hand continues up the mild scritch-scritch-scritch at Thot's coiled body and she says without any real consideration:

"Oh that's all right. I doubt I'll have any use for it."

Silas sighs, long and slow. A flick of ash and an examination of the end of his joint calls for the turn of a stone from his pocket and a flick across its runed face. The light seems to hang in his eyes for an instant after the flame strikes, sizzles and snuffs cold, the cherry swells hot in its place.

He takes his time, long held smoke kicked out flat to drift across the stone floor. He might be the one changing her bandages here in short order. Mr. Ellis seems unlikely to wake. She’s not expiring before his eyes.

Not quickly, anyway.

“What do you expect will happen?”

She is quiet for the full duration of his silence, still save for the soft motion of her fingers. And she is a quiet for a long time after he has posed the question, as if she might have lapsed into a sort of half-conscious state adjacent to sleep and perhaps hadn't heard him at all or at least had failed to interpret the meaning of the question.

Then Wysteria smooths the scritched up fur left in the wake of her fingernails. She ducks her chin so she might look through the gloom and regard the bulky mitt at her left side, its shape oddly square in the meager light.

"One of two things, I suppose. Or—well, three, if we are to be very granular on the subject. It will have to be cut out of course. And I will either survive it or not. And in the latter case, I will either die like anyone else might or I will..." What? "Come unanchored."

A beat.

"Oh, that was a pun. I didn't mean it to be."

Thot rolls over herself, rat tail curled over bat ears, toes stretched and coiled back in to resettle. The rake of her tongue forked over her nose scrapes with audible friction.

Death or disconnect or the great unknown of success.

“I don’t intend to let you die.”

As assurances go, this one is thin at best. But he means it, conviction mild as it is concrete in the scruffy lines around his mouth, an arch at his brow. There’s even less to be said for coming unfastened from Thedas -- past that it will be interesting to see what that looks like.

“Last year I coerced Ellis into agreeing to remove my left hand should the chantry call for our capture. If anything you will be ahead of the curve.”

That does seem to be the agreed upon resolution, she thinks. Which is, as far as occupying a sickbed goes, fairly reassuring. How very strange it is to go from being the least notable figure of a would-be funeral to the focus of a near constant vigil. She might almost be tempted to be pleased for herself, only the draught is beginning to wear thin and the pain in her hand is coming back to her and that necessitates a certain myopia.

(Also she missed the Duke's party, and so what is the point of anything?)

"I'm surprised he agreed to such a thing. Mister Ellis is so squeamish." No, that's not the right word. But he will surely understand what she means.

"But it's a very fine idea should you wish to avoid a Circle. If there's been any scholarship to identify unique properties we might have other than the anchor, I've certainly not seen it. Well—beyond the disease. You might consult Miss Niehaus on the subject." A tired inhale and exhale; it's remarkably difficult work to carry on in the habit to which she is accustomed. "To be certain of your escape."

Her hand retreats from Thot's chicken leg haunch.

"I believe I would prefer someone other than Ellis to do it. And not Lady Rutyer either."

Niehaus is one of the science Rifters. There’s a vulpine slant to the look he catches her with from the corner of his eye -- lingering resentment, a thread of distrust from beneath the boot of Wysteria’s wasting away. Guess he’ll die.

There’s no venom to it, naturally.

There’s no venom in him at all. Elfroot smoke has replaced his internal workings entirely.

“Mister Ellis is squeamish about the fragility of people he cares for,” is a necessary distinction to make nonetheless. Squeamish is the right word. And so too, apparently, is Wysteria. He shifts in his lean, one heel bent up against the foot of his stool. “Why not Lady Rutyer?”

"She has no magic."

(Poor Sidony Rutyer, having the thing she dreads most spoken aloud in such a cavalier fashion.)

"Which is all very well any good for scrapes or anything where there is no alternative at all, but I would very much prefer not to be entirely reliant on being sewn up like a stuffed bear. And also I dislike her. She's much too pretty."

It’s clear in the wary buffer of his silence that he is not making any promises about ensuring Wysteria is the prettiest girl in the surgery. Smoke curls behind his teeth after a shorter toke, giving him space to navigate away from the multitude of implications here (is he not too pretty??) and back towards an imagined scenario better optimized for survivability.

It will need to be a coordinated operation: hands to sever, hands to heal, hands to hold her down for as long as she’s awake.

“Sidony’s skill is undeniable,” he says. “Are you concerned she’ll steal away the attention of your attending healer?”

"Surely skill is hardly the point." This, a little sullenly as she tips her face toward the cat ouroborosed at the crook of her neck and shoulder. It's only the smallest moment however. Then her attention tilts back to him; the oven mitt of Wysteria's left hand raises by a half degree off the bed.

"Would you like to see it?"

Anything to avoid further discussion of Sidony Rutyer, who is oh so very skilled.

If she turns her face too far she is likely to be rewarded with the careless plant of a webbed foot across her nose, or the rasp of a tongue dragging dry under her chin.

It feels irresponsible to argue with Poppell in this state.

So, after still another silence, Dickerson unfolds up onto his feet, stiff in the knees and the wedge of his shoulder where he’d been leaning.

“Please don't remove it yourself,” he says, by way of might as well. He will assist, the light not quite poor and his beard not quite bristly enough to mask the steel of resolve catching taut at the back of his jaw. He adds also, with a pinch to indicate he intends to put out the narrow stub of his joint: “You should take the rest of this.”

This is medical advice.

Edited (dont look at me) 2021-09-22 08:16 (UTC)

"Monsieur Chapdelaine or the Brother may be cross with me," is evidently ample reason to follow alternative medical recommendations for a young lady who has rapidly become quite cross with being told what to do by a cadre of hovering men, for Wysteria's other hand—soon to be her only hand—reaches out to take him up on the offer.

At least this particular hovering man is a novelty by comparison.

"Here is the bandage edge," she says, turning out her oven mitt to expose the tacked end of the bandage. "And there is ordinarily—yes, there. That pitcher and bowl on the side table. A little water will help to dissolve whatever of the plaster doesn't come easily away."

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