[open]

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria & YOU
WHAT: Anchor-related adventures and/or drama in fantasy September.
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Some anchor and rift-related peril; open stuff is in the comments, but may use this as a catch-all. If an open prompt doesn't suit you, feel free to wildcard me or hit me up and I can write something bespoke. Prose or brackets is a-okay.

Comments

[helpinghidinghaunting]

It isn't easy to offend Cole. He is, for the most part, blissfully unaware of how he appears to people...and so he thinks nothing of her looking over her things, checking her pockets, her purse. This place is rough, and he's stopped his share of cutpurses himself anyway.

But at her refusal, he lifts his gaze to her, oh-so-timidly, still holding the water out to her. He doesn't move closer, doesn't physically push in any way, trying to help while making sure to respect her agency.

"But. You do need this," he repeats. "You're dazed, dizzy, drowsy. This will help."

[heirring]

Under the broad brim of her hat, she sharpens a little in response. It's a relatively subtle thing, this flicker of irritation. What does she look like? Someone silly enough to take any stranger up on his sympathies? No, thank you. She has been carted off in the care of scoundrels one time too many to be quite that dim.

(Or maybe that little flicker of offense is for dazed. She is clearly perfectly alert.)

"Do you make for the Gallows?" she asks, veering sharply away from this subject of the waterskin and its contents and her alleged need. "This is the slip for the ferry which leads in that direction, you know. I don't recall having seen you there before and I am ordinarily quite well informed on such news."

[helpinghidinghaunting]

The sharper glance gets her a confused tilt of the head in response, brows knitting together a little. He turns his gaze back down towards the water, turning it over in his hands as if inspecting it for what could be wrong. He had just filled it when he felt her from a distance. But people don't always accept what they need.

"Yes," he finally answers in his tiny voice. "I am...new there. Finding my footing, feeling where I fit."

He struggles to work out how to put it best - if she's well-connected, it makes sense that she is suspicious.

"I think I have...only been a rumor, to most. I am trying."

[heirring]

"A rumor," she repeats back. It has the faintest interrogative air to it, flickering skepticism (and plainly: a poor sense of humor thanks to the heat of the day and her general misery) warring with the impulse to ask any new (alleged!) member of Riftwatch an even dozen questions.

Mentally, Wisteria wills the ferry to hurry along. If it makes it landing quickly, she might press the oarsman with questions regarding the boy's identity which would almost certainly provide tangible results. After all, he could hardly make his way to the Gallows in any other fashion.

Failing that, she will simply have to conduct her own research.

"Which is your division? Who have you spoken to?"

[helpinghidinghaunting]

"Yes. Sometimes I don't stick. People forget."

Cole really doesn't mind her wanting to question him. It makes perfect sense, after all. But he's worried for her, knowing she is unwell, knowing she still won't take the water. It's still in his hands, freshly filled, but he's holding it closer to himself for the moment until perhaps she comes around.

"...I do not have one yet," he slowly rasps. "I am...trying to find where I can help the most." The latter half of her question, however, feels vague to him, and a lack of understanding furrows his brow.

"I've spoken to a lot of people? I don't know how many remember me."

[heirring]

"Name one. A member of Riftwatch. One who is not a division head," she is quick to clarify, for anyone in Kirkwall might know such a name. In truth, she reflects in that same split second, there are a great many people in Kirkwall who might name a great variety of other Riftwatch members as well. So she adds further, a little fumbling: "and describe them, if you would. So that I may know whether you are telling me the truth or not."

See? She is not being unreasonable.

[helpinghidinghaunting]

It takes Cole a moment to think about this - namely because he doesn't really know what Division Head even means. Scanning his memory, he picks someone who had seemed important at the time, or at least distinct -

"...There was a mage," he rasps, eyes flicking upward and to the left as if trying to look back into his past, "Who met me patrolling. Older, eyes and spirit like fire. Smoking. He gave me this."

Reaching into his pocket, he retrieves an unlit rolled cigarette he had been allowed to take, but had had no assistance lighting.

"He said his name was Marcus?"

[heirring]

The transformation in her bearing is quite instantaneous. All at once, the suspicion melts away; the somewhat rigid and off-put line of her shoulders eases and alters, and she turns by a half degree toward the waifish young man. Does she still look nebulously miserable? Yes, of course. As it turns out, modifying one's opinion of a person doesn't instantly cure all ills. But certainly she is all at once considerably less standoffish.

Marcus Rowntree, Wysteria assumes, wouldn't tolerate just any scoundrel.

"Oh! Yes of course! Enchanter Rowntree," cedes swiftly into— "I'm most pleased to make your acquaintance. Miss—er, Madame Wysteria de Foncé. And you are? You really must decide on a division quickly. There is some movement between them, so you shouldn't feel as if to take on one if to be forever bound to it should your skills reveal themselves to suit some other place better. But one must always jump with both feet into a new thing, I believe."

[helpinghidinghaunting]

Oh. Well, that was easy.

He tucks the cigarette back away, blinking rapidly as he tries to keep up with the heel turn the conversation has just taken. Rapid, reeling, rebounding. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, still holding the waterskin in one spindly, grimy hand.

"My name is Cole," he finally manages once he feels he has an opening. "Marcus told me...he mentioned Scouting, because of what I can do." A beat.

"But I didn't know I needed to jump anywhere. Where do I need to jump?"