[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

[acreage]

Not without fondness,

"You just had to go and be exceptional, didn't you?"

Because no, he's never heard of a rifter with any similar issue either. Gwenaëlle, he knows, has an anchor powerful beyond the norm, and Tony too. And that's a worry long to simmer now, if something like this might happen to either of them, to any other anchor-bearer. Hard to say if being a rifter or not makes any real difference here.

[heirring]

"Well obviously it's hardly my preference," is short, a little snipping. "If you would like to trade places, Mister Holden, then you're most welcome to this one. It's quite warm under this assortment."

Of blankets and cloaks and all their attention. Honestly, it might be very fine indeed if not for the niggling little flicker of anxiety living where it's been pushed very, very, very deeply down. For who doesn't like being the center of the universe for a little bit?

"But enough of that." Because the other woman, that native elf—she had died. "How fared my gun?"

[acreage]

It's not a strange thought, in the mind of James Holden, that were it possible to exchange places in a real sense — that he would. That he would die for her, if it came to that, without question. This had been true in the dreams, all blurred, flimsy sense of responsibility and guilt and years that never passed. This is different; this is care built on a bedrock of time spent in her company, on missions, in their workspaces, at meals. The wish for her happiness, instead of regrets for her past.

But he only breathes out, makes a faint, rueful sound, before attending to the topic change.

"It's been working pretty much like as you've said it should. I can't tell you about the paralysis setting," because, mainly, he hasn't run into any creature big enough to merit it yet, "but the enchantments have been holding up and the kickback isn't too bad."

[heirring]

She is meant, it occurs to Wysterua only afterwards, to be dictating correspondence to him. But that's all right; she can recite her reply to Mister Brown after they discuss Holden's field work. Indeed, this is a far more compelling subject than even the Markham scholar's pleasantly gossipy candor (and is indisputably a preferable subject of conversation compared to ominous anchor developments or how she should rest).

"Good, good. And there have been no failures? No misfires or jams? What is the rate at which you're able to reload? Did you time it?"

[acreage]

He did, in fact, time it.

So he's able to give her specific answers; more specific, in truth, with these practical considerations than the more magical, or even the earlier jargon he'd struggled with. Papers and writing implements sit in his lap, forgotten. This is preferable, too, in its way — something to offer her, prized data about her invention that she worked so hard to make.

"It'd be faster," he says, "to reload if the slugs were lighter. That'd help with mobility too," though mobility is an ongoing question with any long gun, "and no jams, but I've been kept it well-oiled — probably better than would be doable for someone using the thing more often. The trigger starts to catch after a few shots, get harder to squeeze."