faderift | closed.

It's late in the day. No skeletons are climbing over the walls, no dragons are raining corrupted fire from the heavens. It's not a good time for coffee, with the sun starting to sink, but there is nevertheless some coffee, currently working its way through a filter and dripping into a clear glass container.

"Prettier means pinch power's a problem," Tony is saying as he runs a leather strap through a buckle, then adds, "Fun to say."

On the table is the object he's referring to, temporarily ignored. A claw-type design with a manual locking mechanism that keeps it tightly closed, and a small winch that eases or increases the pressure. Currently, he is fidgeting with a leather attachment, the soft cap designed to enclose around the blunted end of an amputated limb. Fine straps and buckles are there to balance some of the weight of whatever attachment is affixed to it by anchoring as far up as Wysteria's shoulder.

It can also all be attached with one hand—with practice, and with care, and with patience, one buckle at a time. Still, Tony offers it out with the view to help and check its fit. (It's been weeks, and she's been out of bed, and so eye contact has started to re-establish itself as opposed to finding shifty excuses to look anywhere but.)

"But it should get you through to the next upgrade."

There can be no mistaking Wysteria as unchanged from the chancy, feverish days she'd spent in the Gallows infirmary. Nevermind the significant shortening of her left arm, which is admittedly difficult to overlook given how it features in their present work. Consider instead the evidently prodigious volume of her yellow hair which has been cinched into a simple braid by one of the Gallows laundresses rather than in its typical upright twist! Or her very plain dress with its tragically diminished number of buttons! Or even the fact that she is wearing soft soled slippers rather than her (very sensible) floral stamped nug-hide boots with the ribbon lacings. These are all the truly dire alterations.

That's what she's decided in any case. The rest is clearly perfectly manageable. She is hardly the first young lady to have lost a limb, but there is nothing so dreadful as being poorly turned out. Which is why—

"I'm willing to risk it. The hook is the most important element of this in any case. I will truly die if I can't do up buttons."

Patience however has not been her forte. She is eager to don the array of straps and buckles, shrugging the whole spiderweb a little clumsily into place. Neither is Wysteria shy about offering Tony a few of the buckles to do. Fitting the cap over the blunted end of her arm is done herself, however. There is something incongruously dismissive verging on the impersonal about its management.

"Sure, that'll be what does it," Tony agrees. Between multiple kidnap attempts, any number of ill-advised experiments that have ended in toxic gas expulsions and/or flames, and a shard that ate her hand off, definitely plain buttonless fashions will mark the end of Wysteria Poppell.

He's moving to help, anyway, standing at a casual post by her side as he loops a leather strip up over her shoulder, tugs it secure but not tight, pulling at a few more buckles to check the fit. A glance slides down the length of her arm to peep the fit of the cap where she places it, then at her profile, then at his hands.

"I figure some kind of multi-tool extension should be doable, but not until you've had a minute to test what comes after the hook and clamp. We can prioritise the blast cannon if you prefer. Or the wasp gun. I'm saying we got options."

"There will have to be a knife," is agreement, a carrying forward of the proposal. "Otherwise Mister Ellis will never let me hear the end of it. He is always going on about how I should carry one in the field and is never satisfied by it being in my pack. I quite like the little umbrella you gave me for Satinalia last year. Maybe something like that where it could be built into and unfolded from the forearm. That would be very clever, and wouldn't require the constant winding or unwinding of the winch. —Not that I dislike the principle behind the idea."

With the limb more or less set in place, Wysteria leaves the various adjustment of the bulk of the straps to Tony so that she might instead snap the hooking mechanism open and closed a few times. Presently, she is pleased by the arrangement of metal and coils and the ratcheting and un-ratcheting conducted by the winch's little crank handle. Distantly, she is—

Well, it hardly matters. It has been shoved to the margins for a reason.

When his part's done, buckles buckled, loosened and tightened so that they won't need to be redone when she takes it off and on, Tony scoots a step aside to watch her handle the attachment, waiting to help with any sign of awkwardness or clumsiness that never actually comes. He scrubs the back of his head as she tests the winch, and that part he's pretty confident in, so he moves aside to go lean at the chair he was in to watch her figure out her way around it.

He should say something.

It's been actual weeks and he doesn't know if that means that something's gonna give and he might be moved to express some kind of sentiment, some unburdening thing, or if that means he's gotten into the pattern of just not.

Here, Tony opens his mouth and says, "How's the weight on that?" instead of anything else, but he does want to know, you know, the answer to that question.

Her hand doesn't pause. She has wound the winch all the way closed and is now after only a momentary pause unwinding it in the opposite direction toward opening it fully.

"It's fine," which means that it must be heavy or awkward or at least a little strange. But anything would be, wouldn't it? After weeks spent laid up in that silly little clinic sick bed, being poked and prodded by Riftwatch healers and de Foncé's Orlesian doctor.

"I will likely has to wear it for a little to be sure. It must be a little like breaking in new shoes. —Were you surprised?" She asks suddenly, attention rising from the making some minor adjustment. "About Brother Gideon. I suppose everyone must have been. But I must say, he seemed perfectly capable during the hours which I was in his charge."

The rise and fall of her eyebrows at him says, Ooo spooky.

His attention is where hers is, at first, gauging whether the length is problematically off, how easily it turns, and also, I mean, the aesthetic. The aesthetic's important. It could use work, and when can't it, as subject to alteration and update as any other component, but for a first try, it's not so bad, leather padded out not to bite over time, although there's gonna be some points of pressure, some chafing, just like new shoes—

Tony looks up to eyebrows, corner of his mouth ticking up. "Guess he must have done all his evil scheming off the clock," he says. "Nice of the universe to stack all the fun and games into the one month Mr. Ellis is on the other side of the continent. Bet he'll be thrilled."

He reaches across the table to pick up a sort of fine soldering tool, sets it down in front of her, a hand gesture that indicates go ahead, while he talks.

"Big swing, big miss. You know he tried to take us out, upstairs? Kinda nostalgic."

The soldering tool is accepted with only a very mild flicker of hesitation, her hand hovering briefly over it before fetching it up off the table. She has traditionally done very little of her own work, but— But she can see already a few little things which would benefit from adjustment now that the arm has been strapped to her and the crank tested, and so she sets to poking and prodding.

"No! Did he? How outrageous! Imagine if they hadn't caught up to him and he'd escaped off the island." Poor Mister Dickerson's face. "But I suppose all of this happening while Mister Ellis is away may be a point in both our favors, you know. He may be forced to admit how very self reliant we've become. Not that I suppose it was ever really in any doubt. And certainly not in your case.

"Was your golem able to help you escape?"

Tony emotes with his eyebrows, sort of a yeah, maybe, a flicker of doubt at Mr. Ellis arriving at that conclusion in particular. He watches her poke and prod, remembers the sensor-based prosthetic handle he'd made, what, a month before he went to sleep at the wrong time and woke up here? A piece of technology that could control a whole suit through the flexes of his palm. And that had been a fix until he could get the subdermal implants online.

"He's a robot," Tony says, "first of all, is Fred. And no, I got lucky, or he got sloppy, one of those. But probably Ambassador Rutyer woulda died if not for that one sweaty guy, so I guess Georgetown knew what he was doing."

And then, in a fair imitation of her own accent, "Terribly exciting."

"Oh, ha ha." Yes, Mister Stark, you're very funny. She continues to fiddle with various bits of bobs of the arm, pausing intermittently to test the weight of the crank. "You should consider calling Messere Edgard by his name, you know. Seeing as he saved you and Mister Rutyer from certain death."

This is clearly the most important part of this conversation.

"Messere Edgard," Tony echoes, emphasis his. "Sure. I guess if you weren't going full native before,"

and then the rest of the sentence happens, or rather, fails to. He kind of just shrugs, a blank where the subject of her non-existence shard lives now, and he dips his focus down to fidgety hands. A series of whims has seen him acquire a ring with a veined stone set in it, leading to him putting it on today, and he turns it around on his knuckle.

"Sounds like his most holy was just a solo lunatic, but who knows. I'd wanna believe the Chantry would do a better job."

She is not consumed with either the fiddling with the arm's (her arm, a very logical part of her supposes from what seems like a considerable distance of remove, so remote that in her mind the voice of it is rather small indeed) various mechanical parts or with this particular vein of gossip to a suitable degree that she would miss that strange lingering shape where other words might have been.

Wysteria Poppell, ladies and gentleman: built with ears tailor-made to detect pauses in conversation. How would she elbow her way into filling them otherwise?

Yes. Well.

"I'm sure they had no idea what his intentions were," she agrees. With a last modest adjustment, she offers the little soldering tool back to him. "Other people in the Gallows might suspect otherwise, but I would attribute that to unjust suspicion. For one, I can't imagine what the Chantry would even gain from having sent Brother Gideon with the intention to—well, whatever it was he intended to do. I don't suppose we discovered a manifesto or letters among his personal belongings."

(Did anyone rifle his pockets for a lore related loot drop?)

Edited (copy paste comedy of errors) 2022-01-16 01:23 (UTC)

Come with me, Derrica had said to Loxley, some time in the midst of Riftwatch's second attempt at Satinalia.

And so here are their hands, intertwined as Derrica tugs Loxley along with her. She has tidied, contained and reallocated some of the artful clutter to more appropriate spaces. (Scarves hooked over and over each other on pegs, jewelry in neat little ceramic bowls, boots toed underneath the bed.) There is darkness for a moment before she lights a trio of candles kept in a shallow plate on her nightstand.

"I've a parcel for you," she's saying, turning from him to cast around for the package in question. "I meant to give it to you earlier, before everything happened."

In which everything ranges from a fanatical Chantry brother to a full scale skeleton invasion to a second party. Curls of white ink loop up along Derrica's temples, Florent's handiwork invoking some suggestion of bone that doesn't quite mesh with the oversized fuschia jacket Derrica had thrown over her draping tunic and soft leggings. Kneeling at the trunk tucked at the foot of her bed, she casts a brief smile up at Loxley.

"I should have set it aside when I was clearing up."

Best laid plans, etc.

Loxley is wearing the same costume he'd worn the first time, which is sort of not quite a costume either. A nice cape-coat of a deep forest green would look handsome and acceptably practical once he carefully picks away the felt autumnal leaves that decorate its fringes. A crossbow slung across his back is equally a part of the decoration as well as practical, in case, you know,

more awful things happen. But an awful thing hasn't happened, and so he's in Derrica's quarters, where he's unslinging his crossbow and also removing his mask.

"That's alright," he says. "Everything happened very much. I actually—"

From a deep pocket, he's already extracted a little parcel by the time she's done, something small and wrapped in a shimmering fabric. "It seemed a little crass to partake in gift-giving while you were growing Richard's skin back on him."

Loxley looks very handsome. Derrica will have to remember to tell him so. She doesn't want to interrupt the flow of their conversation just yet for it.

"No, I don't think Richard would have appreciated the distraction."

Though he might have appreciated Loxley's company. Surely it would be some kind of comfort, having a friend close by after nearly being incinerated by a fanatic.

Still.

Derrica's rummaging pauses, looking up at him and the gleaming parcel in his hands. She grins, shakes her head a little.

"Don't give it to me until I find yours," she instructs. "It's only fair."

And she knows her gift to him is in this trunk. It's only the trick of extracting it without dumping out the entire contents onto the floor.

Loxley tosses the little parcel into the air, catching it. When it hits his palms, there's a subtle jangle, which has him smile across at her. "Well, if we're being fair," he says, turning his attention to the room in general. A gesture of his hand, as if feeling the air, has the light from the candles brighten the room in an even more luminous gold.

Helping. He sets his gift down so he can shoulder out of the coat, which stands up better to direct sleet and winter winds and not the indoors. The clothing beneath are all familiar articles, a vibrant orange shirt and more sedate trousers of rough, cream fabric. The sash around his waist is new, a gift from the Satinalia from two weeks ago.

Disrobing stops there, aiming a meandering course around the room, noting pieces of jewellery or floating scarves he's seen before, others he hasn't. He keeps his hands to himself, in the deliberate manner of someone for whom the opposite is instinct.

"I'm sure I can guess the sorts of gifts you get for these things."

Even this small display of magic catches her attention, draws her eyes up from the contents of her trunk to smile at him. There is some quiet, easy pleasure in her expression. Yes, it's helpful, but it's also—

What she should say is I like when you do magic, but she saves that for another moment.

"Everyone's very generous with me," Derrica answers, very sincerely. Her gaze lingers on him a moment longer, before she makes another pass at the contents of her trunk. There's a crumpling, crunch of a noise, and then a soft huff of triumph as she extracts a paper-wrapped parcel.

Only a little bit flattened, but Derrica seems unconcerned by it, so the contents must be unharmed by being abruptly crammed into her trunk. Derrica raises a hand up to Loxley, imploring.

"Help me up?"

Decorations, he means, which she can probably guess. People giving her things for her hair, to hook from her earlobes, to circle her wrists, or drape about her shoulders. Loxley is very much guilty of the same, but seeing her collection only affirms to him it was a correct instinct rather than simply a derivative one—it doesn't seem possible to have too many pretty things, not when you have a room to keep them in.

One long step brings him near enough to connect their hands and pull her up. They don't feel too off-balanced from too much merriment, he thinks, but keeps a hold there while raising up the parcel in his other hand. It's quite shapeless save for the fold of the silken fabric itself, wrapping around something without any hard edges to keep a shape. Again, a soft jangle of muffled noise within.

"Happy Satinalia," Loxley says, a little like he's putting on a phrase that doesn't come naturally, but not insincere for it.

Rather than take hold of the parcel, she reaches for the lapel of his jacket to draw him down to her so she can kiss him. Loxley is tall and handsome and he is very sweet. Whatever is in the parcel will be lovely, she is sure.

"Happy Satinalia," Derrica tells him, soft against his mouth. She has arched up on her toes to save him from bending too far. (A small gesture, considering their respective heights, but surely the thought counts.) When she yields her grasp on his lapel, her fingers tap across Loxley's wrist first, before closing over his fingers, accepting the gift.

Clasped in her opposite hand is a twine-tied parcel of brown paper. It crinkles in her grip. A flicker of something (nervousness, perhaps) as she silently lifts it for him to take in exchange.

She kisses a smile, which is inevitable, and happens almost every time. Any sliver of distraction is an opportunity to surprise. It's true that Loxley has kissed loads of ladies and everything, but this is a new thing, this familiarity, the way intimacy can be so easily accessed. When Derrica ends it, there's a subtle shift like he might pursue more of that, only stayed by the touch to his wrist.

So he straightens up, relinquishing the gift, takes the other.

In her hand, it feels suspiciously like a silky scarf used to wrap up a few fine pieces of jewelry, which is what it absolutely is. The fabric, once unwound, is sheer and light, bright colours of greens and blues enhanced with silver thread in patterns popular to Antiva. It's much more decorative than practical, especially in a blustery Kirkwall winter. The items within that jingle free are two small looped chains with small round bells, a little too large for her wrists but would sit well around her ankles. Lastly, two market-place bought earrings, scallop shells of creamy orange, with golden paint brightening its edges.

Once they're in the business of unwrapping their presents, Loxley has taken a seat at the edge of her bed, undoing the twine—distracted, almost more interested in gauging her reaction than working on finding out what she gave him.

With Loxley at the seat of her bed, Derrica had toed off her boots, left them aside of the bed as she scooted up to sit against the headboard while she unwrapped Loxley's offering.

Derrica is careful with the handling of the items, unfolding the scarf in cautious turns to spread across her lap. She turns one hem of the fabric between her fingers into the light, taking in the colors before the jingle of jewelry draws her attention.

"They're beautiful," Derrica says first, lifting one belled anklet. There is a soft jingle, bells gleaming. She gives it a little shake, to hear the bells properly, before focusing her attention on him. Her smile widens as she observes him, fingers loosely circled with twine.

She prods with one socked foot at his thigh, encouraging, "Open it."

The lingering hesitation is still there, hovering around the edges of her expression. Derrica's smile doesn't falter, but there is a sense of—

Worry. It is a tricky thing, gift-giving. She'd like to have chosen correctly.

Within the wrapping, she has placed a jaunty deep orange scarf of very fine, warm fabric, with dark brown embroidery looping along each corner. A little sachet is tucked in among the folds; when opened and tipped upright, a few pieces of jewelry fall out. A bracelet of soft, dark red leather straps, worked into an intricate braid. A copper cuff of three close-welded loops meant for Loxley's ear, delicate dangling chains affixed to gold caps meant for his horns, and one last, less ornate offering: a gold pendant, stamped with an unfamiliar sigil. The edges have been worn smooth, and it has been strung on a thin leather strap.

There is a note folded on a scrap of paper, easily overlooked. Derrica doesn't point it out to him.

First, the reaction is to smile at the superior, more considered job Derrica did of gift wrapping. He twists around to spread the scarf across the covers, distracted immediately by the sachet before he can say anything. He empties the chain and cuffs and caps into his palm, delicately untangling the chain to determine the configuration.

Which makes him smile. He's picked up a couple of little jewellery items that settle on his horns, but only simple things, metal beaten into plain hoops that he can wedge into place. "These are lovely," he says, quite sincerely.

He considers saying something like, no one makes anything like this in Tassia, but instead just lifts the piece and asks, half-smiling, "Help me put it on?"

The note goes unnoticed for a second, although he's not done with it, fingers already wandering to pick up and inspect the pendant he notices glimmering next to his hand.

"Of course."

Pleased. Relieved.

It had felt right, the jewelry. But she'd wondered after, if perhaps Loxley didn't wear any because he wasn't partial to it. The expression on his face dispels the worry, and Derrica comes down from her recline against the headboard to plaster herself across Loxley's back, kiss the nape of his neck as she reaches a palm over his shoulder.

"Here," with a little beckoning of fingers. "Let me see."

Loxley passes back the cuff and cap in his open hand, leaning back just a subtle amount into the warmth she represents, being there. Other hand reaching back to smooth his palm across the side of her thigh. His head, tipped, to help with access, but it feels more like preening, showing off. It seems fine to do, around someone who's so free and sincere with her flattery.

Inspecting the pendant, he feels over their worn edges with his thumb, the edge of one near-black nail, and then brings it around enough for her to see what he's referring to when he says, "I've not seen this symbol before."

The cap is secured first, tightened into place gently in spite of how sturdy his horns appear. Her fingers drag through the curls at his nape, before her attention turns to affixing the cuff to his ear.

It looks very handsome. She means to tell him so, but puts her mouth to his newly-bared throat instead, arms cinching around his chest for leverage as she drops a trail of kisses up beneath the underside of his jaw before she can nip at the lobe of his ear. Being tucked in so close, there are a wealth of other things she might do here. Murmur into his ear, set her teeth somewhere else, put her hand over his heart, but at the question—

It brings her closer, leaning higher to examine what is already familiar to her. And now she does turn one palm to flatten over his heart as she tells him, "It's a very old rune. I had to trade one of the sailors at the Filthy Nug for it."

And first she'd had to find the sailor, but that's neither here nor there.

"It's for protection," is an overly simple explanation, but a true one. "Where I grew up, it's what we would give to people we wanted to keep safe."

Hey. What're you doing?

[ As soon as she starts answering— ]

I need you in the kitchen. With me, I'm here.

( well, she had started to reply, but—

a pause. suspiciously, )

Do you think I can cook? Because I can't.

Your services are still required. Come on, it's a surprise.

( a put upon sigh that certainly isn't sincere, the sound of rustling, packing up, )

I also don't provide clean up or alibis with kitchen staff, I want you to know that.

( but she's coming. )

You'd provide an alibi.

[ Satisfied by the just detectable sounds of stuff-gathering. ]

'Cause one day someone's gonna be like hey, Provost Stark, Grand Enchanter Smythe said you guys were postcoitus in the herb garden sometime around when exploding poisonous frogs got loose in the chicken coop, can you please verify? And then they compliment my hair.

Tony, I don't even have exploding poisonous frogs.

( but how could she make exploding poisonous frogs. what about an ordinary poisonous frog ... some kind of lyrium experiment maybe, like an enchantment, combined with the sort of alterations they've observed around rifts—

you know, maybe the man makes a point.

and put a pin in that frog thing. )

I wouldn't say herb garden.

[ There's a kind of half-snort sound at this first thing—connoting either irrelevant or sure, Jan—and then, ]

Oh yeah? Like where would, uh—

[ A distant clatter, multitasking. ]

—like, instead of the herb garden.

Poisonous frogs. Herb garden. That's not an alibi, that's a direct line from point b back to point a, what else might we have been doing in the herb garden, i.e. looking for antidote ingredients in the event of some experiment having gone wrong—

( or, you know, locating new and exciting ways to weaponize frogs. she would hate to explode brian, though, so maybe not frogs, she's significantly less attached to eels and if they were dealing with a canal-heavy location, for instance, )

And it would have to be somewhere low foot traffic, I'm not going to have Messere Tom, Dick or Harry saying actually he was in the herb garden for hours and that definitely didn't happen. Dungeon, maybe. Division head access, fewer casual visitors, exciting role-play opportunity. I'll be the Templar this time.

( joselyn. )

I love a woman in uniform.

[ Don't encourage him. More sounds: a cupboard getting kicked closed, a heavier thump of something full landing on a countertop. ]

What's the ETA on you getting here? This is a delicate sort of alchemical situation happening down here and, I need you. Knight-Commander.

( joselyn sets aside how much she enjoys being called knight-commander—

and raps on the edge of the doorframe, leaning her head through, securing her crystal with the other hand. )

What's all this, then?

[ His hands go up, don't shoot style.

And there is probably more chaos going on in the kitchen than his workshop space, if only because flour gets everywhere. It's all over this wooden table, and his shirt, and there's a dusty swipe of it through his hair. It's warm, the oven glowing with fire, and Tony pivots on a heel to go and retrieve something from it.

Some scraping and shuffling, using a peel to fish out the creation within, which he sets down on the table. It's a big circle, with some melted—I don't have to describe pizza to you. One side of the crust is puffier than the other, small scorch marks. Circles of sausage, mushrooms, still bubbling cheese.

It smells good. Tony picks up a knife. ]

This, [ he scrapes the knife through, putting some muscle into it, ] is a very important cultural artefact. Long have my ancestors [ as he continues to make slices ] ordered pizza, no one makes pizza except for pizza guys, but— look, I don't wanna overhype this, but—

[ Tony clatters the knife down, gestures for her to come closer. ]

This will be the best thing you've ever put in your mouth.

closed.

research workshops. closed to wysteria.

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satinalia gift exchange.

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crystal. closed to joselyn.

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