open. “Please tell a story about a girl who gets away.”

[delphian]

WHO: Tsenka Abendroth + YOU?
WHAT: Tsenka takes a bath. A lot.
WHEN: After the skeleton wars.
WHERE: The heated baths in the former Templar tower.
NOTES: Nudity, discussion of trauma, the uzh.

Against all of the odds stacked heavily out of her favour, Tsenka Abendroth is alive. She has survived her first, unlikely rescue; she has endured time in the infirmary, ensuring that having made it to the Gallows she wouldn't simply collapse with all of the foundations of her taken away. She has survived, again, the attack on the Gallows itself by what Riftwatch left behind in Nevarra City—it feels like a thread pulling tight, somehow, her Nevarran name buying her freedom and the Nevarran dead coming to take it away from her again—

she is alive. She is with Riftwatch because she has chosen to be, and not for any other reason. If she decided the choice didn't suit her any longer, she could leave. She has been released from the infirmary under her own power, and she can choose any unused room she wishes,

but right now, she has decided to choose the baths. Tsenka is not, typically, given to overindulgence in luxurious hygiene, but it's been actual years since she's had the leisure to do or not do at her own inclination. Bathing, during captivity, had been...nonexistent, if one were not to stretch the definition to include the occasional bucket of cold water thrown on her if she seemed like she might be sleeping easy. There had certainly not been any soap involved. At liberty to do as she pleases until she can commit to doing something useful to anyone else, it pleases her to set up camp in a corner of the heated baths with a clean robe and towels, a platter of food she'd gathered from mealtimes and the occasional application of large, sad eyes. A bottle of cheap wine, easier to drink from directly with hot, wet hands than fuss about with cups or glasses—some incense that she'd found, and had set up to burn where the ash would fall directly into the water, making it much easier to clean up after.

A few books, though she hasn't figured out the best way to read them without getting them wet, yet. Her crystal. Scissors, because even wet it's obvious that about half her hair is a good several inches different from the rest.

She will be here for some time.

Comments

[delphian]

It isn't that the gesture is difficult to decode so much as the question itself is, for a moment, a surprise. A great many things about Riftwatch are new to her, but the most immediate thing is simply—

No one has ever had to ask. No one has ever not known the things that matter, because for as long as Tsenka can remember and one way or another she has been surrounded by people to whom those things also all matter. Templars locking doors behind her or trying to put swords through her gut—mages, debating rebellion or concession. (The Venatori, determined that there must be a way to bend her to use.) Even the handful of people somehow neither of those things had always been somehow adjacent to them, and certainly not somehow unaware of the capacity of the slight and sly woman in front of them.

She's always wanted her world to be bigger. It's just going to take some getting used to, now that it is. Her instinct is a little incredulity—who else is going to meet a mage in short pants and call him so close—but she swallows that, better prepared for it now by a man who'd not known the Gallows to be a Circle. Jone isn't being unkind, and she isn't stupid. The world is bigger than Tsenka was allowed to see, and freedom means the seeing.

“Aye,” she says, instead, “that's so. So was the Nevarran traitor up in Minrathous,” as it happens, “very saucy, him and Orlov. Star-crossed.” She is absolutely going to kick the shit out of both of them.

[poleaxed]

Jone grins at the commentary-- silly gossip is always endearing, or at least entertaining-- before hissing and drawing one of the corners of her mouth back down. She can't hardly stand this.

There are things she wants to ask-- what kind of mage? Her brother was a mage, too. Do all mages see their fellows as kin?-- but she lacks the fluency. But she's been getting good at figuring out sentences she doesn't have to move her lips for.

"Y'know all the mages here?"

[delphian]

Somewhere, Vanya Orlov feels the chill of someone walking over his grave. It's probably fine.

“No,” slower, more thoughtful — though not because the question itself is much of a challenge. It isn't: “I only know Marcus.” The tilt of her head is as one presented with something as a puzzle, and it becomes clear that she's at least trying to guess what Jone might be curious about beyond that, and limited to in her current mouth situation.

After a moment, she offers, “Him and I—we were close in age. Taken close together. Learned together. We grew as siblings do, he's my brother. I don't know any of you lot as have been here, though catching you all naked is doing a good deal to break the ice, no?”

The bath hangouts are multipurpose.