faderift | open, catch-all

[ His smile turns a little more cynical - a little more honest - as he presses a hand to his heart. ]

His truest gift. His kindest benediction. Without it, there might have been wee Byerlys running about - imagine it with horror.

( a long, thoughtful, faintly amused look—

ah, probably wouldn't be so bad. but she obligingly feigns a quail, punctuated with a drink as if she needs it. )

[ A nod of approval. Correct reaction. ]

Circles technically forbid that sort of thing, don't they?

Oh, they forbade it very strictly. Nothing technical about the Circle's attitude.

Well. The technicality, I should think, is - Gather horny teenagers together, and they will do what they do. No preventing it.

( lightly, )

We're not drinking anything good enough for where that conversation leads.

[ A shrug; fair enough. ]

It is occasionally difficult to know what is or is not taboo to discuss with mages.

[ He's not being condemnatory there, nor judgmental. It can be difficult to know what's taboo to discuss with Antivans, too. ]

( her look is more thoughtful, )

It's not taboo. There's not much mysterious about it, is there? But—

( a shrug. )

Mate, ( with a laugh, rueful, tired, ) it's a fucking downer, isn't it? The fear, the loneliness. Taking babies away from scared girls still bleeding from their birth. Telling yourself not to love, as if that makes it stop.

Now, you want to hear about mages fucking on the road, I've got stories.

That was more what I was after.

[ But: ]

But there's much that's mysterious, in fact. There's much we don't know about your lives. We nonmagical folks. And the mages of our company... [ He gives a small, helpless gesture. ] They do not precisely appreciate prying. Understandably so. But it leaves a fellow rather in the dark.

( tsenka takes a breath.

she considers him, through the smoke, over the glass. a more serious look, not troubled precisely; measuring. how much she trusts him, how much she believes his interest sincere, what it means to answer those questions. )

I can tell you the good stories. I don't mind it. None of them come from the Circle. I can tell you about the Circle, too, but—

( she sucks her teeth. )

Hard not for it to sound... ( a spin of her fingers. ) You don't want to sit here and listen to some dreary old tale of mundane woes.

( does he? )

Didn't keep everyone in check, you're not wrong about that, but you did not want to be caught. And we all heard the rumors about what happens if you're fool enough to get pregnant, and unlucky enough to stay that way.

[ He gives a nod. Unsurprising, of course. ]

I don't want to force you to sit here and tell your woes. Of course.

But what is mundane to you is not necessarily well-understood by all.

( a hum, a quirk of the corner of her mouth hearing an echo of an ongoing realization out of a relative stranger's mouth, )

It's funny. All my life, everyone around me knew everything I knew.

( other than the secrets, but— )

Cared about the same things. Feared the same things. Knew their shapes, at least. I wanted a bigger world, ( ruminative, ) it only takes some adjusting to all this elbow room.

( to new people, who don't know. )

You imagine no one outside cares. You think, how could they leave us here, if they cared?

[ A tilt of his head. As if continuing her thought - ]

But it is, often, not lack of care. It is lack of knowledge. Sometimes lack of power. [ A small gesture of confession - ] Sometimes lack of care, from some corners. But not all.

( the tip of her hand toward him is agreement— )

But you don't know that, as children. And when you're grown and free, how to know the difference?

( when everyone feels like an enemy; when you are still under that same threat, only delayed. when strangers who sit down with you speak in the circles with the present tense. )

Growing pains.

All we can do is exhibit curiosity towards one another.

[ A shrug; easy, casual. He toys with his glass. ]

A pity, then, that curiosity is often the first victim of trauma and cruelty.

( tsenka smiles, over her glass— )

I'm curious about you.

( which would absolutely be a line if she thought he'd go for it, but in the absence of any real prospect of turning this into a shag, it's just true. )

Are you?

[ His smile is slow. Consider his earlier thought corrected. Perhaps. ]

Well, I'm curious about you.

Oof, not much to tell yet.

( that is certainly debatable. she leans an elbow on the table — if she were wearing something more salacious, it'd be an interesting move, but the oversized knit could generously be called 'chunky' and accurately called 'misshapen', so it's just comfortable. ) Expect you've been up to more exciting things than I have.

I've certainly been up to stupider things than you have.

[ He's cheerful as he says that. ]

Does that count? A few decades of nonsense?

( the sound she makes against her teeth could be disapproving, except for the bright laugh in her eyes— )

I wouldn't count on that.

( "stupider than her". she had missed time to make up for, in the rebellion. boy, had she. )

So we end up here, fighting another war, trying to be terribly responsible.

Mmhm.

[ A shrug. ]

Pissing everyone off, in my case. - Which, to be fair, was also something I spent a lot of time doing as a lad.

Oh, I've been good on that front.

( sure, she opened her knuckles on vanya orlov's teeth, but it's healing and he doesn't count because fuck that guy. )

Suppose I don't know anyone well enough for them to worry much what I'm up to, as yet. Jone, maybe, but we get on.

Rowntree.

[ don't forget that asshole that you apparently like. ]

Marcus, ( agreement. ) That's different.

( a twitch of a smile, )

He puts up with a lot from me.

( she trusts him implicitly. she'd die for him, if she had to; would live for him, if she had to. fondly, ) Told him I wouldn't have made a pass at his man if I'd known about the three of 'em. Trust my luck, no? Trying to make friends in this unfriendly place and out of the first three, one's for my brother and one's the sister of the last man I loved.

( wry, ) You top that, if you like.

( he seems like a storyteller. it's an invitation. )

[ He frowns thoughtfully. Interesting, though, that comment about his man; Byerly had rather assumed that that little fuck-knot had duplicitous little Petrana at its center. That'll teach him to think that lads who sleep with both sexes must by nature be fun. Apparently, Rowntree's of that persuasion, and that man is joyless. ]

One time I had sex with - [ He thinks back, squinting - ] Twenty-three people in a single night. With sex defined rather broadly.

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