WHO: Ellis + OTA WHAT: Homecoming WHEN: Guardian WHERE: Kirkwall NOTES: Thread collection. Closed and open starters in the comments. Holler if you want something bespoke or drop in a wildcard, I'll roll with it.
It is a hard journey south, made harder by how he'd chosen to take his leave of Weisshaupt. He is carrying very little. (All he could stash without drawing attention, all in service of leaving under muddled, potentially involuntary circumstances.) And while he means to cover much ground very quickly, he can only push Gruagh so hard; horses have their limits, even hardy Aavar mounts. Ruadh ranges away and back, sometimes with some small game clenched in his jaw while Thot hops and chirps merrily at his shoulder, unbothered by their hasty departure and the ensuing misery of the trek.
Ellis has lived this way before. He has traveled on next to nothing, and made his way across Thedas without benefit of steed or mabari or make-shift bird. He knows how to weather the long road back to Kirkwall, growing lean, dodging Imperial soldiers, winding his way southwards: skirting the edges of Nevarra, through the fields of Ghislain, cutting through the Vinmark Mountains, descending through the scattering of villages until Kirkwall proper looms up around him.
There is some difficulty hauling Gruagh aboard the ferry. It is very late and the ferryman is muttering mutinously under his breath, but between Ellis and Ruadh, there is sufficient motivation to indulge, and deliver them both to the Gallows.
After the stables, after coaxing his crystal from Thot one last time and sending her on her way, there are a number of places Ellis might go. The baths. His room, to see if it's still intact. To the kitchen.
Instead, he climbs the stairs to push open the door to Tony's office without bothering to knock in hopes of finding him there.
Tony is where Ellis might expect to find him: not behind his desk, or installed into the weird little reading nook offshoot to the right, but standing at the table that likely once was used to host meals and discussions, maps and reading material, but has instead been a nexus point of accumulated scrap, a sort of mini-workshop of his own.
It's late. There's not a lot of light. A big vibrant hearth does its best, and there's a lantern nearby and some lit candles, but otherwise, it's too dim to be doing this kind of work by. But likely Ellis can also recognise the eyewear, enchanted to allow the viewer to see everything as clear as day. The object he's working on is held up at eye level by a spindly frame, a glowing source of refined lyrium that splashes ill-light across the worktable. Using some kind of fine, long handled tool, Tony does not look over at the sound of the door opening as he positions a delicate ring of bright silvery metal around it, and when he releases it, it hovers in place, and begins to slowly rotate.
Tony straightens from his slight lean. The hearth has warmed the room enough that he can roll the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows and out of the way, all ordinary day-clothes dismantled into their more comfortable form, feet in winter socks. He looks no different from a few months ago. Who could tell?
"Coffee's on the desk," he says, to whoever has opened his door, failing to look up as he pivots away to check the numbers on a thaumoscope. "Or whiskey, depends on you."
Because late-night intrusions are either coffee-conversations or whiskey-conversations.
There is no reason for it, but Ellis feels such a deep ache in his chest, watching Tony. He'd missed him. And here he is, right where Ellis had left him. Working on something just as unfathomable, at an absurd hour of night. Ellis struggles to find a response for a moment, as Ruadh trots past him to take advantage of the warm and unoccupied space in front of the hearth.
"No food to accompany it?" is not necessarily about Ellis, who certainly has not eaten as he should on the journey, but about Tony, who doesn't eat as he should without reminders, in Ellis' experience.
He is still rooted there, just inside the door. This feels fragile. As if it will all come apart at the slightest movement.
As late as he'd arrived, as little sleep as he'd managed (he'd thrown his blanket onto the floor for Ruadh to curl up on, dropped his pack, and stretched out on his bed, but the strangeness of the room, the pieces of his life he'd been uncertain whether or not he'd see again, it makes sleep impossible.) dawn still finds him on the first ferry into Kirkwall.
It's biting cold. (It is strange to be without his armor.) Ellis turns the collar of his coat up against the chill, draws his scarf up a little higher. Ruadh huffs as they disembark, falls into step at Ellis' side as they wind through the empty streets towards Hightown.
(This too is strange to the point of surreal.)
The gate creaks on its hinges. Ruadh trots through first, while Ellis lingers, testing it once, twice, three times before easing it closed.
The chickens are still tucked away inside their coop, and there is no immediate evidence of the rumored goat, but there is signs that the garden itself hasn't been well-prepared for the change in seasons. He should have given Oona the coin for it, but he hadn't been intending for his absence to stretch as long as it had.
He stands for a long moment looking up at the darkened house. But rather than let himself in (it's too early. it's too soon.) Ellis turns his attention to what is most familiar, and closest at hand. While Ruadh inspects the perimeter of the garden, Ellis gathers hammer and nails, rakes and shovels, and begins tending the raised garden beds. Too late, maybe, but the work is easy and familiar and grounds him in the present.
Ruadh's the first to sense movement. The mabari's great squared head lifts from snuffling at the far fencing to swivel towards the house and give a soft, suspicious boof in answer to whatever movement is occurring. No proper bark, so Ellis only clucks his tongue in dismissive answer, attention set on levering the corners of the raised bed back together before reaching for his hammer. It's early yet. (He's not yet decided whether or not he is going in.) This can be finished and the chickens can be fed before Wysteria rises, before Ellis enters the house.
The exact nature of the disturbance from within the house doesn't make itself known for some minutes. The time allotted before any notable change occurs is almost exactly number of minutes required for, say, a dog led by the noise of trespassers to sniff suspiciously around the entirety of the kitchen's door and then to pad responsibly through up through the house and sit for some minutes scratching at the door to her mistress's bedroom, and then to be scolded by the person in question for scratching at the woodwork, and then some minutes more to convince this person that they ought to come investigate the state of the garden and all its offensively unfamiliar smells and sounds. To add insult to injury, this diligent creature must tolerate being misinterpreted and the resultant delay required by fetching the goat, and it's only after a great deal of bickering (the dog is not involved; the goat and the young lady are) that the house's year door springs open and the mop-like fawn colored briard is allowed out into the glum grey morning.
The Avvar goat with a rope collar around its neck is hot on her heels, as is Wysteria in her shift and slippers and undone hair hissing a curse after the both of them: "There. For gods' sake, I don't see what all the fuss was about—"
The briard draws up short. Nearly tripping Wysteria in the process and definitively blocking her thoughtless exit from the house, the dog plants herself firmly just past the threshold and lets out a single threatening bark at the strangers in her garden.
The pile up of dog, goat and girl in the doorway cannot be missed; it is not a quiet affair.
Ellis doesn't have to turn towards the door. He simply looks up and there she is. (It is in this moment that he considers: He has never seen Wysteria's hair loose in this fashion.) Having caught sight of her, Ellis has little attention for anything else for a long moment. The hammer in his hands, the bite of the cold, even the briard and the goat.
But Ruadh has no such hesitations. Abandoning entirely the scent he'd been snuffling after along the fencing, Ruadh wheels around to face the approaching...threat. Challenger. Irritant. There is no answering bark, but a raising of hackles, the suggestion of teeth, as Ruadh trots forward. Perhaps to inspect, perhaps not.
Which draws Ellis back to reality, enough that he drops the hammer to catch Ruadh before he can pass with a soothing murmur. His hand passes over old scars, sleek, short fur, before his gaze turns back to Wysteria.
What is there to say? If he thinks of anything, it's blotted out by the sight of her. That's the trouble, of wanting so much, of feeling so much. There's nothing to be done with it.
Normally, Ellis doesn't make much of the baths. It's always been a quick affair, over and done without lingering.
But it's very early, and his entire body aches. And so after the slow, miserable shedding of layers of clothing stiff with dirt from the road, and some minor attention paid to new bruising and old scarring, Ellis eases into the water. He draws in a deep breath, and then exhales it, letting himself slouch into the warmth up to his neck.
It's good. (Enough so that he can give a little space to the depth of his exhaustion, and the tangle of conflict knotted in his chest.) He's closed his eyes, more or less satisfied with the idea that most everyone is asleep at this hour.
And then, of course, because this is how Ellis' luck tends to work: footsteps on damp stone.
His eyes open, straightening by degrees to assess the approaching individual.
An unfamiliar face—and all the rest of her, wrapped in a loose robe with her hair piled up atop her head, the mess of it not entirely hiding the pointed ears that confirm, presumably, what the slight frame might have suggested in the first place. Her wrists and ankles are discolored in a particular way that suggests other reasons for that slightness, but as elven women go she's on the taller side and as Riftwatch goes, she certainly doesn't carry herself with any timidity. Not even the ordinary sort one might feel, approaching a stranger in a hot bath—
“Morning,” a Starkhaven-accent, a low, smoky voice, “ought to be more than enough room for the both of us. You want some of this?”
This—appears to be an entire jug of coffee, lifted from the dining hall's breakfast set out on her way down here. Tsenka doesn't actually live in the Gallows any more, but far be it from her not to take advantage of the amenities when she's about; her loft hasn't got anything like as nice as these baths, and she's had a vigorous morning.
Technically, it's not at all unusual to see Ellis occupying the space in front of the fire in the dining hall. It's not his preference, but he had taken up space there often enough, taking advantage of a spot where the light is good and Noose comes to drape across his feet when it is perhaps too late to travel to Wysteria's house to spread his mending across her kitchen table.
Had no one been paying close attention, the sight of Ellis returned to his seat there might be so routine so as to be unremarkable.
But perhaps the five month absence and the massive red-hued mabari stretched luxuriously across the hearth warrant a second look. (The assortment of items to be mended is much diminished, and the habitual whistling is absent. The mabari bears an assortment of scars, outstrips Noose in size easily.) The patter of boots on stone prompts no particular reaction from either party, but should the footsteps veer closer—
The mabari's eyes crack open, then narrow at the approach of a stranger. Ellis' head lifts from his work, fingers stilling over the thread long enough for a minor nod of acknowledgement.
Joy, like all emotions in Jone's heart, lives close to rage. She's glad to see him. She's angry he's left. Her first action is to vent the latter, not the former. Maybe if she could smile, grin, give a whoop of girlish enthusiasm, she'd be a better person. But as it stands, all she can think to do is smack his shoulder and rattle his chair.
"You horse's arse. Least you could to is mention a return. Have to be bleeding mysterious, ennit?"
Instinctively, Ellis' hand closes over the whole of his mending at the jostling welcome Jone bestows upon him. The pin digs into his palm, but the spike of pain barely registers.
On the floor, Ruadh has rolled up onto his belly, still laid out but shifted to something approaching motion. Not fully upright, but the languid stretch of his body has transitioned to wary preparedness as he observes Ellis' reaction.
"You know I'm not one to make a fuss."
Is probably not much of an explanation. But the idea of announcing himself felt as impossible now as it had the first time he'd arrived, if not more so now.
The plan, ever since Bastien's habitual tab-keeping informed him second- or third-hand that Ellis had been spotted alive in Kirkwall, has been where's my leaf? with the expectant look of wealthy child whose father has returned from the city.
The tone of that aye sends the plan out the window.
Instead, Bastien stops, not close enough to be considered to have joined Ellis by the fire. "Welcome back," he says. That's nearly all he says. His weight shifts back like he's about to keep walking. But then he looks at the bear of a dog, glaring at him from the hearth. He stays poised to move on, but first: "Who's this?"
Ruadh is out of arm's reach, but not so far that Ellis can't set a boot gently at his hind paw. Reassuring. Receiving a huff in response, as the mabari stretches, eyes remaining on Bastien.
"Ruadh," he answers, before setting aside the mending, needle lanced through tear to hold his place. Roo-ah, Ellis' voice warming over the syllables, rolling softly over the r.
It doesn't feel like he fits back into the space he'd left. Ruadh is outsized, almost a visual representation of the mismatch. Ellis can feel it, all the ways his time away has reshaped him. And how that will disappoint.
"Sit," he presses, tipping his head to the empty chair. "He'll greet you, in his own time."
The library is the same as it ever was: overcrowded. A little cluttered, a little dusty; it's disorder that comes from consistent use and no dedicated attention to tending the aftermath.
Ellis thinks briefly of Mhavos as he winds his way through the stacks, come and gone and come and gone again, archivist's desk abandoned in his absence. He raps knuckles at the edge before passing into the stacks.
At the present moment, masks are stacked haphazardly atop the shelves. Ellis lingers in the center of the aisle, looking up. Nothing is labeled, or not labeled on the ends jutting out over the edge of the shelving. They'll all have to come down, so he retreats out, casting about for anyone else who can be recruited for the cause, or a chair that might be dragged over.
Which brings him to the nearest table, though before he reaches to commandeer the necessary furniture, he asks the occupant, "Do you mind?"
It's become something of a personal project for Mobius. There are occasionally people who tend to the library lest it dissolve into complete chaos, but it's not enough. He hasn't been here long enough to see to the whole damn library, but a bit of effort every day to make sure books and scrolls and the like are tended to, repaired, organized back into a proper place.
Okay, so it's a long-term project, but he plans to stick around Riftwatch for as long as he's needed.
Which is why the table in question is littered with books, set in various piles, and this older fellow making note of each volume as he picks it up, title, author if legible, condition, subject. He looks up at the intrusion, blinks owlishly for a moment, and then: "Oh, sure, no, go right ahead. No ladder around? Blessed Andraste, I'm gonna requisition some made so people aren't climbing the shelves." He sets down the book he was looking at. "You need a hand?"
A moment to doublecheck the chair he's laid a hand on isn't also harboring a small pile of books, before Ellis does pull it back and lift it, cementing his claim. As to the offer—
"If you wouldn't mind handling some maps."
There might be a ladder. There one was a ladder, but who knows who had made off with it for some alternate reason. Ellis has little idea of what Satinalia was like this year, but it wouldn't surprise him had several ladders been employed to decorate or if some disaster had occurred and damaged the lot, or—
There are possibilities. Ellis finds it best not to dwell.
Abby's eyes don't come up off of her book, which is far more engaging than she thinks it has any right to be. It is spine-flat to the table, to keep people from spying the title; eventually she glances up, as the chair starts to be dragged away.
Double takes.
"When did you get back?"
If it sounds a little accusatory, well– that's only because she has something in her tower room that belongs to him, not because she was vaguely concerned, okay. Don't worry about it.
The question stalls Ellis, who might have simply lifted the chair and gone without further conversation at that exact moment.
"Not so long ago," is not a satisfactory answer. But it's what he has to offer, at the moment. "I've a few things to settle right off, once I made it into the Gallows."
This is not entirely untrue. Yes, some of those things are simple. A bath. Sleeping uninterrupted in a bed behind a door that locked. Spending time with Tony and Wysteria.
But some are also writing. Lots of writing. All of what he'd seen and all of what had to be chased after, now that he's made it back to the Gallows to pass this information into the Division Heads' hands.
"You needn't interrupt your reading on my account."
She spots Ellis going in to the library from some distance away, and thus, by the time her short legs catch up to the other Warden's position, he's already alighted upon a chair and began the process of... whatever it is he's up to, exactly. Reorganizing the stacks? Dealing with the masks from Val Chevin, perhaps.
"Would you like another pair of hands for this?" She smiles up at him from her place standing next to the chair. She doesn't know what, exactly, he found on his trip to Weisshaupt, but she is very glad to see him again.
As if their height difference needed any more exaggeration.
And yes, he does technically need a second set of hands to wrangle these maps. But that's not the priority in the moment.
"Adrasteia," he says, turning, then descending. A step down, returning to ground, so he might reunite with her properly rather than from on high. "I returned your horse."
She raises her eyebrows and attempts not to smile, with only fair to middling success. There had been a part of her that worried that Ellis would not return, either due to being withheld from coming back by an outside force or through some decision-making of his own; to see him here helps alleviate some of that pressure in her chest. Of course, he didn't reach out upon return, and perhaps that hurts her a very little bit, but she's survived worse injuries than that.
So. A half-smile, a relieved gaze. She looks him up and down as if she could discern whether or not he's been injured or changed by his journey. "You wouldn't have happened to imagine up a name for him?" Adrasteia needs to name the poor horse; he is good enough to deserve a name of his own, she knows.
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closed.
tony.
Ellis has lived this way before. He has traveled on next to nothing, and made his way across Thedas without benefit of steed or mabari or make-shift bird. He knows how to weather the long road back to Kirkwall, growing lean, dodging Imperial soldiers, winding his way southwards: skirting the edges of Nevarra, through the fields of Ghislain, cutting through the Vinmark Mountains, descending through the scattering of villages until Kirkwall proper looms up around him.
There is some difficulty hauling Gruagh aboard the ferry. It is very late and the ferryman is muttering mutinously under his breath, but between Ellis and Ruadh, there is sufficient motivation to indulge, and deliver them both to the Gallows.
After the stables, after coaxing his crystal from Thot one last time and sending her on her way, there are a number of places Ellis might go. The baths. His room, to see if it's still intact. To the kitchen.
Instead, he climbs the stairs to push open the door to Tony's office without bothering to knock in hopes of finding him there.
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It's late. There's not a lot of light. A big vibrant hearth does its best, and there's a lantern nearby and some lit candles, but otherwise, it's too dim to be doing this kind of work by. But likely Ellis can also recognise the eyewear, enchanted to allow the viewer to see everything as clear as day. The object he's working on is held up at eye level by a spindly frame, a glowing source of refined lyrium that splashes ill-light across the worktable. Using some kind of fine, long handled tool, Tony does not look over at the sound of the door opening as he positions a delicate ring of bright silvery metal around it, and when he releases it, it hovers in place, and begins to slowly rotate.
Tony straightens from his slight lean. The hearth has warmed the room enough that he can roll the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows and out of the way, all ordinary day-clothes dismantled into their more comfortable form, feet in winter socks. He looks no different from a few months ago. Who could tell?
"Coffee's on the desk," he says, to whoever has opened his door, failing to look up as he pivots away to check the numbers on a thaumoscope. "Or whiskey, depends on you."
Because late-night intrusions are either coffee-conversations or whiskey-conversations.
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"No food to accompany it?" is not necessarily about Ellis, who certainly has not eaten as he should on the journey, but about Tony, who doesn't eat as he should without reminders, in Ellis' experience.
He is still rooted there, just inside the door. This feels fragile. As if it will all come apart at the slightest movement.
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wysteria
It's biting cold. (It is strange to be without his armor.) Ellis turns the collar of his coat up against the chill, draws his scarf up a little higher. Ruadh huffs as they disembark, falls into step at Ellis' side as they wind through the empty streets towards Hightown.
(This too is strange to the point of surreal.)
The gate creaks on its hinges. Ruadh trots through first, while Ellis lingers, testing it once, twice, three times before easing it closed.
The chickens are still tucked away inside their coop, and there is no immediate evidence of the rumored goat, but there is signs that the garden itself hasn't been well-prepared for the change in seasons. He should have given Oona the coin for it, but he hadn't been intending for his absence to stretch as long as it had.
He stands for a long moment looking up at the darkened house. But rather than let himself in (it's too early. it's too soon.) Ellis turns his attention to what is most familiar, and closest at hand. While Ruadh inspects the perimeter of the garden, Ellis gathers hammer and nails, rakes and shovels, and begins tending the raised garden beds. Too late, maybe, but the work is easy and familiar and grounds him in the present.
Ruadh's the first to sense movement. The mabari's great squared head lifts from snuffling at the far fencing to swivel towards the house and give a soft, suspicious boof in answer to whatever movement is occurring. No proper bark, so Ellis only clucks his tongue in dismissive answer, attention set on levering the corners of the raised bed back together before reaching for his hammer. It's early yet. (He's not yet decided whether or not he is going in.) This can be finished and the chickens can be fed before Wysteria rises, before Ellis enters the house.
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The Avvar goat with a rope collar around its neck is hot on her heels, as is Wysteria in her shift and slippers and undone hair hissing a curse after the both of them: "There. For gods' sake, I don't see what all the fuss was about—"
The briard draws up short. Nearly tripping Wysteria in the process and definitively blocking her thoughtless exit from the house, the dog plants herself firmly just past the threshold and lets out a single threatening bark at the strangers in her garden.
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Ellis doesn't have to turn towards the door. He simply looks up and there she is. (It is in this moment that he considers: He has never seen Wysteria's hair loose in this fashion.) Having caught sight of her, Ellis has little attention for anything else for a long moment. The hammer in his hands, the bite of the cold, even the briard and the goat.
But Ruadh has no such hesitations. Abandoning entirely the scent he'd been snuffling after along the fencing, Ruadh wheels around to face the approaching...threat. Challenger. Irritant. There is no answering bark, but a raising of hackles, the suggestion of teeth, as Ruadh trots forward. Perhaps to inspect, perhaps not.
Which draws Ellis back to reality, enough that he drops the hammer to catch Ruadh before he can pass with a soothing murmur. His hand passes over old scars, sleek, short fur, before his gaze turns back to Wysteria.
What is there to say? If he thinks of anything, it's blotted out by the sight of her. That's the trouble, of wanting so much, of feeling so much. There's nothing to be done with it.
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literally makes you wait a million years for a dialogue-less tag, forgive
a GREAT dialogue-less tag
weLL
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bow on this y/y?
yyyy : ' )
tsenka.
Normally, Ellis doesn't make much of the baths. It's always been a quick affair, over and done without lingering.
But it's very early, and his entire body aches. And so after the slow, miserable shedding of layers of clothing stiff with dirt from the road, and some minor attention paid to new bruising and old scarring, Ellis eases into the water. He draws in a deep breath, and then exhales it, letting himself slouch into the warmth up to his neck.
It's good. (Enough so that he can give a little space to the depth of his exhaustion, and the tangle of conflict knotted in his chest.) He's closed his eyes, more or less satisfied with the idea that most everyone is asleep at this hour.
And then, of course, because this is how Ellis' luck tends to work: footsteps on damp stone.
His eyes open, straightening by degrees to assess the approaching individual.
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“Morning,” a Starkhaven-accent, a low, smoky voice, “ought to be more than enough room for the both of us. You want some of this?”
This—appears to be an entire jug of coffee, lifted from the dining hall's breakfast set out on her way down here. Tsenka doesn't actually live in the Gallows any more, but far be it from her not to take advantage of the amenities when she's about; her loft hasn't got anything like as nice as these baths, and she's had a vigorous morning.
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ota.
Had no one been paying close attention, the sight of Ellis returned to his seat there might be so routine so as to be unremarkable.
But perhaps the five month absence and the massive red-hued mabari stretched luxuriously across the hearth warrant a second look. (The assortment of items to be mended is much diminished, and the habitual whistling is absent. The mabari bears an assortment of scars, outstrips Noose in size easily.) The patter of boots on stone prompts no particular reaction from either party, but should the footsteps veer closer—
The mabari's eyes crack open, then narrow at the approach of a stranger. Ellis' head lifts from his work, fingers stilling over the thread long enough for a minor nod of acknowledgement.
"Aye?" is polite, more question than welcome.
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"You horse's arse. Least you could to is mention a return. Have to be bleeding mysterious, ennit?"
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On the floor, Ruadh has rolled up onto his belly, still laid out but shifted to something approaching motion. Not fully upright, but the languid stretch of his body has transitioned to wary preparedness as he observes Ellis' reaction.
"You know I'm not one to make a fuss."
Is probably not much of an explanation. But the idea of announcing himself felt as impossible now as it had the first time he'd arrived, if not more so now.
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sorry.
incredible.
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The tone of that aye sends the plan out the window.
Instead, Bastien stops, not close enough to be considered to have joined Ellis by the fire. "Welcome back," he says. That's nearly all he says. His weight shifts back like he's about to keep walking. But then he looks at the bear of a dog, glaring at him from the hearth. He stays poised to move on, but first: "Who's this?"
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"Ruadh," he answers, before setting aside the mending, needle lanced through tear to hold his place. Roo-ah, Ellis' voice warming over the syllables, rolling softly over the r.
It doesn't feel like he fits back into the space he'd left. Ruadh is outsized, almost a visual representation of the mismatch. Ellis can feel it, all the ways his time away has reshaped him. And how that will disappoint.
"Sit," he presses, tipping his head to the empty chair. "He'll greet you, in his own time."
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ota.
Ellis thinks briefly of Mhavos as he winds his way through the stacks, come and gone and come and gone again, archivist's desk abandoned in his absence. He raps knuckles at the edge before passing into the stacks.
At the present moment, masks are stacked haphazardly atop the shelves. Ellis lingers in the center of the aisle, looking up. Nothing is labeled, or not labeled on the ends jutting out over the edge of the shelving. They'll all have to come down, so he retreats out, casting about for anyone else who can be recruited for the cause, or a chair that might be dragged over.
Which brings him to the nearest table, though before he reaches to commandeer the necessary furniture, he asks the occupant, "Do you mind?"
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Okay, so it's a long-term project, but he plans to stick around Riftwatch for as long as he's needed.
Which is why the table in question is littered with books, set in various piles, and this older fellow making note of each volume as he picks it up, title, author if legible, condition, subject. He looks up at the intrusion, blinks owlishly for a moment, and then: "Oh, sure, no, go right ahead. No ladder around? Blessed Andraste, I'm gonna requisition some made so people aren't climbing the shelves." He sets down the book he was looking at. "You need a hand?"
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A moment to doublecheck the chair he's laid a hand on isn't also harboring a small pile of books, before Ellis does pull it back and lift it, cementing his claim. As to the offer—
"If you wouldn't mind handling some maps."
There might be a ladder. There one was a ladder, but who knows who had made off with it for some alternate reason. Ellis has little idea of what Satinalia was like this year, but it wouldn't surprise him had several ladders been employed to decorate or if some disaster had occurred and damaged the lot, or—
There are possibilities. Ellis finds it best not to dwell.
"Assuming you are in a place to leave off."
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Abby's eyes don't come up off of her book, which is far more engaging than she thinks it has any right to be. It is spine-flat to the table, to keep people from spying the title; eventually she glances up, as the chair starts to be dragged away.
Double takes.
"When did you get back?"
If it sounds a little accusatory, well– that's only because she has something in her tower room that belongs to him, not because she was vaguely concerned, okay. Don't worry about it.
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"Not so long ago," is not a satisfactory answer. But it's what he has to offer, at the moment. "I've a few things to settle right off, once I made it into the Gallows."
This is not entirely untrue. Yes, some of those things are simple. A bath. Sleeping uninterrupted in a bed behind a door that locked. Spending time with Tony and Wysteria.
But some are also writing. Lots of writing. All of what he'd seen and all of what had to be chased after, now that he's made it back to the Gallows to pass this information into the Division Heads' hands.
"You needn't interrupt your reading on my account."
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forgive this extreme tardiness
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eventually
I would like to hear about what you learned while you were away.
"eventually"
You've been hard to find.
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outraged at this revision
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a long delayed bow to slap on this thread
wildcard library ish
"Would you like another pair of hands for this?" She smiles up at him from her place standing next to the chair. She doesn't know what, exactly, he found on his trip to Weisshaupt, but she is very glad to see him again.
forgive me if this is TOO TARDY
And yes, he does technically need a second set of hands to wrangle these maps. But that's not the priority in the moment.
"Adrasteia," he says, turning, then descending. A step down, returning to ground, so he might reunite with her properly rather than from on high. "I returned your horse."
Nailed it.
neva too tardy
So. A half-smile, a relieved gaze. She looks him up and down as if she could discern whether or not he's been injured or changed by his journey. "You wouldn't have happened to imagine up a name for him?" Adrasteia needs to name the poor horse; he is good enough to deserve a name of his own, she knows.
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