open: a little rain never hurt no one.

[charmoffensive]

WHO: Loxley, Tony Stark, Marcus Rowntree
WHAT: Three awkward ferry rides. (Or more, if I get more tags, but you know.)
WHEN: Drakonis
WHERE: The Kirkwall docks
NOTES: Tag any of these! I don't mind double ups. This is also just a general catch all post if you want to do something slightly different, or drastically different.

Comments

[charmoffensive]

River shifts to make room, Loxley seems to magically summon a few spare silvers out of nowhere into the palm of his non-glowing hand, and the ferryman relents with an aggrieved sigh. He scrapes this offering from the qunari's hand and gestures for him to settle.

The ferryman turns away, so Loxley's sketched bow of thanks is likely for the amusement of the girl sitting nearby. He takes the offer, sitting beside her with a creak of leathers. Immediately there is the scent of whiskey from a good evening spent, but he is clear-eyed and graceful, still. He splays his fingers, showing off a remaining silver coin he'd apparently deftly prevented the ferryman from taking by catching it between his knuckles.

"That's about as close as I've cut it in a while," he says. "Sorry for the excitement, at this hour."

[contritumella]

"Excitement is not something to apologize for." River gives him a smile, having been openly staring at him this entire time. From his shoes to his horns, the Qunari is fascinating to her, mostly because she's rarely met one and didn't know that any were with Riftwatch. "Especially when it's not at blade's point. She's been listening to the rain on the water for three passages between Kirkwall and the Gallows; it reminds her of the better parts of being home." On boats, in the water, in the rain are all things that remind River of the best parts of Wycome.

She tucks her legs in under her and sits up a little straighter. "Where are you from?"

[charmoffensive]

Open staring, in this world and another, is the sort of thing one can get used to when done enough, and the sort of thing one can pick up on the nuances of. For instance, Loxley is rather confident that there's no fear or animosity in this instance, context cues being what they are, but he'll have to divine the nature of her curiousity as they go.

Qunari are not frequent folk seen around Kirkwall, these days. And when they are, they tend to be beefier.

"A magical, far-off place," Loxley answers, sardonic without actually mocking her, perhaps only himself, "traversed from through rift, a land by the name of Tassia."

(Her manner of speech confuses, for a moment, but there are no other passengers but they onboard. And so he takes her meaning, and tries to decide if he ought to read melancholy into the news of her back-and-forth journeys, or something else.)

"Which has cities like this one, very much so. Yourself?"

[contritumella]

There is some melancholy there. She's only just become part of the operation, and she misses home. Misses her brother mostly. But home is a dangerous place to be and she has no idea what's happened to her brother, if he's alive or not; seeking him out feels beyond her capabilities now, with the people that could have told her more about where he was just bodies littered in a pathway of the past.

So. Yeah. A little melancholy.

But now she's got a hundred and ten percent on the Qunari Rifter in front of her. That's kind of an amazing combination of words to describe someone.

She wonders if he's terribly lonely since there aren't many Qunari and she assumes that Rifters come through one by one. Knows better than to ask any of that right now.

"Wycome." A shrug. "There are boats. It rains sometimes. Have you ever been?"

[charmoffensive]

The silver is vanished up a sleeve or a turn of his palm, gone either way.

"I haven't," Loxley says. "Somewhere on the coast, I take it. River boats don't move in quite the same way." The punctuation to his point comes with a grip to the edge of the ferry, a list of his body that causes just a subtle sway to it, mostly just to emphasise the liveliness of the sea beneath them. The ferryman doesn't seem to notice.

So that's something. "Otho, where I was born, was very boat-y and rain-y too. Kirkwall-y in general, if not so large."

[contritumella]

Good with his hands, she thinks. Good at hiding things. Secrets? Magic, or maybe just sleight-of-hand, but either way. Something of note, how that silver vanishes.

She has little use for coins at this particular juncture. She doesn't want to steal his, even if she's curious as to where it's gone.

"When Tevinter is not as heavy on the Minanter, ferrying their red lyrium to and fro, you should visit. A town of revels and gamblers. You'd like it there, at least for a little while." He could make coin, or steal it from drunkards. Either way. "Kirkwall is dark. Brutal in it's history, and little need for adornment from it. It isn't as shiny." And part of her misses the shiny.

[charmoffensive]

Loxley raises an eyebrow, oh would he?, about liking a town of revels and gamblers. What could possibly have given her that impression, save for everything about him, and of course she's correct enough for him to mark the name of this place for future reference.

"I'm afraid I don't take many vacations," he says, "not unless it's of the working kind. But I've seen quite a bit, that way. But as far as Kirkwall's concerned—"

He looks up towards the slowly retreating mass of urban spread, firelight, a liveliness to it at this hour. He nods in its direction. "When the moon's out, and you've sailed fair enough away, you might be forced to admit its got its own gleam. You know, from a distance. And that's not even counting Hightown.

"I sort of like it," he admits.

[contritumella]

"It'll have to grow on her," she says with a grumble, but she does look in the direction of Kirkwall rapidly retreating from sight. "Like a mold."

River giggles, then, and turns back to sit properly in her seat. "But it'll come to her. The liking of a new city, the releasing of old fears. Over time, probably, or maybe suddenly and all at once." She shrugs. Who is to say? Definitely not her.

"Is being in Thedas a new adventure?" Or just something new to be suffered through? She's never spoken to a Rifter before, and so she's curious as to how one has adapted when they've been here long enough to say things like 'I don't take many vacations'. Shouldn't trips to other worlds be a vacation?

[charmoffensive]

Should he ask? About this third-person speaking quirk? His impulse is to do so, particularly while he's imbibed a decent amount of liquor, but it does seem rude, and why shouldn't she. Still, it's kept tucked up a sleeve as Loxley resettles in his seat, tugging the collar of his coat a little to protect himself from the rain a little.

Not much, and he doesn't seem to mind it besides. The word 'adventure' gets a half-cocked smile from him. "In its way," he says. "It was to begin with, but the thing about adventures is they're supposed to end, so you can all have a good laugh about it, learn lessons, so on, so forth.

"But here we are," he says, hands spreading. "Myself and my friend, Richard, we've been here for a couple of years, now. Longer."

[contritumella]

Everyone asks, eventually. Some faster than others, and some don't like her answer after she's been addressed with the 'why'. But River appreciates the people that take the time to listen to her, despite her quirks of speech.

"A friend named Richard." Consideration with a hum. A couple of years now, longer, means about three, she figures, but less than four. That's a long time. "Is it easier, with a friend from home?" Or just... different?