catchall

[nonvenomous]

WHO: Richard Dickerson, friends, enemies, and neutral parties
WHAT: Closed starters, hmu if you want some Dick. Wildcards ok.
WHEN: Before Antiva, during Antiva, after Antiva.
WHERE: Thedas
NOTES: Long overdue for some CR building, ping me if you want to scheme out a reason for them to hang or hit me with a wildcard.

Comments

most things are

[thereneverwas]

How or why they ended up in close quarters, well, that's not really a concern; it happens periodically, but they usually have the buffer of other people around, and that's what the current situation is severely lacking.

That and any meaningful form of stimulation other than watching the rain piss down outside the cave, which Barrow is doing with a bland impatience, trying not to think about how hungry he still is after eating half a rabbit. It's too early to sleep, too late to be useful in any other capacity, the damp is fucking with his arthritis, and there's little to do except resign himself to a miserable situation cozied up with one of people he likes least in the world.

It's after a long silence that he finally snaps. Taking a charred stick from the fire, he uses it to draw a small, haphazard grid on the stone floor, which he marks with an X in one box. Then, wordlessly, he tosses the stick over to Dick's side.

_|_|_
_|X|_
_|_|_

[nonvenomous]

The stick clatters hollow across the stone and Dick watches it rock to a stop at the same level remove he’d watched Barrow mark out the grid with. Thot watches the stick also, the cruel hook of her beak parted to expose the cotton white of her throat, the blue of her tongue. She croaks.

And, one long feathered leggy at a time, she steps down from her perch to close one talon around the stick’s base, drawing it in close enough for Richard to twist from her grasp.

He studies the grid for longer than is polite before tracing out an oblong mark of his own.

When he’s done, he passes the stick back to his terrible bird, and she wobbles it back around the campfire to Barrow like a baton in her jaws. Richard watches her go in silence.

_|_|_
_|X|_
O|_|_

[thereneverwas]

Nice to see there's one sensible party among them. Recognizing the terrible bird as the same strange entity as the little swimming cat from before, Barrow accepts the stick with a quiet 'thank you'.

After he's made his mark, if she's still there, he passes it back to her rather than tossing it.

X|_|_
_|X|_
O|_|_

[nonvenomous]

The eyes are the same, fixed wide on him while he scratches out another X -- a vivid sage green, no thoughts between them, with slitted pupils that flash in the firelight. Dick’s had flashed at him like that once, in a dream.

She is waiting when he’s finished, the stick snipped up and galloped back across to her master.

X|_|_
_|X|_
O|_|O

Leathery, feathery scuffling marks Thot’s return a moment later. The fire hisses and spits where Richard’s flicked a glob of fat from his rabbit hide into the flames. It’s a pointless exercise, really. The rabbit was scruffy. They don’t have salt. He’s already poked two holes in it.

I know you've been waiting for this with bated breath

[thereneverwas]

It's the thought that counts, where the rabbit's concerned. Or so Barrow would love to think, if he weren't so hungry, but that's (unfortunately) not Dick's fault and nor is he personally able to go out and find anything better.

X|_|_
_|X|_
O|X|O

yes

[nonvenomous]

“This is a child’s game,” Richard decides, upon seeing that he will not win Ser Barrow’s latest mark.

He will put his O in the northeast socket and Barrow will put his X dead east and there will be nowhere left for either of them to make any mark that matters. A glance across the fire prickles with contempt; he lifts the rabbit’s hide and Thot weeble-wobbles over to take it from his grasp on her way to bustling back out into the rain.

The kind thing to do would be to suggest an alternative. Instead he produces a rag from his person and creaks to his feet to wet it at the cave’s entrance. The better to scrub rough between his fingers and along the blade of his knife

[thereneverwas]

"Got a better one?"

There's no overt hostility in the question, but it's not entirely friendly either. Having come to the same conclusion as Dick, Barrow heaves a sigh through his nose and leans forward to smudge out the attempt at the game.

[nonvenomous]

“I brought books to read,” Richard tells his wet rag, the narrow cut of his back to Barrow and their cramped, hard-packed home for the next several hours. Days? His heart sinks at the thought.

“Do you know your letters?”

[thereneverwas]

"Yes," Barrow grunts, with the air of one wishing he were anywhere but here, "I know my letters." One of these days he's going to crumple that man up into a little ball and throw him down a well.