Loxley drinks from his cup in the break between his speaking and Richard's answering. A little like he could use it, certainly.
No deaths to speak of, at least. Well. Sort of. No permanent deaths to speak of, and when Richard asks that question, the impulse is there to just say that, too, with good intentions attached: you brought me back. He swallows down wine and thinks seriously about it, before giving a bobbled nod. You know, yeah.
"I feel," and it sort of only occurs to him then, as he says it, "like so much less, here."
How important it is, the things he's doing in Tassia. This playing at romance with a princess and captaining a flying ship and a foot in the door of his third deadly temple of vital importance.
"Which is silly." A gesture of his wine glass, bringing it to his mouth again so that his next words trail off into echoey muffledness as they go. "I don't want to split saving this world only four to five ways, or anything."
A catch of non-comprehension might be telling if it wasn’t so fleet, there and gone into a more intent furrow -- supportive interest from a friend, a priest, a scholar.
“Who decides what we are?”
Something about this has recalled his wine to his attention; Rather than bolt the dregs to make room, Richard reaches for the bottle to top himself off. As a matter of course. He’s able to keep eye contact while he does it, past a glance to aim and another to measure.
“Surely it isn’t scope of influence.”
Edited (like this better ty) 2022-09-21 04:53 (UTC)
Loxley brings his glass back down in time for a top up, if Richard is feeling generous.
"I wouldn't have thought so, in Tassia," he agrees. "But then coming back here, so suddenly, and all of that urgency and pressure, gone—I don't really feel relieved about it."
What he does feel is confusing, clearly. If having less to do (even without the shortage of things to do, in Riftwatch) is a commentary on value, then how does one fathom the diminishment? But rather than hunt around for that meaning and how to pronounce it, he asks,
"How was it for you? When you woke up with it."
He hadn't shared it. Not until it could be used as a weapon. Loxley's tone is on the cautious side.
Richard rolls the bottleneck from his cup to Loxley’s glass, easy. The slosh of wine punctuates silence at the question, a moment’s thought before he plants the bottle back upright.
“Lonesome,” he says.
Rare honesty, while he’s reduced to an exhausted ginger scribble at their shared table.
“Oghma doesn’t exist here.” Two years is plenty of time to adjust accordingly, to plug the empty socket with weed and wine and an affair with a mage hunter and a magic cat. She uses Loxley’s wrist to roll to her feet as Richard scratches under his chin, not to return to him, but to try to pluck her way up Loxley’s sleeve to his shoulder. “There was an impersonator, for a time.”
Loxley startles just a little at the feeling of Thot readjusting herself, the flutter of feathers and prick of claws. He hovers a hand to help, but then she's on his arm, marching foot over foot to crab up onto his shoulder. He brushes a hand over her wing, but otherwise lets her sort herself out.
Suspecting her will have to fix his hair if she fixes his hair. But he picks up his refreshed glass, now leaning his elbows on the edge of the table in a more comfortable slouching forwards.
"A spirit?" he guesses, reaching for his scattered grasp of the local arcane lore. It nudges at another thing he ought to run by Richard, but not everything can be solved right here, at this table, so he focuses. Edges his thumb around the rim of the glass.
Says, "I fall in battle," a little apologetically, if anything. It's the thing on the way to the other thing he wants to say. "Properly fall, none of my own weird shit saving me that time. But you," gentle emphasis, "bring me back. And you bring Kally back. It was beautiful, that one.
"So, you know. If Oghma's not here, then at least he was making himself useful elsewhere."
Confirmation comes at a nod and a tilt at his brow, self-deprecating. He looks down to his wine, follows a fleck of cork spiraling loose at its center when he tilts it. Yes, a spirit.
His expression is difficult to read when he looks back up again, his study inscrutable in spite of its weary intensity, or all the more inscrutable for it. Like trying to read a very wet and haggard letter. One written in a cipher.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
And he is. Probably.
“Not that you died,” it’s unnecessary for him to assure. Until he follows it up with, “What was it like?”
Speaking to Richard without being wholly certain of what he is thinking or feeling is just one of those discomforts that Loxley has gotten used to. It's not an alien discomfort, not limited to only Richard, but made less comfortable in moments like these. Still, he has practice. It involves assuming what he is thinking, deciding it is charitable, and proceeding from there.
So there's just kind of the start of a smile for the question he settles on, and then some quiet as he thinks back to it.
"It was quick," he says. "You acted quickly. I think that matters. But I also felt as though I'd been asleep for days, waking up. But before that,"
death, not life, that's the question at hand,
"it felt like being lost. Like I didn't even know enough to know where I ought to go, no sense of where I'd been, just shadow. We talked a bit about it, what happens when a person dies. You were certain," or he spoke with certainty, "that I would go where those who'd done more good than bad would go. And perhaps that's what was waiting for me, and I don't think I got to see."
His hand wanders up, skritching Thot absent-mindedly under her chin, as though she were still cat-shaped. "But the way back felt like certainty. I ran to it, that sense of knowing. Woke up covered in blood," he tips his glass, "not all of it mine, but certainly a lot of it.
"It's also very odd," he adds, while they're being a little morbid, "to no longer have the scars to show for it. I can't even impress any girls about it."
Loxley’s retelling takes time to hold up against his own experience, one lens beside another glassing a distant flame. His recollection hasn’t dimmed over time. Oghma had welcomed him, only to turn him right back around before his bone-deep relief could calcify into resistance.
No rest for the wicked.
Or for Loxley, who has a princess to marry.
He dials back into the sight of Thot with her eyes crushed shut, stretched like a watering can to the scuff of Loxley’s fingertips, snakey muscle firm beneath the fluff of her feathers. A forked tongue sits blue in her parted beak.
“We could carve you up and I could heal them over again with scars,” Silas says. “If it’s integral to the operation.”
sounds real in affect, but the tip of a look to Richard mid-Thot skritch undermines it. No thanks, goth-dad.
There's a silence that follows, thinking back over their conversation, and before it, his own sense of anxious urgency that had compelled him not simply across the water, but also to pick the lock barring him entry. He ever feels inept about what to do or say about the things that happen to other people, on account of feeling inept about what to do or say about the things that happen to himself.
Still, that isn't any excuse. He says, "I'm sorry you've felt lonesome," and it doesn't ring like hollow sympathy, a sorry for your losses, but of a thing he has contributed to.
Richard settles his attention back on Loxley after a long drink, purple harsh around his eyes in his teeth. He’s scruffed raw and lean, pride shot around the slant of his bones, connections all frayed. Animals dredged out of flood waters have the same look.
He doesn’t know what to say either, hemmed into a half-hearted rifle through reassurances, platitudes.
“It was nice for a time. To have someone.”
This is the truth, for all that it’s also a stumping out of this line of conversation.
“I should rest,” he adds, to make sure. “I’m glad that you’re here.”
Loxley smooths rather than continues scuffing up Thot's feathers, finally lowering his hand. She is, anyway, welcome to stay on his shoulder for as long as its upright or he's not trying to dress down. He nods understanding, an understated gesture.
One that sympathises. They'd talked a while ago of love, or at least of the kinds of partnerships that resemble it. That being a Rifter is a complication. That there was no risk of love happening, for Richard.
Odd reversals all around, really.
"Rest," he bids. "I'll finish off some wine and follow your example."
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faderift2022-08-27 07:25 pm
no subject
No deaths to speak of, at least. Well. Sort of. No permanent deaths to speak of, and when Richard asks that question, the impulse is there to just say that, too, with good intentions attached: you brought me back. He swallows down wine and thinks seriously about it, before giving a bobbled nod. You know, yeah.
"I feel," and it sort of only occurs to him then, as he says it, "like so much less, here."
How important it is, the things he's doing in Tassia. This playing at romance with a princess and captaining a flying ship and a foot in the door of his third deadly temple of vital importance.
"Which is silly." A gesture of his wine glass, bringing it to his mouth again so that his next words trail off into echoey muffledness as they go. "I don't want to split saving this world only four to five ways, or anything."
no subject
“Who decides what we are?”
Something about this has recalled his wine to his attention; Rather than bolt the dregs to make room, Richard reaches for the bottle to top himself off. As a matter of course. He’s able to keep eye contact while he does it, past a glance to aim and another to measure.
“Surely it isn’t scope of influence.”
no subject
"I wouldn't have thought so, in Tassia," he agrees. "But then coming back here, so suddenly, and all of that urgency and pressure, gone—I don't really feel relieved about it."
What he does feel is confusing, clearly. If having less to do (even without the shortage of things to do, in Riftwatch) is a commentary on value, then how does one fathom the diminishment? But rather than hunt around for that meaning and how to pronounce it, he asks,
"How was it for you? When you woke up with it."
He hadn't shared it. Not until it could be used as a weapon. Loxley's tone is on the cautious side.
no subject
“Lonesome,” he says.
Rare honesty, while he’s reduced to an exhausted ginger scribble at their shared table.
“Oghma doesn’t exist here.” Two years is plenty of time to adjust accordingly, to plug the empty socket with weed and wine and an affair with a mage hunter and a magic cat. She uses Loxley’s wrist to roll to her feet as Richard scratches under his chin, not to return to him, but to try to pluck her way up Loxley’s sleeve to his shoulder. “There was an impersonator, for a time.”
no subject
Suspecting her will have to fix his hair if she fixes his hair. But he picks up his refreshed glass, now leaning his elbows on the edge of the table in a more comfortable slouching forwards.
"A spirit?" he guesses, reaching for his scattered grasp of the local arcane lore. It nudges at another thing he ought to run by Richard, but not everything can be solved right here, at this table, so he focuses. Edges his thumb around the rim of the glass.
Says, "I fall in battle," a little apologetically, if anything. It's the thing on the way to the other thing he wants to say. "Properly fall, none of my own weird shit saving me that time. But you," gentle emphasis, "bring me back. And you bring Kally back. It was beautiful, that one.
"So, you know. If Oghma's not here, then at least he was making himself useful elsewhere."
no subject
His expression is difficult to read when he looks back up again, his study inscrutable in spite of its weary intensity, or all the more inscrutable for it. Like trying to read a very wet and haggard letter. One written in a cipher.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
And he is. Probably.
“Not that you died,” it’s unnecessary for him to assure. Until he follows it up with, “What was it like?”
no subject
So there's just kind of the start of a smile for the question he settles on, and then some quiet as he thinks back to it.
"It was quick," he says. "You acted quickly. I think that matters. But I also felt as though I'd been asleep for days, waking up. But before that,"
death, not life, that's the question at hand,
"it felt like being lost. Like I didn't even know enough to know where I ought to go, no sense of where I'd been, just shadow. We talked a bit about it, what happens when a person dies. You were certain," or he spoke with certainty, "that I would go where those who'd done more good than bad would go. And perhaps that's what was waiting for me, and I don't think I got to see."
His hand wanders up, skritching Thot absent-mindedly under her chin, as though she were still cat-shaped. "But the way back felt like certainty. I ran to it, that sense of knowing. Woke up covered in blood," he tips his glass, "not all of it mine, but certainly a lot of it.
"It's also very odd," he adds, while they're being a little morbid, "to no longer have the scars to show for it. I can't even impress any girls about it."
no subject
Loxley’s retelling takes time to hold up against his own experience, one lens beside another glassing a distant flame. His recollection hasn’t dimmed over time. Oghma had welcomed him, only to turn him right back around before his bone-deep relief could calcify into resistance.
No rest for the wicked.
Or for Loxley, who has a princess to marry.
He dials back into the sight of Thot with her eyes crushed shut, stretched like a watering can to the scuff of Loxley’s fingertips, snakey muscle firm beneath the fluff of her feathers. A forked tongue sits blue in her parted beak.
“We could carve you up and I could heal them over again with scars,” Silas says. “If it’s integral to the operation.”
no subject
sounds real in affect, but the tip of a look to Richard mid-Thot skritch undermines it. No thanks, goth-dad.
There's a silence that follows, thinking back over their conversation, and before it, his own sense of anxious urgency that had compelled him not simply across the water, but also to pick the lock barring him entry. He ever feels inept about what to do or say about the things that happen to other people, on account of feeling inept about what to do or say about the things that happen to himself.
Still, that isn't any excuse. He says, "I'm sorry you've felt lonesome," and it doesn't ring like hollow sympathy, a sorry for your losses, but of a thing he has contributed to.
no subject
He doesn’t know what to say either, hemmed into a half-hearted rifle through reassurances, platitudes.
“It was nice for a time. To have someone.”
This is the truth, for all that it’s also a stumping out of this line of conversation.
“I should rest,” he adds, to make sure. “I’m glad that you’re here.”
no subject
One that sympathises. They'd talked a while ago of love, or at least of the kinds of partnerships that resemble it. That being a Rifter is a complication. That there was no risk of love happening, for Richard.
Odd reversals all around, really.
"Rest," he bids. "I'll finish off some wine and follow your example."