faderift | open + closed;

WHO: Viktor + Abby + Bastien + Edgard + Ellis + Mobius + Richard + Stephen + Tony
WHAT: catch-all for November
WHEN: now, kind of, but also whenever
WHERE: around the Gallows, particularly the library and Research division workroom
NOTES: Open to all/any, wildcards and tweaks welcome. Will match tag format. Content warning for terminal illness in some threads; will avoid on request. Also!! Hit me up if you want to share a job.

Nighttime cracks an eye to gloaming dawn, to a fog moving at a steady crawl between the Gallows and Kirkwall proper, like it's a huge vessel passing by, like it's going somewhere. Fleeing the sun, maybe. A futile effort.

Viktor likewise cracks an eye, two eyes, squints through a fog receding. He raises his head, wipes his mouth, drags a little reading glass on a chain into the gutter and shuts the book around it. On Astrariums, the cover says. Has he ever put his head down 'just to rest' and not ended up warping at least one page with biological humidity?

Since no one's kicked him out of it—or at least had any success to date, should they have tried—this single side room on the lowest floor of the library has fully evolved into a combination office and living space. From it Viktor emerges with crazy hair and an armful of other books, squinting and snuffling and stiff, taps over to the return cart stationed nearby, and adds them to his prior deposits. He then leaves with the cart; his crutch, leaned out of the way, stays behind.

From there he moves slowly between aisles, stopping here and there to slide a book into place, or to leave it out conspicuously so someone who climbs ladders can put it back where it lives. Once in a while he'll pause with a hand on the shelf to yield to a coughing fit, or else to wait for some other silent thing to pass, before moving on.

No one asks him to do this, he just does it.

Other times, he may be found on any library floor, or back in his ('his') little side room, either busy at the table, or asleep on the settee. (Or asleep at the table. Again.) The door is often open, sometimes left unlatched and open a crack.

On rare occasions he may be found on the library's stone balcony, either sitting alone on a bench (also stone), or leaning on the balustrade (is anything not made of stone here) to look out over the sea, nursing some private melancholy.

Later, when the tower begins to sound like it's waking up, Viktor makes the climb to the seventh floor and assumes his spot in the Research workroom. Settles his bony backside on the stool. Spins a dry pen around his thumb while he thinks.

It looks like he's pondering some deep mystery; what he's thinking, really, is that it's annoying that no one exists here who can check his work on this page or the pages beneath it. (Annoying, upsetting, a constant low ache.) No one needs to check that half of his work. It's fine. He knows it's fine. Still—

Should any be present, he might ask of someone he knows has worked with local runes,

"Can I run something past you?"

Or, of a rifter, or else anyone he's hardly spoken to,

"How well versed are you in the native runic system?"

Or it's any other day and he's just toiling away in here like anyone else might be. Coworkers will have found he tends to respond at least lukewarmly to working chatter, and that if he doesn't want to be interrupted, they won't have to guess—they'll know.

The sound of coughing follows him everywhere: a herald of his arrival, a sign of his otherwise quiet presence, a dry barking down the hall.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

As he holds the thaumoscope in his right hand, Viktor opens the left roughly two feet out, the anchor shard seated like a dim green scar in his palm.

"Keep an eye on this one especially," he says, indicating which with the angle of his thumb. "The way it jumps." The meters' sedate clicks of registration pick up as he brings it in closer; he finishes nearly touching it, then resets his position.

"And now..."

This time, his fingers spread and stiffen, not quite a claw, like he's imagining he must keep a hold on some large invisible sphere. A cord in his wrist stands out. Flexion at the inside of his elbow. Effort shows on his face, the set of his mouth, his nostrils. Just as his hand begins a faint trembling under the strain of it, that quiet green crease suddenly snaps into sizzling acid glow. At once, the thaumoscope crackles its excitement—it grows to an excited fizz of tiny sounds, the meters pipping madly as his palm comes near.

“Like a Geiger counter,” Strange mutters as he leans in to look genuinely fascinated, forgetting for a second that Geiger means absolutely nothing to the other man. His blue-green eyes follow that little jump of the needle, the buzz and click of noise alerting to Viktor’s flex of his anchor abilities.

“So I’m assuming the arrival system is like a larger extension of this, maybe?” Radar, he wants to say radar but he really needs to stop with terminology which probably doesn’t carry over, “It pings on magic with varying sensitivity, and presumably the opening rifts are an even larger outburst of magical energy—”

And they discuss, and that’s how they while away the rest of the afternoon: Viktor showing him around, explaining the intricacies of the thaumoscope and how to use it, eventually taking a tour through the ARRIVED system. They don’t come across anything earthshatteringly new, but they get to play around with the toys in the Research division — which is a good enough way to kill a day, and mucking around with the artifacts feels enough like Christmas that the newer rifter is, frankly, delighted.

open + closed;

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wrap or yrs to close?