[OPEN]

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria and YOU
WHAT: Catch-all for post-Starkhaven
WHEN: Now!
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall
NOTES: n/a, will add if applicable

THE (UNSTAFFED) DINING HALL.

One of the Gallows' towers keeps a kitchen, and a fire in its hearth which services the prodigious main hall. At this particular hour in the morning, that one may in fact presently be seeing to the feeding and watering of Riftwatch's various late risers who may yet be avoiding facing the truly atrocious weather of the day.

This one, however, —that hall's twin in the opposite tower—has been turned to a far more critical business. With buckets of late winter and/or early spring rain falling out of doors, the great underutilized space is—

being cleared of its various heavy furniture at Wysteria's shrill, too-cheerful-for-the-hour, direction. If someone had been unlucky enough to have breakfasted in the same early hour as herself, they may have been pressed into this task of lifting and carrying: shifting unused benches and various scattered tables to the walls of the room so as to leave the center of the hall cleared.

"Wait, wait. It's only just occurred to me. Perhaps we should move two of the tables over before the hearth and turn them on their sides to act as a sort of backstop," Wysteria is saying while, about their heels, a small white dog does his level best to put himself underfoot.

Or, later, once the space has been properly rearranged, is acting as a testing ground for various Research Division atrocities. The poor weather will not delay Madame de Foncé's very strict trial schedule. She has very strictly laid out a great array of materials to one side of the hall, including but not limited to: a six by six square of woven metal strips; a light net halfway to being packed inside of a wooden tube, a prodigious amount of sail cloth wrapped in a tangle of ropes, and a straw padded crate of palm-sized jars with wicks sticking ominously out of their tops, and...a rudimentary bicycle.

THE KIRKWALL DOCKS.

A familiar young woman is standing on one of the low stone walls that zigs and zags about, slicing the Kirkwall docks into its various ramps and stairs and overhangs. She has a little spyglass tucked against her eye, and is presently watching the mouth of the harbor—where a fat mercantile ship is currently wallowing against the weather in an attempt to work itself toward its anchorage—with considerable interest.

So much interest, in fact, that she is presently blind to the pair of shifty looking teenaged boys on the landing behind her who are clearly giving some serious consideration to how they might manage slicing the purse strings running from her chatelaine to her skirt pockets, and whether they could fish away the prize of the purse quickly enough to avoid capture if they made a go at shoving her off the wall.

AN AMBUSH. (wildcard with a twist; please describe what your character is up to and I'll riff off it.)

To describe Wysteria de Foncé as a relentless act of nature devised to make all persons about her thankful for the comparative peace afforded by her absence would be rude. It also wouldn't always be entirely unfair given the woman's propensity for appearing at the most inopportune of moments. There is a particularly uncanny way in which she turns her attention upon her desired victim with the ominous focus of a crossbow swiveling to aim a bolt directly down a helm's eye slot, and a marked tenacity with which she will cross any measure of distance and navigate any obstacle to reach the aforementioned target of her interests.

So maybe Wysteria is suddenly adjusting her trajectory to intercept, skirts swishing about her heels; or maybe she is rushing down a Kirkwall stairwell; or calling "You! I've a very important matter to discuss with you! Wait a moment, I'll be right down!" from the upstairs window of an unlikely Lowtown public house; or merely right there on the other side of the door when it's opened.

Regardless, the trap is sprung. Escape is futile.

Comments

[untiltheyarent]

Why would you do this here is the first question that comes to mind, followed closely by why would you do this at all, but Fifi isn't in the business of pestering people for their reasoning behind poor decisions. Instead, she stares at the spot a little longer to get used to its existence, in the meantime shuffling through all the potential ways to handle it.
This is rather outside the sphere of her knowledge.

"Have you," she stammers, "mentioned it to the Provost?" He's a nerd, right? "I can't say I've worked with... dracolisk venom."

[heirring]

"Oh no. That hardly seems necessary," is the sort of thing which might very easily sound like a lie or a young lady, how shall we say, attempting to cover her ass. But not so. She sounds completely genuine. Mister Stark has more important things to concern himself with, and what does he particularly care about the state of her carpet? No, her primarily concern has entirely to do with—

"I believe our visiting Chantry Mother is touring some of these floors today, and I am largely only concerned for the smell."

(Which is in fact quite pungent—burning fibres and a rancid biological stench.)

[untiltheyarent]

Fifi's mouth opens, then closes again, leaving an expression one might describe as Vexed, With A Tinge of Impending Doom. Merde, she will be in here today. There's no time.

Quickly scanning the room, and then peering back out into the hall, a plan begins to take form.
"This is a storage room," she declares, "filled with odds and ends, nothing worth looking at for too long." Her eyes cut to Wysteria's. Do You Catch My Drift

[heirring]

"But it isn't a—" she begins to protest instantly, only to interrupt herself with an 'Oh!' at the best of That Look.

Yes of course. A storage room.

"Perhaps then we might only concern ourselves with covering or concealing the odor so it doesn't leech into the corridor. For the present, of course. At some point I suspect the venom must stop, er, doing what it is currently doing."

[untiltheyarent]

"One hopes," Fifi says so quietly as to be potentially inaudible, and turns back toward the hall. "Find things to put in here," she instructs Wysteria, "I'll be back with some natron."

[heirring]

"Yes, all right. I'll find, er, something."

Does not, strictly speaking, sound particularly promising as to Wysteria's ability to scrounge objects to fill the room with. But she has already pulled the door shut again, and is spinning on her heel to hurry off in search of anything that might be piled directly inside the door.

"Best of luck! We will reconvene in five minutes!" She calls back across her shoulder, hard soled little boots clattering rapidly off.

[untiltheyarent]

Will we, Fifi wants to say, but instead just sighs and goes her own way. She'll reconvene when she damn well pleases (it's just, you know, likely to be sooner than in five minutes).