closed.

[luaithre]

WHO: Marcus Rowntree, Cosima Niehaus, Yseult
WHAT: Work-related goat race betting
WHEN: Somewhat backdated
WHERE: Downtown Lowtown
NOTES: n/a

The sun has gone down, and the warehouse is lit with lanterns and braziers. Open fire and the press of bodies makes an already warm evening all the warmer. They've thrown open the larger rear doors, however, and the scent of the ocean carried on cooler breezes forgives some sins, including the smell of goat and goat shit.

You could imagine that Kirkwall is carrying on just fine. Right now, the air is full of conversation as folk place their bets, collect their drinks, chatter and speculate, and probably only half the conversation is about the goats currently being rotated out of their cages, their hindquarters painted with an identifying letter, and paraded about by the owners for the upcoming race.

Marcus' bet is on the grey one who had done little jumps without prompting. For the jumps, and the colouration resembling that of his favourite horse. It was not a very confident amount of money.

But he buys a round, returning now to the table with cups, a large pitcher of ale. He is, perhaps, a little overdressed for the venue, but his coat has been abandoned and slung over the chair back and his sleeves are now properly rolled away from his wrists, so maybe touches of embroidery can be overlooked.

Comments

[youwonscience]

Cosima's mode of dress, mostly Thedosian these days, tends toward the colorful and decorative too, though given the season she's avoided the layers she favors at other times of year in favor of a loose tunic and a relatively slim cut skirt with a knee-high slit for ease of movement. She's piled her hair on top of her head so she can at least enjoy the breeze on the back of her neck.

"Thanks," she says as he returns, and takes a cup of ale gratefully. Even if it won't have the crisp coldness she still sometimes daydreams about (où sont les large Cokes in a movie theater d'antan, etc.), something to drink is welcome. "Have you, uh, followed any of the goats' careers or are we all trying something new?" is mostly a joke, though if one of the other two reveals a heretofore unknown passion for goat racing, it isn't like she won't be genuinely interested.

[hassaran]

Yseult finishes collecting her betting slip from one of the roving bookmakers, a scrap of paper with a couple numbers and initials on it and the letter identifying a black-mottled goat currently snapping its teeth at its cage door, its trainer, and anything else that passes within a foot or two of its mouth. She presses a crease into the slip so it'll stand up on its side and then reaches across to pour the ale Marcus has delivered, filling all three cups before taking the last.

"Flint and Stark and I came here a few times," she says, as if that's a perfectly normal thing that of course they did. "The key seems to be to follow the careers of the trainers, but that's less entertaining that choosing among the goats."

[luaithre]

Seating himself, Marcus fetches at the edge of his folded coat to get at the pocket, listening as he does so. A look slid to Cosima—quiet, dry acknowledgment of their current roles as goat race enthusiast replacements—as he takes out a copper cigarette case, thumbing it open.

"I prefer it to the cockfights," should, by rights, be a joke about the state of work meetings, but if it is, it's delivered like it isn't one. An observation. The goats seem unabused.

The cigarettes within the case are wrapped in tightly pressed brown leaf, and when lit with a pinch of his fingertips and minor enough magic that it hardly needs more than a thought, the smoke it emits is sharp, a little cheap. Times are hard.

"Flint's office was in good order. Most things left undone weren't urgent."

[youwonscience]

"That doesn't shock me. It's not like he made a snap decision, departing." Cosima, who has spent years in Riftwatch cultivating a reputation for patience, resists the urge to comment further on Flint's departure; Yseult has already heard most of what she is willing to say about it, and picking it apart further won't help anything. Still, she can't help the merest hint of an edge in her tone at first.

She lets it go, though, with a sigh, and adds: "I'm glad he handed off everything in good order, though. Replacing someone who doesn't know they're going is a different kind of mess. And," a little lighter, "you're not going to keep randomly finding really old notes from the guy two before you in a foreign language, I assume, which is a fun bonus puzzle when I don't remember there could be important things in them."

[hassaran]

"I suspect Stark would have left you cryptic notes even if he had known he was going," Yseult offers, a glance aside as Marcus lights his cigarette, retracted as she lifts her cup. As for herself, "I found an entire secret drawer in my predecessor's desk and spent a week tapping every stone in the suite just in case there were more." And then installed a few of her own, but maybe she'll leave that as a fun surprise for her own someday successor.

"How are you both finding it so far? All the power and glamour you'd imagined?" Below them the goats for the next race are paraded to the start, bleating loudly.