faderift | closed: onboarding with hr

While doors are not in any way a novel concept to the Dalish, the finer points of city etiquette certainly can be—and so here he is, entering the Personnel Officer's office without knocking or announcing himself at all.

"This is the Personnel Officer's office, right? Artemaeus?"

He doesn't sound rude, at least—but that may be more down to his accent than to his intention.

Talin enters the infirmary with more curiosity than he had the previous two offices, and only slightly more etiquette—he thought that small blonde in the Quartermaster's office was going to jump out of her skin when he opened the door. Probably not everyone in Riftwatch is so flighty, but also probably best not to risk it.

There's no one in the infirmary, so he takes the time to wander a little, to poke his nose into cabinets and drawers and desks. He's not looking for anything in particular—not now, anyway—just familiarizing himself with the supplies.

Sheer necessity has meant the Riftwatch infirmary operating somewhat differently than a modern hospital.

There’s not always someone on duty, only the list on the door telling you who to crystal this week in the event of an emergency. The reserves of elfroot and embrium and spindleweed are all freely accessible, as are the cabinets of already-brewed healing potions and gauze and towels; the employees here are adults and should be trusted to take only what they need. The only fully-locked areas are the drawers and cabinets beneath the head healer’s desk. Everything is clean, well-organised, if a little makeshift: the tank of water next to a trough at the back of the room only approximates a scrub station.

And when said head healer returns to find an unfamiliar face in the room, Strange pauses, only the slightest hitch in his step before he continues in, carrying a couple textbooks under an arm. Not accusing, just mildly polite: “May I help you?”

He'd be a poor spy if an unexpected presence made him startle; Talin isn't a poor spy. He straightens from where he'd been poking his nose in the embrium and gives the man a quick once-over—human, of course—then smiles.

"Hello. Can you point me to the head healer? I'm a new recruit, I was told meeting with him is part of the process."

“You’ve got him. Doctor Stephen Strange, Head Healer of Riftwatch,” the man says briskly, by way of introduction.

Strange has gotten into the rhythm of this sort of mundane routine paperwork, more common than the medical emergencies he used to field. He both rankles at the tedium and welcomes it; looks like he just has to find intellectual satisfaction elsewhere these days.

So. Case in point: he walks past the new arrival to check a shelf at the back, rifling through papers. He’d managed to catch most of the other new arrivals, but sometimes they slip through the net.

“Welcome. Glad you stopped by, spared me having to track you down across the complex like some courier—”

"I'm helpful that way."

He watches Strange cross the room to rifle through his papers, notes the anchor shard in his palm and the tremor in his hands. Likely not a warrior, then, but that doesn't rule out magic. Confident, too; this isn't a new job, by any stretch.

"Are all infirm-aries like this?" asked with genuine curiosity, a little hitch in the middle of the word where the familiar becomes something new. "I haven't seen many, since I started wandering. This is very... clean."

“Most aren’t,” Strange says, and there’s a touch of automatic confidence in that declaration. (Arrogance, in a different light.) But he’s undoubtedly proud of this space, there’s a warm fondness as he looks it over: everything is tidy, well-appointed, reorganised to his exacting specifications. It’s his territory, his professional realm.

“I heard about the infirmary at Skyhold and it, to be frank, sounded a bit of a shitshow, just a dank stone room. Natural light is important. Cleanliness is important. Running water would be ideal, but that’s still a ways off, basic tower reconstruction took precedence for a while,” he’s talking as if they were already mid-conversation when Talin walked in, an easy ebb-and-flow and train ofthought. He eventually locates whatever he’s looking for in the shelves, then looks back at the elf.

“Have you any interest in medical care?”

"Not for people," sounds kind of dismissive, but Talin would have been fine letting it lie if not for the need to draw more information out of the doctor. He's disinclined to share too much about himself with humans, but he can piecemeal information out when he needs to. "In my clan, I looked after the halla. I can deliver a foal and tend a doe through colic, but people were never my responsibility."

He thinks about it, makes a face, shrugs—like he's reluctant to say this, like it's something he'd prefer not to do but he recognizes the necessity: "I could probably do alright with field medicine for people, though. Just to keep the injured alive until a real healer comes along."

And any training the doctor wants to provide for that would give Talin a good reason to be poking around in the infirmary whenever he wants. Not that it seems likely Riftwatch keeps anything important here, but you never know.

“Hmm.” More sizing up. The stranger looks rangy in the way of someone used to physical activity and being in the field; Riftwatch is rife with the type.

“We’ve a few assistants like that, but I’m more than happy to take more. Not everyone’s guaranteed to be around when an injury comes in, and not everyone can actually manage a field dressing. If you’ve specific experience with animals, however, then you might want to speak to Siegfried Farnon. He’s our veterinarian, he looks after the various pets and service animals of Riftwatch; perhaps he’d like some assistance.”

Strange has found a spare blank copy of the questionnaire, and holds it out to the other man to read, unknowing of the difficulty. “Here. The medical intake form, if you’re a new recruit.”

"Vetter-nare-yan?" sounds extremely dubious. Why use a big fancy Tevene word when plain Trade "animal healer" works just as well? Better yet, use the elvhen, with all twelve apostraphes and the sounds shemlen can't wrap their tongues around—

He's distracted from amusing himself imagining the Healer tripping over a long elvhen word by the questionnaire held out to him, and Talin immediately makes a face, this one entirely genuine. He does not take the questionnaire.

"Read it to me," comes wholly un-self-conscious, halfway between a demand and a request. "It'll be faster than me trying to make sense of it myself."

“… Ah,” Strange says, missing a beat, but then pivoting smoothly to keep going. This part isn’t new, at least. Runasdotten had needed the assistance as well.

“Well, if it’s going to be an interview, then take a seat.” He gestures to the open chair in front of the Head Healer’s desk, and then goes for his own seat behind it, thumbing his crystal to start recording the man’s answers for later transcription. He begins, his voice crisp and professional, starting to run through the questions with the familiarity of well-worn procedure:

— Name?
— Age?
— Are you a rifter? I’m assuming not.
— Do you have an anchor-shard?
— Do you have any pre-existing conditions? Including food- or herb allergies, poor eyesight, lung issues, old troublesome wounds or missing limbs, et cetera.

Talin sits in the offered seat, noting the crystal recording, that the healer doesn't set to transcription himself—the tremor is disruptive enough he can't write, then, struggles with his finer dexterity. That's filed away, and then he turns his attention to answering Strange's questions—Talin, 25, not a rifter, no anchor shard—

and then he stops. The pause is enough to indicate the answer to that isn't no, but it takes a moment for him to decide what he wants to say about it.

"It's not troublesome," he says slowly, glancing at the crystal, "but I did sustain an injury to my back some years ago. As far as I'm aware it healed well, and scarred with no issues."

No physical issues, anyway.

“Oh?”

No judgment, no personal interest, just clean crisp professional curiosity. Strange is taking note of this, too. “What sort of injury? Some old ones can cause lingering issues.”

Pressing slightly in the conversation, just enough to wonder: is this something he needs to know about. Just in case.

It shouldn't be a difficult question, there's no reason to stumble over it—slash wounds, made with a sword, tended to with a mix of magic and herbalism and healed for five years by now—but still, Talin hesitates. He considers what to say, how to give answers without inviting further questions or lingering too long in memories deliberately left untouched for years...

And then he gives up considering and stands instead, turning his back to the healer and pulling his tunic over his head.

Five years ago, when he'd finally recovered enough to be coherent, he'd learned from the Wolf's agents that most of his healing time had been spent fighting off an infection—the wounds themselves weren't all that deep, actually, and the scars reflect that. In hindsight, the almost perfunctory nature of the slashes makes sense: killing the clan was never the goal of the Exalted March, after all. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, convenient target practice for a group of jumpy humans looking to convince themselves they weren't marching to their deaths. The humans weren't trying to kill the whole clan. That they did was, to them, just a happy bonus.

Aside from the two scars on his back, Talin has a handful of others scattered over his skin which suggest wilderness survival more than frequent combat. Either bicep sports black smears too dark for shadows, though it's difficult to tell what the tattoos are meant to be when seen from Stephen's position.

“Oh, well—”

A surprised noise, but then Strange understands what the man’s doing. He rises and circles around the desk to get closer to Talin’s back and assess the old injuries. And they are old: years gone, so it isn’t exactly the sort of thing which seems to require active monitoring, but…

But the specific location on the back gives him pause, and brings it closer to his realm of expertise.

“Were those from a sword?” the doctor asks, and perhaps it helps that there is absolutely no attempt at warmth or pity in his voice. They’re complete strangers to each other, newly met. He doesn’t actually care. This is another blue sheet-wrapped carved-up body for inspection and analysis. A professional puzzle, a file to jot down.

“It looks like they’ve healed up well enough, but spinal injuries could cause ongoing issues. Did it seem like it nicked the spine at the time? Have you had any lingering pain or loss of movement or sensation in the lower half of your body?”

It's far from usual for Talin to have his back bared for such scrutiny, but if he's uncomfortable, it doesn't show. He holds still under the doctor's professional assessment, breathing with nary a tremble or clenched fist.

"Hard to say what I felt at the time," given everything else going on around him, how the physical pain was hardly a needleprick to the pain in his heart, "it hurt. I fell. Face-down, almost drowned,"

in a puddle—barely a puddle, just a soggy patch of underbrush, wet enough to clog the noise and obstruct the lungs,

"got infected, that might have gone deeper in the spine than the sword. I don't remember any of that, I woke up healed. Magic, I was told, as complete as could be managed. No pain, no paralysis. Just the scars to remember it by."

“Ah, well. That’s good.”

Absolutely none of it is good, but Strange is clearing his throat and hemming-and-hawing his way through this particular stage of the talk, trying to skirt those conversational potholes.

Back to more solid ground, fumbling his way back to professionality. He doesn’t ask what circumstances might have left Talin Shira’nehn face-down drowning in a puddle, a sword in his back. He drums through the rest of the rest of the consultation at businesslike clip, foraging only pertinent details as needed, along with a polite little You can put your shirt back on now.

There’s a story there, there must be, but he doesn’t pry for more. The other man’s history is his own.

[ nearly done, just the captain of the watch and the griffon keeper to go—which would be more comforting if he could find the captain of the watch anywhere in her office, or the central tower at all.

it takes a while for talin to give up the search and pull out his sending crystal, so it's later afternoon when gwenaëlle gets the call. ]

Captain Baudin, hello. I'm a new recruit, I was told to report to you as part of my first day's rounds, but you're not in your office.

( briskly— )

New Forces recruit?

( she does keep track; it'd be annoying to have missed one. )

Scouting, [ she didn't miss anything, ] does that matter?

Someone's given you the Forces list, then. Did you need something from me specifically?

Edited 2024-10-11 19:12 (UTC)

Oh. No, not particularly. I... don't need to tell anyone how I fight?

[ surely that is someone's business here, right, not just the little blonde? she was very clear that she supplies the weapons, she doesn't tell anyone how to use them. ]

You don't need to tell me, specifically, how you fight unless you're intending to voluntarily add guard duty to your regular obligations. Which you are more than welcome to do but will not be paid anything extra for pulling shifts for another division.

It's useful in general, and I like to know who I don't have to prioritise in an evacuation. But I don't handle new recruits for other divisions and you are not mandatorily obligated to inform me. If you specifically want to have a particular discussion, voluntarily, I'm on the houseboat near the ferry landing and knock first.

[ ...well, if leadership is going to invite him to its home, who is he to say no? ]

I don't mind signing up for guard duty. I'll be at your door shortly.

[ which he is, with a brisk knock, mostly because she told him to. ]

The human man who opens the door is tall, gaunt, older; over his shoulder, a portrait of an elven woman of indeterminate age and striking beauty. The boat itself is immediately, upon that door opening, a far more luxurious thing than its ramshackle and forboding exterior seems to suggest. Polished wood, draped hangings, and vibrantly coloured lamps feature prominently from the first foyer, a backdrop that its apparent gatekeeper is slightly at odds with in his severe, workmanlike greys.

“If that's not the confused scout tell them to fuck off, we're busy,”

—is also from over his shoulder, further into the interior, and immediately recognisable, so probably this guy isn't Captain Baudin.

Definitely not Captain Baudin says, unfazed, “Are you expected?”

Edited 2024-10-12 06:09 (UTC)

With everything about the boat and its occupants being so very interesting, it's difficult to choose what to focus on first. Talin notes the disparity between the interior and the exterior of the house, the human servant, the elf in the portrait,

(assumptions are foolish but wouldn't it be nice if that was the Captain and not her lover, or her servant, or her mistress, or)

and he gives the man a sort of self-depricating smile.

"Confused scout, reporting for volunteer watch assignment."

First impression: unfortunately, that is not the woman in the portrait, though there's a split second where he'd be forgiven for mistaking them: the same pendant hangs around her neck, and the way she tilts her head and studies him is an almost note-perfect recreation, the same measuring expression.

It strikes Guilfoyle, a step ahead of him ushering him through, a blow that he has become accustomed to.

(There are worse things she might have grown into than her mother's daughter.)

But the face is wrong and the ears are round where a kerchief is holding her hair up and out of her way, and she's missing an eye (covered by a patch, today, plain black), and scars that that woman did not have scrape down her chest where her bodice is cut habitually low. She doesn't look like much of a captain of the guard; she presently looks like a better class of washer-woman, gesturing Talin out onto the balcony,

“This is a fucking nightmare to set up,” she informs him, “so we'll talk while I work. You come out here and you,” pointing at Guilfoyle, “go and eat something, for pity's sake. He'll spot me, it'd be a bad look if I fell into the harbour and died his first day.”

There continues, improbably, to be so much for Talin to pay attention to in this boat.

His pause in the doorway lasts only a moment before he steps the rest of the way past the servant, dropping his pack and rolling up his sleeves.

"I can see why you wouldn't be able to come to the office," observed in the lilting accent characteristic of the Dalish. To her man, he promises "She won't fall," and though Talin's tone is perfectly serious there is a glint in his eye that suggests he's as like to ensure that by clambering out the window with her as anything else.

"Talin," less talon than tah-lean, "here to sign up for watch duty, Captain."

The this in question is a slightly precarious set up that appears must be secured somewhere much further up— two buckets, one of hot, soapy water and one with various and sundry cleaning accoutrements within, and a second rope (or something like it, softer, fabric), the purpose of which becomes evident when she winds her foot into it and boosts herself up again.

“Gwenaëlle,” she says, in turn, because if he's only ever seen it written down with the rest of her name he is unlikely to guess guh-nayl, the w in her name entirely absent in pronunciation. “I can make a note of your volunteering when I'm in my office and running the roster, and you can inform your division, but obviously if the Scoutmaster needs you elsewhere, your actual work will take precedence. Just try and make sure I don't hear about it thirty minutes before I need someone on your shift.”

She works as she talks; she has the particular painstaking scrutiny of someone who has not grown up performing menial, physical labour, feels the need to check her work slightly too much, only to be right to have done it because she has to go back over something. This does not discernibly slow down her approach to the conversation.

“Generally, I like to know what weapons you already have and what you would benefit from in the armoury, as well as anything else I need to take account of in where to assign you.”

He leans one shoulder against the wall, arms crossed, and watches her through the open window. The Captain doesn't look like the kind of woman who should be cleaning her own house, despite her dress and present occupation—there's an unfamiliarity with the work that suggests she's new to it, not to mention that she has some kind of servant anyway. Makes one wonder why she's out there in the first place—but far be it from Talin to judge a human for actually getting her own hands dirty.

"I'm best with daggers," he says, "brought my own. Not a spectacular shot, but I'm familiar with bows, don't have one. I have some leather for armor, could do with a full set. Do you have room out there for a helping hand?"

He smiles at her, a little mischievous, but mostly in an adrenaline-junkie way.

"Looks fun."

She laughs—

“I’d let you,” she admits, “but the purpose of the exercise is that there’s not always going to be anyone else to help.”

This, Gwenaëlle states casually as fact, not an excess of caution for a possible ill-outcome but something impending, inevitable, as one prepares for anticipated changes in weather. There’s plenty that Stephen, too, can help to manage about their home; some things his hands are not up to, and the finicky nature of getting up and down the exterior is almost certainly one of them.

A tilt of her head in the direction Guilfoyle had left, “He’s very bossy about it,” with real affection.

"Shame," genuinely, Talin wants to climb around the outside of this boat so bad, but he lets it go easily enough, settling against the wall to watch the Captain with a careful eye to her safety.

"Your man seems spry enough," he says, though it's at least half platitude—he came here to sign up for the watch, this has nothing to do with that, how do you be polite about some aristocrat's beloved but decrepit help? This was not in the Dread Wolf's handbook.

"Has he been with you long?"

Edited 2025-03-05 19:18 (UTC)

Gwenaëlle’s dry smile says no, he doesn’t, but what she says is—

“He joined me here when he retired. I find it’s useful to find him things to do, or else he starts finding them for himself and he also thinks he’s a good deal spryer than he is.” ‘Sitting down tasks’, she calls them. “He’d not think much of me calling it pride, probably.”

He also doesn’t think much of it when she refers to the bequest that funds his lifestyle now his jointure, but where she’ll bluntly share her life story with a stranger, sharing that particular jest would feel like an invasion of his privacy and the peculiar relationship he has shared with her family for so long now.

“I don’t know precisely how long he worked for l’Comte de Vauquelin,” she adds, considering, “but I’ve always believed he and my mother came to his employ around the same time. I don’t know that that’s actually true, come to it.”

"Nothing wrong with a little pride," he feels compelled to say, "until it gets someone killed, anyway."

At that point even Talin, disposed as he is to see pride as a virtue, would have to concede its detriments.

But alright, hey, new topic—and a chance to genuinely learn something, this shemlen business of titles has always confused him.

"I'm not the best judge," he says, slowly, "your customs can be difficult to understand for someone born outside of them. But it strikes me as odd that the daughter of a comte's servant has her own boat, and inherited the serving man."

He is not, cross his heart, seeking to offend—though he wouldn't be surprised if he has even so, people get so prickly about status, and doubly so when their parents are involved.

A fair question; she notes his willingness to ask it, where others might’ve elected not to take the risk. Pursued it elsewhere, or lost interest in doing so before the chance arose. It’s not a mark against him — nor, really, a mark for. It’s just shading in elements of a picture that will take time to come into full focus.

“He serves at his own pleasure these days,” she says, dry; their dynamic is familiar and comfortable, and the moreso now for the discomfiting instances of his deciding not to do as she wishes.

What once was instruction is now conversation— the distinction messy but necessary. Not better or worse, just different. Sadder if she thinks about it too hard.

“Anyway. My lord father’s father fucked his way into a title; married up, got hers. My lord father, l’Comte, fucked his way out of it. The bastard child of his chatelaine cannot be his heir, so it was really quite profoundly awkward for him to have passed me off as such for as long as he got away with doing— when he died at Ghislain, his titles, estate and assets passed back into the bloodstained hands of that bitch on the throne.”

She says it very casually. Fuck Celene forever!!

“Before that disgrace, I was the favourite grandchild of my lady mother’s father, l’Duc de Coucy, who didn’t see any reason why that should change only because we share no blood. He paid for the boat. He’s also old enough to have personally put the boot in Ferelden, and Guilfoyle not much younger, so—”

An illustrative tilt of her hand. She landed soft, after her fall from grace; she’s not stupid enough to only wring her hands in and over temporary luxury. The ability to send her grandfather her bills won’t last forever. She needs to know what happens after; it needs to be her decision.

Everyone at Riftwatch is remarkably forthcoming; has Talin ever learned so much about one person with just one question?

So. A bastard Orlesian highblood who hates Celene with an impressive vehemence—coupled with the portrait downstairs, elf-blood seems a likely enough explanation. Not yet likely enough that he's willing to comment on it (the humans fought a whole war about the Orlesian throne, didn't they, perhaps the Captain's resentment is to do with that) but it is, at least, something they have in common. That's not something he can say often about Orlesians.

"Not that I have much experience with Orlesians to judge by," drily, but with genuine esteem for her implied too, "but I can't imagine many of your peers would have taken this opportunity to do much more than whine about what they're owed."

If the stories he's heard from their servants among Fen'Harel's agents are anything to go by, anyway, and he's inclined to believe they are.

After a moment, he looks to her, assessing, considering what to ask next. He was rewarded for his boldness once already, does he dare to try again?

Stupid question, of course he does.

"I know why my People tend to spit on the Empress's name. Haven't seen a human do it before, though."

“It’s probably similar,” she says, drolly, squeezing out her washcloth and considering the shape of the boat that she’s dangling from as they speak. This thing around which she has built so much certainty in recent years, and the shape of this conversation something that once would have frightened her beyond the telling of it.

It seems so pointless to be cagey or circumspect about any of it, now. He could hear it from any number of sources if he wished; why pretend otherwise, when she can say in her own words when asked?

(Stephen had found it a little confronting, too, when they first met.)

“You walked past my mother on the way in.” A statement that doesn’t sound like she assumes he realised that, rather establishing a premise she assumes he hasn’t taken for granted, “My sisters were in Halamshiral when Celene butchered it. Baudin is a city elf’s name.”

And fallen out of use among humans generations earlier as a result; her complicated feelings on having claimed it to share with her mother and sisters when it had been given to them by a man she’d never known nor had any claim on are— another story. Another time.

For as droll as she just was, that is... not the answer he was expecting. Talin doesn't freeze, exactly, doesn't look at the Captain as if for the first time, eyes opened anew,

( screams all around him, or else drunken laughter, smell of woodsmoke and cooked meat. flash of red in the corner of his eyes as bela runs next to him, sulana strapped to her back, slow for his sake. halla scream. his lungs ache, legs burn, can't think about how many bodies he's run past )

because it's not an unfamiliar story. Sometimes it feels as though half of Fen'Harel's agents come from Halamshiral, and the other half have their own stories, their own horrors. If Talin fell to pieces about his losses every time some elf talked about theirs, he'd do nothing else for the rest of his life, even if he were immortal. He has too much to do.

She's not an elf.

His eyes flicker on Gwenaëlle's, looking at her without seeing for a long moment before he blinks. Inhales. Crosses his arms and looks at the wall instead.

"Ir abelas," he says, low and serious. "I'm sorry, lethallan."

He's called elf-bloods lethallin before, but never quite so sincerely.

Gwenaëlle looks back at him for what feels like an entire age, a moment of solemnity amongst soap suds and her firm grip on the ropes holding her in place at the side of her ridiculous boat. She’s thinking of Halamshiral, but she’s thinking of the sound she hadn’t known immediately was a Dalish arrow landing in Guenievre’s throat, too, of the butchered shape of Herian Amsel’s ear, of the tension that unavoidably existed in Skyhold and in the Gallows when their Dalish population was higher and tolerances lower.

Despite her active disinterest — to Thranduil’s ongoing despair, once — she hasn’t avoided understanding enough of the elvhen she’s encountered to not recognise both what he’s saying to her and in its context, its significance. That is is significant. That the average Dalish elf has a far greater reason to distrust her than the reverse, she knows that; knows how much power was in her hands to harm, when she was angriest and bleeding her grief, how little could be turned against her.

And here, a thing that she’s not offered to any Dalish elves, nor been offered in return: kindness.

She fixes her gaze back on her work,

“My ex-husband is a rifted elf,” she says, “and he could go places and ask things I couldn’t. He was able to learn what had happened to them for my mother, before her death. Not everyone even gets to know. I know that. Couldn’t give me any chevalier names, of course, but what’re you going to do.”

Her hand flexes, like the answer to that question might have been terrorism in another life.

“Thank you,” is tacked on with an awkwardness that makes its sincerity obvious, in turn; an unexpected thing.

Talin might demur her gratitude in another moment, awkwardly as it was offered. Wave it away, play that there's nothing out of the ordinary in what he's said.

He meets her eyes and nods, just once. Thanks accepted. He understands what his words mean, what they signify. It's not about what he said.

His throat burns with an answering grief. I'll never know the names of the men who killed my bondmate. The charred-flesh smell of my people will never leave me. The ones who fell to their swords were the lucky ones, and I the unluckiest of them all, standing here. Your sisters would not have been better off alive, just dead in a different way.

A board creaks outside the room, and Talin looks to the door.

"Is there a roster I need to make my mark on? I think I hear your man coming back."

Left for last as a reward to himself for getting through the other meetings, Talin enters the Eyrie at dusk. His cautious expression immediately melts into a smile of delighted wonder at his first glimpse of a griffon, and he stops in the stairwell, arrested by the sight of them. They barely take notice of him, used to the comings and goings of their caretakers, so Talin gets to quietly observe them for a little while, watching who seems friendly and who seems to be in charge.

After a few minutes, Talin approaches the largest griffon, confident but still deferential to her status. He looks not-quite at her, moving slowly and predictably.

"Andaran atish'an, friend," he greets, smiling at the griffon without showing teeth.

Clarisse is in and out of the eyrie today, as she is most days she's in the Gallows. She enters just in time to see a man she doesn't recognize approaching Blunder Supreme, but this doesn't phase her. For one thing, he obviously means no harm. For another, she's heard about a new recruit. For a third, she trusts Blunder to fuck up anyone who tries to mess with her.

"That's Blunder Supreme," she says, as she pours a smelly bucketful of dead fish near one of the exposed ledges. Then, wiping her hands on her shirt, "You're the new guy, right? I'm Clarisse, Griffon Keeper."

A new voice doesn't immediately draw Talin's attention away from the griffon—she seems fine now, but he doesn't want to find out what happens if he gives her his back—but he does angle himself slightly toward Clarisse to indicate he's listening, and raises his voice to respond.

"That's me. Talin. Hello, Griffon Keeper."

Blunder Supreme is... a name, but that's to be expected with griffons, isn't it—even Warden Garahel's was named Crookytail. Once he's confident he can turn away from Blunder without risking an attack, Talin turns fully to Clarisse and gives her a friendly wave (tall, even for a human woman, well-muscled, confident and grounded when she moves, she's a fighter and she has an anchor shard besides, maybe a Rifter?) from across the Eyrie.

"I was told to report to you for some questions. —oh." He snaps his fingers and point at her, just remembered something, "are these only for certain divisions? I might have got the Forces list by mistake, ended up on voluntary watch duty. Don't mind watch so much but I do wanna know if I'm doing this all wrong."

closed: onboarding with hr

for bene, @altusimperius

for stephen, @portalling

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a million gomens orz

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🎀

for gwenaëlle, @elegiaque

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action.

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clearing my inbox, feel free to drop!

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for clarisse, @laruetheday

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clearing out my inbox, feel free to drop!