Two weeks after his arrival, Nicola loses an argument with a well-dressed merchant at the docks. Their debate is held in quiet and rapid Antivan, gestures louder than the words, and reluctantly concluded by a handshake that transitions into a friendlier clasp of his hand to her collar. She's leapt back onto her nimble little ship before he remembers the letter in his pocket, and they have to each lean over the grey, kelpy water for him to hand it across.
She tucks it into her shirt, and then she's busy with ropes and commands, and he's left him with the subject of their disagreement: ten sizable crates, arranged in five stacks of two.
He could lift one of them alone. Maybe. But the rest would not necessarily be here when he came back for them.
He's weighing the relative costs of (a) nine lost crates of shitty table wine, (b) having to broadcast a request for help, and (c) shelling out his own money for some loitering dockhand's time, when he spots (d) a single semi-familiar face or uniform that might be waylaid with a beckoning hand.
gallows.
Whoever has volunteered or been volunteered to teach a newcomer how the eluvians work — and what an eluvian even is — welcome to the room where Riftwatch's Gallows eluvian is kept. Nicola has been quiet. He hasn't expressed any reluctance to learn. However, when the mirror lights up, dully reflective surface giving way to a shimmering glimpse of what's waiting beyond it, he doesn't jump, exactly, but he does go from a curious lean forward to a more alarmed slant back from the mirror.
"I see," he says.
He has seen one of these before. His aunt has one, inert and decorative in her drawing room between a mounted halla head and a gleaming restored mosaic. Should he warn her? He'll consider it.
He does not step bravely forward or volunteer to go first. He says, "In Sirone everyone thinks Riftwatch is enormous. They think there is no other way you could be everywhere and do everything that you do."
kirkwall (open)
Two weeks after his arrival, Nicola loses an argument with a well-dressed merchant at the docks. Their debate is held in quiet and rapid Antivan, gestures louder than the words, and reluctantly concluded by a handshake that transitions into a friendlier clasp of his hand to her collar. She's leapt back onto her nimble little ship before he remembers the letter in his pocket, and they have to each lean over the grey, kelpy water for him to hand it across.
She tucks it into her shirt, and then she's busy with ropes and commands, and he's left him with the subject of their disagreement: ten sizable crates, arranged in five stacks of two.
He could lift one of them alone. Maybe. But the rest would not necessarily be here when he came back for them.
He's weighing the relative costs of (a) nine lost crates of shitty table wine, (b) having to broadcast a request for help, and (c) shelling out his own money for some loitering dockhand's time, when he spots (d) a single semi-familiar face or uniform that might be waylaid with a beckoning hand.
gallows.
Whoever has volunteered or been volunteered to teach a newcomer how the eluvians work — and what an eluvian even is — welcome to the room where Riftwatch's Gallows eluvian is kept. Nicola has been quiet. He hasn't expressed any reluctance to learn. However, when the mirror lights up, dully reflective surface giving way to a shimmering glimpse of what's waiting beyond it, he doesn't jump, exactly, but he does go from a curious lean forward to a more alarmed slant back from the mirror.
"I see," he says.
He has seen one of these before. His aunt has one, inert and decorative in her drawing room between a mounted halla head and a gleaming restored mosaic. Should he warn her? He'll consider it.
He does not step bravely forward or volunteer to go first. He says, "In Sirone everyone thinks Riftwatch is enormous. They think there is no other way you could be everywhere and do everything that you do."