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[nonvenomous]

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[nonvenomous]

He’s quiet again, the rasp of his breath mingling with the rustle of his bedding when he stretches against it.

It’s a question that doesn’t bear answering, really, an impulse towards dry honesty -- the list of things that don’t concern him would be substantially shorter -- lifted up and let off in a huff of salt, the ghost of a scoff.

“I’m just tired,” he tells her. Tired and unhappy.

“I'll be alright.”

[nonvenomous]

[ He’s glad to hear it, an intake of breath to respond -- and then she starts talking. Richard looks from the hearth back to his bed before bracing to sink down stiff before the former to toast the rest of himself while he listens. ]

We’re tools, Miss Poppell. Some of us are more personable or have more inherent value than others.

[ Where do the Venatori fit into this? Less humanely, he supposes, and doesn’t particularly care. Her last question reminds him of an itch at his ear, and he sniffs against the gorilla impulse to reach after it. ]

You were well on your way to transcending that barrier before you lost your arm.

[tender]

Derrica recognizes the sentiment. I'll be alright standing in for so many things that cannot be easily solved.

But that's the trouble: the understanding that what is troubling Richard cannot be solved by Derrica, as much as she might like to.

"You can tell me, if it helps," is the best offer she can make. Someone to listen. Someone who will likely agree. Her fingers nudge very gently against the bend of his knee, underscoring the silent offer.

[heirring]

Well, yes, I suppose we are and yes, I suppose I have—has Mister Holden shown the great gun to you yet? You must ask after it if he hasn't. I'm very pleased with it.

But surely, Mister Dickerson, the same thing could be said of just about anyone at all. Rifter or otherwise. The fact that we are somewhat more inconveniently reliant on this place and one another is a complication of the matter, not an altogether different state of affairs. And you've yet to answer my question, you know.

[Relentlessness evidently isn't stored in the left arm.]

[nonvenomous]

Ruggedly handsome.

[ He answers her question, only a little short from beneath the babushka bundle of his blankets in his dark room. ]

We are alien by nature. We don’t have roots here.

[ They’ve been around about this before, surely. An expertly-timed squeeze of his fist around his crystal at her mention of the gun closes out the sound of a very long and weary sigh. The break for it is silent but measurable. ]

You know that it isn’t the same. Or am I to believe your marriage to Monsieur de Foncé was predicated on true love and not the privilege of property ownership.

[heirring]

[Somewhere, she balks—the first sound of some aborted answer creaking out of her. The beat of silence which threatens the form is quickly subsumed before it can take hold.]

I owned that house well before marrying Monsieur de Foncé.

[Nailed it.]

[nonvenomous]

Of course, [ says Mr. Dickerson. ] My mistake.

[heirring]

Well I did.

[So there.]

Are you in pursuit of a wife, Mister Dickerson?

[nonvenomous]

[ Dick looks down at the lump of crystal glowing in his palm. He considers, for just a moment, whether or not the coals of his fire are actually capable of consuming it. ]

I would settle for a less legally-binding arrangement.

[heirring]

[Less....legally....binding....]

But how would having a— [She lowers her voice to hiss—] lover [Okay, back to ordinary volume] legitimize a person in any legal fashion?

[nonvenomous]

What an interesting question. Why was it that you contacted me, again?

[nonvenomous]

A slight shake of his head will have to stand in for more specific discouragement.

He follows it with an even look in aside, half apology in earnest, half a probe through her feelings on being turned down for a vent session. A conversation about the totality Dick Dickerson’s troubles isn’t in the cards.

However:

“You asked me previously where my magic comes from.”

[tender]

"I did."

There's no disappointment. The offer is made. It's Richard's choice what to be done with it. If there's no comfort in speaking of his troubles, then she doesn't intend to press.

Maybe he will remember the offer sometime later. Maybe not.

Regardless, she turns in towards him, bringing up one leg to rest carefully on the edge of the bed. Settling in, if he intends to speak of it now.

[nonvenomous]

“There is an entity that comes to me in my dreams,” confessed as matter-of-factly as he might report on a delivery of fresh towels to the baths, Richard adds, by necessity: “Less often, now.”

His affect hasn’t changed with the subject any more than it has with her settling in, tattered and listless under his blanket.

“I thought for a time it might be my god working to reach me through the veil.”

[tender]

Listening to him, Derrica straightens, spine stiffening at the strangeness of Richard's admission.

There is some familiarity. Derrica has drawn spirits to her. She has heard spirits murmuring to her through the Veil. This is a skill she's been honing her whole life, but it doesn't sound as if Richard is referencing something quite the same.

"Do you not think that anymore?" she asks, carefully, softly.

[nonvenomous]

He marks the shift in her posture with a glance, down and up.

“No.” He doesn’t.

And that seems to be the end of it.

Good story, Richard.

“I can never quite make out what he’s saying,” he continues, unprompted. Why not. “It’s cruel, in a way.”

[tender]

"He's not asking you for anything?"

There is, fortunately, no place on the leg nearest her where Derrica could put her hand without hurting him. But the instinct is there, to reach out.

[nonvenomous]

Heat rises beneath the hard planes of his bony face, stings at his eyes, wrung back by a tendon-cracking flex at the back of his jaw. It stays set out of alignment for a moment. He sniffs. Dry, as if in evidence. A steady breath clears the rest.

And he’s back again, locked onto her knuckles at his knee as to assert to himself that they’re the only part of her really here for him to have this very normal and professional conversation with.

“Not directly.”

[tender]

"Not directly?" is gentle prompting.

It is not accompanied by a nudge of her knuckles. The slight pressure of that contact remains unchanged. But her eyes are very intent on his face.

[nonvenomous]

The restoration of dignity makes answering easier with this particular cat out of the bag.

“I’m certain it wants the same things most of you do.”

He, it.

Resentment sits harsh in the lines around his mouth but there is nothing evasive about his reluctance to resume eye contact. Nothing to signal deception.

“I don’t believe there is any cause for concern.”

[tender]

"There is always reason to be cautious with spirits."

A lesson Derrica remembers from the very earliest days of her childhood. Not a warning meant to scare or to discourage, but to bring clarity to what was being done each time a Seer opened themselves up.

"Do you know what I am?" is a gentler question, though her scrutiny of him doesn't lapse as she offers it.

She'd promised information too, on the ferry that night.

[nonvenomous]

“Of course.”

It’s rational to agree. He’d seen the aftermath of the abomination that tore through the Gallows the year prior. Or maybe it was the year before that. The books and records he combed through afterwards were explicit and often well-illustrated.

Never mind the demons he’s seen himself in the field.

“I know that mages skilled in healing magic are more inclined to work closely with spirits of the Fade.”

Speaking about it in the context of study is easier still, second nature crept in to file tender details behind titles and volumes and chapter headings. Some of his splintering has room to smooth itself under that added structure.

[tender]

"We do," is Derrica's first, steady agreement.

She has considered that sometimes, whether her skill in this field is due to her skill in another.

Before she continues, she takes a brief assessment of the room around them. At Richard's knee, her fingers pluck anxiously at the folds of the sheet, the only outward sign of nerves.

"I'm Rivaini," she persists. Richard is not of this world, and will not draw such conclusions himself, apparently, though Derrica knows him to be a diligent researcher. "I know more about spirits because of what we believe, and because of what I was raised to become."

The fabric whispers between them. She forcibly stills her hand, releases the fabric as she straightens once more, folds her hands over her knee.

"Have you heard of the Seers in Rivain?"

[nonvenomous]

It’s the fidgeting that barbs into his periphery and brings his eyeline more presently onto her in aside, the change in posture. He lands on her hands resettled over her knee. Most of his research has been more insular to his own interests and the interests of those close to him -- research around personal safety and potential. Research for the war effort.

The intricacies of Thedosian culture have often evaded him. The humans are cruel to elves and the dwarves are cruel to their own. The Chantry’s approach to tending mages has been primitive and at times desperate. Tevinter is full of interesting ideas and potential and blight.

Still, he’s been around long enough and done enough reading that the Seers in Rivain tugs a thread of recognition, albeit hazy, unspecific.

“I’ve heard of them,” he says, in the hedging tone of one who is supposing only just now that he should’ve read more closely.

[tender]

Helpful.

A little smile tugs at her mouth, nodding.

"I'm one of them," she says quietly, slower, watching Richard's expression closely. "We speak with spirits. Commune with them."

Here, some shared ground. Some expertise that might be useful to him, if he cared to call upon it.

"I hear them," is more to the point. "And I know you're a cautious man, but I hope that you know how cautious you must be when something from beyond tries to converse with you."