Inbox - Fade Rift

[nonvenomous]

Book/crystal/correspondence/action/whatever you desire.

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[sulahnan]

[ Athessa laughs softly, because there he goes doing exactly what she just said he does. ]

Wish more people saw things that way.

action;

[heirring]

A corner is turned. Should one prefer to evade harrassment or the kind of conversation which may in some circles constitute as battery, it might be described as an inauspicious one.

"Oh, Mr. Dickerson!" Wysteria has to check her momentum to keep from plowing directly into him as she comes hustling around from the other direction. She huffs. She puffs. She takes him by the elbow and laughs. "What a fortuitous meeting this is! I had just been thinking to myself that we ought to arrange to speak again in private. Mr. Fitz is exceedingly sharp, of course, but I believe the pair of us to be something like kindred spirits on a different level entirely. You agree, don't you?"

[nonvenomous]

[ Having retreated into thought (or one of a very few feelings), Richard keeps quiet. His breathing slows, and he jolts, starting half-awake, catching a glimpse of Athessa under his elbow, and settling in again. If she waits him out long enough, he’ll drift off and start to snore, right out there on the rampart. ]

[sulahnan]

[ She zones out long enough for him to fall asleep, and for a few minutes she doesn't make the very obvious connection between him and the sound of his snoring.

Veeeery carefully she slips off the ledge above him, reaching her leg over to step past his form onto the rampart. She'll tip toe for a few steps, then walk normally to the nearest stairwell.

When she returns maybe five minutes later, it's with a blanket to carefully drape over him. ]

[nonvenomous]

It all happens so quickly.

Like a snail plucked up from a leaf by fingers faster than anything it can fathom, Richard is disrupted into delay. The signal from his brain to put up resistance misfires; he’s already taken a few steps before he hoods his brow and tenses in her grasp -- a kind of musculoskeletal sucking in of the feelers that mark mollusks as curious, happy and free.

"Miss Poppell, I --"

He looks back to the corner she’s already pulled him well away from. Where was he even going? What is his excuse?

"I’m not sure I follow."

[heirring]

In the way of all determined scientists, the tension is as an invitation. She hooks her arm cheerfully about his, hooking elbow to elbow so she might be close indeed and easily heard when she says, in levels which speak to friendly conspiracy, "You are from a place which seems quite inundated with magic. And if I'm not mistaken, some element of it has followed you here."

She touches the side of her nose knowingly. "You of course recall my field of study."

[nonvenomous]

Right away, Mr. Dickerson’s intensity is at odds with his plea of ignorance, composure jolted by the conibear snap of Wysteria Poppell’s Presence. At the same time he’s trying to track where she’s taking him, he’s struggling to recall any scrap of magical toilet paper that might have clung on to give him away, his eyes fixed cold ahead while his mind races.

An absent tip of his chin is the best assurance he can offer that he hasn’t forgotten her field.

When he finally glances over to see her nose touch, it’s a naked attempt to carve through good cheer and into her intent.

[heirring]

Regrettably, the good cheer is very dense indeed and mingled so conclusively with ambition that it is difficult to define where one begins and the other terminates.

"That severe look will not save you from me, Mr. Dickerson. Yet you may rest easy, for I will say nothing of the matter to anyone else if you would prefer to continue to act as being removed from the question so to speak. Given Thedas' particular ideas about magic, I would not fault anyone with the option who might distance themselves from any direct relation to it. However, I think it would be marvelously productive if there were some honesty between us."

That earlier corner is a distant memory, but another one has arrived presently. Wysteria levers him about it, and they are suddenly in a markedly more narrow landing leading into a very narrow twisting staircase. Once upon a time, this was likely some back way by which all sorts of atrocities in the fortress might be reached more quickly. Today, it apparently represents a different kind of shortcut as Wysteria stops them here at the top of the stairwell rather than leading them down it. Nonetheless, they are out of easy line of sight.

"You see, there is so much to be discussed with respect to the workings of magic from beyond the Fade in this world. And I am near to bursting with curiosity as to the nature of the particular artifact you have on your person."

[nonvenomous]

That severe look will not save you from me, his eyes narrow a shade, challenge knotted up subtle at the back of his jaw -- there is a coiling quality to his reproach, not quite an invitation to try him. But he is listening, and as much as cutting the shit has evaporated the affable scholar piece of his persona, there is a genuine spark of interest in his scrutiny.

They’ve stopped. Cooler air creeps up the stair from below. Rather than glance, he keeps his eyes on her, still measuring through the one-man-band of her enthusiasm.

“On the subject of honesty,” he says, even and direct after a pause, “I am very curious to know how this came to your attention.”

WHO. TOLD.

[heirring]

"Call it a keen sense of observation," she replies automatically, and then seems to think better of it for she pauses, does what Richard had not - which is to say, she glances down the stairwell and also to the corridor she had hooked and reeled him in from -, and then adds with a certain air of sotto voce delicacy: "I'm rather good at seeing things. Which is to say actually seeing. Of course Kirkwall and the activity of the Gallows is so suffused with magic that it is all but impossible to say where one strange bit of enchantment ends and the other begins, and at first I hardly recognized the difference. But over the course of our conversation in the Hightown house, it slowly became apparent to me that something was different. It is something like drinking wine, you see. At first it all just tastes like wine and one cannot begin to easily describe the varietals."

Their elbows are still linked together.

[wythersake]

I do need the name of your tailor.

[nonvenomous]

Their elbows are still linked together.

Richard is attentive after the fashion of a hawk with a snake in his talons, even if more of the reverse is true -- marking every pause and glance without looking away from Poppell, lest she juke him with some whisper or gesture sleighted between them. He is not tall or broad enough to loom -- just watchful, and suspicious to his bones. What an odd introduction to a conspiracy.

When he answers, it is at first in a quiet, sibilant tongue, the language unfamiliar to her ears.

There is magic stirring at his shoulder, slender along the back of his neck. It winds down his sleeve, away from the constriction of their joined elbows, and out around the heel of his thumb. Wysteria will feel or see or otherwise sense keenly the grass blade tickle of a little black tongue forked against her wrist before the garter snake behind it weeble-wobbles in search of a pathway through her fingers.

In trade, in light of her two way glance, Richard asks her: “Is this a random stairwell?”

[nonvenomous]

Frankly if you're looking for best dressed you'd be better served by checking in with Commander Flint.

[wythersake]

I'll be sure to check in, the next time I need rob a children's theatre. But between the two of us, the jungle left him in tatters —

[ it left everyone in tatters. present company excluded. ]

[nonvenomous]

[nonvenomous]

Are you suffering from an ongoing wardrobe malfunction?

[heirring]

It is a perfectly reasonable question undercut promptly by a honking sound of dismay as Wysteria processes what exactly owns that little questing tickle of tongue and is sliding free of Richard's sleeve after it. Her elbow jerks in his, threatening - if the word might be so misapplied - to separate from the force of a brief but visibly powerful wave of alarm.

The last time she'd seen a snake so close, it had been in the company of a few hundred others like it at the bottom of a pit. One develops certain disinclinations under such circumstances.

The hilarious contortion act involved with keeping his arm trapped and her hand bent away from the snake mercifully slows her down long enough to give him a distracted answer - "I believe it's a shortcut to a courtyard." - before gingerly, gingerly, Wysteria untwists her pretzeled arm to allow her fingers to stray back for the little garter snake's inspection.

[wythersake]

Oh, I'm afraid that's chronic. Part of the national character. Wear anything in this accent, and you'll look a fool.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/032/100/cover4.jpg

[nonvenomous]

[ silence. ]

...Should I meet you somewhere?

[wythersake]

I'll be at my desk, at your leisure.

[nonvenomous]

The instant he feels her recoil, Dick twists his own wrist protectively up and away from hers, guarding the little serpent up close at his breast. It (she) s-curves through the rings tiered on his knuckles, and Richard gives Miss Poppell his most severe look yet, exasperation tight in the lines around his eyes.

They are, of course, still linked.

“She’s harmless,” he assures, only once Wysteria has started to settle her own nerves, and with patience he’s used the delay to dig deep for. He further waits for her to outstretch her fingers to turn his hand over next to hers.

The snake is slender and unassuming and no more than a foot long all told, her dark scales ribboned with lines of pale gold from tip to tail. As before, the barely-there wisp of her tongue precedes a (cautious) attempt to bridge herself up into the splay of Wysteria’s fingers from Richard’s. This time, he is ready to lift her away less theatrically in the event of overwhelming horror.

“I hadn’t spoken to many of the other rifters,” he tells her (more amicably) in the meanwhile. “Apart from one meeting with Madame de Cedoux. Did you mean for us to have this conversation here?”

[heirring]

She has a wiggling tongue attached to a wiggling body Wysteria's hand is very stiff as the snake cautiously crosses into it. Somewhere behind the rictus set of Wysteria's features passes a further irrational surge of disquiet. And though her arm (linked as it is) remains perfectly still, the intensity of her focus on that delicate little body is so pointed that—

"What? Oh. No. It simply seemed to be the first turn which— Madame de Cedoux is lovely. And I would very much like to discuss this matter with her as well, but— Well."

Well. There is a difference between Madame de Cedoux and the two of them here, is there not? She can hardly imagine herself in the same room as the woman in question, much less in intimate conversation with her.

"What is she? Other than a snake, I mean."

[nonvenomous]

But -- well.

“One meeting was enough for me.”

The snake is cool and dry, muscle working beneath soft scales as she probes her way along the curve of Wysteria’s palm, and eventually to the lattice of her fingers. Richard keeps his eyes down on that progress rather than study Poppell’s face, familiar enough with visceral aversion to file it away for what it is at a glance.

“She was a messenger before,” he explains, “but there’s no one in Thedas to answer.”

Provided she doesn’t lock him in, he uses this opportunity to disengage himself from her elbow -- better able to reach and turn her hand lightly with his own to allow for easier snake-slithering.

“Here she follows my commands, and keeps me company.”

[heirring]

And just like that, Richard is ostensibly free of her. Wysteria's arm remains at that slightly awkward angle, retaining the memory of where they'd been hooked together, though she allows the rearrangement of her hand without taking her eyes from ex-messenger snake. There is something transfixed about her attention - as if she is at once studying the muscular undulation of those linked dark scales and also looking beyond them. Like the snake is a magic eye puzzle, and she is slowly drawing the picture back from her nose.

(And like she doesn't quite buy the claim that any such creature is harmless, but that is neither here nor there.)

"Who did she talk to before?" Her focus breaks. She blinks at him. "—Any command?"

[nonvenomous]

Satisfied -- for the short term -- that Wysteria is less likely now to flinch and cast his serpent friend down the stairwell than she was a moment ago, Richard withdraws to let her handle her as she will. He tacks on a warning in parseltongue that deters a speculative fix of beady little garter snake eyes towards Wysteria’s sleeve as he does so. Don’t.

“An overseer.”

There’s no particular inflection to indicate how he might have felt about that arrangement, or feels about it now. It’s the answer to her first question; he lifts his chin to look up at her at the second, and furrows his brow.

“I -- suppose.”