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The initial tang of cider rot that prickles the air pulls a swallow out of him, followed by a clearing of his throat; he otherwise watches with the same kind of wary attention demonstrating the slice of a freshly-sharpened knife through the same apple would warrant.

Context clues are telling enough that this is a no-no. Richard looks up to Isaac from his pulpy hand to acknowledge his handkerchief want with an of course nod and a is something wrong with your legs/why don’t you get your own handkerchief/Richard will remember this glance. It’s a glance given as he turns, with just enough pause for clots of mouldy pulp to start dripping if Isaac doesn’t get both of his hands involved to stop it.

Petty.

“Are apples especially sacred to the Chantry?”

Kerchief retrieved, he offers it out with a flick.

"I hope not. We only burned Andraste, imagine if they’d shoved her in a pie."

Isaac lifts his fist to inspect. Sticky fruit dribbles to soak his sleeve, spatters the wood below. The slant of his chin, waiting for Richard, isn't unamused — it stays him a further moment, before at last reaching for the kerchief.

There are some things that you excuse after you’ve done them. This little secret wouldn’t mean a pyre, nothing like the others he keeps; but even Ilias’ work draws the wrong sort of attention. When people write of witches, they write of withered things.

"But I don’t imagine they’d look kindly for the waste." He works the clot first from stubby nails, then down his arm, to the desk at last. The apple’s corpse lies half-crushed upon cloth. "For all faith, some things can’t be remade."

In an image, or the palm of a hand.

It would be impolite to ask how well it scales to human beings.

Left with idle hands while Isaac cleans himself up, Dick watches at the same quiet distance as before, his interest prickled coarse with the implications. As magics go, this one does not seem alarming to him, or even unfamiliar.

Just a little intimidating in a closed office with a stranger. That’s all.

“Is the vitality channeled elsewhere or simply destroyed?”

It's a good question. It's as clearly one he didn't expect to be asked. Isaac considers,

"Encouraged, is how I've always thought of it." Thought is its own shape, within magic. "But transfer is perhaps more accurate. There must be a tipping point. To which each of us, our life belongs elsewhere."

Something levels in the pitch of his brows, less performative. It would be easy to mistake for discomfort. A moment passes, is shrugged off. Light:

"If it's wet enough, you get mushrooms."

‘Encouraged.’

Richard nods his understanding, half to Isaac, and half to himself. Practice keeps him from glancing away as he does it, his skepticism banished to a sliver of a delay in processing. When Rah-shak halves a gnoll’s skull with her axe, is she encouraging its brain to leave its case?

It doesn’t matter, he just has to make it out of this room without being turned into a moist bed for fungi.

“I’ve heard hill giants can have that problem.”

Jock itch on a massive scale. Anyway --

“Your staff,” he reminds.

"Of course," Carpentry. "How long will you need it?"

Should he like. Leave. With the Tranquil, he usually leaves.

“No more than a few minutes.”

Easy.

Hands at his sides, Richard offers no clue in posture or tone to help Isaac along with deciding one way or the other. He waits (with the empty patience of a blue-eyed grackle waiting for a french fry) until he adds:

“You can hold it in place if you like. A level surface would be best.”

Isaac blinks first —

Of course he does, shifting to make room less for Richard than to shuffle off uncertainty. It clears a space about the desk, all the same.

"Very well," He stretches to press the pieces together. "Qui ne risque rien n'a rien."

This entire operation has been strange, but what is Dick’s life if not a series of variously strange operations. Apart from his silence while he waits for Isaac to figure himself out, there’s no trace of outward discomfort about him.

“No risk, no reward?” he guesses, when all is finally clear for him to step in and place his hands on either side of the break.

“I’ve been meaning to study Orlesian.”

Matter-of-fact, with a glance aside, and the crook of half a smile. Keeping with the theme of normalcy, he then proceeds to murmur over the staff in a language most often associated with demons and snakes, sibilant, breathy. If it was any less casual, an eavesdropper could be forgiven for thinking this is part of the slow build to an unwilling sacrifice.

"Oh, you don't want to do that," Edging an elbow about his. "Orlesians are dreadful."

Richard speaks, if one may call it speech — there are things that hiss in dreams, that wind through paths of Fade. Few of them own tongues, but every night, you can listen.

You can grow used to anything.

He listens, and it isn't casual; not really. The tension in his hands draws them up new, knuckles lifted with a degree of care not present about the apple. And something in the staff slithers, reaches for itself.

Edited (awk sentence edits) 2020-09-25 05:41 (UTC)

There’s no glimmer or glow to mark the incantation taking hold between them -- Richard’s spellwork is as severe as the rest of him, and in this case, all but indistinguishable from prayer. Raw, healthy material builds its way out of the break at a crawl, virgin wood following the grain to bridge the gap from both sides.

No more than a minute has passed when Richard winds down into a silence that the growth continues beyond, the eerie trickle of cells through a rapid cycle of growth and death just audible beneath the rustle of his breath.

The new wood is a shade or two lighter than the staff around it, not yet having endured the rigors of weather or travel or combat under a mage’s hand, but otherwise seamless. Natural.

He lifts his hands with a hope you weren't expecting something more spectacular glance, and withdraws an easy step, leaving Isaac room to admire or test it as he sees fit.

Inbox - Fade Rift

dick https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/250/493/d16.jpg dickerson

they call him triple d

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me googling arguments about spontaneous generation in the 1700s like i did this to myself

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definitely not almost a month later

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