Inbox - Fade Rift

[nonvenomous]

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

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[unshut]

Fitcher's draw on the pipe is easy and steady and apparently untroubled by how he rearranges the angles of his limbs to fit in next to her. No, it isn't a surprise. She's good at picking questions he disapproves of.

(It's a pleasure to ask them. Feels a little like gambling.)

"Admirably sturdy brow. Excellent chin." She breathes out. "Shame about the zealotry."

She might offer him the short stemmed pipe while she's at it, but no. Instead—

"Raw luck."

[nonvenomous]

There’s something dry in the stretch of his silence, a tilt at his head that kinks the grass beneath it. A few blades spring back to tickle through the wedge missing out of his ear.

“I knew it was ill-advised.”

Brother Gideon didn’t even have to tell him so explicitly and in no uncertain terms.

Whatever Look he’s giving her, he vanishes it behind the curtain of her hat reset to lie flat across his face. In there, he can trade fresh salt air for privacy and protection for his ginger constitution.

“Are you going to tell me yours?” He asks on a delay. Muffled.

[unshut]

It's a good shield of a hat—finely made for defending against the sun for cat naps and the keen attention of would-be examiners which might otherwise be difficult to steer elsewhere. The downside of it is that it's impossible to say which expression Fitcher adopts as she Mmms thoughtfully around the pipe stem. It could be anything. Grass points tickle at her wrist bent behind her head. She plucks the pipe from between her teeth.

"Mine's more compromising than either of yours," she says after some seconds of rotating the metaphorical hook in the sun.

From the inside of the hat, it could sound a little like a denial. No, says her even temperature in the afternoon heat. She isn't going to tell him. Only that's dull, so:

"I let Byerly and Barrow both think they might get somewhere. But, no. I'm afraid it's just you."

[nonvenomous]

It’s equally difficult to tell how sharply he’s listening, and in what degree of suspense. He does turn slightly towards her after a spell of quiet, a tell in the tilt of the brim.

“Ser Barrow is a handsome man,” says the hat. “Strapping.”

The hat has nothing to say on the subject of Byerly Rutyer. But he does reach up to lift the brim just off his nose after a break to consider this information all up, his thumb hooked and flexed wide from a pang through his anchor. His eyes are light in the shadow underneath, measuring her appetite for responsibility with Thot on the case.

“I could fetch a blanket.”

[unshut]

There, pillowed on the crook of her bent arm, her head is tilted only fractionally in his direction. It's not a terribly flattering arrangement. Her chin has to tilt nearly all the way down to her chest to accommodate the angle of the pipe which, with a thoughtful hum like a low gravel scrape, she sets back into the corner of her mouth. After a few contemplative pulls from it, Fitcher raises her chin. The results of that languorous exhale are quickly swept away.

The sideways look she gives him after has a glimmer of fox slyness to it.

"Do you estimate I trust you, or have you just decided to accept ill-considered?"

[nonvenomous]

He has a free hand to fit in under the knob of his skull with her hat held just so.

Enough of a gap to keep eye contact while he weighs the truth.

“I estimate that you trust yourself.” And whatever instinct or confidence in coming out on top in a scrap that entails. He tilts one brow, not quite a shrug: a little chilly as acceptance of worst possible outcomes goes. He trusts himself also.

[unshut]

Madame Fitcher has a dozen smiles in her catalogue, and it's often obvious (in the way that a liar will sometimes playfully confess to being one) when she rifles through her cards and selects one to play rather than coming by it naturally.

But this one blooms rather being drawn. It's slow and crooked, and the wrinkles it makes are deeper for the dust and sweat. 'Narcissism' would be a cruel accusation. Instead, consider: pleased to be recognized.

"I could make do with a blanket."

[nonvenomous]

Is this terrible?

It feels a little terrible.

The crook of his smile back at her is just as grungy -- less easily defined in the shadow of her hat, save that he seems to know what he’s wagering. Surely that’s part of the thrill, permeating as the queer pang at the back of his heart when she smiles at him. He lingers in the grass a beat before grunting back up onto one arm, and from his arm to his feet.

There’s still a hint of a hitch to his step, brush line (briefly) be damned.

Her hat goes with him, seated snug with an unapologetic glance back. His satchel stays behind.

Camp isn’t far.

[nonvenomous]

Silas is away for ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.

A careworn blanket is cast rakish around his shoulders when he returns. It goes well with his hat, the grubby vacation bristle of his beard, the crystal held loose in his upturned palm for him to ask aloud:

“Would you like me to pursue her?”

And to receive an answer in Scoutmaster Yseult’s voice:

”What plan did the two of you make when she left?”

The look he cuts to Fitcher is expectant on the order of a cat left waiting outside of a glass door overnight with the unspoken promise that it intends to claw every piece of furniture it can reach the instant it’s let inside.