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Who knows. This could be useful information to have, if he ever has to pass as a chicken coop salesman, or if the world fully does end and everyone has to raise their own chickens and sow their own gardens.

Dick is still peering deep into this chosen corner and the deep unbidden dread of the unknown it stirs in him when Ellis claps him on the shoulder. He returns to the present as easy as that, one hand scuffed under his nose, the other still at his hip. He nods, also.

This is just helping, and helping is easy.

With care taken not to snag his vest, he tips up and maneuvers the roll over as directed, end over end. Picking it up and lugging it over would probably have been faster.

“Is this something you’ve done before?”

"Yes, but it's been some time."

There is some measure of trust here, a small piece of a long-dead history handed off to Richard. Maybe Ellis should tell him it doesn't much matter; who cares to know what a dead man once occupied his time with?

The base of the coop fits neatly into the corner. Ellis scuffs a foot in the dirt beside it thoughtfully, thinking of trees.

"It seems I still have a knack for it," Ellis continues, before beckoning Richard over. "Stand in the middle of the base. Here. We can get the back wall in place before I hammer down the mesh."

His tone is patient. Richard is doing him a favor. The alternative is dragging Fitz out of the library, and Ellis doesn't quite trust him or Tony not to make the coop more complex than it needs to be.

Richard doesn’t seem to register the significance of receiving an answer. It was an honest question, in that it is the kind of thing a person asks when they’re high-stepping awkwardly around the disembodied components of a chicken coop.

It might occur to him later.

For now, he is well and truly occupied with getting himself into the middle of the base without treading on an exposed nail or cracking any wood.

“I’ve never kept an animal.”

Or built anything sturdier than a tent. This goes without saying. So much so that his next question is inevitable.

“Aren’t there others who live here?”

Where are they and why aren’t they helping?

"They would, if I asked," Ellis says, very generously. "But you've met Wysteria and Tony, I assume?"

Surely Richard can divine the danger in asking either of them to ask with a relatively simple task. There's a pause while Ellis levers the first panel into place, crouches to line up the first nail.

"And Fitz is busy with the library."

The war over how to catalog the books rages on, which is potentially what's driven Ellis into the garden rather than insert himself into the middle of a debate over which form of organization is best when he is familiar with neither.

"Hold it steady, if you don't mind."

“Mm,” after a pause sounds like fair point.

He has met them.

Richard flattens his hands to the panel to hold it steady, and continues to do so as directed without comment or complaint, past clarifications about where exactly, to grip, or at what angle. It’s neither the dirtiest job he’s done, or the most boring.

There’s purpose to it.

When he falls into a more concentrated silence, it has more to do with slotting comfortably into drone work than it does disinterest or distraction.

It's companionable, working quietly together. Richard isn't practiced, the way Ellis' father and neighbors had been once, but he's focused. And he's a good sport, as Ellis is aware this is probably not how Richard would choose to spend an afternoon.

And the final result is neatly assembled, sturdy. After a coat of paint, it'll be a fine home for whatever chickens he can scrounge up.

"Thank you," he says, as he watches Richard line up the ramp. "Next time I have to carry luggage into the guest rooms at the Gallows I know who I can ask."

Big news for Richard, now considered reliable.

It is true that Richard would not elect on his own to spend the entirety of an afternoon building a house for chickens. It is also true that if he did have some other plan established for himself, it was very likely along the lines of sampling something he brought back from the jungle and spending the remainder of his waking hours drooling on himself at his desk.

“You’re welcome,” he waits to say, until everything is aligned and he is creakily stood back up straight. Bones pop at the base of his neck and the butt of his spine. Sweat has seeped dark through his temples and under his arms, in spite of the lack of ‘heavy lifting,’ as it’s defined by Ellis the Warden.

“Please feel free to call upon any other able-bodied denizen of Riftwatch.”

"I could, but I'd enjoy the company less."

A compliment, surely.

There's still minor things to be done, but most of it can wait. The chicks aren't in residence yet, so there's time. Ellis scrubs his palms on his tunic, having given it mostly up for lost. It'll be bound for the laundress.

"I feel as if I should offer you help with something. This has taken up a fair amount of your time."

Richard has been a good sport. That should count for something.

A Compliment.

Richard arches a brow, tired, sidelong, still skeptical to his core.

But as offers go, the one that follows is well-timed, given how recently the subject of significant favors was raised in Dick Dickerson’s thoughts. Normal people, when faced with such a proposition, will take a moment to think, if they don’t dismiss the sentiment out of hand.

“Will you agree to saw my hand off in the event the chantry calls for the capture or execution of rifters?”

Richard asks, plainly, and shows the hand in question, palm out to expose the splinter of otherworldly green embedded in the heel. It’s quite not as filthy as Ellis’ paw, but he has hand prints of his own he'll have to contend with, once he’s back at the Gallows.

When he'd made the offer, Ellis had anticipated something like accompanying Richard on an errand rather than casual dismemberment.

Between them, Ellis takes the proferred hand. Maybe not Richard's intent, but Ellis takes hold of his palm as if to size up the job. His thumb presses into the center of Richard's palm.

"Aye," Ellis says after a moment. "I'll take it off for you."

A neater solution than the Joining, perhaps. It at least has higher odds of survival, if Ellis does his job right.

Dick, who is technically the taller of the two of them, quails almost imperceptibly at contact, shrinking in on himself by the measure of half a nervous scoff, only to iron it out entirely in the time it takes him to breathe in again. Yes, good. Ideal, even, to have the first person you ask agree, particularly when you’ve already seen the force of the follow through on their swing.

“Then you can call me for help any time you need it.”

He closes his hand around Ellis’ press, gentle, very normal thanks, with a normal amount of eye contact, and takes a confident step back, evidently galvanized by this reassurance.

“I should start back before dark.”

In particular, it has galvanized him into breaking away to collect his satchel so that he can leave.

Inbox - Fade Rift

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yada yada yadas past construction

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