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?
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."
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.
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."
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.”
"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."
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?”
Edited (for some reason feeling a need to clarify that it the snake isn't asking questions??) Date: 2020-07-14 06:13 am (UTC)
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.
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?”
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.
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.”
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?"
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.
The answer to her first question hardly warrants so much as a batted eyelash, but the second? Now there is something worth dissection. Wysteria's hum sounds like My, how interesting, as her attention swings back to the garter snake, the angles of her arm adjusting slightly in an effort to give the reptile's body some sense of support without inducing it to, say, slither up her arm.
"Is she alive? I mean in the sense of the nature of the enchantment. Mr. Ralston keeps a spellbound bird, but it still needs seed and papers changed and so on. They are quite rare in Kalvad - living things bound to magic. Constructs are uncommon and trend toward being temporary due to the power required to manifest them, but they are a far simpler thing by comparison."
And then, most ominously, she suddenly brightens and turns all her attention onto him.
"Is she yours, Mr. Dickerson? As in did you assemble the magic?"
“I don’t think so.” The snake is snuggling in as she’s wont to do once she’s comfortable, looped and curled securely between and around splayed fingers, with the wedge of her head centered in Wysteria’s palm. “All of the viscera seems to be present, but she doesn’t hunt.”
Richard’s never really thought about it. He isn’t even really thinking about it right now, busy weighing instead exactly how much he should elaborate, or if it might behoove him for him and his snake to keep a secret or two.
Poppell saves him from weighing the risk by spotlighting him.
“She was a gift.” Easy.
He is measuring her again -- not entirely unlike the inspection she just put his snake through. There is a similarly instinctive distrust at its core, walled up and guarded behind his natural reserve.
On the one hand, a most curious answer. On the other, a satisfactory one - confirmation of a suspicion she'd already arranged in her mind. It is an exceedingly pleasant thing, to be both intrigued and correct all at once.
"I sensed there was something different about your person. That is not altogether the same as knowing what you had. But yes," she says, meeting that measuring look with the willingness of a young lady being fit for new clothes. "I suppose I did."
Now it is Mr. Dickerson’s turn to ask probing questions in this strange corner of the gallows, after a glance to her palm in search of the same sliver of green that’s lodged in his. His have a way of coming only one at a time, with his focus zeroed in on the one answer.
"That's right," she says, turning her hand very slowly so the angle of her wrist might be marginally less awkward without disturbing the coils of the settled snake. She glances back to it, then looks back to him. For all that she seems unlikely to fling his friend off her hand, her attention is clearly still being actively divided by the garter snake's presence - or by the shape of the magic surrounding it. From the corner of her eye, it feels like sun glinting off the surface of water looks.
"It is not an entirely uncommon talent in Kalvad for those with a little ability."
Richard nods, slowly, against some unseen, uphill resistance of his spirit, or better judgment. He has another question. Rather than ask it, he stalls to offer his hand (politely, helpfully) back out to hers -- you know. For if she’s had her fill of one on one time with the snake.
No pressure.
“Have you noticed,” he asks, very casually, “any change in functionality since your arrival here?”
She surrenders her possession of the snake almost without thinking, her hand moving automatically to meet his so she might carefully extricate herself from its coils. It's only after she's motioned to do so that she thinks to regret it - maybe the snake will disappear back up Mr. Dickerson's sleeve and so elude further examination -, but by then it both seems too late to change her mind and she is already invested in turning over his question:
"It's difficult to say. The magic in Thedas is unlike the magic in Kalvad, as is the enchantment on your snake is different from both, and so there are things— well, it cannot be studied the same way, and where at home I might be able to touch it, as it were, I haven't quite sorted how to interact with spellwork here yet. But—"
Here, she stops. A brief hesitation as the garter snake unwinds from her hand. "—my own, er, work I suppose seems as it ever was. Why? Does she work differently here than she did where you came from? Have you altered somehow? Your companion mentioned having changed in appearance, did he not?"
Single questions are apparently not within her capacity as a conversationalist. And then, before he can answer any of the half dozen she has proposed to him, she adds, "Mr. Dickerson, I would greatly appreciate it if this were to stay between us. This is of course all within my records, but I have no interest in being involved in the debates which sometimes occur in the Gallows with respect to Circles and mages and so on."
It’s an easy transition. The little snake periscopes up to intercept Richard’s reach, scales brushing down to the point of her tail as she cycles herself out of Wysteria’s fingers and into his. He gives her a lift to his lapel from there, and she winds oily slow into the turn of his collar against his neck, lacking the urgency of a cockroach or centipede caught out in the light. Before it vanishes from sight, the end of her tail curls to catch on the collar’s edge, and holds there, unmoving. Speaking of:
“He used to have a tail.”
Somehow this is the one answer he chooses (or manages) to give, amidst the tumble of other questions around it.
Technically Loxley’s tieflinghood is a matter of public record.
He listens to the rest with a notable reduction in intensity from his moments-ago resistance to every implication. Still a little too heavy on eye contact -- the look of a man trying very hard to read her mind.
“Nor do I,” he assures her, in the end. The brush of his contempt for local politics is keeled subtle and as dry as the scales she just freed herself of, tight in his chest. “I am a healer, Miss Poppell, but I would like for you to tell me more about your studies here before I submit to interrogation.”
Which is, naturally, a perfectly reasonable stipulation. The fact that he is intent on her whatsoever seems, as in the moment preceding this one, to bother not in the slightest, given that-- "I will most happily oblige you. I don't know if you've charted similarly troubled waters, but discussing the nature of Thedosian magic with anyone with any intelligence on the subjects - mages, I mean - has been as like throwing myself on a series of sharp rocks in hopes of finding a suitable place to sleep for all that anyone cares to discuss the subject with a Rifter. Nevermind that I might be perfectly willing to answer any questions or prove the merit of my interest to them. Did you know I attempted to conduct a study and Matthias demanded that I pay him for it or else would say nothing? Honestly."
That he has not rushed down the stairwell available before them is a most optimistic sign indeed. She absently wipes her snake-hand on her skirt, but otherwise her attention is fixed right back up at him.
“Did you try telling him having a better understanding of his abilities might elevate them?”
There’s a pinch at Richard’s brow, immediately skeptical of any resistance offered by Matthias. He seems like he should be very easy to manipulate.
“Regardless,” he interrupts before she can clarify one way or the other, “we shouldn’t have this conversation here.” Sound has a way of carrying over stone, they are at the juncture of two blind alleys, and did she just wipe her hand --
The impetus behind his study of her flattens out. Weary.
“We can go into the city. Otherwise, my quarters are unoccupied.”
Somewhere in there is the desperate impulse to indeed provide that clarification, but she clamps down on it just long enough to forget it entirely in favor of methods of effective clandestine secrecy.
"Quite so, Mr. Dickerson. In which case, I suppose your room of residence will have to suffice."
She has no real interest in delaying this conversation for the time it will take to reach a sufficiently private room across the harbor, and they certainly cannot use her quarters. Imagine.
As they walk, Richard explains that Loxley is often away on business in the city, and prefers to spend nights there, when he can. Loxley has a strong sense of right and wrong. Loxley has a very hands on approach to problem-solving. Once Loxley flipped onto a marauding werewolf’s shoulders and placed a crown on its head that suppressed the curse long enough for them to avoid slaying it.
Richard has a lot to say about Loxley.
Their shared quarters are unremarkable by contrast. It is a place where two men sleep, sparsely furnished and decorated as temporary residence often are, despite their having been here for nearly a full year. There are two cots pushed to opposite walls, each with a trunk at the foot. One has a book halfway under it. There is a table with two chairs and two bottles of wine, one of which looks expensive. And there is a small desk, where more books live, including the one Richard told Wysteria he would take back to the library.
It smells very faintly of elfroot smoke. It is also currently quite dark, apart from light cutting in from the hallway.
That’s it.
He holds the door open for her.
“How long has it been since you arrived in Thedas?”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2020-07-13 04:39 am (UTC)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."
no subject
Date: 2020-07-13 05:07 am (UTC)She touches the side of her nose knowingly. "You of course recall my field of study."
no subject
Date: 2020-07-13 06:38 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-13 07:59 am (UTC)"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."
no subject
Date: 2020-07-13 11:39 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-14 01:34 am (UTC)Their elbows are still linked together.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-14 06:11 am (UTC)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?”
no subject
Date: 2020-07-14 11:52 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-15 05:20 am (UTC)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?”
no subject
Date: 2020-07-15 06:17 am (UTC)"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."
no subject
Date: 2020-07-15 07:04 am (UTC)“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.”
no subject
Date: 2020-07-15 07:30 am (UTC)(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?"
no subject
Date: 2020-07-15 06:26 pm (UTC)“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.”
no subject
Date: 2020-07-15 07:37 pm (UTC)"Is she alive? I mean in the sense of the nature of the enchantment. Mr. Ralston keeps a spellbound bird, but it still needs seed and papers changed and so on. They are quite rare in Kalvad - living things bound to magic. Constructs are uncommon and trend toward being temporary due to the power required to manifest them, but they are a far simpler thing by comparison."
And then, most ominously, she suddenly brightens and turns all her attention onto him.
"Is she yours, Mr. Dickerson? As in did you assemble the magic?"
no subject
Date: 2020-07-15 10:14 pm (UTC)Richard’s never really thought about it. He isn’t even really thinking about it right now, busy weighing instead exactly how much he should elaborate, or if it might behoove him for him and his snake to keep a secret or two.
Poppell saves him from weighing the risk by spotlighting him.
“She was a gift.” Easy.
He is measuring her again -- not entirely unlike the inspection she just put his snake through. There is a similarly instinctive distrust at its core, walled up and guarded behind his natural reserve.
“You could sense that I had her.”
no subject
Date: 2020-07-15 10:28 pm (UTC)"I sensed there was something different about your person. That is not altogether the same as knowing what you had. But yes," she says, meeting that measuring look with the willingness of a young lady being fit for new clothes. "I suppose I did."
no subject
Date: 2020-07-16 03:48 am (UTC)Now it is Mr. Dickerson’s turn to ask probing questions in this strange corner of the gallows, after a glance to her palm in search of the same sliver of green that’s lodged in his. His have a way of coming only one at a time, with his focus zeroed in on the one answer.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-16 04:37 am (UTC)"It is not an entirely uncommon talent in Kalvad for those with a little ability."
no subject
Date: 2020-07-16 05:08 pm (UTC)No pressure.
“Have you noticed,” he asks, very casually, “any change in functionality since your arrival here?”
no subject
Date: 2020-07-16 08:23 pm (UTC)"It's difficult to say. The magic in Thedas is unlike the magic in Kalvad, as is the enchantment on your snake is different from both, and so there are things— well, it cannot be studied the same way, and where at home I might be able to touch it, as it were, I haven't quite sorted how to interact with spellwork here yet. But—"
Here, she stops. A brief hesitation as the garter snake unwinds from her hand. "—my own, er, work I suppose seems as it ever was. Why? Does she work differently here than she did where you came from? Have you altered somehow? Your companion mentioned having changed in appearance, did he not?"
Single questions are apparently not within her capacity as a conversationalist. And then, before he can answer any of the half dozen she has proposed to him, she adds, "Mr. Dickerson, I would greatly appreciate it if this were to stay between us. This is of course all within my records, but I have no interest in being involved in the debates which sometimes occur in the Gallows with respect to Circles and mages and so on."
no subject
Date: 2020-07-16 11:18 pm (UTC)“He used to have a tail.”
Somehow this is the one answer he chooses (or manages) to give, amidst the tumble of other questions around it.
Technically Loxley’s tieflinghood is a matter of public record.
He listens to the rest with a notable reduction in intensity from his moments-ago resistance to every implication. Still a little too heavy on eye contact -- the look of a man trying very hard to read her mind.
“Nor do I,” he assures her, in the end. The brush of his contempt for local politics is keeled subtle and as dry as the scales she just freed herself of, tight in his chest. “I am a healer, Miss Poppell, but I would like for you to tell me more about your studies here before I submit to interrogation.”
no subject
Date: 2020-07-16 11:42 pm (UTC)That he has not rushed down the stairwell available before them is a most optimistic sign indeed. She absently wipes her snake-hand on her skirt, but otherwise her attention is fixed right back up at him.
"Where shall I begin?"
no subject
Date: 2020-07-17 07:08 pm (UTC)There’s a pinch at Richard’s brow, immediately skeptical of any resistance offered by Matthias. He seems like he should be very easy to manipulate.
“Regardless,” he interrupts before she can clarify one way or the other, “we shouldn’t have this conversation here.” Sound has a way of carrying over stone, they are at the juncture of two blind alleys, and did she just wipe her hand --
The impetus behind his study of her flattens out. Weary.
“We can go into the city. Otherwise, my quarters are unoccupied.”
no subject
Date: 2020-07-20 06:04 am (UTC)"Quite so, Mr. Dickerson. In which case, I suppose your room of residence will have to suffice."
She has no real interest in delaying this conversation for the time it will take to reach a sufficiently private room across the harbor, and they certainly cannot use her quarters. Imagine.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-20 07:20 am (UTC)To the snake pit.
As they walk, Richard explains that Loxley is often away on business in the city, and prefers to spend nights there, when he can. Loxley has a strong sense of right and wrong. Loxley has a very hands on approach to problem-solving. Once Loxley flipped onto a marauding werewolf’s shoulders and placed a crown on its head that suppressed the curse long enough for them to avoid slaying it.
Richard has a lot to say about Loxley.
Their shared quarters are unremarkable by contrast. It is a place where two men sleep, sparsely furnished and decorated as temporary residence often are, despite their having been here for nearly a full year. There are two cots pushed to opposite walls, each with a trunk at the foot. One has a book halfway under it. There is a table with two chairs and two bottles of wine, one of which looks expensive. And there is a small desk, where more books live, including the one Richard told Wysteria he would take back to the library.
It smells very faintly of elfroot smoke. It is also currently quite dark, apart from light cutting in from the hallway.
That’s it.
He holds the door open for her.
“How long has it been since you arrived in Thedas?”
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