heorte | when i go towards you it is with my whole life.

Had she expected him to refuse her? No, surely not. After all, he so rarely does. Yet having her request so promptly granted sparks something bright in her. She nearly laughs over it as he makes to sit and draws her there after him.

Indeed this posting serves her perfectly well, and she takes to it promptly enough—so pleased to be indulged that she hardly shies over the task of chasing after his tunic's hem.

"Remind me, and tomorrow I'll see if I can recall any of the Brave Ivanhoe adventures. I think you would like those better than any of the founding sagas. They have slightly less obtuse reasonings behind them, I suppose. —Oh," she says. She has drawn his tunic halfway off over his head though pauses suddenly.

"But will you be cold if you're stripped down?" And then, in a rapid and only slightly blistering reversal of this reconsideration— "Well, no. I suppose you can put it back on after if you decide you've a chill."

Hence, she hurriedly peels the light rumpled tunic the rest of the way free of him.

Caught briefly within his own tunic, arms raised, Ellis isn't afforded the space to reassure or deny the possibility of catching a chill.

He'd expected the pause to be related more to the reality of what they were doing rather than concern for his well being. But Wysteria tugs the tunic free of him without any further delay, and Ellis follows the motion upwards, back onto his feet.

No, he isn't very worried about being cold.

"Save a Brave Ivanhoe for our hike," Ellis advises. His skin is prickling, aware of the space between them. Their respective levels of undress. "Or our trip back to the lodge, if you don't care to share it with our guides."

In truth, that pause had been just that—a silly, twittering sort of hesitation disguised even to herself. But as he stands again, she recognizes it. Or, at the very least, she becomes very aware of the result of all this effort. He is so very broad and the bursting dark shape of that tattoo lodged at the center of his chest is so very immediate.

She is still holding his tunic. So Wysteria abruptly folds it in half, steps slightly sideways and thrusts it unceremoniously over the chair arm while saying, "I am positive Serah Tomar would prefer not to be regaled by myself, so I think I will save it for later. Besides, it will be good for me to try my hand at talking and skating at the same time."

(Implies she hadn't chattered along the whole way down the river, which is fundamentally untrue.)

He still is very broad and his tattoo very dark when she has finished dealing with the tunic. Her hands though, which have been more or less occupied since they came to the room, are abruptly without employment, and for a moment they hover unconsciously in clear indecision. Then she catches him by both wrists and authoritatively places his hands back at her waist.

"We should decide now if I am seducing you or not tonight."

The brazier has not been banked and shuttered. The fire still crackles merrily in the hearth. There is no real sort of shadow to mask the hard wear written into Ellis’ body. That too is easily seen now, along with the black bloom of ink at his chest. Wysteria is close enough to see it all.

There is some distant worry for what she’ll make of that, slotted in alongside the awareness of her looking at him.

When she grasps his wrist, Ellis is partway to some other observation. Maybe a suggestion as to what chatter Tomar might find palatable or praise of her ability to multitask. It’s all startled out of him when she speaks, so decisive that it rattles a laugh in response even as his palms mold to her hips. The fabric of her underthings is sturdy but thin, so thin by contrast that he can fee the warmth of her skin straight through it.

“I didn’t know I had a say in when you decided to seduce me. It feels like I should be caught off guard by it all.”

A small favor, perhaps, that she’s giving him advance warning instead of simply launching into her campaign.

"Oh," is half fluster and half objection, though her hands both stay put at his wrists, firmly anchored. "Well if you would prefer to be surprised, I can make those arrangements. I only supposed you might have an opinion on the matter."

Stop there, says good sense, yet she continues to qualify: "I realize, Ellis, that you have a habit of being entirely accommodating. But as has been previously noted, we've something of an early morning and all manner of danger and adventure to account for, and that seems to be to require some measure of deliberation."

She is merely being sensible and considerate.

"So say the word and we will go to bed. To sleep, I mean."

"Very sensible."

With his hands so pinned, Ellis' expression of affection manifests in a slow lean forward, catching her mouth in a light kiss. Maintains the slip of space between their bodies as he does so.

This is al indecision. Their trajectory had felt inevitable until this point, and now Ellis is thinking of early mornings and of his own apprehension. Trying to parse how much of his hesitation belongs to the former rather than the latter.

"I think we might go to bed," he says slowly. "And keep your seductions until tomorrow evening. When we can spend all our time on that, without worrying about what waits for us in the morning."

Tomorrow evening they are meant to go scuffing back upriver to the lodge, which she would not describe precisely as gloomy—(and truly what does she care about that? The Gallows is gloomy. The house in Hightown is certainly grim)—, but somehow feels like oddly close quarters despite being considerably larger than this little room or even this little public house. Even so—

Well it is all at once something like a relief. Not to avoid the thing this evening, but to have it marked and placed on a metaphorical calendar. Yes, suits her perfectly well. Look at all these hours she has to organize her thoughts on the matter. A deadline, or a fixed point in time, can be a very fine thing.

"Tomorrow," is prim affirmation and threat both. This is a plan and she clearly means to keep his feet to the fire over it. "If you arrange to be mauled by a wolf, I will be very cross with you."

She squeezes his wrists and squints at him for emphasis. It's only after this warning has been given a moment or two to marinate that she unravels her hands from him, saying, "And Brave Ivanhoe will have to wait of course," as she steps back and moves to see to her stays.

"Is there only one tale of Brave Ivanhoe?"

Is not a promise to avoid being mauled.

Not that Ellis has particular aspirations to be mauled. It is only that he's found it better to avoid making any promises outside his control. There's no need to be held responsible for some future bad luck. Who is to say that wolves will be the entirety of their task tomorrow?

Left to his own devices, Ellis unfastens his own laces. Steps out of his trousers, so he might leave them with his discarded tunics and gambeson.

While Wysteria manages her stays, Ellis crosses to see to the fire and then to the brazier in turn. The bed itself is piled high with blankets and furs. They'll be warm enough tonight.

"No, not at all. There is a great assortment of them. He is rather like—well, I can only think of Monsieur Royan's Black Fox at the moment, although Brave Ivanhoe isn't really much like him at all save for the fact that there are lots of different stories about him and they can all be taken together or apart, and I imagine someone has translated most of the Black Fox's adventures in all sorts of languages. He is one of those repeating characters in folklore for which there is a story you may use for nearly every occasion."

This she chatters out in not quite raid succession, pattering along at a clip one might consider perfectly respectful were it not slowed by her attention wandering after Ellis as he crosses to see to the fire and brazier; she's never seen him in his drawers in anything like real light. To say nothing of the fact that, before he turns the coals over, she can clearly see the scars left behind on his back by that dreadful crush of armor; and the marks of other old hurts with them, a great array of markings like points on a map.

But lest she be caught examining anything above Ellis' waist or below it, she has turned away by the time he's finished with the fire.

"We had a book in the house which collected a great deal of his adventures and was prettily illustrated. They're usually in verse, of course," she says, folding her stays once over and then laying them with the rest of her things. "Which I won't be able to reproduce. I've no head for reciting poetry, as well you know. But I think I remember the general sense of a few of the stories enough to pass them broadly along."

From her satchel, Wysteria wrestles free a length of bright blue calico. She is already moving to the bed as she makes to wrap the cloth about her hair. If her hair isn't coming down, there is no reason not to see its shape more or less preserved for the morning.

Once the brazier has been attended to, the room is plunged into warm darkness.

Ellis has been careful, or attempted to be careful, when it came to putting his scarring on display. How much time had lapsed between Wysteria's removal of his tunic and the moment the light was lowered down to shadow? Enough to take full inventory?

When he thinks back to that little shed, his memories center more on her hands in his hair than any other thing that might have happened.

When he joins her, it's only to settle first at the edge of the bed. Put a hand to her knee as she wraps up her hair.

"I'd like to hear as many as you remember," he tells her. "But not all at once. Only one or two, maybe."

His voice softens, warming as he continues, "We have the time."

They're married. They've been given this time, away from Kirkwall. They can make the most of it.

In that coppery dark, the naked glow of her anchor shard washes the air about it a cool and sickly green. She hardly notices it as she secures the calico and tucks its ends in under the edge. The whole effect is absurdly domestic—more unvarnished and straight forward than even the brisk no-nonsense way she'd asked whether he cared to obligated to submit to her wiles.

"Well," she says. His hand on her knee is warm through the fabric of her chemise, and the piled furs are both prickling and soft. It's an acceptable state of affairs for the evening. Yes, it's true. They do have time.

"I'll see if I can remember one or two or the best ones to start with then and see where the rest fall in to place after."

So highlighted, Ellis is almost of a mind to ask if she cares to send for assistance. They might have someone from Riftwatch within a day by griffinback. They would likely return so quickly after that it would hardly disturb them.

The option is tucked away. After they have assessed the rift, Ellis can decide whether to press the issue.

With Wysteria's hair more or less secure, Ellis tightens his grip on her leg before lifting his hand. Draws back the bedclothes properly, so he might come to lie alongside her.

"Before we consider Brave Ivanhoe, or sleep," he posits, "Would you like to return here tomorrow after we've done our work?"

She is shifting to make room for him there among the blankets and furs, beginning to unfold her legs so she might stretch them out, but this question draws her briefly short. Would she like that? To come back here to this little room over the relatively quiet public house main room, with rooms to either side of this one and a inoffensively bedraggled landlady overseeing the whole of the property? Certainly the room is far smaller than the one they've been permitted at the lodge. With the fire lit and the brazier uncovered, she had been able to see him in so much detail.

(For an instant, she misses that tiny closet of a room in the Markham collegiate dormitories.)

With a sniff, Wysteria kicks her feet in under the blankets and pats the space beside her in an effort to urge him to hurry into bed. She is pulling these covers up shortly, Ellis. Best to see yourself under them immediately lest you be left outside of them— and so on and so forth.

"Let's see how late the hour is after we've finished our work. It's possible we will have no choice at all in the matter and be forced to stay or attempt to skate back upriver in the dark."

Yes, she thinks. She would to come back here.

It's near enough to a decisive answer. Ellis can divine the meaning behind it, and considers that he might leave a little extra coin with the landlady to be sure of their place tomorrow evening.

Yes, he likes this small, cozy room better than the one at the lodge. It has a certain kind of luxury to it, as befits the dwelling of Viscount, but it is borrowed and they are not alone within it.

Slid in beside her, Ellis doesn't bother checking the urge to turn fully in towards her body. Wysteria drags all these heavy blankets and furs up over them, and for his part Ellis slides an arm around her waist. Cinches her in towards him so they might lie flush against each other.

"I wouldn't make you skate in the dark," is low and fond, has the cadence of an endearment despite being so far from romantic anything. "So it's good that we have a bearable alternative for you if we find ourselves in such a scrape."

A scrape is indeed what they find themselves in the following afternoon after a long morning of traipsing into the mountains led by Serah Tomar. Happily for the poor man in question—who is not unkind, merely that gruff sort of backwoodsman who finds being drawn into relentless conversation by young women baffling—, the exertion of snowshoeing puts something of a dampener on the clip of Wysteria's narration. It is one of those activities which loses its whimsy relatively quickly for the unpracticed, particularly when one is obligated to practice it rather than simply indulging in a bit of fun.

What awaits them at the end of this long hike is more or less as expected; a pack of slavering, overlarge fade touched wolves driven near rabid by the touch of the thinning Veil, and a rift punched into the winter thin atmosphere. Tomar judiciously doesn't accompany them that far, but rather sets up on a ridge where he will be untroubled by either wolf or demon. Were he slightly less aged, Wysteria might elect to be put out by the man's good sense of self preservation. Regardless, she leverages this fact and Tomar's lack of conversational defense as ammunition later when they are loading the corpse of a large dead wolf onto a litter of freshly hacked pine branches.

('Serah, I beg you not question Warden Ellis and I's expertise in this matter, given all that we've accomplished this afternoon,' and so on and so forth.)

The sum of these things is trudging back down into the village as the sun sets, sweating despite the cold and stinking of viscera and exertion both.

And how tremendous a success! They will have to borrow a sledge and take an intrepid team of goats back to the lodge come morning in order to see the corpse transplanted back with them, and Wysteria spends a jubilant half hour arguing with a local in order to secure just that. To say nothing of the further hour she spends in the company of the dead creature in the bitter cold of the public house's wood shed, taking extensive notes for the benefit of Mister Dickerson whenever they should eventually make their return to the Gallows.

It's only after darkness has fallen in around the woodshed that she suddenly looks up and pauses writing in her little field book.

And then all at once, Wysteria is on her feet with a cry of "Oh!" And then, more mortified still: "Oh no."

When she bursts into the public house's back room where, in exchange for the use of the shed for storing cursed animal bodies, Ellis has been put to work helping the landlady with the repair of the store room's shelving, there is a distinct air of something like desperation and horror about her person. She is still in her traveling clothes, mud and demon-sludge black at the hem, and is pale under the winter blown pinch of color at her cheeks and nose. Maybe she has found out something dreadful from the wolf's corpse. Maybe it hadn't been Fade touched at all, merely possessed, and now is a corpse prowling the village hungering for the bones and flesh of something more human.

"Have you seen the landlady?"

Upon opening the door, Ellis is dusted with a scattering of wood shavings. Sleeves rolled back to his elbows, the muck and gore of the morning's work still spattered piece-meal in all the places his long-shed armor hadn't covered. The shelving is more or less assembled. There are nails held in his mouth, which Ellis quickly removes upon seeing the look on Wysteria's face.

"Aye," is swiftly followed by, "Has something happened?"

Because even in this little room lit by a pair of dusty oil lamps, the state Wysteria's arrived is very clear. Or Ellis is so finely attuned to her many expressions that it would be impossible to miss the distress emanating from her now.

His coat is close at hand. No armor, but the mace will do if there is some clear threat to be dealt with.

Even before she answers, he is making his way to her. It involves stepping around the many boxes and jars and other assorted items waiting to be returned to the newly-secured shelves, but Ellis is sure of his footing. None of the obstacles delay him from drawing close enough to reach for her hand.

Yes, something is clearly the matter. And nattering every moment more the narrower the space between them becomes. From where she stands there in the store room's doorway, Wysteria takes a small step backyard in a nearly subconscious attempt to preserve some of the distance between them.

"No, no. Everything is perfectly well. There's no reason to concern yourself. It's only a small matter of— a subject to address with the proprietess."

It's fine.

The searching expression on Ellis' face trends towards a frown. He persists only a step or two further, but doesn't pursue her through the doorway.

"She's offered supper, and laundry, should we need it," is more or less a guess; what else does Wysteria have to discuss with their hosts?

Maybe Ellis had bartered. He'd had plenty of time to do so, when Irina had been conversing at him from the doorway. (It had been a very one-sided conversation; Irina wasn't nosy, just very determined to get her money's worth out of this arrangement.)

"If you wait a few moments for me, I'll finish up here and we can speak to her together."

Edited 2022-09-23 05:55 (UTC)

Her "No!" is so abrupt is might qualify as a slap, though afterwards she hastens to moderate and offer some softer alternative "No, continue as you are. It's only a small thing, and of no great consequence. I'll discuss it with the lady directly."

In a desperate bid to turn conversation from whatever is troubling her, she glances past him and blurts out, "It looks very fine. I'm sure the landlady will be quite pleased to see what a respectable job you've done of it."

And then, with a swirl of mud edged skirts, Wysteria is bolting away.

A small thing, of no great consequence.

Ellis is not entirely convinced of this. Though Wysteria does bolt in the direction of the tavern proper, which allays some more material concerns as to their newly-acquired cargo.

Still, he stands uneasily in the doorway looking after her for a few moments. It has never been his habit to catch and keep hold of her when she so clearly preferred otherwise, but he has the sense that maybe he should have tried to convince her to stay. Even if only for a few moments longer, enough time to try and settle her.

But without any clear course of action (he could follow after, but her no had been very effective discouragement.) Ellis does return to the task at hand.

The work is simple, methodically accomplished. It doesn't entirely dispel Ellis' concerns, but it sets them at a little distance from him. The door remains open, so any signs of trouble will be easily heard. And one by one, while Ellis waits for her return, he hammers each shelf into place. Tests the support before returning various canned goods and jarred vegetables to the newly-installed shelving. He takes more time than he needs, gives the task more attention than it might really require. Wysteria will fetch him when she is so inclined.

On the plus side: there is no screaming or gasps from the public house's interior, and no undead wolf comes immediately battering down the back door either. Slightly more ominous is the fact that Wysteria doesn't return—not within a few minutes, not even within a handful of minutes. And though the sounds of the well attended little tavern seeping in through to the kitchens and the storerooms seems perfectly typical, there is no shrill underpinning at all from Wysteria's twittering voice. When someone does appear back in the kitchens, it's the spotty faced nephew of the landlady sullenly clanging and clattering his way through scraping dinners out of the large pot simmering over the fire, grumbling about it being the scope of his duties while deftly stacking bowls up the length of his arm for conveying back to the dining room.

He sticks his head in the storeroom before he goes, frowning gloomily at Ellis in the way teenage boys are wont to do.

"Aunt M says to tell you to have something to eat."

Just for peace of mind, Ellis looks in on the fade-touched corpse before heeding the instruction to come in to find something to eat.

Wysteria's continued absence feels enough like a warning sign that it propels Ellis from the dining room up the stairs to the cozy little room that's been let to them a second night.

A cautious rap on the closed door is followed by—

"Wysteria? Do you intend to eat with me?"

Before whatever trap she's laying springs.

First of all, Wysteria Ginsberg née Poppell would never lay a trap. That would be absurd—a sign of desperation and a lack of charisma both, surely. Why lie in wait when it is so much more expeditious to simply go directly toward what she has an interest in. No, it is entirely unfair to cast such aspersions in her general direction.

For indeed if she were baiting a trap, certainly she would have a more thoughtful reply prepared for him than the muffled squawk of alarm that first answers his inquiry through the door. It's cut sharply off, interrupted no doubt both by Wysteria's own bid for discretion as much as it is—

Something else. There was some other noise accompanying that honk of dismay, though separating it proves to be difficult through the closed door, and in no time at all Wysteria is calling hurriedly back—

"No, you go on Mister— Ellis. I'm hardly hungry. Which is to say, I've eaten," is clearly a lie in an effort to dissuade further questioning. "So please don't concern yourself with the state of my stomach."

Yes, it is clearly a lie.

If the delivery had been a bit smoother, and Wysteria seemed more at ease when they'd spoken earlier, Ellis might have come to the conclusion that Wysteria was occupied with her notes. It wouldn't have been the first time some scientific data took precedence over all other things.

As it stands, Ellis hesitates for a long moment on the opposite side of the door. Hand heavy on the latch, Ellis ultimately circles around to the semi-casual rejoinder of—

"I would rather have your company," will likely be easily brushed aside as well, which is why it's coupled with, "Would you sit with me, or have me come up after I've finished?"

It's very difficult, sometimes—to tell him know. From the far side of the door, she can imagine what he must look like in the narrow little hall: a frown, maybe. The slightest pinch at his brow.

All at once, she realizes that the bolt has not been done again. The landlady had drawn it back to allow herself to leave, and Wysteria had not thought to follow after her and see the door secured once more. This brief moment of alarm sounds like, from Ellis's side of the door, like either a very long pause of consideration or perhaps as if she's been distracted from the question entirely and has only half heard him—

"No!" is blurted out as if to fill that space retroactively. "I mean, I can't join you but yes. You ought to come up after you've finished. Or—" Think. "Or rather, let us split the difference I will come down in a reasonable time to have a warm drink with you once you have finished your supper. There, a perfectly happy arrangement."

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foisting time skip duties upon you pls oblige as whims dictate

acceptable

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