[open] I'm learning to live

[frontlinetitties]

Who: Gideon Nav and OPEN
Where: Around Thorne Castle, and a visit to the dungeons.
When: throughout the month
What: various interactions
Warnings: TBD but probably none



The Dungeons - open to prisoners and welcomed

[She's been avoiding the dungeons. There has been enough to deal with for the last little while, like the heady rush that comes with having someone finally see something worthwhile in her, for being chosen for her capabilities rather than stamped down and discarded in a decaying tomb of a place that was never meant to thrive. The shock - bright and sharp as a snapped stem - at finding herself back inside her own body, whole and undamaged and very much alive. Being cast into some strange new world, life in the castle, the horizon, all of it-- all of this has acted as the perfect distraction against really acknowledging that, unlike her, some people have been cast down and locked out.

She's been toying with telling herself that they probably deserve it. That if they've been locked up down there then there's probably a very good reason for it. Only, it's an excuse that knocks hollow against the inside of her skull, knowing as he does that life has the propensity to be anything but fair. And she supposes it’s high time she started asking questions.

So she's here, at last. Here with an offering of bread rolls - fragrant and still warm from the ovens - that she's pilfered from the dining hall, like a sad apology for her neglect and wilful ignorance. For any of the other castle residents, she might be ran into whilst loitering before the stone stairway leading down into the dungeon's depths, looking guilty and uncertain. For the residents of the dungeons, she'll come looming out of the shadows, looking entirely forbidding all draped in black and bound in six feet worth of solid muscle. Until she opens her mouth to speak, anyway.]

Sooo, I figured you might be hungry?

Training - open to welcomed

[The sword she managed to procure during the first month's festivities is more than a little shabby, leaves quite a lot to be desired, but it's hardly the first time in her life that she's had to work with less than the best of tools. Cavaliers back on the Ninth were never particularly handy with a blade. Not since the legendary Matthias Nonius and he'd been dead a thousand years at least. They'd been bred for how much bone they were capable of lugging around rather than their skill with a rapier, and as such what had passed into her hands was the least rusty and decrepit of an array of very rusty, very decrepit weaponry indeed. Only her longsword had been a thing of raw and savage beauty-- but the less she thinks of that the better, lest she fall prey to something embarrassingly akin homesickness.

Whatever, the sword she's now deep in practice with is shabby, but not the shabbiest. It'll do-- and indeed, there's a fast-ascending animal joy in the way she's training with it now, even alone in the empty courtyard, with nothing but stationary dummies for sparring partners, she finds herself slipping into that sideways place where time slows down and the physicality of the fight becomes everything. Perhaps you've merely come to watch her train, or maybe you want to join in?

Eventually, she'll spot whoever is hanging around from the periphery of her vision, and turn, cutting a dramatic arc through the air with the blade before sweeping low in a bow. It's always nice to have an audience.]

Yo. You here to train, or...?

Wildcard

[Run into her wandering the halls? Catch her snooping about the castle or listening in to a conversation? Devouring more than her fair share of food in the dining hall? If you have an idea just hit me and I'll roll with it!]

Comments

[wiedzminka]

[ Ciri's lips quirk in an almost-smile, though the amusement in it is wry at best. ]

I think you already know, considering you came down here to ask in the first place.

But though I can't speak for many of the others, the only reason I've been able to discern for our treatment is that the mages upstairs made a mistake, and this is how they intend to sweep it under the rug.

I'll take the bread now. Since I've been so helpful.

[ She reaches out through the bars. Might as well. They don't get that much food. ]

[frontlinetitties]

[Maybe she's right. Fuck it, she is right. Some part of her has known for a while now - or maybe for longer than that, maybe even since the very first day they'd been pulled out of that creepy void-fountain - that nothing here was sitting right against her bones. That something was up. So she hasn't been paying the kind of attention she ought to have been paying, too swept up in finding herself here, unharmed, among people and things and a kind of purpose for once. But the niggling, unpleasant feelings in her have been there for a while.]

Yeah. Yeah.

[She says, somewhat lamely, before handing over a couple of the rolls of bread with a sigh. She supposes she'll have to persuade Harrow that they need to do something now, that they have to act, plan a prison break or something. Which, frankly, kind of sucks, because it had seemed to her that Harrow kind of likes it here. Ah well.]

Thanks for the honesty.

[And she's turning on her heel then, heading back toward the gilded spaces and suspicious luxury of the floors above.]