semi-open | busy old fool, unruly sun

[necrosaint]

WHO: Harrowhark and Gideon; Harrowhark & open
WHAT: Hiding from the fact that the real world is Too Loud in the Horizon is not a feasible long-term coping mechanism.
WHEN: What is time? End of September-early October nebulous.
WHERE: Cadens | the Horizon

I. the physical world part [for Gideon]
Harrow genuinely does not know how they're still staying in this room in Cadens—she knows the plan isn't to continue to stay there but seek out the coastal Libertas where she might fit in a bit better, but it requires resources and a plan to make that trip. And some sort of financial acumen. In a place that frowns on magic, necromancy is not particularly useful, and that's all Harrow could have contributed.

There is also no library she has found where she can study the area's magic; that doesn't mean there isn't one. That means Harrow hasn't found it, the same way she hasn't leapt into the local scientific discoveries other than desperately wanting to research them. Harrowhark has not even managed to get her hands on a map.

That's because every time she goes outside she is immediately stricken by overstimulated senses and recoils back into her cloak and hood, and disappears back into her room. It may not be a modern metropolis to some of the summoned, but to Harrow, Cadens is the loudest and brightest and most completely overwhelming place she has ever seen. After the experience getting there, her nerves were raw: after a time staying there she finds herself seeing people in the periphery who do not exist, hearing voices that belong to no one, and becoming convinced that the two hundred souls she carries with her are all very interested in not going outside.

It's all a little bit too much, and a tired and frayed Harrow has retreated strategically into her cocoon of bone. One does not need to deal with the world when one is safely wrapped up in an osseous shield.

Presumably, one does not need to eat when one is a Lyctor.

(If she is not interrupted before getting to that point, one will learn that even Lyctors need to drink.)


II. the horizon part [open]
Access to the Horizon probably is not the healthiest thing in the world for Harrow, in this instance: it is enabling her tendencies toward being withdrawn and contemplative by giving her a whole second reality in which to hide from her body, leave it behind wrapped in bone in a meditative state, and allow her to continue being withdrawn and contemplative.

At least she isn't sticking entirely to her own domain, and she hasn't figured out—possibly through some tiny, subconscious self-preservative sabotage—how to seal it off from outsiders, which means it is wide open for entry. It's only as appealing as it ever was: it's still a vast bioluminescent cave filled with ice, piles of bone, and skeletal constructs.

(And a frozen--both literally and in time--corpse in an ice block in the middle of a tiny island surrounded by blue-gleaming water. She's in chains. You can ignore her. She's really not going to mind.)

But now one of the skeletons is regularly found boiling a pot of tea over a small fire, and it smells appealing. There are also a few bird-skeletons, perched on rocks or flying across the cave and resettling. Often Harrow is perched on a rock repeatedly practicing more complex detailed construct forms (something she wonders about the real-life applications of, and the only way to determine is to try) but sometimes she wanders, whether or not it's because one of the bone-birds has gotten out and flown off somewhere new.

Either way, if she wanders into your domain, she's probably whispering softly to herself ... or chasing a bird.

Comments

[frontlinetitties]

By the time Gideon shoulders open the door to their dreary little room, the wood creaking abominably beneath her rough thrust, she's tired right down to the very centre of herself. A bone-weary, muscle-achey kind of tired, which nonetheless feels good and almost clean despite the general drudgery of the tasks she's been undertaking. Never in a million years would she have dreamed she'd finally fly the coup, shuck off her metaphorical bonds, only to be performing drudge work on some distant world that she's still struggling to even conceive of. It's hardly the blood, guts, and glory of the Cohort, a far cry from the girlhood fantasies that had got her through hours and days and years of misery back on the Ninth. No battles, no medals, no beds filled with writhing babes. Only physical, menial tasks that eat up the hours and leave her weary yet still somehow satisfied at the end of each day.

Maybe it's just that she can go out and sort of choose what she does that makes it feel worthwhile, maybe it's the novelty of being paid for her time, for the cold clink of coin in her hand that says what she's doing is worth something. Maybe it's the little thrill of knowing that this shit might be hard and she's still getting to grips with it all but she's got this, can take care of herself and Harrow both. Or, at least, she thought she could, an assertion that swiftly dissipates as she enters the room and casts her gaze about for her necromancer, only to find a cocoon formed from osseous matter were the other girl ought to be.

"Harrow...Harrow! What the fuck," confusion gives out around a hot and nerve-scalding panic as her slow slink into the room turns into a dash instead, reaching for her sword as instinctive as breathing. Her mind whirrs around what might have happened whilst she was gone, throws up all kinds of ugly horrors-- Harrow attacked whilst she'd left her undefended! Harrow hurt and bleeding out inside a goddamned bone. Her heart beats out a terrible rhythm against the constriction of her ribs as she acts quite without thinking, uses the pommel of her sword to smash down against the cocoon of bone in an effort to drag her necromancer free.

It takes a while - this fucker is thick - before cracks start to show, before the grisly off-white chrysalis begins to crumble beneath Gideon's assault, and she's throwing down her sword then. Reaches inside to pull the thin collection of limbs that make up her necromancer into her arms.

"Harrow, are you hurt? What the hell happened here??"

[necrosaint]

"Mmf," says Harrow eloquently as she's jostled from her reverie; she really should have noticed the assault on her shielding, but the actual mild dehydration isn't helping her awareness much. Her awareness of suddenly being held, and her cavalier in a state of concern that doesn't make much sense.

Far be it from Harrow to think of the fact that she made her own situation look pretty bad.

"What—Nav, I was just thinking—I'm fine," though she is not, actually, fighting her way free of Gideon's grasp, so she's clearly not completely fine, "I was aiming for preventing being hurt. I suppose I fell asleep."

ii;

[extremethirst]

"Well, hey, how are you?"

The greeting isn't to the owner of the domain but instead to the corpse that appears to be in a block of ice. He bends down at the waist so that he can get a good look at the body, squinting at about where the chest is.

"It's a real shame that you feel like putting those tits on ice, but I guess I shouldn't be too judgy." Nero offers a small shrug as he straightens up. Within his domain, he has the broken statue of someone that he honestly cares about, so he gets it. In his own twisted and disgusting way, he gets it.

"Still, quick question -- how come the skeletons get to play house but not the corpse?"

[frontlinetitties]

It takes a moment for that to sink in, for Harrow's words to cut down through her panic and rearrange themselves into something coherent. And when they do, there's the slow bleed of her feelings into something else. Confusion, edged with relief. The bright, hot spark of an anger born solely from gladness. Still standing there in a dusty pile of smashed-up bone, clutched bridal-style in her arms, held in close against her chest, Gideon stares down into her necromancer's face, her expression gone tight with a wash of mixed emotion.

"What? What the fuck, Harrow. You were just casually taking a bone-nap? You wrapped yourself up in bone just to think?" her eyes sweep over the other girl's narrow, pointy little face, searching her expression for something, some clue as to the truth of her wellbeing. She looks weary and perhaps a touch dehydrated, like some dried-up, particularly drab-coloured flower. As though she's been in that fucking thing all day or something. Gideon's gaze narrows in evident suspicion. "preventing yourself from being hurt by what? What happened?"

horizon.

[wiedzminka]

Maybe Harrow wandered in completely by accident, chasing something; maybe she was drawn in by the bones. The gates to Kaer Morhen's great yard are always open, and inside can be glimpsed stone, snow and skeletons. They lay strewn about, half-frozen, enormous monstrous ribcages curling up from the earth mixed in with the smaller, unmistakably human bones tangled within and iced over.

The fortress lies nestled in a mountain pass, with the blue and green snowcapped mountains rising above and around it, a false backdrop that only seems as vast as it should be when standing inside the domain, but can in no way be as large as it looks. The road leading up to the Witcher keep seems to lead right into these mountains, with the chill in the air biting but not overly unpleasant, wintry and fresh with the scent of pine and frost.

Inside the gated courtyard filled with bones and training equipment, steps and strangely balanced logs and stones hanging by chains, is a woman. She is blindfolded, standing delicately balanced atop a series of tall, narrow logs stuck vertically into the frozen earth, each set a couple feet apart so she must hop from one to the other. The sword in her hands gleams in the bright sunlight, silvery-sharp, and glides with a silken shwf! through the air as she turns in a quick pirouette to block a blow from a heavy, cloth-wrapped bundle set up on chains above her and swinging furiously this way and that in a simulation of some wildly attacking foe.

[necrosaint]

"I wrapped myself up in bone to meditate so that nothing--"

Harrow's sharp tone suddenly falters and halts, as she processes the reality she's in more thoroughly. She has frightened her cavalier, who she believes mostly despises her, and yet that fright is fair regardless due to Harrow's actions having technically belittled Gideon's job; she is being held by said cavalier and has not ordered her to put her down.

Her cavalier has every right to be a combination of angry and suspicious, and Harrow is so fearful and tired and emotionally wrung-through, she gathers up every last bit of self-control to not rest her head against Gideon's chest. That would be far beyond appropriateness. Instead, she says in a smaller, timid voice, "Nothing happened. I am just always afraid it will. It's so--much, there's so much. Outside happened. I stepped outdoors and the light, all the people--"

Another tiny sigh.

[necrosaint]

Regardless of how she got there, the giant skeletons held her. Those incredible bones of constructs she must figure out how to make! Her boots would be soaking in water for the amount of time Harrow circles them, were she thinking about the fact they should be; as she is not, the Horizon's consensus reality doesn't force it on her. Instead she plans and memorizes,a nd maybe swipes a couple of the human bones for herself--it's not as if she can take them out of her own domain, anyway--before her curious wandering continues.

At least the weather is familiar, wherever she's found herself.

Her interest remains in the bone, in the cold, and perhaps in the landscape; that is what is keeping Harrowhark here, and yet when she spots the young woman fighting, that becomes what is holding her in that spot. She doesn't hide her observation. She simply stops where she is and watches, unabashed.

Harrow doesn't have any of Gideon Nav's knowledge of what these motions should look like, but it is because of Gideon Nav that she is interested. And because of that, she remains in a cautious, curious posture: a tiny necromancer wrapped in black robes, skull paint fresh, body poised as if she's about to run off but expression made of focused intensity.

[wiedzminka]

Ciri senses another presence -- a combination of the faint sounds of shoes crunching in the snow, someone moving and breathing, and the Horizon itself seeming to alert her in a subtle way, a tingle along her spine. This is her Domain as much as it is Geralt's, a place built for safety and defense and entirely unwelcoming to guests (or intruders) unless its owners wish it so. The gates have been left open for some time now; Geralt allows others into the outer yard of the keep, and she has no reason to feel otherwise, though her cabin's door is as tightly locked as the inside of Kaer Morhen.

Still, though Ciri knows someone is watching, she knows also there is nothing that can truly threaten her in this Domain. And she's in the middle of her training routine. The guest will have to wait.

A few minutes later, just as the obstacle swings at her head one more time, Ciri ducks, turns and flips suddenly off the wooden stake she'd been balanced on. She lands catlike on her feet, facing the unknown person squarely without even looking. And only then reaches up to tug the blindfold off.

"It's rude to stare without announcing yourself."

Her sword stays in her hand, but down at her side, not threatening. Her other hand lands on her hip as she eyes the stranger up and down, having expected someone she knows and instead surprised to find a completely unfamiliar face.

A first-timer?

"Do you remember your name?"

[necrosaint]

"Is it?"

It's a genuine curiosity; Harrow is someone who genuinely doesn't know that. The number of people she has watched practice with swords is short, and they have all been genuinely eager to see her doing so. Even if occasionally pretending to be angry, or in the case of Ortus, not even remotely welcoming of her feedback.

"My apologies," she says, and then, "Yes," and then, because that probably wasn't the entire question, "Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Reverend Daughter of the House of the Ninth; your space has most superlative bones." And that is where all of this polite--not deferent, but polite--respect is coming from: names, titles, the most social appropriateness she can string together.

[wiedzminka]

Ciri doesn't respond, assuming the first question is rhetorical; at least it doesn't sound like a quip so much as an odd comment, and Ciri takes it as simply a filler sort of musing to bridge the silence before the woman finally gives her name.

It sounds so formal, the way she includes her titles even though they mean nothing to Ciri. Her brows rise-- and only quirk higher at the compliment regarding Kaer Morhen's bone collection. There is nothing else it could be but a compliment, said that way.

At least Ciri is fairly sure the woman is not, in fact, a first-time visitor to the Horizon. She's heard that term before -- the Ninth -- and she's quite certain that those who appear here without memories know nothing but their name, not even where they hail from or any former titles.

Now. Where has she heard that turn of phrase?

"Thank you. I think."

The bones aren't really anything Ciri thinks should be praised; they're a relic of mistakes past, a warning and a penance. And they aren't real. She hasn't asked why Geralt made them, hasn't thought about whether she'd have recreated them the same if she'd been the one to construct this Domain first and by herself. It hasn't come up. It doesn't matter.

Kaer Morhen is the way it's always been. And that way is, inherently, steeped in death.

"The Ninth is the name of your sphere? I don't suppose you know a woman by the name of Gideon."