𝖆𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖆 𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖐𝖔𝖛 ☼ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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abraxaslogs2021-12-01 08:44 pm
solmate) wrote in abraxaslogs2021-12-01 08:44 pm
Entry tags:
003
Who: Alina, Mage Jolene, Mal, Ciri, Sam Wilson
What: Alina crosses a desert as cargo with a disreputable carpet salesman. It goes better than expected.
Where: Castle Thorne, Horizon
When: Early December
Warnings: None yet
Other: PM me or shoot me a private plurk![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
hellbender if you'd like a custom start!
What: Alina crosses a desert as cargo with a disreputable carpet salesman. It goes better than expected.
Where: Castle Thorne, Horizon
When: Early December
Warnings: None yet
Other: PM me or shoot me a private plurk
jolene
So here she is. Bruised from the bumpy ride with a terrible crick in her neck, too tired to fight with real vigor as she's shepherded to whatever dreadful fate awaits. Will it be communal or solitary? Capital punishment isn't out of the question, but the wouldn't hang her. She doesn't think.
It is with more than mild surprise she wears very obviously that she meets Mage Jolene rather than... well, honestly she was expecting anyone else. Not that she was exactly prepared with a speech, it still knocks her off her mental balance. Eyes wide, her jaw jerks a little as if stammering. She doesn't put her bluff back on entirely. Jolene had been kind to her, and that tempts Alina into thinking she might find mercy.
But she's still cautious.
"I suppose you're going to put me back in the dungeons."
no subject
"We could do that," she says off-handedly, still reading, and takes a seat across the desk from Alina. "It does seem a bit extreme, though, given that you weren't found with any weapons or other illegal items. You did go through a lot of trouble to get back, didn't you?"
Setting the parchment down, she waves a hand and the candles on the desk light themselves as she leans back in her chair. "We've already made the offer that any of the Summoned could return to Thorne without risk of imprisonment. Why would you bother with all this when I would have simply sent Kylo to retrieve you from outside Cadens?"
mal
That doesn't mean she's making herself comfortable in the castle. Thankfully, she's had plenty of practice trying to be invisible. Another novelty is that it seems to work.
With quiet steps, she surveys the castle, on the look out for two in particular. (although she'd much rather find one. She hopes her gut is leading her to the correct one.) Her skin seems to buzz in anticipation as she feels like she's getting closer to... something.
She peeks around a corner, and her breath escapes as she flattens against the wall in delight and relief. Then, with startlingly accurate precision, she chucks a crumpled up piece of parchment at his head. No small science needed, just a lifetime of annoying one (1) boy.
sam
It's fine. But then it's only fine until it's not. She's there, only until she's not. Creeping out in the dead of night, coins stolen and shoved into her purse. Parchment waits for Sam on the table, folded neatly with his name written in script on the front. There is something inscrutable here. Written and crossed out, sloppy with blobs of ink before it starts again. It's only with careful examination that he might see an admission, I didn't want to leave. A week or two later, he'll find a small crystal statue left in his domain. A falcon, and it's undoubtedly made from the same material that towers in her odd, sunny domain.
no subject
Maybe he should have. Maybe he should have been paying more attention. But Alina's always been somewhat cagey with him, and with Geralt's disappearance, Sam just. Hadn't thought to check in. It's also why he doesn't think to look, when he wakes up - pushing through the still present urge for coffee, and trying to decide if he wants to bother starting a fire in the hearth or if he should just grab something on the way. If he should bother making breakfast - maybe Alina would actually eat? And it's somewhere in that thought, as he turns to her bedroom door, that he catches the note on the table. The pile of maps. The scrawl he'd just started to recognize, himself.
He collapses into one of the chairs as he reads the words - over and over. It's not that he's shocked, really, but there is a pit that grows in his chest. Grows and grows until he can't quite keep his feet under him.
It's not until later that he responds. Not until later that he finds the empty coinpurse, the echoes of someone who had been packing, taking with her whatever remnants of her that had been left in the apartment, and then some. It's later that night, maybe early the next morning, that the words will come across her vision - Sam's tight script, not all that different from the notes he would sometimes leave her if he had to leave early, or would be back late.
ciri
The false starts are crumbled, ripped, and smeared with ink, littering the floor around her. Her hand is cramped and her back aches from hunching over the parchment. She doesn't have that many pieces left. She wonders if it would be better to just disappear without a trace, erase herself from Ciri's story.
But she considers the opposite, has lived the opposite with Mal, and she doesn't need Ciri to put herself in more danger chasing after her and her dumb decisions. With a sniff, she wipes a tear and begins to write. Ciri's name is lettered on the front and slipped under the door of their house before Alina meets her smuggler.
A couple of weeks later, Alina waits in Ciri's domain, knees curled up to her chest. It is a pale imitation of her promise to come back.