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Who: Michael Ralston & Various
What: Catch-all for August
When: post-Horizon, but will probably use this space as I see fit throughout the month.
Where: Castle Thorne
Notes: Feel free to hit me up on discord or plurk if you want to plot something or want a ~*~bespoke~*~ starter. Prose or brackets are a-okay; I'll match your preference. See Ralston's optional opt-in info HERE .

THE CASTLE.

There is a man in Castle Thorne who walks with a cane and has made little effort to seek out anyone's company. By all accounts, he is easily missed and cuts a fairly unremarkable figure—he is neither particularly tall or short, nor especially good looking or plain. In fact if not for the tell-tale tunic and trousers and a penchant for haunting the guest quarters, he might be easily mistaken for some servant or native of the castle who is only as interested in these out-of-world travelers as he is employed to be.

And yet—

[A] Here he is, making use of the library available to Thorne's 'honored guests'; he has rooted his way to some back series of shelves, and is presently standing at the foot of a ladder clearly doing the mental math on scaling it to reach an upper series of books when movement at the end of the stack draws his attention. Ralston snaps his fingers at whoever has had the distinct misfortune to cross paths with him, saying,

"You. Step this way for just a moment."

[B] Or he is in some quiet courtyard available to Thorne's guests, sitting on some bench in the shadow of a high stone wall where the air of the day is most temperate. He has an orange in hand, and is peeling it slowly with every appearance of waiting for someone. Ralston's dark eyes search out any figure who happens to pass across the yard. If he happens to recognize them as either an ex-prisoner or someone who has demonstrated a particular talent for the little magic spells being taught by the Thornean mages, he will whistle to get their attention and motion for them to come closer. Worst comes to worst, he might flick a bit of orange peel in your direction to clarify the urgency of his demand for conversation.

[C] Or, rarest and strangest of all, Ralston might be found in some part of the castle where he shouldn't be. Perhaps it is a merely a rarely used back staircase, or a quiet corridor in some wing of the castle which guests have ostensibly been discouraged from visiting, or he is quietly letting himself into a room in which he has no business being.

WILDCARD.
[You know the drill. Feel free to hit me up on disco or plurk if you feel moved, but I can roll with pretty much anything.]

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He is slow to unwind himself at the edge of the bed, to shift toward standing, and indeed is only just rising as Kirigan makes his suggestion. Something sharpens in Ralston's face. Narrows, so that the flashing heat of temper fires only in his dark eyes rather than being writ broad through either his slanting brow or mouth.

Click. Leaning on the cane, Ralston straightens fully—or as near to it as he ever bothers with.

"Then the next time you go, I'll follow you down." Simple. Bristling. He didn't care to remain seated there at the foot of the bed like a faithful pet anyway.

This pleases him; it shows in the lift of his chin, his eyebrows, dark eyes bright with interest. With a little effort he could both look and sound much less condescending, which might be a nice fantasy to entertain while experiencing the reality of his presence.

"And how will you do that?"

"I don't see how the method would be any of your concern," is snapped back, abbreviated in reply to that knowing tilt of the general's chin. If Ralston had hackles, they might ripple to standing. Instead, he just shifts his grip on the borrowed cane's smoothly curved handle and considers moving to fetch the small table from where it presently blocks any entrance or exit to this quiet, still room.

"Your passage into that place clarifies the way forward. The door stays open behind you."

"Fascinating."

He means it, according to the attentive movements of his eyes.

Ralston sounds as if he's done this before. Or something like it. But perhaps he's just extraordinarily adaptable—a fine quality to have, and one Kirigan expects of all his favoured Grisha. This stranger is turning out to be useful in unexpected ways, and the more this continues, the more firmly he resolves into a person-shaped thing with details worth examining.

"Is that all it would take? Another traveller nearby?"

Fascinating.

Incredible, how loathsome that word can be under the correct circumstances. Ralston lifts his chin so he might return Kirigan's examination with a study of his own down the length of his faintly crooked nose.

"How should I know? We've only just begun."

The smile that phrase engenders is no kinder than the broader promise it contains.

"So we have."

These people, the people of Thorne and all those they love and all who might defend them, will come to regret what they have done. The pleasure he takes from this thought is that of a child closing his hand around a pebble, smooth and dark.

Ralston's reward: a momentary indulgence.

"Sitting up or lying down?"

"I don't think we'd both fit in your bed," is snipped directly back, indulgence be damned.

There is a narrow chair which he frequently makes use of, much to the detriment of anyone else who might care to sit somewhere other than at the edge of their bed. With a disparaging sniff, Ralston shifts in pursuit of it now—dredging it around by its arm like a sullen child so that when he sinks down into it, he is facing Kirigan rather than some alternative.

(Though it hardly matters. He doesn't need to see him to sense his progress.)

This is new territory, a rare thing in so long a life, and Kirigan's appetite for it limns his mood enough to make him willing, but not enough to override his judgement. He doesn't yet know whether he can sit upright without support while travelling, as he's come to think of it, and isn't about to try with an audience when the result might be tipping face-first into said audience's lap—even the look on Ralston's face wouldn't be worth that indignity—so it's back to the headboard he goes, bare feet and all.

While settling in place, he murmurs, "You should be so lucky." Despite the timbre of his voice, which flows with a warmth not at all out of place at his bedside, the amusement it carries is unmistakably mocking. Right after, he clears his throat to banish it.

"We'll meet in the centre. There's a woodland nearby—stay clear of it."

Don't tell me what to do, he doesn't say although it's written there in every sulky line of him and in the impatient flick of his wrist which hooks the borrowed cane at the chair's arm. One foot, still in its shoe, is kicked up onto the very edge of Kirigan's bed; and then the second one arrives as well, one ankle hooking across the other as Ralston's hands lace together over his middle. The glint in his dark eye suggests that even in Kalvad it must be poor manners to put your shoes in someone's bed.

"Don't tell me you've elected to protect someone's things while they're away. How shockingly sentimental, General."

This, as he settles into the depths of the chair with such devotion that it's as if he's willed himself to become a part of it.

"It's not for his sake, it's for yours," he says, thinking in advance of how annoying it would be to have to drag Ralston out of the raven boy's seductive wood or, even worse, to end up wandering there along with him. He says this while looking at Ralston's shoes.

After a deliberate pause, he looks to the face of the man himself.

Then he says, "I'd really rather not."

From the depths of his chair, Ralston reflects back a studiously unperturbed look. You'd really rather not what? isn't a question which requires asking.

"Lie back," he says to the man who has already settled himself quite firmly against the headboard. "It requires concentration, doesn't it?"

Oh, Ralston.

He responds with a sigh, and turns his gaze aside, as though in concession to this—whatever this is. Assertion of autonomy. Rebellious compulsion. This ongoing argument Ralston is always making against everything. He has been more than patient with it—permissive, even. Polluting his bed, though, with the shoes he wears outside? While gently wringing his hands, the Darkling takes a second to imagine the horror witnessing such a thing might provoke among his Grisha—Ivan would be enraged by it, bless him—and finds it faintly comforting.

And then he flicks his wrist and lifts the shadow beneath Ralston's chair to knock it on its back, and doesn't even watch it happen. Good-bye.

He leans forward. It's the natural, most reflexive response—beating out any sound of dismay or snatching grasp after the chair's arms. The crack of the chair back impacting with the floor is loud, and in his ear there is a sharper more nauseating snap that has nothing to do with the clatter of the borrowed cane as it skitters away across the floor in imitation of a live snake until it finds some rug or furniture edge.

With a sharp cry, Ralston spills after it in apoplectic disarray.

He writhes there tangled in the geometry of the upended chair. Recoils from the ravenous pain that snarls through his shoulder, the heat of it so shocking and the change or altitude so shocking that he doesn't immediately realize why his face is wet or how exactly he might have contrived to strike it. And then he tastes the metal and it's incredible, isn't it? How freely a broken nose bleeds, hot and copper into his fingers and onto his clothes and the floor.

The initial calamity isn't worth observing. A chair tipping over is hardly catastrophic. Nonetheless, it sounds like Ralston is making a fuss, which doesn't surprise him at all—who knows how long the man been permitted to get away with his trifling bullshit, free of repercussions—so it's only when a new colour appears in the periphery of his attention that he turns his head to see it. His eyebrows drop in undisguised puzzlement.

"Are you bleeding?" When he comes back to the bed's edge, lowers his feet back to the floor, he does so without even the slightest urgency. "How in the world did you manage that?"

He is indeed bleeding, the hand cupped over the lower half of his face painted grisly vermillion.

"Bastard," is spat back, spittle and red and fundamentally reflexive, from behind it. Only he can't both shield his face and twist off the hot bolt of pain jagging through his shoulder, and so with a scrabbling lack of grace Ralston abandons the attempt in favor of bleeding freely across edge of the rug so he might dredge himself free of the chair.

There's no grace in the arrangement. Half sitting, half lying, he holds his right arm tight against himself. Had he caught himself that way? Twisted as he fell after the impulse to catch himself? Ralston reaches after the cane where it's rolled to a stop, the red heat of fury and mortification and the sick nauseous feeling that comes with sudden pain burning in his face and the back of his neck and low in his belly.

How dramatic.

Were they in Ravka, Kirigan would remain seated there and watch him scrape himself off the floor, and perhaps chide him for bleeding on the rug—the urge is right there on his tongue—but this is neither his palace nor his rug. He must consider where he is, and how bad it would look if someone came to the door only to find it blocked off and this friendly little scene unfolding beyond the barricade. Observing Ralston's tender movements, how he carries himself, the state of his face, he concludes: bad.

So he rises. In a moment he'll drag that little table back to where it was previously, but first he walks to Ralston, stops just shy of the blood, and crouches down smoothly to equalize the level of their eyes.

"I don't know what this is," he says, one finger tugging the rest of his hand to vaguely indicate this, more as a concept than the physicality of it, "but I can see that it hurts, and that you hate that it hurts, so I believe it. I can also see you're repulsed by the idea that you might have to take any lesson from this. Even so, I hope you'll make the effort." The smoke of confidentiality leaves his voice, then, and it's back to business: "Now, I'll fetch a healer for you, yes?"

He spits. Fuck you. And fuck your satisfaction.

"Yes," is snarled, Ralston's bloody lips curling back from the flash of enamel behind them. Wounded animals often show their teeth. He can feel the heat burning in his face, the taste of shame of frustration more sour at the teeth than any metallic blood tang. "Do that."

Get out of this room. Take that paternalistic and patronizing air with him.

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