middaeg | [open/catch-all] live, i wanna live inspired

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[open/catch-all] live, i wanna live inspired

Who: Myr + you! Yes, you. Over there. Stop hiding behind the furniture. (Starters for L + Connor in the comments.)
When: ~Septeril 2nd to Septeril 18th, ~~author reserves the right to update date range at random to fit around the Dorchacht trip.~~ Myr is in dignitary group number 2, so feel free to catch him any time up until the 14th!
Where: Around the City, mostly the Haven and the Coven.
What: ~*training montage*~
Warnings: None as yet; will update if any arise.

i. coven.
Though the invitation for Monsters to sit in on classes at the Coven was made plain from the start, Myr hadn't availed himself of it his first month in Aefenglom. Call it preoccupation with adapting to his new circumstances, call it having the run of a city for the first time in his entire life, call it having a regular job.

Call it anything but wounded, festering anger that he wasn't invited to those classes as a student, because Geardagas had seen fit to strip him of his magic on passage through the mirror.

He can't sulk forever; even early on, he'd acknowledged he would need to learn how magic works here, if no other reason than his own insatiable curiosity would drive him to it. But that acknowledgement hadn't amounted to action until he'd been given two very good bits of evidence, one (the SQUIP) right after another (Dorchacht), that the Witches here couldn't all be trusted to use their power for the common good any more than Tevinter's magisters could. And what does that fucking say for the Libertarians' arguments about mage rule...

In order to beat a Witch, he'd need to know as well as they did how magic worked. And--he couldn't keep weighing their ethics, their reasoning on Thedas' scale; couldn't keep up his reflexive judgment of everything said or done by a member of the Coven if he didn't know how they thought of themselves.

They're not the happiest reasons to finally come learn magic, but they're good enough to make him an occasional fixture in the back of the Coven's classrooms in early Septeril. Maybe he's reached over politely to attract your attention and ask, sotto voce, what an instructor's drawing on the board. Perhaps his newly grown antlers are in the way of you being able to see the board. Or maybe he recognizes your voice out in the hallway and gravitates over to ask, eagerly, what class you're bound for next--because sitting with someone he knows a little is absolutely better than being among total strangers.

ii. haven. ~~i like sticks~~
An advantage of profoundly disordered sleep is that there's many quiet hours in the night for Myr to do those things he'd rather not people see him doing.

Like sneaking into a deserted park in the Haven after the bells toll three one morning, staff and dagger in-hand.

There's no one here in Aefenglom who knows who he was back home. There's no one to tell him he can't fight, that he's a liability, that he'll never sit his vigil--but all those things have come with him through the mirror, and they cling close as shame and keep him furtive about his combat drills and forms. Furtive, but not unfaithful, because with the trip to Dorchacht looming on the horizon, he needs to be in his best form.

Stripped to the waist and furred up his back in pale white fuzz, he stands out like a wraith among the darkened trees. Live opponents would be better than the invisible ones he constructs for himself from memory, but his staffwork's sharp enough anyhow to almost infer their presence from how the blade slices air.

iii. wildcard.
(( GO WILD. Myr works at one of the Daisy Chain locations as a gardener and might be found literally anywhere inside the Bright Wall if he's ~~gotten lost~~ exploring. Also prone to napping in some weird places when his awful sleep habits finally catch up with him. Hit me up (Plagueheart#0051 on Discord) if you'd like a starter! ))

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Myr, in turn, had been allowing the younger man space; while the elf's got all the instincts the Maker gave a particularly overprotective mother hen... He's also well aware that he has them and precisely how stifling it can be to have someone hovering around fretting all the time. (He hadn't borne it any better when he was the incapacitated patient.)

So he'd made himself a note to check in with Rich if he didn't notice the younger man around (which he had) for more than a day or two, or something else changed to give him cause to go from passively concerned to actively worried--

And he'd gone about his own preparations for the trip to Dorchacht--and dealing with the SQUIP--much as he would've otherwise. (Though he'd put in more than a few words for Rich with the Maker and His Bride. Remind him there's people here for him before he does anything irreversible...)

It's fortunate that Myr's been largely nocturnal lately (when...he's been sleeping at all), and double-fortunate he's at home rather than out when Rich comes knocking; he's there at the door in under a minute, tousle-headed and half-dressed but quite awake. "Come in and sit down," he says, near-reflexive, to Rich's explanation, seeming not the least bit surprised or dismayed by the timing of the visit.

"And we'll talk, if you need."

Edited 2019-09-09 19:54 (UTC)

Rich steps in immediately when Myr steps aside, barely giving his new surroundings a passing glance. Fight or flight is still overwhelming him, so all he's really thinking about is being away from his bed and the cramped room and the lonely, isolated building of the barracks.

He sits down at what looks to be a kitchen table, resting his head on one hand, making sure not to cut his cheek open. He looks up at Myr then, noting his appearance for the first time... the blindfold, the slight horns... he's surprised to find that the man is so short. Is Rich actually taller than him? He tilts his head in thought.

"What made you think I'd need to talk? I'm sure I just needed a change of scenery."

"Let's say you're not the first person as has shown up at my door because he can't sleep," Myr replies, amiably, and shuts the door behind Rich. "Sometimes talking helps for that."

Because with other mages it was often nightmares, and nightmares meant demons--and that isn't so far off Rich's situation, now was it? Though--strange as it was to think--whatever version of the SQUIP haunted Rich's dreams now didn't have anything but memory's power to do harm.

Being trapped in your dreams with only your own thoughts for company seemed somehow worse than being awake in the Fade every night.

"But if you'd rather not, the garden's probably better for scenery." He pads away from the front door, completely in his element in his own space--though he pauses now and then to touch a wall or a bit of furniture, orienting. "Jasmine's blooming."

Myr would actually be surprised to discover it's not just memories. Explaining that, though... might be more complicated than it needs to be. She... it... doesn't speak up very often, so there's no point in confusing Myr more.

"Well, guess it depends what you wanna talk about..." Rich turns towards the back yard, looking out at the scenery Myr points out. "It's nice... you take care of it yourself?"

"What's keeping you up, if you'd like." Myr had been heading toward the back door anyhow--and taking the hint from how Rich's voice changes as the younger man turns to look that way, he steps up to it and nudges it open.

The jasmine is indeed blooming; the sweet scent of it tendrils into the room on the damp night air.

"Or you could tell me more about yourself, or I can brag on our garden," with a note of humor there; he knows the extent of his own pride over what he's managed in the month he's been here. "--Not all myself, no. Joint effort with Caster--it's his house, to begin with.

"Ever done much gardening?"

Rich looks at the blossoms, admiring the way they sort of sway in the gentle breeze, and it reminds him of talking with Justine.

"Did you know jasmine represents love and sensuality? I mean, I guess most flowers represent love in some way, but... you know."

He stands up then, slowly following Myr to stand at the back door.

"I haven't had a chance, no. I lived in an apartment growing up, so we didn't have a garden."

"I didn't," Myr replies, with an undertone of delight at having learned something new--both about the jasmine, and about Rich. He'd heard about flower-languages before but dismissed them as being entirely too Orlesian to pay much attention to, but... Well, if it's from somewhere Orlais isn't it can't possibly be tainted through association with the Game, now can it? "S'pose that makes sense about them all representing love, too, seeing as a flower's a plant's way of getting another plant."

He turns his head toward Rich as the younger man approaches, and gestures him gallantly out the back door. "After you; we've benches, if you'd like." One's even positioned conveniently by the fence awash in jasmine.

"That's a pity. We didn't have the most room for gardening in the Circle, but we grew as much as we could. How'd you pick up the meanings of flowers?"

"Yeah. And since it's also the preferred way for a human to get another human. I mean, bouquets are a classic. I guess back when they weren't so cliche, people made up all sorts of meanings for them."

He moves to the bench and has just sat down when Myr asks that, and Rich very quickly finds himself flushing red in embarrassment at his old hobbies.

"Oh god... promise you're not going to judge me? It's super embarrassing shit I did when I was a middle schooler. Plus, I mean... how do I even explain it?"

Rich holds his hands out in front of him in a swift motion to emphasize how super prepared he is to tackle this subject.

"Back when I was a kid, when people really liked a story, like from a book or a game or whatever, they would... take the characters and write stories about them to show how much they liked them. I used to do a lot of that... and uh, one of the common storylines people wrote about would be about this made up disease where if you were in love with someone and didn't tell them, you'd cough up flowers. Usually, the flowers were symbolic of the characters, so... I studied up on that..."

He groans as he finishes his explanation, realizing how ridiculous it sounds.

"Please don't laugh."

"Promise you're not going to judge me?"

Myr manages to keep himself from laughing--not that anything Rich has said is laughable, but Maker's bones he remembers being that age and it's endearing. Old enough to recognize not everything you'd done when younger was as brilliant as you thought it then; young enough to still be mortified someone would find out.

(Damn. That would put him right around Harrowing age, wouldn't it.)

He ambles slowly over to the bench as Rich explains, enjoying the simple pleasure of walking barefoot through one's own garden. "Now, what's laughable about that? Sounds a perfectly reasonable pursuit for a lovestruck young man. I just wrote terrible poetry."

Imagine borrowing Hawke from Tethras and penning entirely new adventures instead. Or--more like him--some of the protagonists from the Randy Dowager-- He shakes his head to knock that idea loose, makes a noise like a laugh in the back of his throat, and stops by the bench. Doesn't sit down, yet. "--Sorry, that wasn't at you. Thinking of--I s'pose we'd had something like that with the serials, where the folk who'd write 'em weren't always the same from chapter to chapter. Never read anything quite like coughing up flowers, but I might've been reading the wrong ones."

Thinking of that, though-- "So could you send someone a secret message with a bouquet, now? In the event someone, I don't know, walled you up in a garden and was reading all your mail and you needed to send for help--"

...look, he just. He's got a lot of imagination. It made mages better at what they did.

"L-Lovestruck? I wasn't-" Rich trails off into indignant noises as he tries to think of a convincing protest. He's finding out that the old Rich Goranski might have been more of a romantic than he realized, considering his new ability to understand his sexuality. Those weird moments where he admired the basketball team's practice don't seem so weird now, in hindsight.

"I mean, it's not like the stories were less terrible. I'm pretty sure they were the picture of desperate, hormonal teenager."

He does lighten up a bit, though, as Myr finds a connection to his own world. "Oh, yeah. I think back home, like a hundred years ago, that's how fanfic started, from people writing serials about characters that already were popular. Sherlock Holmes and stuff like that."

The question is extremely imaginative... and it's lucky that Rich is just the creative type to brighten completely at the possibilities. "Oh, I bet you could! I mean, most of the flowers are more geared towards romance, but there were flowers that would represent pride and stuff... maybe if a spy organization had already made up some sort of code for reading them... and then when the spy tries to confess to the other, the other guy thinks it's a message about a double crossing agent, and, and then they've gotta hunt this non-existent mole down because he's not ready to confront his feelings-"

Is he planning his next fanfiction right on the spot with Myr...?

If Rich is, so much the better; anything to get his mind off what had been keeping him up.

Between that and exactly how endearing the younger man's enthusiasm is, Myr's more than willing to go along.

"Oh, only a hundred years? Then we're just an Age off catching up with you," he jokes through a grin. "Though that means I won't live to read--" Well, he wouldn't read anything any longer anyway, no matter how long he lived, but never mind, "--about the flower disease."

Put a pin in that Sherlock Holmes, that sounds worth asking about. How much better, though, to write something of their own-- Myr leans a little in with visible interest as Rich spins out the start of a story, lower lip caught between his teeth as he thinks through the scenario on offer.

"Ohh--and the first fellow's certainly glad of the opportunity for time away with the spy he's sweet on, so every time they get close to their quarry, it vanishes on 'em? So they've got to spend all this time in each other's company, having all these adventures and getting into tight fixes--"

Rich would like to ask if Myr is really honestly that interested about the flower disease stories. If he was, Rich is almost certain he could remember a couple he wrote, and maybe explain them to him, skipping over the embarrassing bits.

But instead, he finds himself quite distracted by his brainstorming. Though Myr can't see the way his hands are moving, it's clear from his tone that he's becoming more animated as he talks, almost breathless as he tries to get all his thoughts on.

"He's glad, duh, but he's also ashamed! He knows all of this is just a big misunderstanding, and continuing on like it's a big, exciting mission is tricking his partner! When he finds out, he'll never forgive him. He knows he should stop this, but every time he tries to tell the truth... he can see the look in his partner's eyes. He hasn't been excited about his job like this since he was a rookie. He can't take that away, can he?"

Truly? Myr was, the same way he's interested in just about anything someone he likes has a yen for. Even if he eventually found them not to his taste, what was the harm in learning more?

And given Rich's obvious flair for high romantic drama--and exactly how well it matches Myr's own--anything the younger man's spent more than a little time on is worth being curious about.

"No, he surely can't; even if he hadn't meant it, he's given his beloved the best gift he could give him." What an awful pickle they've landed their theoretical spy not-couple in! Myr taps a finger against his lips, expression composed in thought. "But it's going to come out sometime--maybe one day our hero's just not quick enough in inventing the mole's next move and the whole sham goes to pieces around him. And then his partner says--"

What does his partner say? Are they writing a tragedy or a comedy here?

Rich is glad to have someone actually show interest in what he likes, honestly. He always had his interests called weird at best and "girly" or "gay" at worst. Not that he believed that stereotypical gender role bullshit... but it still stung a bit to be the only one not giving a shit about that.

It seems Myr doesn't either, though, and much more enjoys the drama. Rich is getting wrapped up in the plotting, very quickly. "Then his partner has to ask what he's up to, what's really been going on. He has no choice but to explain all the lies he's been using against his partner... but his partner doesn't care. He tells him that if he really wanted to confess to him, he could have gone for a box of chocolates. It turns out Michael- uh, his partner loves chocolates."

Shit. That was a dumb slip up. Rich is going to hope Myr thinks that's just the name he's chosen for the love interest. The purely fictional love interest.

When you're from somewhere "girly" interests include getting married to God and launching a war on an evil empire to end slavery, you grow up with somewhat different expectations about gender roles, it's true. Romantic drama was something everyone could--and should--enjoy, as far as Myr was concerned.

His perspective might be slightly warped by a steady diet of smuggled novels, though.

...Which, unfortunately, when coupled with years spent in an environment perfectly rife with all sorts of hidden romantic tensions of its own, means he's very keen to what causes that particular kind of slip. ...And also has the decorum not to immediately call it out for what it is; a couple of conversations didn't make them close enough to tease about that kind of thing. "Oh, have you got names in mind for both of them? That's easier than talking about the spy and the other spy when plotting all this," he says, all...well, not exactly innocence because that's a kind of lie, but the wink-wink-nudge-nudge cousin of it one learned to use when pointedly not calling attention to something in the Circles.

"Still--that's a good happy ending for their first adventure. Though think of all the mayhem they could've gotten up to if there's some kind of...chocolate language as well." Maybe that's the next one. How many misunderstandings could they put these poor bastards through?

That is certainly a different idea, for sure, though Rich has never heard that. He'd probably find that intensely more intriguing than his own society's stupid ideas. Though probably still just as bad. He'll focus on the romance novels for now. And not on his very stupid slip up.

Even if Myr is kind of calling him out. Okay, okay, calm down, he can salvage this... just have to think of a decent name... "Yeah, sort of? I like Michael for the one guy and Dan for the other." Richard Daniel Goranski, you didn't just...

"Maybe they can have code names too, though. I mean, I don't know if they'd want to use their real names when they're on the job. Plus, it can be symbolic and properly romantic when they use their real ones." He snorts at the idea. "The enemy spies have a chocolate language and think the two of them are planning to topple them when they catch them exchanging gifts."

Get Myr started on Andraste and all She's done for Thedas and you'll never hear the end of it, Rich.

"Michael and Dan," Myr echoes thoughtfully. "A little odd, but I like the sound of 'em together." A little odd, says the guy named for a plum tree.

"Code names are a fine idea, though; and I'd bet once Michael's wise to what Dan's been up to they'll be insufferably sweet and inscrutable by choosing paired names. Then they're all ready to kick off a shadow war over chocolates--"

He's about to launch into another flight of literary enthusiasm when he's interrupted by a rustling among the jasmine. The disturbance shortly gives birth to one of Archer's stray cats, a scruffy little calico queen who leaps imperiously onto the bench. Well, she's here, mortals. Adore her while she washes her feet.

"...ah. That's one of the cats, isn't it."

"It's not that odd, is it? I thought they were kinda basic names, to be honest." But he didn't know what else to name the other guy, when he was coming up with something on the fly.

He's relieved Myr's caught on to his suggestion, and is very ready to keep this brainstorming train going, but they're interrupted by the arrival of a pet.

"One of the cats?" Rich echoes curiously, carefully reaching out a finger to see if the calico is interested in pets. He's certainly trying to worship her, so surely she'll like that.

"One of the fellows I live with keeps feeding every stray who comes around," Myr says, fondly enough. "So we're colonized with them now."

The calico looks up from the all-important task of addressing her tongue to her kitten mittens as Rich reaches out to her. Then she l e e e a a a n s forward to snuff at the outstretched finger. A moment of deliberation follows before she headbutts his hand. Pets begin now!!

"They're not all that basic on Thedas, I s'pose, is why they came off as odd. Or maybe exotic would be the better word; Michael's nearly Orlesian." Myr's gone back to the topic of names.

Pets certainly come now, Rich giggling softly as he starts scratching the sweet little princess behind the ears. He glances back at Myr, but he's definitely not going to let up on the attention any time soon.

"I never had a cat. Had a couple fish, and I mean, always wanted a lizard." He was thinking about getting a dog at some point, when he was settled with going back to school and being roomies with Jake, but that didn't quite pan out either.

He raises an eyebrow as they go back to names. "Is it? I don't know, it's common where I'm from. I guess all of my friends would have 'exotic' names to you."

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[open/catch-all] live, i wanna live inspired

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