new beginnings
Leatherworker

Age: 36 | Height: 175cm / 5'9 | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 3 - Strg: 16 - Dext: 17 - Endr: 20 - Luck: 8 - Int:
Played by: Neowulf Offline
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Posts: 397 | Total: 642
MP: 970
#1
RORY
Life was strange.

Something had happened in the dark of Long Night, things Rory could not explain, could not name, could not pin down. A change, within. It wasn't just how strange and haunted his house felt when he returned to find all the floorboards loose and the nails pulled out, it was .. something else, too. Having abandoned every last shred of what made him a Natural when he'd ridden into the Long Night dark, he felt detached. Disconnected. Like this place he found himself in was no longer his place in the world.

The feeling had lingered with him as hours turned to days and he put his house back together. As he cleared up what needed to be cleared up. As he fixed and repaired and found his lost ponies outside again one morning, happily eating the hay he kept putting out for them.

His greatcoat was still in his workshop, unfixed. He needed to replace a section of leather on the chest, where Edy's flames had hit him. So for this day—sunny, bright, full of promise, yet with a cold bite in both shadow and breeze—he wore a couple of wool sweaters to keep out the memory of winter. Crawling up his throat and onto his face were the burn scars, another reminder of how this Long Night had been so different.

He still didn't feel quite himself as he hitched Talys to a post near Remi's shop and slid off her black back. His body was as healed as it would be, but even as the days turned he felt displaced. Out of sorts. Melancholy and adrift, wondering who he was.

In one hand, rather gingerly, he held the Spark Bird's ever-burning feather. He'd nearly had a couple of accidents with it before realizing he should treat it very carefully, lest he set something as bizarre as stone on fire.

With the other hand he reached out to knock on the alchemist's shop door, hoping that he was in, and that he wouldn't mind having his brain picked about the feather.

[ For Remi ]
as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
Remi Taliesin
the Bastion


Age: 31 | Height: 5'11 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
Level: 15 - Strg: 68 - Dext: 60 - Endr: 100 - Luck: 93 - Int: 3
ORIA - Mythical - Spriggan (Ghost)
Played by: Odd Offline
Change author:
Posts: 10,723 | Total: 16,193
MP: 3059
#2

One thing Remi found interesting was the way some just opened his door and let themselves in, while others knocked. Thus far there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason one way or the other, and vaguely the alchemist wondered if he shouldn't just make a sign that said Try the handle. If it's unlocked, come in. or some such variation. After all, Remi didn't keep the most regular of hours, but he would hate for someone to think that he wasn't home simply because the hour was late. Given how often he had been sleeping in his shop, the opposite was normally true.

"Coming!" Remi called in a cheerful tone from somewhere in the back of his shop. Emerging, the alchemist tried to carefully wipe paint onto the rag he was holding, but did manage to get a smear on his white shirt (always white, for some reason). The paint was a pale lilac-blue shade. It was for a painting he'd been working on for a lovely young farmer that he'd met. Though with Ronin's plans to assault the spire creeping closer and closer, Remi was worried it wouldn't be completed in time.

Gripping the door knob (leaving some paint there as well), Remi opened the door enthusiastically, needing to partially shade his eyes as sunlight spilled over Rory's shoulder and directly into the alchemist's pale gaze. "Rory!" He beamed through squinted eyes and a scrunched nose, backing away into the warm shade of his shop to let his friend in. Within, Rory would find a peculiar brand of ordered chaos. There was shelving all the way around the perimeter as well as some free-standing shelves in the middle. Each held any number of inventions, some appearing like useful and mundane sorts of objects (swords, shields, an interesting and intricate looking rake), while others seemed far more adventurous in their scope (a partially-constructed telescope, a mini windmill), and hundreds of other things. At the back was a small counter and then a door leading to another small room.

"I did not expect you to make good on your promise so soon. How are you feeling?" He asked, chromatic eyes sparkling with Remi's particular brand of cheerful and bright youthfulness.

Яemi

I'm holding on to all the pieces of my heart's debris, until it's time
I'll pull it together and fix myself eventually & know it's mine
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Leatherworker

Age: 36 | Height: 175cm / 5'9 | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 3 - Strg: 16 - Dext: 17 - Endr: 20 - Luck: 8 - Int:
Played by: Neowulf Offline
Change author:
Posts: 397 | Total: 642
MP: 970
#3
RORY
He knew that nothing could go back to being the way it had been: the comforts of the way of life he had known for nearly three decades, gone in an instant, more profoundly than ever before. Things had changed, both in Caido and in Rory, but this time.. he wasn't sure there was a way back to who he had been before. And yet, he didn't know in what way he had changed. More lost than before? More abandoned?

But he had gained so much. He thought of Remi's sparkling eyes and charming smile; Isla's horn pointed against his chest; the warmth of Jigano's hands; Amalia's lithe frame pressed against his body in the Spark Bird's light; holding the recalcitrant Wessex close.

So perhaps not more abandoned, merely more lost.

Then the door was opening, and Remi was there, beautiful and innocent and awash with spring sunlight. Rory's heart did its usual little complicated flip, tinged with sadness, and again he was struck by how dark and grim he always felt in comparison to the alchemist. The way his own soul just ate up all the radiance Remi spilled out, until he, too, seemed darker.

He wanted to be done with dragging him down, wanted to match him smile for smile, stride for stride, until they rivaled the sun, but Rory was tired and change was daunting and he wasn't capable of such brightness. He was the lean and bitter dreamer shaped by a lifetime in Caido, and not strong enough to change himself.

"Hello," he said warmly, a smile curving his own lips, and he stepped into Remi's lair.

And straight into another world.

Shelves upon shelves cluttered with things, some which he could figure out what they were (or had been), and some which he couldn't fathom why on earth Remi would have in a shop—or what they were at all. Most of the emotions drained from Rory's face, replaced with a look of wonder as he tried (and failed) to take it all in. Silently, as if any noise would prompt some of the items to launch themselves at him, he turned around, taking care not to accidentally brush the flaming feather against anything.

He wondered if Remi remembered all the objects he had upon the shelves, or if some of them had slipped his mind. He wondered where they came from, what they were, how he thought of them—how he made them, and what for.

Then he turned back to Remi, once again struck by how he—a man who had always been considered bright and cheery, if sometimes mellow—paled so utterly in comparison to Remi. He was a storm cloud to his sunlight. "Much better," he said, knowing it was half a truth and half a lie, but his body had healed, so there was that? "Largely because of your pet pointy pony friend. And you look better than last time we spoke." He wanted to narrow his eyes and say, are you though?, but... Wasn't he going to try and not drag Remi down anymore? So instead, he swept his feather-free hand towards the shop. "I've never seen anything like this," he breathed.
as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
Remi Taliesin
the Bastion


Age: 31 | Height: 5'11 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
Level: 15 - Strg: 68 - Dext: 60 - Endr: 100 - Luck: 93 - Int: 3
ORIA - Mythical - Spriggan (Ghost)
Played by: Odd Offline
Change author:
Posts: 10,723 | Total: 16,193
MP: 3059
#4

There would be no dimming of whatever radiance it was that Remi had. No slow burn into eternity, no rationing of light. The alchemist would be as he always had right up until the day that he wasn't. On that day, his soul relieved of all its fuel, would grow dark and die. There would be no denouement, just a sudden collapse of all that he was. Nothing so grand as a stars implosion in on itself, just a complete cessation of all that he was. And it was coming, though you'd never know it. The mountains Remi carried were crushing him, and his light shone all the brighter for it. It was the only lie the alchemist could remember telling, other than the obfuscation of his sexuality, but it was one he told over and over again; I am alright, I do not need anything, I do not want to kiss you, I am fine, I will make it.

As Remi's gaze refocused with the closing of the door and the dimming of the light from outside, he inhaled a breath seeing the burn-patterns still running up from beneath the collar of Rory's shirt and onto his jaw. The sound wasn't disgust or pity, more a sort of abject curiosity as his pale gaze wandered the new topography. Unbidden one of his hands raised as if to map the new landscape of his friend's with the pads of his fingers, but of course they stopped somewhere around Remi's shoulders falling thoughtfully back to his side with an air of embarrassment.

Chuckling, Remi shook his head at Rory's lackluster answer. "I could ... remove those scars entirely if you like." He hummed almost bashfully, his eyes following slowly behind where Rory strolled through his aisles, feeling apprehensive and awkward and nervous to know that the hunter's keen too-blue stare was upon that which he'd made. Leaning apprehensively against one of the shelves until Rory had made a full rotation, the alchemist looked across at him behind a dangling veil of curls with an expression of quiet uncertainty. "Ah..well. Losing a good portion of your memories will do that I suppose." Remi said with his characteristic boyish casualness, the smile crookedly sweeping across his face one of reluctance but acceptance.

Glancing around as if trying to see his shop for the first time, or through Rory's eyes, all the alchemist could see were the enumerable projects left to finish, to start, or to be thought of. With a wistful sort of half smile, he nodded, lashes fluttering as his gaze slipped lower. "I could stay here forever, just thinking and designing." He admitted with a sunny and buoyant chuckle.

Яemi

I'm holding on to all the pieces of my heart's debris, until it's time
I'll pull it together and fix myself eventually & know it's mine
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Leatherworker

Age: 36 | Height: 175cm / 5'9 | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 3 - Strg: 16 - Dext: 17 - Endr: 20 - Luck: 8 - Int:
Played by: Neowulf Offline
Change author:
Posts: 397 | Total: 642
MP: 970
#5
RORY
He was suddenly self-conscious under that seafoam gaze, aware of the spindly web of scars marring his weathered face. He still sometimes woke up, sweating, in the middle of the night, his mind full of the fireball coming towards him in the starless dark. In his nightmares, he snapped out of it just before it hit him, and he wondered at the pointless mercy of it. He had already felt it once, in real life, the impact and the sizzle and the smell as the fire clawed its way through skin and nerves and ate at him. If he blinked, he could still sometimes see Esaia outlined against the fiery glow as he fell from her.

And Remi's eyes roamed them, with interest but without judgment, and Rory held still like an unsure animal, intrigued but frightened all the same. Part of him wanted to do like the bucks, flick a warning tail up and bound off majestically, but he wasn't a bloody deer.

"I could ... remove those scars entirely if you like." The breath caught in his throat, faced with such an unexpected, wild offer; Rory hadn't even considered the aesthetics of it. It just was, like so much else just was, and the offer took him by such surprise that he realized he didn't know what he wanted. It wasn't like scars were cool or anything, but part of him thought.. that he needed to keep it. A reminder of the fragility of life.

And another part thought it would be sweet to get his untarnished good looks back.

"Oh," he said, the conflict clear in his eyes and voice as his hand came up to gently touch the skin. His sense of feeling in it was all weird. "I.. appreciate the offer, I really do, but I.. I need to think about it," he finally managed, and somehow his tone conveyed that it was not a polite no, merely something that genuinely needed more thought.

Then Remi responded to Rory's casual comment of him looking better, and though his casual tone matched Rory's, the content didn't. Rory's eyebrows went up and he blinked a couple of times, keeping silent while his brain shrieked excuse me?!. Then he put his free hand back in his braid, and frowned. "You did.. what? How?" One didn't just lose their memory, and Rory definitely cared enough about Remi to want to sit him down for some tea and ask about it and.. feel inadequate. Certainly Remi had other friends who had already done that. Why on earth would he want to do the same with Rory?

"This place suits you," he responded, gently, a smile ghosting across his lips again as he looked around. He remembered the skilled hand the other had with drawing, the sketches he'd seen out by the barrier—a lifetime ago, a simpler time, more innocent. So much new and strange hadn't happened yet, aside from the influx of Outlanders. Rarely anyone aside from those from Northaven had come. Rory bit his lower lip. No darkness, he reminded himself.

He turned to Remi again and gingerly held out his Spark Bird feather. "I was wondering if you had any ideas on how to help me with this, actually," he started. The feather spat and sparked. "It has a rather annoying habit of setting anything on fire, which makes it a bit of a hazard, and I'd rather not burn my homestead down. So I thought.. well, maybe you'd have some ideas, at least?" he finished with a helpless shrug.
as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
Remi Taliesin
the Bastion


Age: 31 | Height: 5'11 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Torchline
Level: 15 - Strg: 68 - Dext: 60 - Endr: 100 - Luck: 93 - Int: 3
ORIA - Mythical - Spriggan (Ghost)
Played by: Odd Offline
Change author:
Posts: 10,723 | Total: 16,193
MP: 3059
#6

"Oh, I did not mean it as—" Bashfully, stumbling over words he hadn't even yet said, colour bloomed on the alchemist's cheeks as he looked down trying to wrangle the awkward smile on his lips into something more appropriate. "That was not meant as a comment on your appearance." The other version of the alchemist might have had the nerve to look Rory in the eyes and elaborate. Say that the scarring made him no less handsome than he had been, but this version, the one who couldn't remember having been kissed before, tried desperately to find a way to sidestep the implication. "I just thought perhaps you would have lost some feeling."

And why was Remi thinking about whether or not Rory had lost feeling in that particular area?

Rory's surprise only made Remi chuckle wryly and shake his head. "The mask that Ludo gave me ... it was stolen." He explained, pale eyes roaming low, somewhere near Rory's hands before he conjured a feather and began to stroke it lightly against his palm as a distraction. "He was not pleased when I told him. The loss of my memories was a punishment." Pausing in whatever invisible-script he was writing on his palm, he hazarded a glance at Rory. Telling him the content of the lost memories seemed both thrilling and somehow dangerous, though for the life of him Remi couldn't figure out why.

"Memories of...men I had strong feelings for, in the past." He added with an awkward sort of cough, bashful smile, and very obvious lack of eye-contact.

Looking up suddenly with a sunny and bright grin, the alchemist laughed. "What, disorganized and useless?" He quipped cheerfully, falling so easily and charmingly into self-deprecation like a second skin.

"Ahh. Yes. I remember seeing you standing around the perch... It is quite a gift. A dangerous one, to be sure, but—" Reaching out as if miming what it might be like to hold the feather, Remi lost himself immediately into his own mental mappings of a solution, which was probably for the best lest, he find himself asking about the hunter's relationship with Jigano.

Twisting his fingers as his eyes appeared to see things which were not there, his expression softly changing as a multitude of thoughts danced behind his eyes, finally he came up for as it were, exhaling the breath he'd been holding and focusing back on Rory. "I could create some sort of pouch for it, which would render it safe to carry. But it is so beautiful..." The alchemist's lips twitched slightly as he sighed. "I can..change things...but I have not been able to successfully change a magical item yet." Remi admitted with an almost sad sigh. "You could wait, but as you have said, the feather is not the most practical as it is."

Much as the alchemist would like to simply wave his fingers and make the fire controllable, he was not that strong yet. Whether he would ever be he had no idea. For now though, it was out of his reach. A magical pouch was all he could offer his friend.

Яemi

I'm holding on to all the pieces of my heart's debris, until it's time
I'll pull it together and fix myself eventually & know it's mine
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Leatherworker

Age: 36 | Height: 175cm / 5'9 | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 3 - Strg: 16 - Dext: 17 - Endr: 20 - Luck: 8 - Int:
Played by: Neowulf Offline
Change author:
Posts: 397 | Total: 642
MP: 970
#7
RORY
He hadn't mean to embarrass Remi, or to, well, how could he not sort of implicate that it affected his aesthetics to have a scar (or to not have a scar)? But he hadn't meant to imply that it.. well.. that he had thought Remi meant it was displeasing to look at; he honestly didn't know what had prompted the Alchemist to make the offer. Remi was a kind man, that was true, but regardless, Rory found himself holding his hands up in an effort to stop the other from feeling too embarrassed about the whole thing. "Remi, it's alright," he tried to reassure the other, a smile in his words, a smile on his lips. "And besides, you're right. I don't feel as well where the scar is." But was that enough reason to get rid of it?

Or would it get better with time? It was still so fresh...

So the mask Remi had mentioned wanting to show him was Ludo's? Rory blinked a couple of times in surprise, mindful of the lantern he still had, and curious about what it did. Aside from burn steadily and constantly, it hadn't really told him anything of its magical properties. "That's a shame," he commented, merely raising an eyebrow in surprise at the sudden feather. In response, Rory decided to suddenly have a sparrow, so, there was a sparrow. "I would've liked to see the mask." I would've liked to see beyond the barrier.

Some sort of vague plan formed in the back of his head, and .. well, who was surprised that Ludo had been upset his mask got stolen from Remi? He frowned. Such was the nature of their Gods, he supposed, but... He thought of his unanswered prayer at the Shrine, how he had not prayed in years, because in the end: it didn't seem so bad to stay away.

"That's, ah.. an oddly specific set of memories to take," Rory said lightly, gently, unsure of how to handle it. Physical intimacy was not something he shied away from, not even in conversation, but feelings .. now that was an area he avoided like the plague, at least in this context.

But then he laughed, rather helplessly, though he didn't really want to laugh at anything that described Remi in such unfavorable terms. "No, no, creative and dreaming, full of wonders," he said, still with a laugh in his voice.

Without much hesitation he held out the feather, though Remi didn't take it, but he held the sparking, flaming thing between them. Fortunately it seemed like whatever sparks it emitted were not strong enough to burn anything down on their own, but he still took care not to hold it too close to anything. In silent fascination he watched the thoughts chase themselves through Remi's eyes. Creative and dreaming.

Then the Alchemist came back from his thoughts, and if he wanted to hold the feather, Rory would let him. "Beauty does not help it if it burns my house down," he said with a laugh. "And besides, it does not cease being beautiful just because it is out of sight, mh? You're welcome to fiddle with it later if you want to, but for now, I'd greatly appreciate it—and owe you—if you could make me a pouch for it."

Said and done—when Rory eventually left the Alchemist's shop, it was with a pouch for his feather, keeping both it and his surroundings safe.
as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.


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