[To say that Ortus has been adjusting to his new circumstances would be strictly accurate. Having experienced one disorienting, world altering shock has seemed to somewhat inoculate him against the subsequent ones, or perhaps it is the purview of the dead to handle the variegates of life with more equanimity than the living.
He has found it a relatively simple matter to fall back into the practice of obscurity. Whatever coda this place is to be in the unlikely annals of his existence, it is not one where he is called on the way he was in the false House of the Lord. He is superfluous, and as this has been the case for the majority of his existence, it has been something of a relief to be forgotten in the wake of several arrivals and apparent scandals he still does not understand. (Nor, in fact, does he wish to.)
There are two people who have retained notice of him, despite this. The first has been, of course, the Lady Harrowhark, whose solicitousness towards him has been a painfully sincere and vulnerable thing to behold - which he has good reason to suspect has not sweetened the regard of the second towards him at all. The message he receives one moonlit day soon after his arrival does nothing to dispel his suspicions.
Nevertheless: the Ninth calls, and he must answer as best he can. This is why when he arrives at the isolated location specified in the message, he is painted in precise formality, affecting a more defined pale jawbone than his usual style, with his inelegant inheritance of a rapier belted at his black robed waist. He forsook the pannier, assuming - correctly, as it turns out - that there will be no one there to make use of anything he might carry in it.
Ortus looks at Gideon for a long, contemplative moment. Longer than perhaps he's ever truly looked at her, and only her, his eyes deep shadowed sorrows in their black painted setting. He clears his throat like a muffled knock, as if she has not already marked his approach.]
Where is the snail that reminds you of Matthias Nonius? I am curious to see it.
[ There was a part of Gideon that didn't expect Ortus to show up. A snail with Matthias Nonius energy is a pretty good draw, of course, but it's no guarantee.
Gideon used to cleave up the aged population of the Ninth House into three groups: Harrowhark, Aiglamene, and everyone else. Ortus might be one of the nicer members of everyone else, but it still doesn't change the fact that he probably hates her, and she doesn't especially like him.
But he's here, fallen for the bait, and he's looking at her, which is weird, she never asked for that. (except that she did, over and over again, screaming in her own way for someone to notice) Trust Ortus to make things weird. Whatever. She's got a job to do. Gideon sighs. ]
There's no snail, dude. I just needed a sneaky reason to get you out of God's receding hairline. [ Gideon starts to duck into a nearby abandoned shack, waving for Ortus to follow. ] In here.
[ Once she's confident he's not about to up and leave, Gideon will kick a couple crates together, as if that makes a halfway decent seating area. It doesn't, which is, you know, very Ninth. She sits. ]
There's some things you should know. About God. Since you're living in his area, and all.
[Having only the vaguest guess at what a snail might be, Ortus manages to endure the disappointment of the deceit with equanimity. God's receding hairline would have banished any thought of what he has missed out on anyway, his eyebrows darting upward as his lips thin in automatic disapproval that gives way.
But he says nothing. He follows her into the shed solemnly, then sets himself tentatively on one of the crates, not wholly convinced of the structural integrity of wood. She continues, and his brows slide down and together, the stark white of his paint emphasizing the well-worn creases of worry in his forehead.]
I imagine that there are.
[This is not the discussion he had expected, but then, he had hardly known what to expect. What does he know of her, beyond what he has beheld at a distance, and the imprint that she left on Harrowhark?
He knows she would not speak to him like this if it were not crucial.]
[The last time Ortus had ever expected to see the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, she had been wretched with exhaustion, sodden with grief, and terrible in her triumph. He does not know what to make of any of the rest of their wholly unanticipated reunion, but he does know that when her hollowed near-black eyes fell on him once more, he was troubled by how many of those shadows yet clung to them.
He has not found himself put more at ease by anything that followed. She is fretful and imperious by turns - she is coiled tension in a buried spring-loaded mechanism - she is worn in the manner of polished bone, and none of these are unusual states for his Lady Harrowhark, which is precisely what concerns him. By all measures, she should have, if not peace, some measure of reprieve.
But the strictures of the Ninth House bind his tongue without the need of needles. He cannot ask 'how are you?', a barbaric and indelicate question; he cannot ask 'what is wrong?', as the answer stretches out beyond all reason; he cannot ask 'what do you need of me, Lady Harrowhark?', because he has never known Harrowhark to understand what she needs of anyone.
What he can do, in the wake of their arrival at the (blessedly enclosed) house of the Lord, is arrange himself on a worn seat in a scholar's study, as was once their custom. He may sit up after arranging the folds of his robes, as he always has, his hands clasped modestly in his lap as he regards her with creased brow and downturned mouth.]
It has been some time since we last spoke.
[The observation is offered mildly, as if in passing, but it is at least a beginning, a delicate cracking open of the weighted silence.]
early april | the pthumerian sea: the lonely island | the emperor
It is a question that Ortus has contemplated before, and he imagines it is not an uncommon contemplation. He has read the fragments of the oldest gospels, those not long surrendered to the archival acquisition of the Sixth House, and in these most ancient of Ninth House records, God is never described in His embodiment, but only in the halo of His divine acts. So it continues through the canon, God ever expressed in his virtues and his glories, the incidental trivia of anything so mundane as appearance elided in their favor.
In some commentaries, theologians of a particular bent suggest that this is an intentional omission on the part of God, one meant to remind His people to treat each stranger as if they could be divine. This had been the practice Ortus seized on in the wake of the terrible knowledge that he was, evidently, soon to stand, his soul unshriven, before the regard of his Lord.
Thus, when he does, at last, stand before God, there is a very small part of him that notes these theologians were as baldly incorrect as he had always suspected.
God is a man on the pitching deck of a ship under a yawning sky. God is a man with brown skin warmer than Ortus' own, with a tousled head of dark hair, with a hole near the collar of his shirt, with eyes -
There are those would look at Ortus (especially now, in his embarrassingly unlayered white shift, in his hastily sketched skull applied by his unseeing, shaking hand alone already running) and imagine there is no action he might undertake with grace. They would be largely correct, but there is no child of the Ninth (save, perhaps, one blazing exception) who does not learn their devotionals until the bruises feel as though they have set into the bony caps of their knees, until their robes stick tacky to split skin.
Ortus folds to his knees with his hands dutifully clasped at his breast, his eyes downcast in reverence, as if the waves beneath him do not exist to tip his balance. He prostrates himself before his Lord God without thought or hesitation, his forehead kissing the splintered, blood-flecked wood shamelessly. It is his voice which holds all the tremulous, stricken fright of him, awestruck as if cleft between the eyes with a single blow.]
[ The man they've come to rescue is a big doughy lad, as pitiful and washed-out in his prisoner's shift as Harrow had been in her hospital gown. He crumples into devotion with a wholehearted reverence which God has come to expect in his own kingdom, and which is a local rarity. Breath of fresh air, really, to see one of his own people fold down to forehead and knees and acknowledge divinity. (When Harrow does it, it's mostly sad.)
There is a hanging beat of silence upon the rocking ship, amid seaspray and spilled blood. And then God says, with slow-building incredulous delight: ]
Ortus Nigenad.
[ He seems to be experiencing something intensely funny, but no one else is in on the joke. He turns around to look at his followers as though he'll find someone he can jostle with an elbow, someone to whom he can whisper Are you seeing this.
In the absence of any target, he draws himself up into kingly dignity. He steps forward. There is no sound but the seething of the waves and God's easy footfalls on the deck.
His hand touches Ortus's shoulder. Quite gently, God urges him back up. ]
I'm glad to meet you. Harrow's said only good things. [ He cracks a white-toothed smile like this is a joke. ] Welcome aboard.
[ God claps his hand on the shoulder of his disciple and turns away still smiling.
It's a pretty representative first meeting, all told. ]
[Ortus Nigenad has had a very interesting day. Given the extent to which he has sought to limit the number of interesting days he would be required to suffer throughout his life, that alone would be distressing. The particular contents of this interesting day, beginning as it did with awakening with too many (and far too boneless) limbs and culminating in the meeting of a certain august personage, has managed to be interesting in a novel way, which in Ortus' estimation is the worst possible way for anything to be interesting.
Perhaps some of this shone through his queasily mortified expression in the aftermath of his rescue, as one of the (excessively) kind strangers bundled him off the ship and onto land soon after disembarking, ushering him to the closest local drinking establishment and settling him at a long, splintering stretch of darkly stained wood with instructions to 'open a tab' directed at the apparent proprietor. It seems he is to await collection at some point in the near future, after incomprehensible affairs (some practical, others more rarefied) are dealt with on the ship by his betters.
This is how Ortus Nigenad, lately of the Ninth House, finds himself as a broad black-swathed slump in front of a glass of some brown frothing liquid that smells of yeast in a place much like the frontier bars described in many of his primary sources. He stares at it with baffled dark eyes, his fresh skull face paint and raised hood obscuring all but a thin sliver of brown skin at his throat, his hands hidden in his crossed sleeves laid over his rounded belly.]
Is...this beer?
[He asks the question tentatively, despite the ponderous depth of his voice, glancing apprehensively at the nearest individual.]
[typically viktor isn't a bar person. ok, that's not entirely true, he's hardly against the concept when he has a specific goal in mind but rarely is he in a position where a bar will help him achieve some goal. he could likely find cheaper, better liquor that isn't watered down in a bottle he can bring anywhere he likes, like his lab, for example. where it is quiet and people don't cause trouble.
but lately he'll admit to certain level of aimlessness in quiet moments, ones that sometimes see him at the shore, both to watch the ships and look for scrap along the beach. sometimes that aimless, drifting feeling does not go away with the sea air, and sometimes the trench is an overwhelming place that has that little voice inside go 'fuck it, why not.' in this case fuck it, why not stop at the dingy little bar on the way back? it might even be nostalgic, like the horrible little holes one could find in the undercity where it was so easy to vanish like another stain on the counter as you sat and nursed your drink.
he's trying a beer himself when ortus is brought in, glances over from idly tracing the ghosts of schematics with the condensation of his glass on the scarred bartop before him. the first thing he notices is the skull paint, which... is admittedly a lot to notice, the kind that forces a second look out of a passing glance. interesting. odd, but certainly there is odder. he was nearly eaten by a shadow of himself just the day before, things got weirder.]
Yes, on the cheap side but- [viktor offers a shrug with the answer, tapping his own glass to show hey, he drank some and he's still alive so... there's that going for it.] Sometimes cheap beer is preferable.
[Under usual circumstances, Ortus may have noticed that second look with the pained sensitivity of someone who very much prefers to not receive so much as a first look. Usual circumstances do not involve beer, or asking questions of a stranger who has the hollowed, gaunt look of a necromancer.]
It is?
[He peers at the glass, then glances at the stranger out of the corner of his eye. The man does seem to have survived his consumption of a drink that Ortus had always imagined to have a somewhat different odor than the effluvial one it possesses. He produces a hand with split knuckles from his sleeve and gingerly brings the glass to his lips.
Well. Ortus sets it back down with studious neutrality.]
I have been led to understand that beer is sometimes considered a reward for valor in battle, or the quenching of thirst incurred from labor. Would you describe this beer as 'typical' in its taste?
[ She's been known to frequent this kind of shithole — the kind where the booze is barely potable and the smells are highly questionable. Andy blends in well with the questionable crowd, smelling faintly of cigarette smoke and throwing back the maybe-beer with the ease of a seasoned alcoholic.
The large, black-clad fellow had gotten a cursory glance from her when he first sat down, but she'd practiced her habit of minding her own damn business — at least until she caught that hesitant question. It earns a second look, her eyebrows lifting ever so slightly towards her hairline, giving her a vaguely skeptical look. Finally, with a light huff of breath that's half-amused: ]
Barely. [ With a twinge of wryness: ] Not much of a drinker?
[Ortus has met very few people in his life who have varied from the mold of a religious penitent or devotee. He met a wider variety in his death, but none of them are who he finds himself thinking of when the woman beside him speaks. At the mere recollection of Aiglamene, his erstwhile and always disappointed teacher, his spine straightens neatly as his throat bobs in a reflexively nervous swallow. The woman at his side does not, he thinks, intend to be intimidating. It is simply a quality she possesses, the way another person might possess a particularly large hat.]
There have been few opportunities.
[And little interest on his part in pursuing them. The last time he drank he was a teenager, huddled alone in a disused access tunnel, and it had done nothing but add a splitting two day headache to his problems.]
But today has been unusual in several respects.
[He lifts the glass, and takes a measured, dubious sip, expression twisting only mildly at the eruption of sour, fermented bubbles on his tongue.]
I was a squid this morning.
[It's an explanation he's found useful several times already, and it seems to get most of what he means across.]
[If a person has cause to be near the edge of Gaze and the dilapidated, looming house there, there is a chance they will come across Ortus fussing around the even more dilapidated shed at the edge of the property.
(Sleeping on God's hallowed couch had proved unbearable, at least partially because of the havoc it wrecked on his back.)
He is not, by any definition, a 'handy' man, but he is a diligent one. The debris that had filled the shed - a haphazard assortment of rusted tools, half-finished seeming projects, and rotted wooden planters - has been hauled outside and organized into piles for further consideration at another date. He has pinned heavy blackened canvas over the freshly cleaned windows, whose dim moonlit glow and view of the endless yawning sky had unnerved him as soon as their caked grime was scrubbed away. He has set up a modest, unyielding cot with sufficient blankets to stave off what he is informed is 'spring chill', though it lacks the bite of the Ninth's true cold.
The basics complete, Ortus can now turn to other, smaller projects. Dressed in his black robes with his face painted in a lesser elaboration of the Jawless Skull, Ortus labors under a thankfully dark daytime sky on marking the gaps in the shed wall with white chalk, looking solemnly and perplexedly at the crooked hang of the shed door, and sitting on a nearby stump holding a hammer as if he wished it might turn out to be something else.]
[Presumably, those last three labors are not taking place simultaneously — but whether they are or not, there's a tall, slender, pale shadow of a man lurking by the house's back door, adding the occasional waft of a more pungent smoke to whatever other fresh-air post-industrial pollutants (not to mention, of course, spring pollen) are cheerfully drifting through the air of Trench and waiting to fuck with people's lungs, and quite plainly watching Ortus at his labors.
His voice is polished, cultured, the sort of voice that sounds as though it ought to be raised to declaim poetry, or battle cries, or both — with no evident sign that the smoke has caused any damage to it, no less — and it's pitched to carry effortlessly across the yard, for all that it isn't raised.]
Works better when you're aiming at steel, rather than corpi unguii, if you're really looking to nail it.
[God must be so proud of this man who has spent ten thousand years playing Teacher's Pet.]
[With a sufficient lean, or perhaps a stick strapped to the chalk, Ortus might be capable of all three from where he sits on the slightly crooked stump. He is engaged in contemplation of the haft of the hammer when a voice calls out like the Drearburh bell itself, and his hand closes around it as he startles, straightening to attention in a way that Aiglamene would scoff to see.
He has not heard the voice before, too overcome by humility (and caution) to linger anywhere the man - the Saint - might be, but the face is that of the evidently benignly obnoxious Saint of Patience. He drops his gaze as soon as comprehension comes to him, respectfully averting his near-black eyes. Of course he was aware of the observer, but he would not have gotten as far as he did in life without the cultivation of practiced unnoticing.]
Thank you, most holy Saint. My knowledge of tools is, I admit, scant.
[By pure coincidence, the most direct path from Palamedes' unmarked bunker and the looming face of God's Own House includes passing through a copse of scraggly, haunted-looking trees, the dramatic emergence through which should only be fitting for scions of the Empire of the Nine Houses: dark, somewhat haunted, inexplicably not coming down the street like a normal person.
For Palamedes, it's just annoying, but not so much that he's going to go around and waste the extra few minutes. It is thus that he appears in view of God's Own House and Some Guy's Own Shed, ostensibly on a quest to walk into God's kitchen and see if literally anyone else is around who can lend him a spatula: yanking the hem of his gray cloak off an errant thorny bush, and with leaves in his hair.
So he's taken just fine to living in a place with real plants, one could say.
He comes to an ambling stop not when he sees Ortus - he gazes fairly overtly at the hulking shape of a man marking a shed as he starts his way across the property some 50 feet away - but rather, when the realization dawns, he veers back to the shed proper with a more businesslike step. The kitchen can wait.]
The other Ninth; I'd heard you were here. [three whole Ninths looked upon with his own eyes, amazing!!] I'm the Sixth Warden. What's this you're doing?
[Ortus took note of the passing stranger approaching the Emperor's defense, and then he took note of his long, gray silhouette, the slight reflective flashing about his face. By the time the young Master Warden pivots on his path, Ortus has taken the opportunity to school his features to placidity.
There is still a lingering mournfulness to his expression, but this is not atypical. What is atypical, and what he dolefully hopes the young man does not notice, is the flicker of inexplicable relief as he regards the whole and intact face of a stranger.]
Warden of the Sixth. [Ortus dips his head in a respectful nod.] Yes. I am Ortus Nigenad.
[It shouldn't come as a surprise that he's been mentioned, and yet: it remains difficult to picture circumstances in which he would be a topic of discussion.]
As for what I am doing...
[He looks at the chalk-marked shed, then at his white dusted sleeves, then back to the Warden with an even more wearily dolorous set to his skull-painted face.]
It seemed best to identify the areas of concerns before formulating a plan to address them.
[Working for the majority of her life on an isolated estate crumbling under the weight of its hubris and haunted by uncountable ghosts—the familiarity, Sayo realizes, is probably why she always felt uncomfortable staying at the manse for more than a night—has left Sayo with some scattered knowledge in handy-ing. True, more specialized contractors were hired to do serious repairs, but sometimes the shed door just wouldn't open and she had to figure out what was wrong herself or else be yelled at by the madam.
Inhabiting a run-down warehouse slash martial arts dojo has only sharpened her talents, which is why's one of Ortus's friends that's qualified to actually help him in this instance. Such as properly instructing him on how to use a hammer rather than watching him sadly contemplate it while he mopes on a stump.
Wiping some sweat from her brow (a few months ago, this much exertion would've left Sayo lying on the ground panting, and despite her growing dissatisfaction with Johnny she quietly thanks her sensei), Sayo surveys the shack.]
Hm... the big problem is that it isn't rainproof. If you're going to be properly storing books in there, we need to find a way to make sure the roof doesn't leak. Water will spread through a space like that very quickly.
[Taking instruction from Sayo has proven more amenable than Ortus' past miserable endeavours in hands on education, but this has not protected him from splinters or the beginnings of new wear on his palm from use of the hammer. Still, progress has been made, and the novel aches in his shoulders at least fall along tolerable lines.
He is also sweating, as much from the unsettlingly warm air as the labor at hand, and his paint has smeared in several places, giving the impression that he has himself been left in the rain to melt.]
I do not think I care for rain. [Ortus says, after a period of silent contemplation (and discreet readjustment of his robes).] It is more of a nuisance than I anticipated. There is entirely too much damp on the whole.
[He heaves an impressive sigh, one that swells him on all sides before he deflates with a muttered:]
[The crumbling tower Paul's map leads to once stretched above the treeline. Whatever sheared it below the level of the whispering leaves is long gone, the scattered remnant stone of its upper levels half-buried in the clearing that Paul waits in.
He finds it difficult to stay still, so he doesn't. He circles the shaded meadow on light feet, the black hood of his shorter spring jacket pushed back as he crouches by patches of flowers and clumps of moss tucked between tree roots. Most people have a healthy fear of the Trenchwood for good reason, and Paul doesn't take his safety for granted, but an onlooker would be forgiven for assuming otherwise as he admires the pale blue of a violet with all the ease of someone kneeling in their own back garden.
That's where Palamedes will find him when he arrives, Paul looking up from the flowers with a bright and easy smile as he unfolds gracefully to standing, brushing loose dirt and stray blades of grass from his knees. He adjusts the straps of the dark rucksack he wears to rebalance its weight as he crosses over to him.]
No trouble getting here, I hope? The markers were clear?
[Grey cloth wound around branches, difficult to see even if a person knew what they were looking for, but Paul had confidence in Palamedes' skills of observation, if not woodcraft.]
[The grey is a nice touch, or at least, Palamedes' Sixth sensibilities. He isn't one for wandering in the woods, hm, at all, but for the sake of seeing Paul's mysterious new projects, he manages to find the tower still in good spirits. Despite all the Nature, which is terrible.
Still, the sight of Paul looking at some flowers makes him smile briefly, shrugging as he comes up.]
Effective, for sure. I like this one better than your last couple of spots.
[The weird sanctuary room, the terrible hovel... This busted tower at least has some flowers out front, which is nice.]
[Paul shifts his weight between his feet at Palamedes' approval of the location, his beaming barely contained. It is better than the last places they've convened, emblematic of the progress Paul has been making. These are the environments he belongs in, not pent up in miserably claustrophobic rooms.]
It needs an introduction. Follow me?
[He pitches it as a question, but takes off towards the yawning open arch of the tower's entrance before it can be answered.]
You'll want to be in an observational position for this. [He glances over his shoulder, brimming over with anticipation.] How much do you know about Beasts? Or maybe it's better to ask - how much do any of us know about Beasts, outside of their impact on us?
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deercountry2022-04-13 04:55 pm
Ortus Nigenad
CLOSED
early april | gaze: the streets | gideon nav
He has found it a relatively simple matter to fall back into the practice of obscurity. Whatever coda this place is to be in the unlikely annals of his existence, it is not one where he is called on the way he was in the false House of the Lord. He is superfluous, and as this has been the case for the majority of his existence, it has been something of a relief to be forgotten in the wake of several arrivals and apparent scandals he still does not understand. (Nor, in fact, does he wish to.)
There are two people who have retained notice of him, despite this. The first has been, of course, the Lady Harrowhark, whose solicitousness towards him has been a painfully sincere and vulnerable thing to behold - which he has good reason to suspect has not sweetened the regard of the second towards him at all. The message he receives one moonlit day soon after his arrival does nothing to dispel his suspicions.
Nevertheless: the Ninth calls, and he must answer as best he can. This is why when he arrives at the isolated location specified in the message, he is painted in precise formality, affecting a more defined pale jawbone than his usual style, with his inelegant inheritance of a rapier belted at his black robed waist. He forsook the pannier, assuming - correctly, as it turns out - that there will be no one there to make use of anything he might carry in it.
Ortus looks at Gideon for a long, contemplative moment. Longer than perhaps he's ever truly looked at her, and only her, his eyes deep shadowed sorrows in their black painted setting. He clears his throat like a muffled knock, as if she has not already marked his approach.]
Where is the snail that reminds you of Matthias Nonius? I am curious to see it.
no subject
Gideon used to cleave up the aged population of the Ninth House into three groups: Harrowhark, Aiglamene, and everyone else. Ortus might be one of the nicer members of everyone else, but it still doesn't change the fact that he probably hates her, and she doesn't especially like him.
But he's here, fallen for the bait, and he's looking at her, which is weird, she never asked for that. (except that she did, over and over again, screaming in her own way for someone to notice) Trust Ortus to make things weird. Whatever. She's got a job to do. Gideon sighs. ]
There's no snail, dude. I just needed a sneaky reason to get you out of God's receding hairline. [ Gideon starts to duck into a nearby abandoned shack, waving for Ortus to follow. ] In here.
[ Once she's confident he's not about to up and leave, Gideon will kick a couple crates together, as if that makes a halfway decent seating area. It doesn't, which is, you know, very Ninth. She sits. ]
There's some things you should know. About God. Since you're living in his area, and all.
no subject
But he says nothing. He follows her into the shed solemnly, then sets himself tentatively on one of the crates, not wholly convinced of the structural integrity of wood. She continues, and his brows slide down and together, the stark white of his paint emphasizing the well-worn creases of worry in his forehead.]
I imagine that there are.
[This is not the discussion he had expected, but then, he had hardly known what to expect. What does he know of her, beyond what he has beheld at a distance, and the imprint that she left on Harrowhark?
He knows she would not speak to him like this if it were not crucial.]
I await your instruction.
cw: reference to child death, implied child murder
cw: references to child death, murder, abuse, ongoing for thread
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early april | gaze: bone house | harrowhark nonagesimus
He has not found himself put more at ease by anything that followed. She is fretful and imperious by turns - she is coiled tension in a buried spring-loaded mechanism - she is worn in the manner of polished bone, and none of these are unusual states for his Lady Harrowhark, which is precisely what concerns him. By all measures, she should have, if not peace, some measure of reprieve.
But the strictures of the Ninth House bind his tongue without the need of needles. He cannot ask 'how are you?', a barbaric and indelicate question; he cannot ask 'what is wrong?', as the answer stretches out beyond all reason; he cannot ask 'what do you need of me, Lady Harrowhark?', because he has never known Harrowhark to understand what she needs of anyone.
What he can do, in the wake of their arrival at the (blessedly enclosed) house of the Lord, is arrange himself on a worn seat in a scholar's study, as was once their custom. He may sit up after arranging the folds of his robes, as he always has, his hands clasped modestly in his lap as he regards her with creased brow and downturned mouth.]
It has been some time since we last spoke.
[The observation is offered mildly, as if in passing, but it is at least a beginning, a delicate cracking open of the weighted silence.]
early april | the pthumerian sea: the lonely island | the emperor
It is a question that Ortus has contemplated before, and he imagines it is not an uncommon contemplation. He has read the fragments of the oldest gospels, those not long surrendered to the archival acquisition of the Sixth House, and in these most ancient of Ninth House records, God is never described in His embodiment, but only in the halo of His divine acts. So it continues through the canon, God ever expressed in his virtues and his glories, the incidental trivia of anything so mundane as appearance elided in their favor.
In some commentaries, theologians of a particular bent suggest that this is an intentional omission on the part of God, one meant to remind His people to treat each stranger as if they could be divine. This had been the practice Ortus seized on in the wake of the terrible knowledge that he was, evidently, soon to stand, his soul unshriven, before the regard of his Lord.
Thus, when he does, at last, stand before God, there is a very small part of him that notes these theologians were as baldly incorrect as he had always suspected.
God is a man on the pitching deck of a ship under a yawning sky. God is a man with brown skin warmer than Ortus' own, with a tousled head of dark hair, with a hole near the collar of his shirt, with eyes -
There are those would look at Ortus (especially now, in his embarrassingly unlayered white shift, in his hastily sketched skull applied by his unseeing, shaking hand alone already running) and imagine there is no action he might undertake with grace. They would be largely correct, but there is no child of the Ninth (save, perhaps, one blazing exception) who does not learn their devotionals until the bruises feel as though they have set into the bony caps of their knees, until their robes stick tacky to split skin.
Ortus folds to his knees with his hands dutifully clasped at his breast, his eyes downcast in reverence, as if the waves beneath him do not exist to tip his balance. He prostrates himself before his Lord God without thought or hesitation, his forehead kissing the splintered, blood-flecked wood shamelessly. It is his voice which holds all the tremulous, stricken fright of him, awestruck as if cleft between the eyes with a single blow.]
My Lord.
no subject
There is a hanging beat of silence upon the rocking ship, amid seaspray and spilled blood. And then God says, with slow-building incredulous delight: ]
Ortus Nigenad.
[ He seems to be experiencing something intensely funny, but no one else is in on the joke. He turns around to look at his followers as though he'll find someone he can jostle with an elbow, someone to whom he can whisper Are you seeing this.
In the absence of any target, he draws himself up into kingly dignity. He steps forward. There is no sound but the seething of the waves and God's easy footfalls on the deck.
His hand touches Ortus's shoulder. Quite gently, God urges him back up. ]
I'm glad to meet you. Harrow's said only good things. [ He cracks a white-toothed smile like this is a joke. ] Welcome aboard.
[ God claps his hand on the shoulder of his disciple and turns away still smiling.
It's a pretty representative first meeting, all told. ]
OPEN
early april | darcmouth | nosedive bar
Perhaps some of this shone through his queasily mortified expression in the aftermath of his rescue, as one of the (excessively) kind strangers bundled him off the ship and onto land soon after disembarking, ushering him to the closest local drinking establishment and settling him at a long, splintering stretch of darkly stained wood with instructions to 'open a tab' directed at the apparent proprietor. It seems he is to await collection at some point in the near future, after incomprehensible affairs (some practical, others more rarefied) are dealt with on the ship by his betters.
This is how Ortus Nigenad, lately of the Ninth House, finds himself as a broad black-swathed slump in front of a glass of some brown frothing liquid that smells of yeast in a place much like the frontier bars described in many of his primary sources. He stares at it with baffled dark eyes, his fresh skull face paint and raised hood obscuring all but a thin sliver of brown skin at his throat, his hands hidden in his crossed sleeves laid over his rounded belly.]
Is...this beer?
[He asks the question tentatively, despite the ponderous depth of his voice, glancing apprehensively at the nearest individual.]
i hope this is ok!
but lately he'll admit to certain level of aimlessness in quiet moments, ones that sometimes see him at the shore, both to watch the ships and look for scrap along the beach. sometimes that aimless, drifting feeling does not go away with the sea air, and sometimes the trench is an overwhelming place that has that little voice inside go 'fuck it, why not.' in this case fuck it, why not stop at the dingy little bar on the way back? it might even be nostalgic, like the horrible little holes one could find in the undercity where it was so easy to vanish like another stain on the counter as you sat and nursed your drink.
he's trying a beer himself when ortus is brought in, glances over from idly tracing the ghosts of schematics with the condensation of his glass on the scarred bartop before him. the first thing he notices is the skull paint, which... is admittedly a lot to notice, the kind that forces a second look out of a passing glance. interesting. odd, but certainly there is odder. he was nearly eaten by a shadow of himself just the day before, things got weirder.]
Yes, on the cheap side but- [viktor offers a shrug with the answer, tapping his own glass to show hey, he drank some and he's still alive so... there's that going for it.] Sometimes cheap beer is preferable.
it's great! Viktor!
It is?
[He peers at the glass, then glances at the stranger out of the corner of his eye. The man does seem to have survived his consumption of a drink that Ortus had always imagined to have a somewhat different odor than the effluvial one it possesses. He produces a hand with split knuckles from his sleeve and gingerly brings the glass to his lips.
Well. Ortus sets it back down with studious neutrality.]
I have been led to understand that beer is sometimes considered a reward for valor in battle, or the quenching of thirst incurred from labor. Would you describe this beer as 'typical' in its taste?
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The large, black-clad fellow had gotten a cursory glance from her when he first sat down, but she'd practiced her habit of minding her own damn business — at least until she caught that hesitant question. It earns a second look, her eyebrows lifting ever so slightly towards her hairline, giving her a vaguely skeptical look. Finally, with a light huff of breath that's half-amused: ]
Barely. [ With a twinge of wryness: ] Not much of a drinker?
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There have been few opportunities.
[And little interest on his part in pursuing them. The last time he drank he was a teenager, huddled alone in a disused access tunnel, and it had done nothing but add a splitting two day headache to his problems.]
But today has been unusual in several respects.
[He lifts the glass, and takes a measured, dubious sip, expression twisting only mildly at the eruption of sour, fermented bubbles on his tongue.]
I was a squid this morning.
[It's an explanation he's found useful several times already, and it seems to get most of what he means across.]
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so sorry for the delay, got sick - we can handwave/wrap soonish if you'd like?
hope you're feeling better!! we can leave it with this tag or whatever you're comfortable with!
mid-april | gaze: bone house | a shed of his own
(Sleeping on God's hallowed couch had proved unbearable, at least partially because of the havoc it wrecked on his back.)
He is not, by any definition, a 'handy' man, but he is a diligent one. The debris that had filled the shed - a haphazard assortment of rusted tools, half-finished seeming projects, and rotted wooden planters - has been hauled outside and organized into piles for further consideration at another date. He has pinned heavy blackened canvas over the freshly cleaned windows, whose dim moonlit glow and view of the endless yawning sky had unnerved him as soon as their caked grime was scrubbed away. He has set up a modest, unyielding cot with sufficient blankets to stave off what he is informed is 'spring chill', though it lacks the bite of the Ninth's true cold.
The basics complete, Ortus can now turn to other, smaller projects. Dressed in his black robes with his face painted in a lesser elaboration of the Jawless Skull, Ortus labors under a thankfully dark daytime sky on marking the gaps in the shed wall with white chalk, looking solemnly and perplexedly at the crooked hang of the shed door, and sitting on a nearby stump holding a hammer as if he wished it might turn out to be something else.]
sheds are very important, you know
His voice is polished, cultured, the sort of voice that sounds as though it ought to be raised to declaim poetry, or battle cries, or both — with no evident sign that the smoke has caused any damage to it, no less — and it's pitched to carry effortlessly across the yard, for all that it isn't raised.]
Works better when you're aiming at steel, rather than corpi unguii, if you're really looking to nail it.
[God must be so proud of this man who has spent ten thousand years playing Teacher's Pet.]
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He has not heard the voice before, too overcome by humility (and caution) to linger anywhere the man - the Saint - might be, but the face is that of the evidently benignly obnoxious Saint of Patience. He drops his gaze as soon as comprehension comes to him, respectfully averting his near-black eyes. Of course he was aware of the observer, but he would not have gotten as far as he did in life without the cultivation of practiced unnoticing.]
Thank you, most holy Saint. My knowledge of tools is, I admit, scant.
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cw: sketchily sexual allusions (possibly ongoing for the rest of this thread)
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making a sharp left directly into ortus' business
For Palamedes, it's just annoying, but not so much that he's going to go around and waste the extra few minutes. It is thus that he appears in view of God's Own House and Some Guy's Own Shed, ostensibly on a quest to walk into God's kitchen and see if literally anyone else is around who can lend him a spatula: yanking the hem of his gray cloak off an errant thorny bush, and with leaves in his hair.
So he's taken just fine to living in a place with real plants, one could say.
He comes to an ambling stop not when he sees Ortus - he gazes fairly overtly at the hulking shape of a man marking a shed as he starts his way across the property some 50 feet away - but rather, when the realization dawns, he veers back to the shed proper with a more businesslike step. The kitchen can wait.]
The other Ninth; I'd heard you were here. [three whole Ninths looked upon with his own eyes, amazing!!] I'm the Sixth Warden. What's this you're doing?
[Boy, Ninth tastes are something else, huh.]
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There is still a lingering mournfulness to his expression, but this is not atypical. What is atypical, and what he dolefully hopes the young man does not notice, is the flicker of inexplicable relief as he regards the whole and intact face of a stranger.]
Warden of the Sixth. [Ortus dips his head in a respectful nod.] Yes. I am Ortus Nigenad.
[It shouldn't come as a surprise that he's been mentioned, and yet: it remains difficult to picture circumstances in which he would be a topic of discussion.]
As for what I am doing...
[He looks at the chalk-marked shed, then at his white dusted sleeves, then back to the Warden with an even more wearily dolorous set to his skull-painted face.]
It seemed best to identify the areas of concerns before formulating a plan to address them.
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Inhabiting a run-down warehouse slash martial arts dojo has only sharpened her talents, which is why's one of Ortus's friends that's qualified to actually help him in this instance. Such as properly instructing him on how to use a hammer rather than watching him sadly contemplate it while he mopes on a stump.
Wiping some sweat from her brow (a few months ago, this much exertion would've left Sayo lying on the ground panting, and despite her growing dissatisfaction with Johnny she quietly thanks her sensei), Sayo surveys the shack.]
Hm... the big problem is that it isn't rainproof. If you're going to be properly storing books in there, we need to find a way to make sure the roof doesn't leak. Water will spread through a space like that very quickly.
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He is also sweating, as much from the unsettlingly warm air as the labor at hand, and his paint has smeared in several places, giving the impression that he has himself been left in the rain to melt.]
I do not think I care for rain. [Ortus says, after a period of silent contemplation (and discreet readjustment of his robes).] It is more of a nuisance than I anticipated. There is entirely too much damp on the whole.
[He heaves an impressive sigh, one that swells him on all sides before he deflates with a muttered:]
At least it is only water.
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Paul Atreides
late april | the trenchwood | palamedes sextus
He finds it difficult to stay still, so he doesn't. He circles the shaded meadow on light feet, the black hood of his shorter spring jacket pushed back as he crouches by patches of flowers and clumps of moss tucked between tree roots. Most people have a healthy fear of the Trenchwood for good reason, and Paul doesn't take his safety for granted, but an onlooker would be forgiven for assuming otherwise as he admires the pale blue of a violet with all the ease of someone kneeling in their own back garden.
That's where Palamedes will find him when he arrives, Paul looking up from the flowers with a bright and easy smile as he unfolds gracefully to standing, brushing loose dirt and stray blades of grass from his knees. He adjusts the straps of the dark rucksack he wears to rebalance its weight as he crosses over to him.]
No trouble getting here, I hope? The markers were clear?
[Grey cloth wound around branches, difficult to see even if a person knew what they were looking for, but Paul had confidence in Palamedes' skills of observation, if not woodcraft.]
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Still, the sight of Paul looking at some flowers makes him smile briefly, shrugging as he comes up.]
Effective, for sure. I like this one better than your last couple of spots.
[The weird sanctuary room, the terrible hovel... This busted tower at least has some flowers out front, which is nice.]
What's this project, then?
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It needs an introduction. Follow me?
[He pitches it as a question, but takes off towards the yawning open arch of the tower's entrance before it can be answered.]
You'll want to be in an observational position for this. [He glances over his shoulder, brimming over with anticipation.] How much do you know about Beasts? Or maybe it's better to ask - how much do any of us know about Beasts, outside of their impact on us?
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cw: Beast experimentation
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cw: animal parts
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