2017-06-06: Something New
- Log: Something New
- Cast: Talise Gianfair, Matilda Whitehead
- Where: Adelyn Ranchlands
- Date: 2017-06-06
- Summary: If you encounter a friend of a friend on the road, befriend them!
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
Talise took a detour yesterday. In part it was to pick up some cactus liquor from the Baskars. In part it was also to swing by a friend's ship. In the middle of the desert for some reason.
She's left it behind for now and is currently heading back in the general direction towards Adlehyde, mounted on the back of a large horse, a blue dun gelding carrying her atop a simple but rugged saddle. Break it to her lightly, but she's still pretty recognizable despite the fact that she's bleached her hair down to a pale blonde. There aren't too many six-foot-two women who are both muscular and possessed of cheekstripes and elf ears, nor do too many carry a lute over one shoulder along with a large sword.
If nothing else it might throw off the wanted psoter watchers.
Trotting down the road well outside Adlehyde, she guides her horse up a small crest, raising a hand to her forehead and squinting off towards the smouldering wreckage that is the city. Her lips come together in a firm line.
"I really, really wish the fucking Guard would just leave already," she grouses to open air, before giving her horse a pat between the ears. "Guess we're campin' out again tonight, Dragon. Can you live with that?"
The horse lays his ears back and snorts disconsolately.
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
Matilda has actually been around Adlehyde itself in a fairly significant way lately; doctors and medics are much-wanted, and while Matilda is really more of a pharmacist than a doctor, the distinction doesn't mean much in the current situation. Unfortunately, the situation is also running her out of rose hips and orchids, which means...
A long, emphatic sigh, and heading out into the plains to try to hunt something up. She's not on horseback; instead, she's been moving along the road on foot, stopping at each clutch of greenery.
Eventually, this puts her not too far from the freshly-dyed Talise; she gives a small wave, and says, "Hello!" She follows it up with a nervous waggle of her fingers.
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
Mostly Talise doesn't want to have any more run-ins with the Guard. Last time that happened, someone smashed her lute and it took her a month to fix it.
At first, she's a little intimidating, being a very tall woman on a horse and generally looking like she could bench-press a couple of Matildas at once. It vanishes as Matilda notices her and waves, though - and she answers it with a broad, cheery smile, exposing pointed canine teeth. "Hey down there!" she calls with a quick wave, nudging her horse towards the roadside; she stops near Matilda and looks down at her, still holding that smile.
"You look like you lost something," she observes. "Or like you're looking for something. Though come to think of it... haven't I seen you around a couple of times before?"
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
"Ah -- that seems likely!" Matilda says, with a bright smile and a nod. "And that's -- very astute, at that..." She glances to one side, then to the other, and lets out a slightly nervous laugh.
"Pleased to make your acquaintance more formally! My name is Matilda Whitehead. Theoretically Doctor, but most don't care for that distinction unless it's medical, precisely, ahahha..." She shifts her weight from foot to foot for a moment.
Eventually, she explains, "I'm looking for additional reagents -- mostly rose hips, but not exclusively. The -- situation, in Adlehyde, is running me out of everything that isn't toxic..."
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
"Oh! You're a doctor," Talise muses with a blink, then a smile. "It's nice to meet you - can I call you Matilda, actually? My name's Talise Gianfair, but you can call me Tal if you want."
Crossing her arms against her saddlebow and leaning forward a little, she moues her lips, nodding as Matilda explains what she's doing out here. "I don't know if I have any rosehip," she admits. "I don't normally deal much in herbs... but yeah, I can imagine how it'd be hard to keep supplies right now. To think everything's gotten so bad...." Trailing off, she bites down to her bottom lip firmly, then lets out a slow, pensive rush of breath.
"...I'd send you to a lady named Jacqueline, but I'm not even sure her shop survived the attack," she admits with a blush.
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
"Well! It's a pleasure to meet you, Tal." Nodding, she adds, "It's hard to come by reagents consistently. I have small, out-of-the-way planters set up here and there... but they're too far a ride and often looted anyway."
At the mention of Jay, Matilda shakes her head. "Her shop didn't, though she did, at least -- we've been working together on this. To tell you the truth, part of the reason I'm looking for ingredients so aggressively is to pay her back..."
Tapping at the side of her mouth a little, she asks, "Why are you this far out, anyway? Most people have either been much closer to Adlehyde or left entirely..."
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
The smile Talise flashes is slightly sad. "I can imagine it's hard to find naturally-growing stuff like that... Filgaia seems so bare compared to what I'm used to," she says, figuring by now that most people know there are moon people about in the town. Althena's Guard exists, after all.
The mention of Jacqueline's fate draws a soft sigh from the tall woman. She slides down from her horse, landing with a thump of boots, reins still held in one hand. "Glad she made it, at least. Sad about her shop, though. She put her heart into that place, from what I saw... and she's a good person, too. Hate seeing good people suffer."
The question draws a shrug from her, smile lopsided. "I figured I'd drop in on a friend out in the sand a ways. Besides....
"...I really don't want to spend more time around the Guard than I have to."
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
"Ah -- so you're someone else who has run afoul of our friends from, erm, abroad..." Matilda hasn't really kept up with that situation in the least. She knows they're there, but who are they, with their weird goddess and their weird ship?
It's unknowable.
"What exactly is their... everything?" Matilda asks, her body language suddenly closing off a bit; she itches at her opposite elbow with a gloved hand. "They seem so -- strange. They're simultaneously well-equipped and poorly-equipped, and their doctrine is..."
She settles for a gesture.
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
"Yeah... you could say that we've had a few, uh, encounters." Talise's smile holds a bitter note. Pushing her right hand through her hair, she looks up towards the sky a moment, trying to find the moon with her eyes. Well, one of the moons, anyway.
At Matilda's question, she opens her mouth, then closes it, before letting out a low chuckle. "Long story," she says. "Don't know if you know much about Lunar - a bunch of us came over from there because of, basically, bullshit magic tricks of some kind. The Guard came over too. They're the military arm of the Church of Althena, our goddess up there."
With a look back down, she shrugs one shoulder and explains, "Back home what they've got is the most advanced technology there is. They're there to stamp out the enemies of the Church. Problem is, the Goddess also banned music and drinking, so mostly what they do is hassle musicians and bards and yell about sin."
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
"I -- erm -- I suppose I'd call myself 'completely ignorant,'" Matilda admits, with a shake of her head. She gets the explanation, though, and nods along with it. "I see, though -- so they're..." She trails off a moment, weighing hat she's about to say carefully. "That's terribly regrettable, though a little fascinating..."
The dark-haired woman pushes her hair back a little, fluffing it out. "Is this sort of casual repression a common, long-time occurrence, or has it been a recent innovation?" She takes a moment to consider her next words carefully, before adding, "And do they truly not have anything better to do...?"
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
Talise moues her lips, seeming to rethink how she's going to approach the story if Matilda really doesn't know any moonfriends yet.
"No. It's actually been recent," she explains as she shifts her footing, free hand moving to rest at her hip. Her nose crinkles in an unthinking gesture of distaste. "For a long time, we'd thought Althena had vanished. She was gone for about a thousand years. Then a few years ago she suddenly came back. She brought a dead man back from the grave as her champion, established the Guard, built herself a new city and then started banning all the things most people enjoyed doing. It was really bizarre and I think a lot of people aren't sure what to make of it, to be honest with you."
The woman sighs and shrugs once again. "I don't know why she's doing it, but if they're gonna run Adlehyde, I don't want in there. Last time I ran into the Guard, they called me a sinner and broke my lute."
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
"That's..." Matilda pauses, before tilting her head to one side, then the other, slowly mulling the thought over. "Well -- it is not so uncommon for religious doctrine to change in such a manner, especially when the feats that precipitate it are true miracles indeed..."
She looks down at the ground; it's now that something catches her eye that didn't before, and she carefully plucks a flower from the ground. "At any rate -- it hardly seems as though they have any real business haunting Adlehyde in such a manner... it's a pity, to say the least."
After mulling it over, she asks, "So -- where do you intend to go, then? Will you simply be haunting the roads, or, ah..."
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
"No... it's not like this." Talise shakes her head with a sigh, folding both arms under her bust. "Nothing in thousands of years of Althena's rule over us has been like this. Something weird is going on and when I get back there I intend to get to the bottom of it. But...."
She looks up towards Matilda again and manages a wan smile. "No... they're butting in, aren't they?" she agrees. "I think they're just doing it to try and get ahold of Lucia and her friends."
As she's questioned, she looks down the road again. The smile she's wearing fades steadily away, replaced by a look of quiet distance, eyes thoughtful. "...For now, there are friends of mine who need help. And in the process I'm going to try and find a way home. I want to go back eventually, but so long as I'm here, maybe I can do something to help make life a bit better."
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
"I see -- so they're looking for someone specific, and using the attack as a pretext..." Matilda nods, glancing down at her hands after shoving the flower in her pack. She taps something out on them, deep in thought for a few moments. "That's really dreadful."
Scooting subtly closer to Talise, she adds, "Where are you headed first, then? Besides 'away from Adlehyde.'" She takes a breath, before adding, "I admit -- part of me is loath to go, but it's hard to linger, too... the human constitution is not meant to take in death on this scale."
That seems to stop her in her tracks for a moment, and leaves her looking pensive.
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
The account is answered with a nod from Talise, her lips curling into a bitter grimace for a moment before the expression vanishes. "Yeah. Yeah, there's a group of them... though I don't think they're as bad as the Guard says they are. Actually I'm not inclined to believe much that the Guard says. But maybe that's just me not having much respect for authority figures when they try to strong-arm me the way the Guard does."
As Matilda questions her, Talise sighs and looks off towards the horizon again. A little smile plays at her lips. It's a thoughtful expression, sparks of interest twinkling behind her eyes. "We were thinking of going to explore some ruins out in the Badlands... my friends and I discovered some neat murals awhile back and we sort of want to find more."
When she turns back to Matilda, it's with a nod. Her eyes dip towards the ground, then come up again. "I've... never been through something this horrible, either," she confesses more quietly. "I wish...
"...I wish I could've done more to help."
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
Matilda very carefully does not render much opinion on Lucia and the Vile Fiends for reasons that are left as an exercise for the viewer to discern. "Well -- that is interesting! I've been finding some interesting murals and pottery myself of late. ... Would you mind if I were to come with you? I'd need to go back into town to buy a horse, of course -- it's something I've been putting off, but I have the money, and now..."
She gestures vaguely, and gives Talise time for her quiet confession. Eventually, she says, "... This isn't my first such experience, in some respects. You grow more used to it as time goes on, unfortunately..." She sighs. "There is nothing worthwhile to be had in regret, though."
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
Talise doesn't pursue the Lucia matter either. She's trying to keep her hands clean of that whole Lucia-and-Sorey mess.
"I don't see why that'd be a problem," she says, "though I'd definitely like to introduce you to Ida and Lynnai, too, since I wasn't the only one along on the expedition. But it'd be nice to have some help. We've always had a couple people we could rely on before now."
She grimaces and shakes her head. "Problem is, one of 'em was Zed, and now he's a Metal Demon. So. No more combat buddy."
Reaching back, she gives Dragon a pat on the haunches, an easy smile coming to her face. "If you need a ride back, sure, I could manage. Dragon's pretty strong. He can carry two, if you don't mind kind of riding at the back of the saddle."
Matilda gives glum thoughts voice. Sighing, Talise reaches out to give the woman's shoulder a gentle pat. "I hope I don't get too used to it... I don't ever want to lose the sense that I should do something to help."
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
"Well -- ah... I'm not exactly the best combatant myself when it comes to monsters," Matilda says, with a shake of her head -- despite her strange armor and the hint of an ARM beneath her coat. "Still -- if I can help, potentially, I'd certainly like to. Before becoming a full-time Drifter, I used to attach myself to Drifter parties as a merchant and camp follower, so..."
She fluffs out her hair again. There's so much, and it's so silky! "As for the ride -- I wouldn't want to expose you to the Guard, if all you say is true... I can walk back and return later."
She lets the topic of absolute despair die for now, because there are some things that just don't lead anywhere pleasant. Instead: "Wait -- Ida? Ida Everstead-Ray, yes? Oh, she's a lovely person! We've met before!"
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
"But I bet you've got other things you excel at. Most people do," Talise muses, her eyes drifting toward that dark silky hair of Matilda's. For a moment, her smile takes on an envious note.
She pushes the thoughts aside. No time to dwell on the difference between butches and femmes right now. "You know Ida? Perfect," she says with a wider grin, grateufl for the mental diversion. "She is great. And she's decided to stick around, so hopefully we'll be rolling with her for awhile. I'm sure she wouldn't mind if you came along."
Chuckling, she rubs the back of her neck with one hand, a gentle blush coming to her cheeks. It even reaches her cheekstripes. Yep, they're natural. "Between her, Lyn and you being a doctor, plus Zed being gone, I think I've officially been demoted to the dumb muscle of the group again. I think I'm a bit embarrassed now!"
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
"I do know how to handle myself," Matilda says, with just a hint of pride. "It is a very dangerous world out there -- Filgaia may not be what you're used to, but here..." Her eyes hood a little. "... Well. Let us simply say that in the end, even the places most lauded for their safety are not perfectly, completely safe."
She shakes her head, and seems to shake the gloom out of herself with it. "Don't worry, Miss -- I'm sure you have your own skills. I've never been able to learn an instrument, for instance -- my sense of rhythm is..."
She attempts, briefly, to dance. It is embarrassing, and it's clear that she knows it's embarrassing.
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
"Yeah... it is a dangerous world. Probably the hardest part for me was learning to fight people with ARMs," Talise says with a chuckle, shaking her head and blushing a bit more brightly. "And yeah, I've started to figure out that it's more dangerous here than it is back home. It's not awful, though! I'm pretty hard for most common people to mess with."
Reaching back, she pats the neck of her lute, hanging next to her sword. Opening her mouth to say something, she...
...trails off as Matilda tries vainly to dance.
With superhuman discipline, Talise keeps a straight face, arching her eyebrows and bringing a hand up to her chin. "...Not bad for starters," she deadpans, "but you could always go for a couple lessons. Maybe if you stick with us, I'll teach you a move or two."
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
"Oh, are such things not developed on your world? Or perhaps it's that you developed past them..." Matilda notes, considering this carefully. "At any rate -- yes, I suppose if the weapons typical of the Guard are what's common on your world... it would seem rather more lethal here."
She adds, after a moment, "I don't know if you can teach someone with two left feet -- but I welcome the attempt! I've always sort of -- fantasized about being graceful and rhythmic... ahaha... haha... ha."
She hangs her head. "But yes! That really does sound lovely." There's a beat, before she adds, "... can Miss Everstead-Ray dance...? Or are you the only one?"
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
Laughing gently, Talise waves a hand in the air as though to chase away a thought. "No, no, we're less advanced than Filgaia! We don't have ARMs on Lunar at all. The closest thing we've got is a crossbow, and those are hard to just lug around - you need a windlass just to reload it!"
The tall woman glances down, then back up again, smiling easily. "Hey. They look nicely-matched to me. But I can show you a couple things. Maybe play a few songs for you."
Then Matilda asks her a surprising question. Talise blinks. "...You know," she admits, "I've never seen Ida dance. Or Lyn for that matter. They're both serious people. But Sephilia dances plenty - you've met her, right? She travels with me quite a bit. Her and Chauncey both."
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
"Ah -- Miss Sephilia... she counts me as better than a book, at least, and that's some small comfort -- but really, you're all a -- unit? Club?" Matilda smiles. "It seems this meeting is very fortuitous, then!" She clasps her gloved hands brightly, before adding, "My, though -- you know how to make someone feel welcome, Miss."
with a slightly-awkward but pleasant laugh, she says, "I can't say I'm surprised that she's taken to dance, though -- she's got a truly absurd amount of energy. It's almost awkward to even be around..."
She adjusts her coat, nodding. "What is the deal with her -- puppet, anyway? It's so strange... I've hardly seen anything like it before. Are such things normal where you're from?"
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
Talise waggles her right hand.
"Maaaaaybe unit's the wrong word," she admits. "We're not a big pirate gang like Bart's crew is, anyway. But we've kind of stuck together over the past few months, and we've got a couple others who follow us around sometimes, too. And it's all good people, so I've been really happy to stay with them."
At the talk of Chauncey, Talise chuckles and shrugs both shoulders. "Not sure, honestly. Chauncey's the first thing of his kind that I've seen, but Sephilia did bring him with her from Lunar. I don't know where she found him. He's pretty handy to have around, though." Her smile fades, and she winces slightly. "The Metal Demons kind of beat some of the stuffing out of him, but I think Sephilia's got him all patched up at this point.
"Honestly, I kind of think of him as our mascot."
<Pose Tracker> Matilda Whitehead has posed.
"Oh, so it's just the handful of you?" Matilda nods. "That's certainly something -- that you've been able to work together so well... especially since I'm fairly certain Miss Everstead-Ray is not from your world!"
That's sort of fascinating, Matilda reflects -- though she scoots away from Talise, subtly, as she thinks about it. "Well -- I look forward to working with you, at least sometimes. I'm a bit of a free agent -- I do my best to keep in touch with several cliques of Drifters, so... I won't be able to work with you all the time."
With a thoughtful expression, she appends, "... but everyone I've met from your group has been lovely, so far, so I'm sure we'll keep in touch."
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.
"Yeah. It was just me and Lynnai at first. She found me at the bottom of a cave," Talise explains. "Then we picked up Sephilia, then Ida. Rosaline's been joining up with us a lot lately, even. Zed used to roll with us a lot too, but." She gestures, shrugging and throwing her hands briefly out to her right, as if chucking something over her shoulder and away.
She moves a hand back to her hip again. "I wouldn't ask you to. All of us kind of do our own things sometimes, too. We're just kind of regular friends who help each other. So long as that's true, I think everyone's going to be happy if you ever want to run with us." The smile she shares with Matilda is warm and genuine.
"Yeah, definitely keep in touch," she agrees. "I'll keep my eyes out for you."