[open] what mystery pervades a well; the water lives so far

[isorropia]

CHARACTERS: Rhan, Lyr, & YOU
WHERE: The Red Coast
WHEN: DAY: 029-:034
SUMMARY: Puttering around for fun and profit. Wild cards are okay!
WARNINGS: N/A, will add if necessary

LYR. THE ORCHARD

[The twisting fruit trees lay in perfect, ordered lines. They stretch out in the shadow of Tyrisson House and crawl quietly up the hillside. It's quiet here; the yellowed fruit on the knobby branches must not yet be ripe and the weather must be kind enough to simply let the trees grow. Come noon, the skeleton crew of grounds keepers and field hands have largely quit the place, leaving the orchards empty. Or close enough to it.

It makes for a good place to take a walk anyway. A fact that Lyr is currently taking full advantage of. He cuts a path first up between two straight lines of lumpy trees and then down the next, crisscrossing the orchard in exacting lines.]

RHAN. ABSOLUTELY GODDAMN EVERYWHERE

[Considering the amount of time Rhan's kept largely to herself in the Graze, it should be hard to pin her down here on the Red Coast where there's so many nooks and crannies to get lost in. But it seems the opposite is true: that cloaked figure at the pub's corner table? Rhan. That Carbauschian wandering the coast and cliffs? Rhan. Trying to get in some alone time? She's almost guaranteed to show up at your elbow.]

Well, fancy seeing you here.

LYR & RHAN. CARBAUSCHIAN QUARTERS (DAY :033)

[It's late in the afternoon and you've made a mistake. Meaning: you've arrived just in time to catch Rhan and Lyr in the middle of a debate. Lyr has taken up post in one of the heavy built in bunks and Rhan is walking circles in the center of the space. Clearly most of the other Hosts have not yet returned from whatever misadventures they're having, or (more likely), the two elder hosts' dialogue has driven off any unwilling participants.

Not that you're so lucky. Before the newcomer can so much as shed an article of their heavy Carbauschian disguise, Rhan calls out:]

Oh! Just in time. Come help me tell Lyr he's being ridiculous.

Comments

[isorropia]

[If he's struck a chord, the robes at least do her the benefit of making it so it doesn't show on her face. But there's a pause, a lingering of her fingertips around the shape of her glass, and the sensation of something-- unspiraling. A loose thread in a sweater. A ribbon unwound from its spool.

She'd said it on the Station before and thinks it again now: having so many Hosts together at once seems like the strangest, most unlikely kind of miracle. It seems like it should be a blessing. It seems like a resource she should have known how to use better. That's the dream for a spy mistress, isn't it? A nice little web of eyes and ears all doing their part.

But it's been a long time since she knew anyone but her own brood, longer still since she was in a guild of thieves. Even then, she had been little more than an ambitious finger on a hand. The truth is, maybe she just isn't qualified for this.

How very disappointing.

She takes a drink and laughs when she sets the glass down again. What an optimistic question.]

Sometimes it happens, but it usually isn't up to us. People do what people want to do. If we don't have to hand things over to the Carpathans, I'll personally consider that a win. That might be unfair of me, but I'm not a fan of any place that seems like they'd consider theft something to execute over. That's the vibe you get too, right?

[deployed]

[ None of them were suited to this. Maybe one or two of their Nest had a knack for surveillance, but not enough. And what's worse is their tendency to scatter in all directions, chasing leads that take them away and never circle back. ]

Who is it up to if not you?

[ Whoever's above them, likely. The same person who might have been directing Cathaway. Bellamy knows there must be someone directing them from there, but he doubts Rhan is going to tell him. ]

It's naive if I said I'd make them all share it, isn't it?

[ What are the chances of all these factions getting along after they'd left? ]

[isorropia]

Them. [She makes a gesture to the rest of the pub with all it's murmuring noise and clatter of glasses, the burst of a laughter from a table of Meradans in the company of a few Red Coast residents, two Carpathans in close conversation standing near the door, and presumably beyond it out to the rest of the little seaside village. The planet. The kaking universe. Whatever.]

We're interlopers here. There's really only so much we can do on our own. At the end of the day, where they go from here is mostly on them. Keeping the nectar out of the hands of the bad guys is already going to be a tough nut to crack. Asking for more than that seems... I don't know. It'd be nice, but I don't know if it's in my-- er, our capacity to make it happen.

[Forgive the slip of the tongue; she isn't used to this whole being candid thing.]

As for the rest-- no idea. But I think if sharing it was really an option, we wouldn't be here in the first place. Sounds like they've tried that and unless it comes with the end of the war too, it isn't really working out long term for Hyrypia to play at being a neutral party. But surely that's just my exceptionally well educated opinion.

[deployed]

[ Nice, but impossible. Bellamy's gotten used to watching Clarke make impossible things happen, but he recognizes that this is a more fraught situation than anything on Earth had ever been. All their best wishes and intentions might still end in this planet being ripped apart by war after they've left. ]

It seems like something worth trying for, if we can.

[ But to Bellamy, most of these missions feel intangible. It's hard to feel as if they've made progress when they've never seen their Enemy and can't measure their defeats in some concrete way. A victory would be leaving this world even marginally better than when they found it, knowing they'd put the Nectar into the right hands instead of just directed it away from the Enemy. ]

But I'm used to things being more straightforward than this.

[ An extreme understatement. ]