Why Does It Always Rain On Me?

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A large forest in Central Anaxas, the once-thriving mostly human town of Dorhaven is recovering from a bombing in 2719 at its edge.

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Oisin Ocasta
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Tue Jul 02, 2019 4:49 pm

Early Evening - 16th of Hamis, 2719
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It was the Rainy Season. After all his time away, Oisin had forgotten how literal that monicker was. It wasn't that the deserts and steppes of Mugroba had been devoid of rainfall, far from it: but when the Flood Season came, the skies truly opened, as if an entire ocean was being systematically emptied across the landscape. In Mugroba, the rain was vital, welcome when it came, and longed for when it left. It could be destructive, too - Flood Season was not mere hyperbole - but whatever it was, however you felt about it, the rain in Mugroba was an event.

The rain in Anaxas meanwhile was simply miserable. It was intermittent, and it was indecisive. It came, and it went, and it returned, changed it's mind, left, returned again in greater force, and then disappeared again for two days of blissful sunshine before resorting to the same old misery. It was with no fondness at all that Oisin remembered the rains in Old Rose Harbor, the waterfall cascades from the tired old roofs he'd huddled beneath, the pools of liquified filth that soaked through worn boots, the drenching, bone-cold rains at night that chilled you to your very core. For some, it was merely an inconvenience, a talking point to help bolster the necessary pleasantries of benign conversation. For the working man - or working child, as Oisin had been - weather was merely something you endured. For those working at the bottom of the barrel, there was no such thing as stopping on account of rain.

Of course, even the worst aspects of nature could have their uses, if one was resourceful enough. Oisin was no farmer, but he knew the value of watering the crops. In this case, those crops were the people of Vienda, and like plants and flowers they too responded to the rainfall in different ways. For the wealthy, it was an opportunity to flourish: a chance to show off fashionable raincoats, to pull on fine-crafted rainboots, and stroll unhindered beneath the protective shade of an umbrella, a highly visible display of the ways in which wealth and status could shield you from the hardships endured by the common man. Even unfurled, those with umbrellas walked with greater purpose, umbrellas tucked between arms or swung like walking canes, as if the weather permitted them to walk through the streets armed like a conquering hero.

Beside them, or behind them, or rapidly in front of them in order to stay out of the way, walked the rest of Viendan society, hunched and huddled against the cold and the wet, bustling along from place to place as quickly as their feet would carry them, weaving between puddles, vaulting the streams of rainwater that meandered across the streets in places, seeking shelter from whatever winter coats, convenient overhangs, and repurposed newspapers they had been able to get their hands on. Some even surrendered to it, resigned to their waterlogged existence, shuffling along with more focus on staying warm than any futile illusions of staying dry.

Oisin counted himself among the latter, though found himself wondering which kind of person his quarry would be. Several days had been wasted on this particular endeavour, several rain-sodden days lying in wait outside the man's home, hoping to catch him discreetly on his way to or from work. Imagine Oisin's surprise then, to discover that the man never approached the entrance over which Oisin had kept such careful watch. Imagine his surprise to notice that the apartment seemed largely undisturbed, that the slight hitch of the drapes in the window of what Oisin presumed was the bedroom hadn't been corrected for days. Oisin had, after far too many visits to the dsoh shop beneath, even enquired of the whereabouts of the apartment's occupants, but that had proven singularly unhelpful. Oisin's stomach growled, squirming in protest at the thought of Hoxian cuisine yet again.

The journalist sighed, tugging out his pocket watch, and glancing down at the time. At least it was a convenient location to keep tabs on, here on the Kingsway, not more than a few minutes' hussle from the Post's offices, and the welcoming fire that would hopefully be waiting within to warm him dry.

Oisin turned his eyes skyward, squinting at the clouds, as if he could somehow disapprovingly glare the rain into submission. Of course the rain today was the worst of all: of course that was the case when he'd decided to await Rhys Valentin a little further up the Kingsway and closer to the headquarters of the Seventen, rather than inside the dsoh shop, or in one of the relatively sheltered vantages that he had managed to find on previous days. Of course it was today, as his patience wore thinner, that nature would see fit to test it more severely. He let out a sigh, feeling a bead of rainwater escape from an eyebrow, cascading into a rivulet down the side of his nose. "Alioe give me strength," he muttered quietly to himself, as the pocket watch clicked closed, and disappeared back into his sodden waistcoat.

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Rhys Valentin
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Tue Jul 16, 2019 1:28 pm

memories of home
evening of the 16th of Hamis, 2719
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The streets were still familiar, but Uptown no longer felt like home. His blood had long-since been washed from the alley near Crosstown Court, and yet just walking from Headquarters through his now habitual series of thoroughfares and alleys was still enough to set him on edge. He'd changed out of his uniform, soaked as it was from a long day on patrol and totally infused with the musky, thick scent of wet chroven that the tall not-galdor was convinced would never wash out of the green-dyed fabric by Roalis, if ever, packing everything away in favor of well-tailored clothes that perhaps would have pegged him as almost too lower class for his position as Sergeant in the Patrol Division of the Seventen and yet almost too wealthy for the Painted Ladies he now called his actual home.

Rhys had come to ignore the looks he received when leaving his office, comfortable now with the curious glances of his new co-workers ever since he'd left the Investigative Division in Bethas, much to the shock of nearly the entire Seventen.

Especially to the obvious discomfort of Captain Damen D'Arthe.

The man had tried everything to pass him back to Captain Arthur Haines, but the young Valentin had been adamant. It was time for a change. After his suspension—and, truthfully, after his beating at the hands of Damen himself and whoever he had under his thrall—the Sergeant knew he had to keep a closer watch on things, knew he had to begin to look for corruption closer to its source, and knew he had to keep his sharp blue gaze trained on the Co-Captain of the Patrol Division personally.

There was no one left to trust and he simply couldn't face his office or his desk anymore knowing what he knew, the memories of nearly drowning in his own blood far to fresh to allow him peace when smiling at Constable Potiphar when investigating some new lead. It was either transfer and begin to step up his game or quit entirely and pursue things with the kind of vengeance and subterfuge that had landed well-deserving Benjamin Tolsby's twisted, marred body at the bottom of the Avora River.

He couldn't distance himself enough from such a personal breaking of every oath he'd sworn to wear his four snaps, but at the same time, he also didn't want to. Not really. No, now he knew he simply had to keep going until it was all finished, until justice was served.

Or something like that.

Godsdamnit

This long, slosh-filled walk to Kingsway and the abandoned flat above his favorite dsoh shop in all of Vienda was just a ruse. It was another layer of lies just like his credentials, just like all the documents that declared him a galdor, just like his Brunnhold diploma and his ramscott field. He made his way through the evening crowds of other galdori bustling to go home, most of them hunched under an umbrella like he was, many in rickshaws and carriages to avoid the intermittent but far from merciful downpour of mid-Hamis that seemed to promise more rain in the summer, that seemed to threaten it would never end.

His route was always the same now: headquarters to Kingsway Market, check his mail, wave at familiar Hoxian faces, shuffle around outside an apartment he couldn't stand to look at anymore, and then leave to walk to the Dives, to the Painted Ladies, to his wife—to home. Today, however, he'd go inside and do some cleaning, arrange some things a little differently, and tucked under his arm in his soggy satchel was a small bunch of the last of Spring's flowers he'd purchased from a vendor near the Zoological Gardens.

The Sergeant avoided puddles with the kind of self-awareness of an Inspector and the muscle-memory of a man who'd lived half a decade in the capitol and had patrolled the streets for far too much of it. The Seventen also paid attention to his surroundings in the way only an officer could, in the way only a man who'd been beaten in broad daylight could possibly see so clearly, for the whisper of paranoia for a man who upheld the same laws he'd broken, he'd had broken against his own body, was very real and constant indeed.

Had he noticed the same face in the dsoh shop beneath his flat over the past few days? Had he perhaps caught a glimpse of him here and there in the Market or nearby for the past handful of evenings? Rhys' casual expression and long-legged gait gave nothing away as he turned the street corner he used to call his, knuckles rapping against fogged glass beneath a sagging awning, burdened by too much rain, and he waggled fingers at the young man cleaning tables, smiling at the familiar scent of Hoxian spices and broth that had been boiling since this morning. He boy waved back and his dark eyes said what words could not—a slow slide sideways that indicated his visitor had returned again—a valuable note of information that a couple of coins had earned the Sergeant from people he trusted.

Jaw clenched, he didn't see anyone in the restaurant proper, but he didn't dare look over his shoulder, either. Stepping through the solid wall of thick drops that fell from the awning and making his way up the side stairwell toward his old apartment, he began to fumble for his keys in a far more clumsy manner than necessary, dropping them at his doorstep and using the moment to glance around in a mockery of frustration. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he inhaled a long, slow, cautious breath as if just the memory of the interior was enough to bother him, as if the place would hold Tolsby's ghost, the restless spirit of the man still looking to get incorporeal hands on Charity's pale flesh.

Empty, thank Alioe.

He leaned against the threshold, setting his satchel down carefully before he stepped in and closed the door, slipping out of his soaked boots and beginning to shrug off his coat in the dim light, blue eyes scanning over dusty tables and an empty bookshelf, lingering over curtains that hadn't been drawn open to the sun in days.

Perhaps he should have paid for a housekeeper after all.

Rhys sighed, the exhaled air he'd held in his lungs for too long exiting his scarred lips through grit teeth. Resolving himself to a half an hour of light work making the place look lived in, he moved to light oil lamps after digging a box of matches out of his soggy trouser pocket. Once a bit of light was shed on the room, he paused over the coffee table, tracing a circle and a few words of Monite into the dust that had settled there, eyes fluttering at the ringing that began in his ears and the wave of vertigo that snatched for his senses while he whispered words, reaching out with his Perceptive-laden glamour and expanding his hearing above the normal range expected of a man, that tingling feeling that he had been watched for days leaving a metallic taste not so unlike blood on his tongue like runoff from his spell.

Without pausing, he began to tidy up alone, quiet and efficient.
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Oisin Ocasta
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Fri Jul 19, 2019 7:23 am

Early Evening - 16th of Hamis, 2719
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There he was: the illusive Rhys Valentin. Or at least, someone who looked somewhat like the man Oisin was relatively confident was Rhys Valentin, approaching the restaurant above which Rhys Valentin lived. Until now, Oisin had only seen the man from a distance, observed him on patrol in those fetching and eye-catching patrolman greens, and confirmed with people who knew such things that the Seventen over there was indeed the man he sought. Seeing him now, from a street's width away, he wasn't at all what Oisin had expected. He seemed younger for one thing, and he dressed like someone trying to lose themselves in a crowd, a niche of fashion that Oisin favoured himself. It was certainly deliberate, though Oisin couldn't quite decide upon why: was there someone in particular that Mr. Valentin was trying to avoid, was a little tailored anonymity a normal reaction to a day spent on display upon chrove-back, or were some of the habits of his investigative days not yet dead and gone? Oisin wondered how many times the Seventen might have passed him by without his notice: had it really been several fruitless days of observation, or merely several oblivious ones?

Oisin waited as the galdori loitered at the dsoh shop window, exchanging a few nonverbal pleasantries with someone inside. One last moment of braving the rain, and the galdori made for the apartment's entrance: that confirmed it, or at least, pushed Oisin beyond reasonable doubt that this was the man he had been looking for. Either that, or some sibling or other look-alike sent by Rhys Valentin to act as a decoy, though Oisin wasn't ready to ascribe that level of paranoia to the man just yet, elusive as he may have been thus far. That might have explained the fumble of his keys, of course, or was that deliberate? Generalised paranoia, or specific paranoia? Had Oisin somehow given himself away? Had his frequency at the dsoh shop not been interpreted as the visitations of someone who worked nearby as he'd hoped?

The journalist sank a little further backwards into the shadows of his vantage - or at least, what would have been shadows, had the sky been clear enough for the sun to cast them - and watched the windows of Valentin's apartment. He watched as light began to glow behind the curtained windows, watched as a silhouette began to move around inside. For a fleeting moment, a whispered thought dredged up old instincts, notions about he and the mercenaries he'd once run with might have handled this situation, ideas for how such a silhouette might translate into something to aim at for a merc with a crossbow in one of the upstairs windows of the building Oisin stood beside, and for how they might have planned to storm the apartment had they been asked to capture the galdori inside. Of course, the Sergeant would have had more information than Oisin had been able to glean on his own: he'd have demanded it from their employers, and refused the contract if it wasn't provided. Eneus wouldn't have sent anyone into that apartment without knowing the galdori's conversational specialities, nor the kind of combat skills he might have boasted: or at least, without knowledge beyond "perceptive, probably" and "good at fighting". He certainly wouldn't have sent anyone into that apartment alone. For a moment, Oisin wondered if there might have been ways he could have discovered such things, records from Brunnhold or the Seventen that the right connections or the right coins in the right hands might have earned him a glimpse at. Then again, why did such knowledge matter? This wasn't a mercenary operation. He hadn't been hired to capture, harm, or otherwise adversely affect the man in the apartment across the street. He was here of his own volition, and he merely wanted to talk.

Oisin's jaw clenched. Talking was hard to do from across a rain-filled street, and while Oisin had the sense that Valentin wasn't frequenting his residence as much as one might expect, there was no guarantee that tonight wasn't the exception to that pattern, or indeed the night that marked the end of it. Waiting here to follow Valentin when he left would serve little purpose if Valentin didn't actually leave. Was it something that would advance his purpose? After all, this wasn't some incumbent or socialite he was planning to trail to the location of some newsworthy scandal: if talking was what Oisin wanted, there was little reason why that couldn't transpire here, in the dry and relative privacy of Mr. Valentin's apartment.

Excuse me, Mr. Valentin, I was hoping I might have a word.

The wick rehearsed those words in his mind as he continued to watch, striving to inject them with confidence and authority - but not too much. You didn't get a second chance at a first impression, people said, and annoying a saying as it was, they were right. It was perhaps Oisin's biggest struggle in this line of work. In Old Rose Harbor, he'd gravitated towards work that kept him out of sight and out of mind: better that way, when you were the kind of tsat that everyone loved to take their frustrations out on. In Mugroba, there'd always been someone else to do the talking for him, either Sergeant Eneus, or one of the other mercenaries - though preferably not Vex, if it was a conversation you didn't want to end with fists flying. Here in Vienda, Oisin couldn't hide behind thankless work, nor the authority of whomever had been placed in charge. Here, his mistakes and successes were entirely of his own making, and his first impressions his own to screw up.

Oisin tried to cross the street with casual purpose, not so swift as to seem aggressive, but not so laissez-faire that he seemed suspicious. Excuse me, Mr. Valentin, I was hoping I might have a word. Part way, as he sidestepped what looked to be a problematically deep puddle, he caught himself wondering how best to knock: loud enough to be heard, of course, but not the kind of knock that would be alarming, or threatening. How did one knock on a door in a friendly fashion? It occurred to Oisin that he couldn't recall the last time he'd had reason to knock on a door, if he ever had; nor could he ever recall having a door upon which anyone knocked. The closest was the occasions when he and the mercenaries found themselves renting rooms in a tavern, and the Sergeant had done the rounds to rouse them in the morning. There had been a rhythm he'd knocked with, as if he were tapping out some sort of code. One, pause, two, pause, one. Oisin repeated it to himself as he quickened his pace to avoid an approaching carriage, sidestepping under the awning of the dsoh shop for a moment. Excuse me, Mr. Valentin, I was hoping I might have a word. Back into the rain, across to the apartment entrance. One, pause, two, pause, one.

He drew a breath, flexed the muscles in his hand, and readied his knuckles.

One, pause, two, pause, one.
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Rhys Valentin
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Mon Jul 22, 2019 3:47 pm

memories of home
evening of the 16th of Hamis, 2719

He heard the stairs first—the creak of someone moving up them much more audible from inside his flat instead of outside in the driving rain. Rhys was in the living room, dusting the coffee table while his mind was elsewhere, back in Vortas, blue eyes distantly fixed on the waxed wooden surface as he wiped it clean. Staring at the blurry imitation of his face, he remembered Charity's panicked state. He remembered Jynx's protectiveness. He remembered his mistakes—

Blinking at the knock on the door, the young Valentin caught his breath. From this distance, his Perceptive-laden glamour felt nothing, just out of reach of brushing against the monic field of the stranger on the other side, and so he was left to make assumptions. Had he misread the boy's expression downstairs? Had someone decided he needed some dsoh to take home? Well, he wouldn't say no—

But there was something to the rhythm of the knock that didn't speak of the casual indifference of a teenaged boy, especially because in some ways, the Sergeant still was one inside, and he scowled. Setting his things down and straightening, a flutter of panic ringing in his ears while his hands smoothed over the buttons of his shirt before he cleared his throat,

"Just a moment!" He called out, well-practiced authority in his tone while he made his way to the door. Gathering his glamour with caution, protectively taut and confidently threatening at the same time, he was quite aware that his presence could now be felt on the other side of the threshold, though obviously the location of his physical body was a mystery. The officer of the Seventen knew not to stand directly in front of the thing, off to one side of the door and body already coiling for action should some kind of defensive measure be taken, he capsized the weight of the obviously non-galdori monic signature on the other side.

A wick.

Interesting.

Had one of his contacts wondered about his absence and not gotten the memo now that he was in the Patrol Division? Did someone need him to sign some more paperwork for their release? Did someone have a grudge because they'd been handed off to Constable Potiphar and his poor people skills?

Fingers curled around the handle and it was with a bold, smooth sort of bravado that Rhys pulled it open, sharp blue gaze immediately settling onto the face of the man before him, taking in his features with the kind of quick analysis of a former-Inspector. If he recognized the wick on his doorstep, the Sergeant's face didn't give it away at all, his expression neutral but neither judgmental nor welcoming. He made no motion to invite the stranger in even though a steady stream of rainwater ran from the slanted second story roof through a tear in the awning above the wick, dribbling dangerously close to the reporter's shoulder,

"Good evening. Is there something I can help you with, sir?"

The tall blond let the last word hang in the air as two layers of questioning, both attempting to fish for the man's name as well as attempting to fish for his purpose. While he most likely could only catch one of those things with his semantic sort of worm, it was worth the try.
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Last edited by Rhys Valentin on Tue Oct 01, 2019 8:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Oisin Ocasta
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Sat Aug 24, 2019 10:53 pm

Early Evening - 16th of Hamis, 2719
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Oisin wasn't sure what he had expected. In fact, he generally made a point of not forming expectations at all. Deductions, yes, but those were different. Those were based on analysis, and observations. You took the time to read and watch someone's story, and in doing so you gained a certain sense of where the plot was going. You weren't always right, or perhaps you weren't always certain which potential possibility would actually unfold, but it was sensible, and rational, and formulaic. There was logic to it, a sense of structure. Expectations were something different: they were wild, untamed, and often based more on emotion than intuition. You could deduce what might happen, but as soon as you started to expect what would happen, that was when you became unstuck. That was when you became invested. Too invested. You grew disappointed or disillusioned when things didn't go the way you expected; when people didn't act the way you expected. Life was plenty disappointing on its own, without undue expectations helping it along.

Yet there were assumptions, too, the tricksy middle ground somewhere between deduction and expectation. Sometimes born of logic, but sometimes from bias; some based on evidence, some on expectation. The expectation of character was chief among them, as far as Oisin's vulnerabilities were concerned. You read a story, absorbed the descriptions, processed the actions, and an image would slowly form, a perception painted by your imagination of who and what a character was. You always felt as if it was based on evidence, an accurate interpretation of the details the story had provided, and yet your biases were always there, often invisibly so. A description, or action, or turn of phrase would remind you of someone you had once known, and suddenly their face, their voice, and your perception of them was forever changed, forever tinted and tainted by that drop of dye in the water.

Real people were no different, merely characters of a different sort, scribed on the pages of life and reality rather than fiction. You took the details you knew, the description provided, and your imagination rendered an image, something that strayed painfully close to an expectation. So while Oisin didn't know what he may or may not have expected, he did know what he had inadvertently assumed, and the man before him was not that.

For one thing, he seemed young. Not youthful, per se, but younger than Oisin's imagination had depicted. Or perhaps, more to the point, he looked younger than Oisin. Not by much, perhaps, but in his mind that made all the difference. Despite all his years as a mercenary, Oisin had never quite stopped being the rookie. They never quite stopped treating him that way, and he never quite stopped feeling that way. To him, the world was loosely divided into those who were older than him, and those who were younger; and those older were supposed to be wise and experience, while those younger did not. But Oisin's thirtieth year was behind him now. By all accounts, he was what his younger self would have assumed - expected - to be a mature and capable adult. From what he had heard, Rhys Valentin lived up to such an assumption, which to Oisin's mind made exactly one of them. Perhaps that was more about the dangerous unwitting expectations he held about himself than anything else.

"Sergeant Valentin, I presume? You're a difficult man to track down."

Oisin wrestled internally with how much to readily volunteer, and how much to play close to the chest for now. There would be an expectation, of course, that a stranger on one's doorstep be forthcoming for his reasons for being there, and Oisin suspected that Rhys might be even less tolerant of Oisin's proclivity for evasiveness than most. Yet there was a level of honesty that was unwise, in the interest of one's safety, and in the interest of not getting a door slammed in one's face. He chose his words carefully, trying to thread the proverbial needle.

"My name is Oisin Ocasta. I'd hoped we might find a few minutes to talk."
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Rhys Valentin
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Tue Sep 10, 2019 12:37 pm

memories of home
evening of the 16th of Hamis, 2719

"That would be me, yes. Rhys Valentin, Patrol Division Special Enforcement Sergeant. I don't suppose I'm too difficult to track down, considering you're here." Rhys couldn't help the riposte, smirking lopsidedly as he stepped away, almost baiting with his tone of voice, still holding the door open, and offering the other man an opportunity to come in out of the rain. His glamour was a weighty thing in comparison to the wick on his threshold, a indectal barrier organized and dutiful like any other galdor even if it shouldn't have been, even if it was an anomaly had anyone learned the truth of it all.

"Mister Ocasta of the Kingsway Post?" A pale eyebrow arched, the scar that split it puckering just so with the curious curve of it, and the tall blond's expression softened just a little.

He didn't have anything to really receive guests with here—there probably wasn't any tea. The kettle had been empty for months. The icebox bare. It was all an illusion, this place. Rhys realized when he let the reporter in, he was revealing empty bookshelves next to the mantle in the living room. The shell of his former life, and here he was caught in the lie without thinking everything entirely through, too caught off guard to back-pedal, too committed to the illusion to throw the trick. No osta glared from the hall at the interloper. No Charity moved through the house in her petite grace. It was hollow in here because it was no longer his actual address, and there was nothing he could do to hide the ruse.

The tall blond smiled anyway, but it was thin, stretched nervously, the taut scar in the middle of his lower lip reminding him of the kind of risk he was taking by letting the wrong man in. Was Oisin Ocasta going to be just another mistake?

There was a ripple in the not-galdor's glamour, like the ruffling of a bird's feathers to shake off the Hamis rain outside, but Rhys shut the door behind them both, shoving his hands in his trouser pockets and hovering just between actually inviting the wick in further and simply standing where they were for whatever questions he had,

"I might have a towel, if you'd like. I can—well, what are you here for, exactly?"
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Oisin Ocasta
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Wed Sep 25, 2019 10:35 pm

Early Evening - 16th of Hamis, 2719
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The mention of a towel left Oisin momentarily confused, rain having long ago become something that Oisin simply didn't pay much mind to anymore; but it was the words that followed that which caused Oisin's mind more trouble. Why are you here, exactly? A perfectly polite and reasonable question, and one that Oisin would have gladly offered a simple answer to, had he possessed one. It was more of a feeling that he should be, something vague and abstract. He wasn't arrogant enough to call it an intuition, a journalist's or otherwise, but still: the more times Rhys Valantin had brushed across his awareness, the more certain he had become that the man was someone with whom he should be acquainted. But how to put that into words? How to structure that into some sort of justification?

Mister Ocasta of the Kingsway Post. At least that did some of the legwork as far as initial introductions went. "There's no need to make any special effort on my account," he replied, politely countering the offer of a towel before anything else. "I don't intend to stand here dripping on your carpet for too long."

He allowed himself a momentary pause, to take stock of his surroundings, and of the man he had finally encountered. Valentin was not the first member of the Seventen that Oisin had encountered, but he was the first that Oisin had met in quite such close proximity, and when not intent on drawing the encounter to an end as expediently as possible. It surprised him how remarkably normal the man felt; on some level, Oisin might have expected the man to seem more formidable, imposing, intimidating, or other such things, but instead he was just a man, and one willing to be somewhat hospitable at that. Yet, the scene behind him didn't go unnoticed, the absence of effects, belongings, and the personal touches that turned a house into a home. True, the man might have been like Oisin, someone who failed to see the purpose of such things, for whom a home was merely a place to sleep - but the empty shelves and empty tables suggested an absence rather than an aversion. Combined with Oisin's struggles to engineer a crossing of paths with the man, the story didn't seem to be a difficult one to string together.

"I'm sure you must have somewhere else to be." The statement was made not as a threat, but with understanding. Oisin had read, and heard, and researched enough about Valentin to be able to make a few educated guesses as to why the man's life might have been located elsewhere. If that was the case, it was none of his business, and Oisin tried to make it clear from his tone that he fully understood that.

His brow furrowed for a thoughtful moment. He contemplated his conversation with Incumbent Vauquelin a few days prior, and the tactics he had resorted to then to pierce his way through the outer shell of politic to reach the - hopefully - reasonable man that lay beneath. With Valentin, he raised no such barriers, which was both a blessing, and a curse. With Vauquelin, blunt honesty had been the blow that pushed Oisin's intentions through the breach. Here, he would have no such momentum. One could not stab a man with a quarrel and expect it to do the same as if you'd shot him with it.

"I'm here because I am told you are a good man, Mr Valentin." With a deliberate effort, which Oisin so infrequently made, he forced his field to open up, to unclench from the cowering, protective shell that he usually wrapped himself in, unfurling petals upon which his intentions could be more easily seen by those appropriately attuned. Oisin was not a man accustomed to opening up, in any potential sense of the word; but even though Valentin had introduced himself as a patrol sergeant, Oisin knew that hadn't always been the case, and with the kind of scrutiny that a seasoned investigator might apply to his words, the more open and readable Oisin made himself, the better. "I realise that the Kingsway Post carries with it a certain kind of reputation, but it is one I have inherited, not earned, and is not one I have any intention of living up to. I work at the Post because a wick does what a wick must; but I write because there are things that deserve to be said, and aren't."

He let out a small bitter note of laughter at his own expense. "I sound like I'm trying to sell you a kenser, " he mused with a sigh, the corresponding slump of his shoulders transforming into a shrug. "As I said, I've heard that you are a good man. It often seems that there are too few of those in Vienda, but today at least there is one fewer of them that I have not met."
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Rhys Valentin
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Topics: 19
Race: Wick
Location: Vienda
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Thu Oct 10, 2019 2:23 pm

memories of home
evening of the 16th of Hamis, 2719

Rhys Valentin felt like he was a boy again, caught in Ol' Theo's farmhouse kitchen, up to his elbows in the jar of sweets. Mister Ocasta stepped into his abandoned flat and stood in his foyer, dripping, refusing the towel he probably didn't even have here anymore. There was an awkwardness about it all, an unspoken understanding between the two men—the two wicks, had Oisin known the truth—who had both learned when to keep their mouths shut about things when it suited the situation,

The tall blond blinked, exhaling a long, slow breath through grit teeth, begrudgingly watching the reporter's eyes wander over the nearly empty space, begrudgingly clearing his throat and shoving his hands into his trouser pockets after turning away from the door he'd shut and leaning his tense shoulders against it. He took in the way Oisin moved, the shape of his body, the signs of a similar age and a leaning toward physical fitness as if the other man had experience,

"It's technically my carpet even if I don't live here anymore, but I keep the address. Obviously. And you found it well enough, didn't you?" Rhys was almost coy about it all, his hatcher-may-care tone of voice revealing he was not particularly threatened by his visitor, given he was still an officer of the law even out of his uniform. For now. He smirked, adding without any delicateness to his voice, "I've got a wife waiting somewhere, it's true. You don't need to know where, though."

Leaning away from the door, he meandered the mostly empty room, not looking away from Oisin as the other wick furrowed his brow and seemed to struggle putting into words his actual reason for being here. At the words good man, however, the young Valentin chuckled. Then laughed. He looked away, into the dark kitchen, blue eyes narrowing at the dusty dining table, digging teeth into the lump of a scar that split his lower lip, and slouched a little,

"Good man? Really? Ha. That's clocking kind." He grunted the words more than spoke them, one hand reaching up to curl calloused fingers up to calloused knuckles through strawberry blond hair too long to be regulation-compliant and press against his scalp.

A wick does what a wick must.

He sniggered, tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, heat trickling down from the base of his skull like magma, crawling down his spine, causing him to pace some more as if he was worried the reporter would begin to smell the sourness of his burned flesh, on fire from within,

"I don't need a kenser, and I'm not sure I need a reporter. Who the fuck told you I was even halfway decent, anyway? If you're here to say I'm good for taking trash like Captain D'Arthe to court, then I'm honored, I really am, but there's not much else I can do, legally, to further that cause and I'd just drown you in the garbage I could dredge up from the bottom of the Arova if you're hear hoping to hear it. If you're instead here to call me good for my exemplary service as a Sergeant, well, thank you, but I'm not sure—"

Rhys looked away from the other man's face, his gaze sharp in its crystalline intensity, and stared up at his ceiling, body tensing and Perceptive-heavy glamour tightening around him like some armor of the mind, sigiled and defensive,

"—I'm not sure what in the Lady's name I can do for you, really. Just speak plainly, if you don't mind. We both don't have time for dancing—you've got the morning edition to write for and I've got a lovely pianist watching the clock."
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