needlework and seedlings in the way that you're walking

[nightwolf]

Who: Arya Stark, OPEN
What: Wandering, killing, stealing, ALL THE FUN THINGS ONE DOES TO GET BY without a job
Where: All over. Aaaaaaall over, but notable: Echomire, Sobek Croix, Mafaton, Barrackham, and Griss Twist.
When: This week, Newdi to Veerdi
Notes: Tag in with any location, any time, she'll have a reason to be there. If you'd rather run into Arya with another face - a young man or an old woman, both of the Spatters variety - just let me know! I want to give her Facelessness a run. ALSO IF YOU HAVE A PREFERENCE ON NYMERIA BEING PRESENT idk just let me know
Warnings: None

She began in Echomire, as she always did, but each day she took a new route. Some days she walked as a man, strong shoulders hunched, head bowed and beaten by the world, a Stranger to everyone he passed. She had found that an interesting label, one she'd embraced and taken as a sign. In the Faith, the Stranger guided the dead to their afterlife. the Stranger was just another name for the God of Many Faces. Being a Stranger herself, now, she took as a reflection of the work she'd done for years. Even the kindly man would see that.

Some days she traveled with the face of an old woman, slow and aching and quick to speak her mind. Arya could hear the woman's voice when she spoke, she even fancied she could hear the woman's thoughts in her head. This, the kindly man would not accept. The Priests of the House of Black and White, they knew that death was to be communicated through the will of He of Many Faces. They had told her, again and again, that it was not for her to decide.

And yet they took money for assignations in Braavos, killing those they had been paid to. She did not see the difference. So more and more frequently, Arya left Madrasati with her own face on. Sometimes Nymeria accompanied her, particularly when she frequented the less populated neighborhoods that made up Baedal. They'd explored most of the farmlands, and Barrackham had become a particularly favorite place for them both - but there were too many people in the city to avoid them forever. And everywhere she went, she observed. Faces in Mafaton - particularly those who had warned her away, shops in Sobek Croix - the Apothecary still had her interest, one day she followed the river from Griss Twist to the ocean.

There were new things to learn. Arya hadn't reported three things she knew to the kindly man for years, but his task had had its effect: she looked for information everywhere, sometimes while her body sat against a wall near the Arena and her thoughts soared in a bird high above. Sometimes cats whose eyes she'd borrowed followed her through the towns near the water, and she was reminded of Braavos, and her time as Cat of the Canals. But Cat was dead and gone, a lifetime away and out of reach.

It was Arya's turn to live again.

Comments

[heardmermaids]

"I'm sure she was just being kind," he replies, suppressing a shudder at the thought of being in potions class again. Perhaps Snape had once been a supportive teacher and he'd only changed in later years? Perhaps he also taught his students about flying pigs and blast-ended skrewts. "And to be fair to her theory, it must come as a great shock to meet someone as an adult you only briefly knew as a child."

[inkdamage]

"That's hardly an excuse." To his credit, Severus only sounds slightly grudging, and he bites back the rant about Aurors and their inability to do anything that begins to creep up. Instead he directs his gaze outward at the quiet street, and defiantly thinks of the child he relocated despite the uncanny discomfort. They are not the same people, and he's never considered it for a moment; he is not the 'professor', as Narcissa called him, just as Nymphadora Tonks is not the odd first year in the classes he's forced to teach.

"I trust everything else is going as well as it can?"

[heardmermaids]

"Well enough. I returned the creature I was caring for to the temple and that leaves two components left to fulfill." He's not exactly looking forward to finishing the arrangement with Shada, but it's something he needs to do. Sebastian would never forgive himself if, somehow, he was pulled home to London and he didn't even bother to try restoring his magic.

[inkdamage]

Severus is not really sure how he feels about all this god business overall, being the sort of person disinclined to respecting or bothering with any higher power, but he understands the desire to want to use magic again. The need for it. He's imagined it again and again, working with him to pick apart the curse damage he carries, and it's unsettling and claustrophobic at every turn. He suspects it won't be the same as he was born with, but after what Sebastian's been through, he doesn't think that'll matter.

"I'm glad that it's progressing." He doesn't say I can't imagine- because he can, and his imagination is horrific.

It's second nature to keep tabs on everyone around him with a third eye. He imagines not doing it, or stopping, and he won't even as an exercise. Someone who's probably psychic walks down the street by them, and his head jerks in the direction of Severus and Sebastian, alarmed - maybe it's at the cigarettes, maybe it's at the onyx-walled void that is the paler man's head.

[nightwolf]

If she reaches out, she can feel Nymeria skirting the farmlands, running through fields fast enough to escape unwanted attention. The feel of grass beneath her paws and earth in her snout is a comforting one; it helps clear the smoke out of the dripping nose she wears now, helps her blink the irritating fog from eyes that will always be red and scratchy and not quite right.

She walks with an uneven gait when she walks at all; it's easiest to listen to crowds when you sit so still that they never notice anyone's there at all. She's used to disappearing against her surroundings. She's used to not understanding personal conversations, too, and it doesn't take long for Arya to shuffle-limp put to the two men. She doesn't recognizes the things the smoke is coming from, and wants a better look. So while she pretends to ignore the psychic's (not that she'd recognize him as such) discomfort, she thrusts one broad, calloused hand out to the conversationalists.

"Anythin' t'spare?" The voice is as blunt and masculine as the hand, as the face she wears, but dull, too. Behind the mask, she studies the men, memorizing faces and dress.

[heardmermaids]

Unless he's under attack, Sebastian doesn't bother with mental shielding beyond a screen to hide damage that would usually turn a psychic's stomach. At least that's the theory. He's had no one in his mind since Voldemort's death.

"I'm sorry, no," he replies with a shake of his head. When he can, he'll donate to charities, but it's become too old a habit to refuse giving gifts to strangers without due cause.

[inkdamage]

Almost as a rule, strangers tend not to approach Severus. It wasn't as stringent in the Nexus, where people flung themselves at every stationary person in vivid curiosity, but Baedal is a genuine society reminiscent of the real world. As such the blistering aura of standoffishness, not to mention the fact that he makes no bones of being a practitioner of dark magic, means people keep their distance.

Usually.

"What are you looking for?"

The question is blunt, but not hostile; his expression is mostly neutral, skewed towards unconcerned skepticism. (If there were musical cues in the city, they'd be warning Arya not to make eye contact, right now.)

[nightwolf]

The hard part was pretending to know things she didn't know - but this city made things easy, on occasion. She wasn't the only one in this small kingdom who didn't understand half the things it contained. When the first man doesn't fill her hand with gold - copper - whatever - she doesn't snatch it back, waiting. The man whose face she'd worn had been slow to move and slower to act. Best to adopt those traits for not.

The other man's question, though, makes her look up with the dead man's eyes. "What you smokin?" She smile's the dead man's shifty, crooked smile.

[heardmermaids]

At his feet, Velcro shifts in place, presumably either to make himself more comfortable or to get a better look at the young man. He won't be the one to tell the beggar to leave; Severus will likely do it quickly and sharply.

[inkdamage]

There's something off about this, something Severus can't quite put his finger on. A normal person might just shrug it off as being uncomfortable with confrontation from transients, but Severus is not a normal person. He is a very paranoid, grudging person with an uncanny sixth sense for the fantastic, and so the instant the shuffling panhandler meets his gaze, he reaches out. (Not with his hands.)

He speaks no incantation, twitches no wand, but if Sebastian is looking close enough he might notice the tell-tale sharp and brief frown of someone casting a spell. In a heartbeat, Severus is invading the mind of the man who's approached them, lance-like and brutal, searching-

[nightwolf]

A little girl leaping through the snow, a little girl lost in the dark caves beneath the Red Keep, a little girl stabbing a stable boy by accident and fleeing - the images shot through her head, different moments of a life she'd told herself was no longer hers. A girl had no past, no family, no homeland. A girl was faceless (she remembered obtaining her first face, the darkness behind her eyelids, the was of blood across her skin).

But absurdly, there were other memories, fleeting and faint. A boy who had lived all his life in Baedal, who had failed in school and lived in the Spatters, who didn't want to be a Stranger but didn't know how to change his life, who grew up and eventually died, blood spilling over his face.

Arya lurched back a step. The attack was alien to her, and in the distance, in her mind, she could feel Nymeria snarling. She lashed out, throwing a punch at Severus' jaw, not even certain he was the one who was causing this, but she had to do something to make it stop.

[heardmermaids]

Operating on instinct, Sebastian slips his hand through the handle of the mug so that its body rests against the palm of his hand and moves to strike Arya. He's confident that Severus will be able to handle the situation and moves less to disable her than to distract her and give the other wizard a little extra time to prepare himself.

[inkdamage]

Well, that's interesting.

The spell effectively cancelled, Severus leans back, head raised, and whether or not the movement puts him out of range is irrelevant for two reasons: the fact that Sebastian is in the process of intercepting with his coffee mug, and the immediate paralyzing-pain curse that Severus strikes out with, eyes narrowed.

Next to them, someone gasps, and inside the cafe, an employee is already rushing out. Panhandlers are embarrassing for an establishment of this kind to begin with, but a violent one? Oh, dear.

Severus himself is torn between two feelings; who is this person-within-a-person, and what is their ulterior motive? Do they know Sebastian, is this related to the war? And then, far more cruelly - what's going to end up on death's door, here? Which mind, which body? Curious.

[nightwolf]

The cup coming down on her was a sharp sound, one she had grown very familiar with when she spent her blind days in the House. It meant danger, it meant move. She turned from Severus, bringing her arm up and in to protect her head from the assault. Arya would have lashed out again, with big hands that she saw as her own small and callused ones, but she didn't have the chance.

A curse wasn't something she could fight off. She didn't even know where the pain was coming from, or how it had entered her body; all she knew was that it was crippling. She cried out in a man's voice as her legs failed to support her weight, knees hitting the ground hard.

"How," she croaked, and in the distance she could feel Nymeria howling her own anger, her own pain, running unsteadily through farmland.