then the riddle gets solved and you push me up to this

[caballero]

Who: Bruce Tom & Seoraj.
What: Camping, completely free of ulterior alibi motive.
Where: North of Flag Hill.
When: Beginning roughly on the 30th.
Warnings: Weirdness, violence, sexuality.

They leave early, because that's the tradition of camping - before dawn, as they have to make it up to the northern edge of the city proper first ("'Morning-") - the provisional shops built into the cliff face that hosts the treacherous ways up into the forests are helpful, the proprietors less so; that they generally profit off fools isn't anything they keep quiet. Bruce isn't bothered. Cold morning air and physical exertion with dirt under his hands makes some far-off part of him feel at peace.

It's just starting to become properly bright out when they reach the summit that'll lead them into the woods, and he takes a moment to stop and look out over the view of the city. Up here it's quiet, but not silent - it's not an absence of sound, but an absence of people, and looking down on Baedal from the vantage point of the highest natural point in the only landscape they have available makes it feel like another world.

Remarkable.

Comments

[serjeant]

As alibis go, Seoraj is a good one; he's 'that huge friendly bloke' to his cohort and 'Master Stoneshell' to his neighbourhood, a real salt of the earth kind of guy, as much of a pillar of the community as any of the new arrivals could hope to be. An uncomplicated man who takes pains to stay that way.

It's funny how complicated than can get, of itself.

Up here, though, it's clear air and the sense of relaxing back into his own skin. This is more familiar to him than city living, and it's easy to fall into step, to be quiet because they know what they're doing and there's not a lot that needs to be said, to-- sometimes catch himself listening for footfalls that aren't there, because it's only the two of them. (Not unheard of, before, but not his norm, either. Two men on foot meant coming or going and doing either with a certain degree of urgency, usually.)

"Shame we have to go back down," he remarks, mostly a joke.

[caballero]

Several packs full of unspeakably rare alchemical materials and one freed cow dragon later, Bruce and Seoraj - alive and relatively intact - arrive back at the edge of Flag Hill. For all his bruises, Bruce feels rather accomplished, and he feels at once relieved to be 'back' and regretful to leave the clean rawness of the wilds.

At the sight of them, one of the gateway rangers asks what the fuck kind of camping they were doing ("Enthusiastic"), and also jovially recommends a lodge with hot running water.

Which is a really, tremendously good sell over crawling all the way back to Stoneshell. (Or Stoneshell and Bonetown, or... well, whatever, they're crashing for a night up here, still.)

And it's certainly one tactic to avoid ... avoidance.