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]

The extent of Seoraj's familiarity with the notion, prior to Baedal, consisted of vague rumours that invariably concerned foreigners; he hasn't had much occasion to give it more thought, before, but at least in his case that mostly means a lack of inconvenient preconceived ideas. Large parts of his life have been 'find something interesting, make up the rest as he goes along', so why should this be different--?

What makes him uneasy has nothing to do with Bruce - Tom - but the locale. It's never been consciously deliberate but it's also never been coincidence that the women he gets deeply involved with have tended to be foreign women, women in cities he was passing through, relationships that had an inevitable and consistent endgame. Sooner or later he had to go, and though some endings were less amicable than others, ultimately they all ended the same way, without necessarily much input of his.

It's not something he's particularly inclined to examine, though, and there's another long, hard day ahead of them tomorrow; there's only a quiet chuckle in the darkness, and then sleep, and in the morning the change between them is just awareness, for now, so they can go on.

[caballero]

Sleep is uncomfortable on the rock, but they're covered and relatively protected, and it's flat and free of bugs. Could be worse. Bruce wakes long before the light's made it's way down into the ravine, and moves silently as he scopes out any changes. Nothing's come to bother them during the night - or at least, nothing that wasn't floating through the air undetected.

If Seoraj isn't up by the time the sunlight begins to turn the black pit slightly greyer, he's getting a poking.

[serjeant]

Seoraj is awake before dawn by habitual reflex - he just usually is, Bruce surely remembers interrupting him in his morning routine over some horse shenanigans - though not quite so quickly as his companion, here. It's hard to say whether he's temperamentally a morning person or not, but the knack for falling asleep anywhere and shaking it off in moments is a survival skill that he mastered a long time ago, and he's easy on his feet in good time.

“Not missing anything?” A little wryly; from their camp ... toes ... seriously, Bruce, what madness have you got him into. (The best kind; Baedalian domesticity has had him bored a while.)

[caballero]

"Doesn't look like it." He's already eaten a terrible-tasting ration bar (finding things sealed to the point of being undetectable by animal senses is difficult in Gotham, forget Baedal) and is ready to get back to work, as it were. He's got an idea about where they're going, and it's going to suck, but it's also the best idea about where they're going he's had since they set out. (Comforting.) He relays this to Seoraj, quiet enough not to disrupt the ambiance of whatever's deep inside the rock, lurking, but leaves out phrases like 'it's going to suck.'

(It can probably be inferred.)

Rock climbing through a cave system is claustrophobic, dark, uncertain work, but Bruce is sure-handed and has such a calmness to him that it seems like nothing could possibly go wrong without his permission. More than once, they have to sit still and quiet as something creeps past them towards one of the cliff-side fissures, apparently off to bask in the warm light. Pockets of air seem thicker, in places, too humid, but cold.