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Gideon Nav ([personal profile] ninth_cavalier) wrote2024-02-24 10:58 am
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Open Post: The Arms of the Emperor are Never Idle

Gideon spends her mornings in the practice yard, bright and early, despite the cold. She jogs and stretches to get her blood pumping and her muscles warm before she draws her sword, and then after drills she brings Tally her coffee, and then after that it's back to more sword—unless Tally hauls her off to some other activity, which she pretends to hate but is secretly devastatingly grateful for. The absolute worst part of this place is all the time. Endless stretches of time, with barely any work to be done.

In some ways it's just like the Ninth—except on the Ninth she knew her exits. They were few, sure, and near-impossible, but she knew them: buy her way out, fight her way out, trick her way out, or truly earn it.

None of those apply, here.

She breaks for lunch, and wanders the halls trying to locate various Clues and Mysteries that might end up giving her a way out, and mostly just finds people. More and more people.

She's not antisocial. She likes the people here, more than she's openly liked anyone in her life, individually or as a group. But a gnawing restlessness keeps her on the move rather than letting her time fill up with idle conversation as so many here do. She's always hunting for something to keep her busy, to wear out her body so that when she sleeps her mind is forced to rest rather than serving her a lovely buffet of the worst things she's ever seen and even worse things she hasn't, the things she was yoinked away just in time to miss.

Sometimes it even works.

[This post is open in perpetuity until something happens to make me close it, at which point I will edit it and say so! Feel free to find Gideon in the morning doing sword drills, or tooling around inside, opening and closing drawers and trying peel the wallpaper off in case there's flesh underneath.]
quote_gentle_unquote: (31. oh you make me)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-03-11 05:13 pm (UTC)(link)
"You can catch minnows with a net, but they're awfully unappetizing," Susan says. "Have you got a knife, or is it just that sword?"
quote_gentle_unquote: (18. you are the ground)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-03-11 05:31 pm (UTC)(link)
"I've spotted some perch, and I believe there might be catfish, too," says Susan, coming over to inspect Gideon's knife situation. "You ought to have a knife that's useful for a wider variety of applications. I suppose Swiss army knives have their merits, but it's easier to sharpen a single blade. It shall work in a pinch, but the blades are too short to clean a fish effectively. And your other one seems rather... single-use."
quote_gentle_unquote: (35. and if you wouldn't mind)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-03-14 03:53 am (UTC)(link)
"Oh, you might ask Annie for the nets," Susan says, quite forgetting that she knows of Annie's nets through remote observation rather than direct conversation, and therefore it might seem odd if someone were to go to Annie and ask for some and cite Susan as the source of their information. "She's got the boat on the lake and I believe she might occasionally fish as well. I'm not entirely sure. And there are loads of proper knives already in one of the closets near the attic, if you'd like to choose from an assortment. Some of them have rather dull blades--" Susan has, of course, tested multiple of them, and moved the very best to one of the emergency supply closets she's been slowly appointing to her own preferences. "--but they seem like they might be sharpened by a determined and rather strong young woman." Is she speaking of herself or of Gideon? Ah, well, perhaps both. "I could show you."
quote_gentle_unquote: (05. easy they go)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-03-16 04:45 am (UTC)(link)
"I've got time," says Susan. "What is 'edging'?"
quote_gentle_unquote: (66. and it takes time)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-03-20 03:06 am (UTC)(link)
"Oh! There's a name for that sort of thing?" The look Susan is giving Gideon shifts a little - she's definitely a little more engaged. "I see."
quote_gentle_unquote: (95. say i'm an airplane)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-03-26 12:12 am (UTC)(link)
Susan surprises herself by laughing a little at that. "Knives," she confirms. For a brief, queer moment, she considers playfully taking Gideon's arm the way she might Lancelot's, but discards the idea in fairly short order. "Follow me."
quote_gentle_unquote: (43. still i came back)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-03-27 04:34 am (UTC)(link)
Susan glances back at Gideon, but doesn't see anything strange about how she's walking, and so continues apace. "I trust you've been settling in well?" she says, as they enter the mansion.
quote_gentle_unquote: (75. cuz i've been having nightmares)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-03-28 03:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Susan's eyebrows lift. "Well then! Very good."
quote_gentle_unquote: (03. but what if i do?)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-03-29 03:34 am (UTC)(link)
"My first time in a mansion? No."
quote_gentle_unquote: (70. it takes time for eyes to see)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-04-02 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)
"In some ways it was like this one: Enormous. Full of nooks and crannies to explore. Loads of books. The grounds were smaller, but there was a stream in the garden. Oh, and a magic wardrobe with an occasional portal to another world rather unlike this one."
quote_gentle_unquote: (89. not so with the warmer lot)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-04-06 08:42 pm (UTC)(link)
"It's not always a door," Susan says, contemplative. "Sometimes the world just yanks you through to it. Sometimes it's a mirror. And I'm given to understand the old professor who owned the mansion traveled to that world primarily through magic rings and little ponds. ...I do know how mad this all sounds."
quote_gentle_unquote: (03. but what if i do?)

[personal profile] quote_gentle_unquote 2024-04-08 03:28 am (UTC)(link)
"Space, truly?" Susan is immediately fascinated. "They intended to attempt for a manned sub-orbital flight shortly before I arrived here but there weren't enough resources and the plans were changed. You've traveled through space, then? Or are you just from a fixed point within it?"

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