Feytower - Stables (Ka'Ri, Thimblewick)

Ka'Ri gives Thimb a warm look and then laughs. "I like you too, Thimb. I don't think I'd reveal quite as much so soon with someone else. It's hard sometimes to... form trust with people who are not crew."

Ka'Ri holds her hand out to Hamish, offering to scritch their head if they are interested. "And I like you too, Hamish and your shiny."

She turns her face once again to Thimb as if considering something. "I suppose I did have a somewhat exciting childhood. To put it like the storybooks, I guess you could say I was trapped like a princess by an evil king and queen who refused to see who she was and could be. Then, at a tender age, with nothing but her wits and a stolen hair clip, she absconded herself to the seas where she could grow up to be herself under the gentle watch of the Goddess Osprem."

She taps a finger to the side of her nose conspiratorially and with a roguish wink, leans down to whisper. "Some say that evil king and queen and the tower they tried to lock her up in exist in this very city, in the treacherous wilds of decay known as the Sun District. And they still angrily bellow for an heir who'll never return. But who's to say though? The ways of stories are mysterious."

Hamish, it turned out, always wanted scritches, and happily rammed their head into the offered hand like a cat. They let out a noise that sounded like what a cat might make if they had beaks and cooed instead of purred when the scritching began.

"Ugh, evil royalty," said Thimb with an over dramatic roll of her eyes, "they're always The Worst. All the treasure and comforts a person could want and then they go and try to ruin other people's lives. Maybe they'll get sat on by a dragon- that's how it goes in the stories, right? And then the princess and the dragon become best friends and rule the kingdom fairly?" Thimb, it would seem, did not grow up with quite the normal fairy tales.

Ka'Ri used her spare hand to scritch the area right on the base of their neck and behind their ears, enjoying the soft symphony of Hamish's delighted mews.

Ka'Ri looks at Thimb with a twinkle in her eye. "I like that. I wish I had more stories like that when I was young. And yes, evil royalty is always like that. Makes you wonder if something rotten happens to a person when they have too much money and get too rooted to one place."

"Yes," said Thimb with the utmost sincerity, "they get sat on by a dragon."

Hamish's tail feathers fanned out like a peacock and shook, somewhat like a dog wagging its tail.

As they stop--or at least slow down--for scritches, Thimb notices a familiar figure stalking down one of the corridors. The human man is not, to her recollection, a mage in his own right, but he is some sort of important politician who she is normally not supposed to talk to, but today might be an exception all things considered.

"Oh!" she said, as she spotted the man. What was his name? Some boring human thing, right? Started with an L... she really should know more about the local politicians, she was being terribly lax in her civic duty.

"Um, excuse me!" she said, waving with her arm but also her mage hand because she knew she was below most people's sight lines. "Hi! Yes, hello. Uh, we're here to see Lady Siannodel and I think we might be real late? Or real early we're still not sure- anyways, uhm, are we going the right way? I'm pretty sure but I don't come to this part of the tower often so not positive you see."

Ka'Ri winces and stops scritching Hamish much to Hamish's loud protestations. She risks a quick glance up to see if she recognizes the back of the person being called, desperately hoping that this was not someone she had lightened the load of.

She really should have known better than to stop and pet the kitty... fox... owl... chimera familiar. This is why you don't open up more, Ka'Ri chides herself hoping to not put her new friend in danger with her past actions.

Ka'Ri does in fact recognize Luther, but thankfully not as a mark; the powerful commissioner of the Feytower would be avoided by all but the most reckless of thieves. He stops in his tracks and looks them over carefully, his head tilting slightly as he studies them. Hamish, not to be outdone, tilts his head at a much better angle and looks proud of himself.

"Stairs," the man says, pointing at a nearby closed door which looks like every other closed door the two have passed so far. "Second floor, take a left out of the stairwell. Fourth door on your right." He narrows his eyes, looking thoughtful. "You're one of the chimera ranchers, aren't you? We were expecting an orc."

"Oh! Yes, my twin, Jarek," she said with a nod, "there was a bit of an upset at the ranch so he had to stay behind to help," she did not elaborate on what that upset was because for some reason people tended to panic if they heard a chimera or six got out of their pen and be very ununderstanding about how hard it was to keep them penned in. They kept growing new bits! You think you're containing an acid spitting duckling but now it's grown what are basically lock picks for hands too and really how are you supposed to manage that?

"Um, I can send Hamish to go get him if it's really urgent, but we figured I'd fill him in after- we weren't really sure what this was about so..." she trailed off, awkward and apologetic before holding up her basket of breakfast pastries, "muffin?" she offered, hoping to break the tension.

Luther gives her a very slow blink. "...Yes, alright," he agrees, holding out his hand for the mage hand to drop a muffin in. This is held with the ginger delicacy one would use to hold a dead wombat, but possibly the man is still preoccupied by Hamish's upside-down head. "Well. Enjoy your meeting."

Thimb deposited a blueberry crumble into the open hand, smiled brightly, feeling that since a muffin was accepted all awkwardness was done with. "Thanks! Nice meeting you!" she said before continuing on her way.

Hamish hesitated, still staring at Luther, their head upside down, enjoying sowing confusion.

"That guy gives me the creeps, don't know why," Ka'Ri mutters under her breath as she lets herself slowly up from the floor.

Internal Thoughts::

"I suppose we should go the rest of the way before we run into anymore..." Ka'Ri paused as she tried to find the right words to describe the situation and debating which euphemism to use before sighing and deciding to try out honesty. "Creepy bastards?"

[OOC: Technically, Luther is not a magic user (and people know he isn't), however that anecdote definitely happened and the fact that Luther doesn't do magic just makes it creepier and more terrifying.]

"Hm?" strangely the woman who worked as a chimera rancher didn't have the best danger sense, and seemed to have not noticed that. "He certainly wasn't very friendly," she said thinking this statement was an agreement with the ones Ka'Ri had made. "People who hang around wizard towers tend to be an..." she trailed off, grasping for the right word, "odd," she settled on, "lot though. You get used to them faster than you'd think." It did not occur to Thimb that she had been making deliveries here since she was a teenager.

Hamish, having further challenged Luther to a tilt off by turning their head entirely upside down, was not counter challenged, and so considered themselves the winner and happily trotted after Thimb.

(OOC, sorry I was at Trans March yesterday. Can we just assume Ka'Ri followed Thimb the rest of the way to Laerdys?)

((OOC: I mean sure but we still need to work out what the matching friendship bracelets they're going to have made look like))

(OOC: They'll have to be shiny to match Hamish's rock ;) )

[OOC: This scene continues in "Feytower - Laerdya's Laboratory".]

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