jaskoleczka | { pfsb } a letter and a meeting

Time is passing strangely for Ciri; it's difficult to tell if she has slept entire days or only a few hours. There is no way to mark the days aside from weather, and that changes quickly enough that it is wholly unreliable.

(The Bar, in her infinite kindness and usual sympathetic meddling, has in fact created a mild time loop in Ciri's room, giving her time to recover and somewhat ignoring the distressed flurry which has emanated out in ripples from her arrival.)

She comes downstairs, therefore, determined to more fully explore this strange place. There are stables she wishes to visit, and the woods remind her very slightly of those around Kaer Morhen...but her plans are abruptly canceled when, along with the strong hot tea she'd ordered, Lady Bar provides her also with a note.

Anyone watching would see Ciri rub at her forehead as if to quell a sudden headache, then lay a hand on the bartop and request something in a soft voice. Quill and pen appear, and she bends her head to write briskly and neatly:

Reverend Daughter,

I am terribly sorry for the distress I have caused. Please know it was not intentional.
I welcome your request for a meeting. I am at your disposal and shall visit Room 99 within the hour.

- Ciri

Folding the note, she looks for a waitrat to charge with its delivery and watches as the messenger scampers up the stairs before she turns with a sigh back to her tea.

Which she is now wishing was something a good deal stronger.

It's about half an hour later that she stands at the door of Room 99 with no idea of what to expect, knocking lightly with gloved knuckles.

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Ingress nods her head in commiseration. “That sounds likely. It took me time to make friends with Harrow, and I’m a professional.”

"A professional friend?" Ciri laughs. "I envy you your profession, and your skill at it."

“Actually I never got a formal degree in making friends,” she snickers. “Still an amateur. No, I’ve just had a knack for making friends here all this time. When I was small I apparently ran around in tutus with a training sword, charming everyone I met.”

"I can see how it might."

She also ran around with a training sword, but the witchers are a tough lot to charm.

(She managed it anyway.) "Your friends are fortunate. I hope to count myself among their number one day...if I can keep from making dire prophecies, that is."

“It sounds like it’s nothing you can control, so I can’t see how it could be held against you. And of course you can count yourself as a friend of mine. We’ll cross the bridge of dire prophecies if we ever come to it.”

Edited 2020-11-17 23:19 (UTC)

"Deal," she says, firmly. "With a little luck, it will never come up."

“Do your eyes roll or your voice get weird? I’ll watch for warning signs and run, if need be.”

"You'll have to ask Lan Wangji," she admits. "But so long as I don't enter any trances, we should be safe."

“That’s perfectly fair, then. I accept the challenge.”

"Good!" says Ciri, cheerful. "Because I wanted to talk to you about portals. Wei Wuxian said you have a talent for opening onto other worlds; is that true?"

"Oh, yes. My family and I are all Openers. We don't often have need to open to other worlds, but we can. My brother-in-law, who's practically my dad, really, my sister's much older than me, has more experience with opening farther away, but yeah, I can if I need to. Why do you ask?"

"Because I can travel to other worlds, too," Ciri tells her. "At least, I'm supposed to be able to. I'm still learning how to control my powers, and now that my mentor is gone, I'm a bit leery of practicing portals. I'd rather not find myself dropped into the caldera of an active volcano when I'm just trying to pop over to Novigrad, if you know what I mean."

“I absolutely know what you mean. For me it’s like stepping through doors, but you definitely want to know what’s on the other side.”

"Yes," she agrees. "I should be able to do it fairly easily, but I haven't quite got the hang of it yet."

She lifts a palm in a what can you do? sort of gesture. "And of course being Bound here hasn't helped. I spent time on the grounds creating portal after portal, and they all just dumped me right back where I was."

“I might be able to help you there,” Ingress says, smiling. “My family home connects to Milliways; we used to have several guests that took up residence with us for a more homelike setting. I think some of them were Bound. It may work to bring you there to see if you can at least practice going back and forth.”

"That would be very helpful," she says, eager. "But of course I wouldn't want to put you out, or your family and guests."

“It wouldn’t. I’ll let Tom know - he’s usually the one who keys people to the painting portal.”

She points to the rabbits playing poker. “Which is right there.”

"Are those...rabbits playing a card game?"

She's seen some strange things – even lived in an underwater city for a while – but small fluffy animals playing cards is still a bit beyond her.

She laughs. “Why yes, yes they are. They used to be dogs, but Wei Wuxian has a phobia, so Tom changed them. They keep an eye on things.”

"I suppose that's one way to hide a portal in plain sight."

She's picturing Lady Yennefer's likely reaction to said portal, and it's making her smile. "And your home is beyond the painting?"

She nods. "It leads to the Front Gallery, where the other painting portals are. My house is made up of rooms from all over the forgotten times and places of London Below. No doors, just paintings."

A house made up entirely of portals; how Geralt would hate the idea! "Very efficient," she says. "So the whole thing is made up of stable portals that...anyone can use, if they know how?"

"All of my family, yes. Anyone other guests must rely on Tom's charms to help them through. He was not born into my birth world, so he brings solutions we wouldn't have access to."

"Then your whole family can travel as you do?"

Avallac'h calls her the Lady of Space and Time; she doesn't need to create a portal the way the mages do, and she isn't reliant on portals which are already there but defunct as he does. She goes when and where she wants...supposedly.

With a chill, she realizes the Hunt would likely be almost as happy with Ingress and her powers of opening as they would be with her. "That's quite a gift."

"All of us," she says. "It's our knack."

The Hunt have a lot in common with the Angel Islington.

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jaskoleczka - 2020-11-25 16:29 (UTC) - Expand

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