therookery | crystal.

[The griffon eyrie is a sacred space to Val de Foncé, who has long coveted and admired the precious beasts. When does one have the distinct and hitherto unparalleled pleasure of witnessing the regeneration of a species thought extinct? That the griffons are guarded so jealously makes a kind of sense--because it is very good to have an advantage over one's enemy, and also, one could not ignore the chance that their exposure might wipe the creatures from known existence once more--although the ingenuity and tenacity of the griffon has now been doubly proved, since they were only thought extinct but in fact were not, were surviving all on their own--and it is therefore only hubris that would make one think onee might keep them alive by one's own will alone--

These are the thoughts that Val had been having as he was climbing the endless stairs to the top of the tower. It is a very long climb, and he had briefly paused upon the last landing to catch his breath, so that now when he emerges, he is fresh-faced and composed and breathing entirely evenly. And for once, no little beast accompanies him. But he is carrying his satchel and--pausing again--he reaches inside its depths and when he withdraws his hand, he withdraws it with a fistful of salted meat.]

Mesdames! [--which he follows with a piercing whistle. Wary of sharp beaks and talons and large rushing bodies and wings and the precarious height that their little party finds itself, Val throws the strips of meat onto the stones and dashes to the left. This leaves plenty of space for Wysteria's two harriers to rush in to receive their gift--which they will do, of course!--and leaves him with a view of the peculiar pile of slender wood framing and sailcloth.]

What is this!

[That Wysteria straightens at Mesdames just as briskly as the griffons accosting her work do is strictly not a point that they will be discussing, particularly as her stormy expression goes slightly stormier and redder when she marks exactly who the call and whistle belongs to. Moreover, she has dragged a part of the frame upright with her by dint of the clamp end of her prosthetic arm and now it must be reset so she can try once more to stretch the canvas over all the appropriate corners—

Really, is there no little project not made more difficult by his presence?

(Never mind that with the griffons otherwise engaged, Wysteria does briskly manage to right the frame and wrench the third of four sailcloth corners into place.)]

If you're so clever, why don't you tell me?

[With a pop!, she releases the clamp of her make-do hand and moves to wrestle with the sail's last connector point.]

[Having been stepping in the direction of that fourth corner, ostensibly to make himself helpful, Val is arrested by this question. He stops where he is and assumes a thoughtful position--head cocked, finger to his chin.]

Hmm, [he actually says. And in this pose, he makes a thorough and thoughtful study of the framework and the clamp-hand and his industrious scholarly wife, and he thinks. The nearby chomping of the griffons is a pleasant sort of music, if you enjoy that sort of thing.

Eventually:] A sail. Or a screen behind which one might put on a shadowplay. But that does not strike me as very you, Mademoiselle. Why a sail upon a tower? Must it be cast upon its ship from some great height?

Edited (edits to remove a word/make sure the notif goes through) 2022-03-09 02:08 (UTC)

[It takes nearly all this thoughtful time for Wysteria to crank closed the clamp onto this fourth corner. It makes a soft ratcheting sound with each rotation of the crank, the click-click-click a staccato backing track to Val's reasoned guesswork.]

Why on earth would anyone come all the way up here to put on a play— No. Clearly it's neither of those.

[Clearly. Grasping the laces with their little hook ends stitched into the sail cloth's corner, she struggles to dredge it over the edge of the frame. This part requires considerable strength to bend the cloth and hook its laces into the waiting matching eyelets. She strains for moment at the task, flush and impatient and frustrated.]

These fit before.

It would be a very dramatic setting for a shadowplay, you must see that. I suppose if it is neither of those, you shall have to tell me what it is, or risk hearing another four guesses that are merely variations upon the first two.

[He leaves his pose and ambles over to see what she is about at a closer range. It requires very little observation to divine. Without asking, Val moves to seize hold of the sail cloth and give it a great pull. The cloth creaks against the frame but the laces and the eyelets also draw closer to one another.

Very conversational:] I do not really enjoy guessing-games, you know. They are quickly tiresome. 'Before'? This has been constructed before?

[That will be a problem, thinks some analytically turned bit of her subconscious. The whole thing ought to be assembled easily by just one person, regardless of their strength. But in the moment— snip Wysteria painstakingly clips the hooks into their eyelets under the shadow cast by Val's hands and wrists.]

I assembled it in the workshop first. Well, a few times. But the shape is inconvenient for going up the stairs and there was the training dummy too, so I brought it up in pieces— There, the last hook is in place. You may stop pulling on it now, thank you.

[The most prim 'thank you.' Wysteria releases the clamp end of her would-be hand with a blunt jab and allows the frame with is stretched sail cover to flop back down onto the straw and chipped bone strewn floor of the eyrie. Straightening, she regards the whole arrangement critically (rather than regarding her husband beside her with the same scowling air). After a beat, she announces in a firm and assured level tone:]

It's useless is what it is. I hate it.

[As requested, Val releases his grip upon the sailcloth. He taps his fingers on it, pleased at the hollow drumming sound that it makes.]

I like it.

[He sticks the toe of his boot beneath the frame and lifts it off the stone a little. When he lets it fall again, it makes a new hollow sound, something like dropping a tambourine might sound, if the tambourine did not have any of its bells affixed.]

I would like it more if I knew what, exactly, its function was meant to be--which you still have not yet managed to share with me--but you are distracted by your work, this I understand better than another might. If you will not share the purpose of the cloth and frame then you must at least say what the training dummy is meant for.

[No, she has not told him what it is. And this insistence that she ought to— Wysteria sets her teeth, jaw clenched briefly fierce, and glares down at the arrangement of sail cloth and light wood and the cabling running from it to the harness the dummy has been strapped into.

She raises her face abruptly and looks at Val directly.]

I'm very angry with you, you know.

[It's clipped and blunt, a far cry from that shrill fury expressed over the crystal.]

[Val might scoff, or Val might dramatically throw his hands into the air, or insist that he does not know why she might be angry, or what he could have done to anger or, or say that he is sorry that she feels that way, but instead he looks at her, the particular set of her jaw and the hard look in her eye and the pinkness in her cheeks that is from effort and, perhaps, emotion.

He looks back at the griffons. They have eaten the scraps that he had thrown to them and now they are scuffling around looking for more, making noises very like the doves that used to roost outside his apartments in Val Royeaux.]

Yes. [He looks back at her, with a little smile.] But I am hoping that we can talk of this Thing of yours instead, and that you might forget all about being angry very soon.

[It's a very infuriating little smile. If she weren't in fact still angry at him already, she thinks that or the look in his very dark eyes or maybe some fact like the prickle of scruff on his lip or his too long hair would do the trick.

Wysteria sniffs primly.]

I would never forget about being angry.

[She reverts her eye line if not her full attention back to the sail covered frame. With her nose still turned slightly up in the air as if she might make the most accurate assessment down the length of her nose—]

It's for slowing a fall. Purposeful or otherwise. I was thinking it might be useful for when one is riding or a griffon or if someone wished to drop into a place like Starkhaven which has otherwise been all surrounded, but— Well, the design is hardly functional for assembling in the air. So you see, it really is very poorly done.

But I suppose since I've come all this way and bothered to put it together in the first place that it might as well go out.

[That infuriating little smile remains in place as Val also turns his attention to the frame. Whatever he is thinking of the other matter--whatever he thinks of Wysteria forever remembering her anger, and what he might have said to incur that anger, and whatever he might suffer as a consequence of all of this--these thoughts he keeps quite to himself as he crouches to examine her handiwork more closely.]

Yes! It must go out. What a waste of effort anything else would be! And to see it fall, slowly? From such a height as this?

[He gestures around them, as if--speaking of forgetfulness, or not-forgetfulness--she might have forgotten where they find themselves. Behind them, one of the griffons follows the line of his hand with sharp interest.]

That alone is worth a great deal. It has not been tested at all? Not even from some scaffolding? Here, I will get this end--

[He moves toward helpfulness.]

No, it— [She bends automatically after him to fetch up the near side of the canvas stretched frame. It's light, but not weightless] —it's too large to test properly at less height. But I threw a scale model out a window and it didn't fare too poorly.

[Obviously she has already decided she is going to throw the thing off the tower regardless of its principle design flaws. This decision of course has nothing to do with his insistence, and less still to do with his assistance.

But it is easier to drag the whole arrangement out into the eyrie's landing platform and thus to the exposed, wind whipped edge of the battlements. Wysteria (literally) hooks the training dummy as they go, dragging it out after them by a harness strap.]

I should find the remains of the model after this and thank it most sincerely for its service. Had it not performed so well, you may never have come here with this prototype--and I should have missed this. It is an alternative timeline too tragic to spend much time thinking upon.

[All of this is said with some slight strain and effort as the dragging continues. But only slight. Val never appears overworked or overburdened, even when he is. It would not do to appear otherwise.

The landing platform is wide enough to accommodate their strange parade, but at the edge of the battlements, the wind makes it all a more dangerous task. At this height it is strong enough to shove so sharply that one feels at times that a hand has struck one between the shoulderblades. The height is vast, enough to pitch the stomach. Val grins, immensely pleased by it all.]

Perhaps I should go in place of the dummy!

[There, that practiced scoff as Wysteria straightens away from the arrangement of the training dummy and the sail rig and all their various lines and harness straps. 'Thanking the remains of the model.' Honestly.]

You will do no such thing. I will not be held responsible for dashing you all over the courtyard. But you may push him over the edge, if you like. [Wysteria fusses with the arrangement of the lines and connections, following them back to the sail frame.] It might fare better if you do that while I hold up this bit so nothing catches while it goes over the edge.

[It's not so heavy that she can't lift the frame one handed. It's merely awkward.]

[!! is the sound that Val, impossibly, makes aloud.]

So you admit it. You do not want to dash me all over the courtyard. A glowing proclamation! I should write it down so that I do not forget .

[Conspiratorially, he leans in to the dummy.]

Next time, mon ami, it will be me. And your sacrifice today will not be forgotten. We will honor your memory. Perhaps a tasteful plaque if I remember to commission it.

[He gives the thing a pat on its lump of a shoulder before cheerfully placing both hands upon its back.]

Only say the word, mademoiselle, and I will push!

[She will not be held responsible!, is what she had said. That has nothing at all to do with any preference for whether or not he is thrown off a very high tower or not. In fact maybe if he were really so insistent on being foolish and ridiculous, she would only demand that he not be cavalier with his person while she were still in the vicinity! Byerly would accuse her of being a murderer. And she would have to answer all sorts of inquiries from de Foncé's friends.

This gross misrepresentation prompts Wysteria to wrinkle her nose fiercely in her husband's direction as she hoists the sail frame up off the eyrie landing.]

Well go on then—augh!

[—morphs into an abrupt squawk of dismay as the stretched sail is wrenched out of her grip. Maybe it has to do with Val doing precisely as asked and shoving the dummy off the edge, the lines simply tugging with more speed and force than she'd prepared for. Or maybe some unlucky play of the wind cuts hard in the wrong direction. Or maybe it's some combination of the two. Regardless, the wood and stretched canvas panel yanks free of her grip and rockets in Val's direction with murderous intent.]

[If there were such a thing as footage of this event, which one might, at a later hour (provided one did such a thing as survive the experience of this experiment), review at one's leisure, so as to understand the series of events that now takes place--well, then one would find that Wysteria's squawk of dismay and the events that follow are the result of a combination of the power of man and the power of the wind itself.

That is to say that Val has only a moment to turn his head to see what has caused Wysteria to make this unpleasant sound. He is still grinning, exhilarated from this first part of the experience. And here is the Thing speeding toward him, leaving Wysteria behind. Over her shoulder is the dark sky and the griffons, which have raised their heads, keenly paying attention to these abrupt noises. One of the griffons has a comical strip of salted meat dangling still from the corner of its beak. And Val makes his own sound of dismay--which sounds very much like a laugh, because it is a laugh.

The Thing does not laugh. It is far too serious. Continuing in its murderous intent, it instead catches Val in the chest with a piece of its wooden frame and drags him in a rush for the edge of the eyrie tower.]

[Light as the wooden frame may be on its own, the force with which the wind uses it to strike Val is strong enough that the crack of it pierces past the rush of the air at the top of the eyrie. It's a dreadful sound—the sort of note that lodges in the ear and haunts the kind of person who might later be prone to guiltily needling herself even when all is safe and sound. But in the moment, Wysteria hardly notes it. She's already taken two steps in pursuit.

There may be further strides which follow (how far apart were they standing? not so great a distance, surely), and she may grasp after some tangle of the lines whipping viciously after the framed sail (later Wysteria will realize some rope has wrenched itself out of her hand hard enough to leave red marks on her fingers), but the definitive part is the one where she lunges bodily after Val. It's an effort to catch him by both legs before he can go careening over the tower's edge, more reliant on her body's weight than her hand.]

[The frame had knocked the wind out of Val first. The tackle knocks out the rest of it. Strange, as Wysteria hits him at the knees, but of course, after one's legs and the backs of one's knees strike upon the ground, the rest of one is sure to follow--the torso, in which is contained the lungs and the breath--and then the back of the head will inevitably follow. Which it does.

The frame goes by overhead, with its trailing lines and its slack sail snapping. The dummy scrapes by, a clumsy woman rushing to the arms of a lover. Val turns his head to regard it--at first somewhat dazed and then with urgency as he realizes he is about to miss out on the experience.]

No! Mademoiselle--

[He twists, or tries to twist, so that he can scramble to the edge of the tower and behold the dummy's slow fall. One hand pulls blindly at Wysteria, to extricate himself--and, of course, to scramble her along with him. She must not miss the sight.]

No?!

[Is shouted back, more disbelieving echo than protest as the various cabling whips over them and the whole array of training dummy, sail, and so on is abruptly yanked fully free of the eyrie by both wind and gravity. Wysteria manages to duck to avoid being clipped in the head by some passing connection point, and so fails to deter Val from either his squirming or what passes as his goading encouragement.

But the time Wysteria slaps his hand away, they are the pair of them at the edge of the tower where one might only look down to observe the whole contraption as it spirals slightly less than leisurely (though perhaps not lethally) downward toward the featureless slab of the courtyard far, far below. She is only partly on top of him still, and if she has failed to drive an elbow somewhere tender in the process then he ought to be grateful for it.]

[In the spirit of observation, Val stares, rapt, down at the contraption. His state of breathlessness is only partly due to the elbowing and impacts he has recently suffered. Even if Wysteria had not somehow shoved an elbow into both his windpipe and his gut (or was it the contraption?), he would still be a state of breathlessness. This is a moment.

A moment that he then breaks with a shout.]

Fantastic!

[He twists around so he can beam at Wysteria, without even trying to properly extricate himself.]

It works! No, it not only works--it works wonderfully! Of course there are flaws that must be eliminated--it is too cumbersome--but look at the speed of the fall! I am not even disappointed to miss its crashing upon the pavement, as I normally would be--for why else do you watch a thing fall? To enjoy its crash! And I would have enjoyed its crash, but this! This is somehow better!

[Somewhere far below them, the training field dummy might raise a point of objection when it eventually comes to a thumping rest and then is promptly clobbered by the same hard edges of the frame which had threatened to murder Val. But that's neither here nor there. And besides, being knocked cold by one's own safety equipment is surely a remarkable improvement compared to being splattered bodily in every direction.

But sure. It works. The stretched sail descends at a steady clip, a pale flashing rectangle in the grey cast of the day wandering lower and lower toward it's inevitable crunching conclusion. Later, when fetched, a great deal of the frame will be broken and Wysteria will have to consider which impact—whether it was the hard ground or Val's ridiculously hard head—must be held responsible.

But for the moment, from some combination of beside and above him, she flushes hot with pleasure (it does work), and fury (Valentine de Foncé is absurd), and mortification (imagine if she'd murdered him) all together and all at once. With an overwhelmed ugh, Wysteria makes to cover her face with her hand. And then changes her mind and instead cuffs him on the shoulder.]

You! Are so—! [Irritating, she begins to declare, and gets only halfway there before kissing him on his stupid smiling mouth.]

[When one climbs a tower to view a somewhat dangerous and certainly destructive experiment designed by one's wife--not that Val thinks of Wysteria in this way, not in so many words--which is to say this one word--and in fact if Val were asked to provide a word for her, he would say Mademoiselle, the sort of Mademoiselle that has a capitalized M at its start, which denotes a certain something that Val could not put into words, which is why he would choose just that one--but all that is to say that, in this particular scenario--

Well. This is a fine ending. Val is already somewhat dazed from the impact of the frame, and dizzy from the success and the sensation of staring down from a very tall tower, an experience which alone can be relied upon to leave him feeling pleasantly unmoored and exhilarated. And then to be kissed: not kissed well, not kissed with practice, but simply kissed--and, kissed, while his shoulder is still smarting from where the kisser had struck him. As it happens, this makes for a pleasant combination for Val de Foncé.

Which means that he kisses her back. The griffons are watching and the wind is twisting all over the place and it is cold and somewhere the frame and dummy have, probably, finished striking the paving stones far below, and Val cannot think of a thing that he wishes to say right now. As he would capitalize the Mademoiselle for Wysteria, he would capitalize the M for this Moment.

(Which is strange. There should not be a Moment. And yet, it persists.)]

[So persistent in fact that for a moment—small m—Wysteria is fixated entirely on some stubborn one upmanship rather than the absurdity of the whole arrangement or the irritant of Val's face (meant both literally and figuratively; when was the last time he shaved?). She kisses him, and he kisses her back, and so the entirely natural response him to kiss him more furiously lest he somehow mistake the very important point that she is meant to be making.

Which is that he's dreadful, and frustrating, and also that she has not forgiven him for being so purposefully disparaging, and that she feels no remorse whatsoever for whatever part she might have played in having him nearly thrown off the ramparts. Most of all, that she would never feel an ounce of remorse for any disagreement which passes between them being as she is almost always correct and he is almost always simply being stubborn.

Obviously.

Yes it's very important that he not get the wrong idea when she kisses him, or when she lets him kiss her. That would be disastrous. So the Moment has not quite begun to fade when she draws back to look at him where he is all aggravatingly windswept and battered and informs him very frankly:]

You may thank me for saving your life now. [And,] These are among my favorite stockings, so there had better not be a run in either.

[Val's head thumps against the stone of the tower as the kiss is ended. He blinks up at the sky, still smiling. Wysteria is still just within his sight, a faint halo of blonde hair and forehead. He angles his eyes so he can see more of her.]

I shall buy new ones, if there is. For Satinalia, or--hm. Summerday, as it is the next one. Ouch. [--Belatedly. The stone is not very forgiving, and very cold besides. He pushes himself up onto one elbow.] But when did you save my life? Of course I should like to thank you, if it happened. You cannot be referring to what just took place. There was no real threat to me.

crystal.

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dw betraying me by not sending this notif

how VERY dare

great news I got both of those

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