usir | on the outside [open]

Entry tags:

on the outside [open]

Character(s): Billie + whoever else is lurking around the wilderness.
Status: Open
Location(s): Marshlands near City of the Free Peoples
Date(s) Early March
About: With tensions and fighting within the city on the rise, Billie's opted to keep Mr. Werewolf fed through somewhat more wild means.
Warnings: She's hunting, so animal death and potentially more violence.

With winter on the run and the snow and ice ebbing away, the marsh isn't necessarily the safest place to pick off rabbits and the like, but the point is that the animals know that, too. There's less foot traffic outside of the road that edges around the swampy parts out here, meaning creatures popping up to pick at what greenery has begun to show through are far more common.

It also makes it a good place to hunt through less conventional means. Why waste arrows when you can literally turn into a giant rat? Or in this case, a cross between a human and a rat. She's shed her coat and boots to go skulking through the marshland in her black-furred shiftling form. At a distance, it's easy to assume she's one of the beastfolk. Though, at a closer range, the much more wild traits of a wererat are obvious to someone who knows what they're looking at. She isn't a wererat in actuality but for lack of a better word...

All that aside, for whatever reason you're out here on your own, your trek is about to be interrupted by a hare bolting out of the rushes and across your path. This is followed immediately by the shiftling leaping after and landing directly on it with a sick, soft crack of bones underclaw.

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"So you're a shiftling then," Strange responds, equally dry. Honestly, he doesn't know why Billie's being so difficult! If she'd just answer his possibly invasive questions, then everything would go smoothly!

He's staying a little bit away from Billie and the pile of dead animals, as if by standing away she'll somehow forget that he's been conscripted to help move the bag o'corpses. Bell is standing a good distance away because she's a hare, she doesn't have thumbs, this is not her problem.

"Were your parents shiftlings as well? I've read theories about the blood curse aspect but I'll admit it was never my focus. When did you first learn you could change forms?"

This is a stunning example of being book smart but a total moron about people and Billie freaking knows it. That doesn't make it any less obnoxious. She finishes brushing dry mud off her legs and gets her boots back on before even bothering to look up and pin Strange with an irritated look.

"Mom could turn into an abhorrent bitch at the drop of a hat. Does that count?" Here she is, humoring him in the least useful way possible. "No idea about dad, though. Useless fucker wasn't around." Admittedly, her mom called him a filthy rat as an insult half the time so she has some ideas. "So is it my turn to ask invasive shit? How about you tell me if elves really do get shat out by trees?"

Strange makes a small noise of affirmation as Billie shittalks her dad. Same hat, Billie, dads are terrible. He's about to continue on the invasive question like when Billie asks hers. He gives her a bit of a Look: he knows she doesn't actually think that and is probably trying to get him to back the hell off. But that only makes him want to continue bothering Billie. This is slowly morphing into a battle of wills and Strange does not want to lose.

Besides, if she spends all her time asking him stupid questions like that, then he doesn't have to answer anything of substance!

"As far as I can tell, we don't. Though as I haven't actually seen any elves give birth, it's potentially possible." However, Strange's super dry tone plainly implies that no, it's not possible, that's a dumb question and you know it. "Was your other form always that size or did it grow with you as you grew up?"

"I was born fully grown so there wasn't any need," Billie lies blatantly in response to that question. She's fairly adamant to be as unhelpful as possible, especially on this topic. Strange isn't a shiftling and he's done nothing to imply she should trust him, so that makes two people unwilling to lose a battle of wills here.

Anyway, she pushes away from the rock and goes to fetch her coat, to pull that back on as well. Doesn't mean she won't keep talking, though, because she shoots back, with, "What about your ears? Were they that size when you hatched or do you elves grow them pointy later in life?"

Yeah, she knows elves don't hatch. She also knows, yes, they just have ears like that, but she's intent on being an asshole about this.

"In that case, I feel so sorry for your mother," Strange deadpans. He's standing still, watching as Billie gets her coat on but not really doing anything to help. She doesn't need it to begin with and even if he did help, she'd probably find a way to take offense.

"They're always pointy but grew relative to my head as I grew up. How do you and Daud know each other?"

Which isn't a shiftling related question at all. But it is something that Strange picked up on during their ongoing werewolf related nonsense and something that he's definitely nosy about.

"You shouldn't, she was a terrible one," Billie says outright to Strange's deadpan. He may mean it in jest. She, however, does not. It doesn't help that he's prodded a topic far more delicate than what she is. The who is more complicated than the what will ever be.

See, that's the problem with helping out like this. If it's outside who you already know, people pry and think, oh, they should get to know you better! Though she's not regretting helping Lykos out in the long run, that Daud would just abruptly decide to lend a hand... For free, of all things...

But that's a lot that Billie has to chew on by herself. She isn't sharing it with Strange, so all it does is drag out the silence between her insulting her mother and answering. She buckles her coat shut and turns to heft up the string of fish before even saying anything more and then it's just something simple like, "I used to work for him, that's all."

As she drags out the silence, Strange just stares at Billie. Does she think that remaining silent will get him to drop the question? That's not how it works! He's not going to give up on his stubbornness now. And he's rewarded by...barely an answer. But considering that he honestly had no idea what Daud and Billie were to each other before asking the question, he won't say no to that barely an answer.

"A shiftling working for a tiefling? Unexpected, but I've seen stranger pairs."

And that's all Strange says on the matter for the moment. This odd game of questions has settled into a rhythm and, at least in Strange's mind, now it's Billie's turn to ask him something.

"I'm a human most of the time, you know that, right?" Billie is pretty sure she's been human around him like every time until now. "Didn't really matter to Daud, anyway. All he cares about is whether or not you can get the job done and that has nothing to do with races or curses or anything else."

But other than that, there doesn't seem to be any forthcoming question. She'd been throwing them back to be rude, not because she was ever actually interested.

Anyway, she settles the fish over one shoulder and shoots a look Deirdre's way. The tern reacts without actually being called, taking off and flying on ahead of them. From there, she'll take lead, picking her way back through the half-frozen marsh and towards the actual road.

Edited 2019-03-15 19:41 (UTC)

Yeah, Strange knows that she's human most of the time, but turning into a giant rat creature thing! That's still a little unexpected!

He'll follow Billie as she walks. While she heads towards the road, Strange is keeping an eye out, trying to see if there are any predators or were-whatevers out and about while also trying not to step in any particularly marshy and wet bits of the marshlands. Bell is having worse luck as the hare hops from frozen place to frozen place, trying hard not to fall into the few inches of swampy water.

Since she's not bothering him with questions, he's going to take the opportunity to fill the silence and just keep fuckin talking.

"Do you still work for him now?"

"No," Billie at least answers that one after only a short, fairly normal pause to consider. "I resigned my post partway through the war."

Kind of. If one can call her attempt at a coup a 'resignation'.

Strange can't help but wince. Running into someone you knew before you died must be awkward enough. Running into your old boss? He can't imagine how awkward and uncomfortable that might be. Especially because Billie's enough of a sassmaster that he's not so sure they parted on good terms.

"I'm sorry. It must be damned awkward to run into him now—I know I would have no idea what to do if I ran into my mentor."

They parted on the worst possible terms to ever fucking exist, which she won't tell him. Preferably ever. Billie does give a snort of laughter when he describes it as awkward, however.

"You have no idea..." That said, she does shoot a quick glance back his way. Since he's bringing his own bad relations up, what better way to turn the questioning back around?

"Why's that? You piss them off?"

"Of a sort," Strange answers. Despite the fact that he's usually the first person to talk about himself, he's a little cagey on this point. Strange mulls over his words before answering.

"We left on terrible terms. I never saw him again after that."

"You sound like you regret that," Billie says, mostly as an idle comment but... Did she regret the way it had ended between her and Daud? She isn't so sure that she does.

There's a pause before he shrugs. Strange is navigating weird feelings and torn emotions as he talks. "I suppose I do. He was a good man and, though we had our differences, I miss him."

This is getting emotional. And Strange doesn't necessarily want to air out his mixed feelings about Gilbert Norrell to a woman who he suspects doesn't give a damn about him and his history.

"Mostly I regret the whole dying thing." Strange sighs, as if dying is just something that happens and not the serious thing that it is. "I suspect we could have made up but my bleeding out on a battlefield changed all of that."

He wouldn't be wrong there. Billie may be curious enough to ask but she isn't invested in what may or may not be upsetting Jonathan Strange. Mostly, she just ends up shrugging at his regret about dying.

"Well, it's just shit luck that you did," she says to that, which probably isn't the kindest way to offer comfort for this. "But what's the point to regretting it? You'll just mire yourself in the past and let it drag you down."

Of course, for all that she would claim she has no regrets herself, she sure sounds bitter about something there for a second.

"I think some aspects of the past are work remembering," Strange simply responds. How he treated people. Mistakes he made. His wife. But would those drag him down like Billie was implying? He's not so sure.

"If I regret it, then it will stay on my mind and it won't happen again." He hopes.

"Learning from your past and regretting it are different things," Billie points out in return. "I'm not saying forget it all, just that you're in for a bad time if you let too many things you miss or people who are gone haunt you. I mean, I can definitely vouch for how shitty the latter is. I had that problem even before waking up a hundred years later."

Which is by far the most personal thing she's shared with Strange thus far but that's her own secret to share, not Daud's or the Sea Wolves'. Just hers, nothing more.

Strange can't help but frown a little as he thinks. That is definitely a personal thing that he didn't expect Billie to share. And it's also something that Strange himself still has trouble grasping. After all, he's been trying to push past Arabella and trying to push past his old mistakes, but they still linger on his mind.

No matter what, hearing Billie out might be good.

"Any tips on how to stop letting it haunt you?"

"Never said I ever stopped having the problem, just that it's going to ruin your life," Billie says, tone of voice taking an odd turn straight up into cheerful when she offers that effectively useless tidbit. Of course, she won't leave it there, but first— "And watch out for this puddle. It's deeper than it looks."

It's the one she's hopping over. She'll make it across fine and Deirdre is flying but rest in pieces, little Bell, hopping along after them all.

Strange can't help but laugh a little at that. "Touche," he remarks, with a nod.

As soon as they get to the puddle, Strange bends down a little. He makes a kissy noise and pats his shoulder. Bell takes a running leap and drapes herself over Strange's shoulder, lying there like a fur stole or a lumpy sack of something. She won't drown in the puddle, but this has the added effect of getting mud and grime all over his coat. He could fix that later. Washing it out should be simple enough.

"Our lives have already been pulled in so many different directions: dying, Lykos, the dragons...I'm honestly a bit curious as to how they could be ruined."

"I'd say having a second chance and blowing it moping over what's still gone is ruining it," Billie says with another shrug. At this point, they're reaching an incline in the ground. The marshiness of the dirt and grass and ice and snow underfoot is fading away for something firmer as they finally approach one of the smaller roads built through the swamplands.

"Dying was expected. Lykos is just another job. Dragons..." Well, those are a little more out there. "Still don't know what to make of that other than they're being a nuisance, so I can't call that too different, either. They just happen to be a larger, more haunted nuisance than usual."

There's a pause as Strange gets off of the marshland onto the smaller road. Gingerly, he sets Bell down. When he speaks again, there's a surprising serious tone behind his words.

"I think the dragons are more than just a nuisance. Multiple small things have happened to me recently. They were seemingly unconnected except for one common thread: the dragons."

Finding that scale while researching. His courier falling apart and gifting him what Strange assumes to be Logistykon's scale and Logistykon's power. That mirror he found, one that showed the unenchanted form of things, which showed him with a scaled face. One would have to be mad to overlook all of that.

Billie hasn't outright ignored her own strange circumstances. A scale arriving in the oddest fashion, what happened when she picked it up; that's all real, too real to pretend otherwise. It's just she doesn't talk about these things. With Strange bringing up his own odd occurrences, however...

It's enough to make her stop and turns about halfway back towards him, giving him a decidedly neutral look now. At least before, she'd been morbidly cheerful, but this is definitely different.

"Small things like what, exactly?"

There isn't anybody out here. And yet, Strange gives the area around them a once-over, making certain that nobody's watching or listening in to this conversation. Strange's voice drops a little as he talks.

"A dragon scale in the middle of my courier. And a second dragon scale, found between the pages of a book. And finally, I received a present: a shard of mirror that shows the true form of what it's reflecting. If I look long enough, my face becomes scaled."

So a whole bunch of small things. Strange's tone of voice is also decidedly neutral as he talks. Obviously he's pleased as punch that there are signs that the dragons are back and are gifting him with this power...but he honestly doesn't know what to think about that mirror.

"There's some odd things that happened that have nothing to do with the dragons, of course." He has a pistol now! "But those three things happening within a month or so can't be a coincidence."

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