Anything you can do, I can do better—

[blackmagus]

Who: Lord Buttercup and the Hag with the Cat! (cough, Dilandau and Fortescue)
What: Ruby's gone, and they have the house to themselves. That's not really a good thing.
Where: House 15
When: Day 89

On top of everything else that's been going on, lately, Ruby being missing is just another unwanted event. Fortescue had held her breath, a little, waiting for her to be returned. Sometimes people only go missing for a few days, at least on their side. But she isn't back yet, and that doesn't bode well. For a variety of reasons, one of them being the state that House 15 now finds itself in.

Lack of sleep is something that Fortescue can deal with. It's not something she's unused to. But having Dilandau around, well, she finds that she can't resist needling him. It helps her deal with the tension of having her head invaded. Even if it's no one in the Cape's fault, particularly, it makes her paranoid — it reminds her of the Elben Mahr and the Inveterates, and how they'd tried to break into her mind before.

There are other ways she'd prefer to deal with the tension, of course, but Dilandau is the last on her list for that sort of thing.

Fortescue's sitting on the couch in the living room, trying to ruminate about the food situation, when she hears an odd bumping noise coming from another part of the house. It sounds heavy, and a little ominous combined with the previous silence before. Sighing, already dreading whatever it is, she gets up to check.

If a dire wolf is eating Dilandau and she isn't there to see it, she'll have to be cross, she tells herself.

Comments

[burnburnburn]

It's when the food Ruby cooked finally runs out that Dilandau decides he's given her long enough to reappear. He's been patient (for him), but if he leaves acting too long then some other prisoner is bound to be put into her room.

Like hell he's going to let some stranger come in and claim all of her belongings for themselves. That mirror is his, as it ought to have been from the day he arrived.

He managed to get into the room with minimal damage to the door, but moving the mirror proves to be far harder. He can't lift the object, so he's reduced to bumping it across the floor and stopping to recover with every other step.

He's almost made it out of Ruby's door when he hears Fortescue coming up the stairs. He glares in that direction, ready to hear some fussing about honouring the dead.

[blackmagus]

She pauses in the hallway, coming to a full stop as she watches him struggle with the mirror and then turn in her direction. The automatic glare is just adorable, really, and she smirks just a little bit.

"Tired of having to go into the bathroom to check up on your hair?"

Technically, all of the belongings aren't theirs to begin with. Laying claim to them is temporary, in Fortescue's mind. They're just there until... their captors take them away. It's a somewhat depressing thought, but the truth often is. Still, she doesn't want him to take too much. The Cape's getting low on space, and someone will need a room eventually.

"Leave at least the bed, if you have to pilfer."

[burnburnburn]

His glare narrows at that grin before he wipes his brow, points at the other edge of the mirror and smirks.

"You pray for hair as good as mine. Make yourself useful and grab the other end."

The door to his military-neat room is already open. He's already stolen her bag of cosmetics and emptied it across his desk to sort for likely-looking goods.

[blackmagus]

Fortescue gives him a Look for a long, long moment. Almost so long that it seems unlikely she'll do anything other than loose another snarky comment. But, shrugging, she takes hold of the end he indicated and hefts it up. She's stronger than she looks, but she still considers picking up the whole thing through magic.

...but if it gives her a migraine, she'll have nothing to say for it other than a moved mirror. So, she'll pass.

"I'm not religious," she retorts lightly. "If a god gives you better hair, they're clearly procrastinating about something."

[burnburnburn]

Had she waited a moment longer he'd have broken out into a bad temper, but as it was as a minor victory.

"True, they should have made you better looking in the first place. I guess not everyone gets the best looks and talents together." His ego let that roll off his tongue without a hint of embarrassment.

They manoeuvred the mirror into his room and he led them to prop it up against the wall by his bed. He sat down immediately afterwards on the bed, panting shortly.

[blackmagus]

She takes the offhand compliment — which she isn't even sure he meant, but she'll accept that she has good talents as far as a fellow warrior is concerned. While her skills are fairly terrible as far as survival are concerned, she can more than defend herself in a fire fight. Or any other kind of fight, even if she has to be very pragmatic. Or fight dirty.

"Do you really know how to use all that?" Fortescue smirks, gesturing to the bag of cosmetics. She does, too, and it wouldn't surprise her in the slightest, but still. She finds it amusing. "I didn't think they went into bases and blushes in Basic Training."

[burnburnburn]

He scowls at her, though there's not any rage behind it.

"I was looking for some tweezers amongst all that womanstuff." He flaps his hand at the bag dismissively.

"The cream is mine, that cleansing lotion is mine and the kohl is mine. You can have the rest. The powders are too dark for my skin." He sticks his nose in the air, daring her to snicker more. Truth be told, he'd be snickered at for using them back home, but he's coming to realise that being a stranger in a strange land has some advantages when it comes to redefining acceptable social boundaries.

[blackmagus]

Speaking of social boundaries... "I'll keep it in mind."

She's been enjoying not feeling like she has to wear any makeup. Who would possibly expect her to, in a place like this? She only bothers when she really wants to. Just like 'home' — although at least Dilandau doesn't have to put up with her wandering around with no pants.

Not that she'd care. Maybe she'll save that for a day she wants to exasperate him more than usual.

"Speaking of all that, one of us is going to figure out how to cook. Unless we want to survive only on roasted fish."

[burnburnburn]

"There's the pottage too."

Truthfully he cann't blame her for failing to mention his other contribution. It's marching food, something to be devoured quickly to sustain the body while having as little contact with the tongue as possible. After having Ruby cooking he doesn't want to have to go back to that.

"How about you stop giving away most of your catch and trade them with the farmers instead? That's what I'm planning to do with the fish I'm getting with Wallie."

He takes a slow breath and stands before heading for the door back to Ruby's room for more scavenging.

"There's enough new prisoners coming in we'll have another mouth to feed here soon."

[blackmagus]

"Mm," Fortescue agrees. It's not difficult to keep her tone business-like, but she does have to consciously work at it. "Hopefully the new person will have something to contribute. Or this house is going to seem very small."

It's slightly bigger than the houses that she's used to, owing to space-minded architectural styles. But if the new mouth to feed is at all opinionated, maybe she won't need anything else for entertainment.

"I'll be doing more fishing, yes. And if I can, I'll try and pick up hunting."

Hunting has been pure sport in her country for a hundred years, maybe more, and so she has much to learn on the subject.

[burnburnburn]

He leans back and glares, grumpy at the fact she has the option to go and try.

"If it's fun, don't tell me. It's bad enough having to rest without hearing about all the things I'd actually be able to do around here."

[blackmagus]

She can't imagine finding hunting fun. Times without her soul aside, the act of killing another is something she'd rather not do. But she has very little choice, back home, and here she doesn't have much of a choice aside from learning to be useful. Survival skills are important, if the food is no longer coming from their captors.

"Oh, you'll be able to get out there eventually. You must be getting closer to healed, now."

[burnburnburn]

"Eventually. At least another two weeks, and then I can go jogging. Lightly. And I've got to lay off the heavy lifting for longer."

He's ignoring the fact that he's probably set himself back several times already, since he can feel every single hour seep past like thick mud. The light at the end of the tunnel is too far away for his liking.

"Are you planning on flipping rabbits out of their holes like you did with the fish?"

[blackmagus]

"I hadn't amassed a plan, yet." She frowned thoughtfully. "But that would work. Bullets take too many resources. I'd rather save my gun for something more... memorable."

Like shooting their captors in the face.

"Are there rabbits? I suppose there must be."

[burnburnburn]

"Of course it would work." He smirks, pleased his idea is under consideration. "Once you find a warren you could flush the whole thing out. We'll save the skins for leather in case we don't get any more cloth."

As for the other question... He shrugs.

"I've seen pellets in the grass that rabbits from Gaia would leave, but I haven't seen any myself. Ruby always brought back the bigger prey."

[blackmagus]

Dilandau makes it sound as though they'll all be wearing skins in short order. Fortescue's culture has long stopped wearing anything like that, and she feels a small measure of discomfort at the idea. That alone tells her that she might have more trouble with hunting than previously expected.

"I'll have to see if I find any, then. I don't suppose the giant wolves would have good-tasting meat..."

[burnburnburn]

"So? If you can hunt one, hunt one. If the meat's bad you can trade it to someone you don't like and keep the skins. We'll put fur rugs in every room."

He's grinning rather toothily at thought of this clever deal and all the irritating people he'd be able to palm wolf-meat onto. He might even be able to convince Brigid that it's an attempt to be polite.

[blackmagus]

She raises an eyebrow at the thought. They have carpeting. Isn't that good enough for him? "So we can look like cavemen whenever we have a visitor?" she wonders, smirking. "Somehow I think there would be better applications for them."

[burnburnburn]

"Like what? Bed spreads? Fur cloaks? Bait to lure other wolves in?" Actually, he likes that final idea. Leaving pieces of hostages always did work well to draw in maddened humans...

And then a thought occurs to him and he comes down from his grandiose plans of wolfish annihilation.

"Not that planning's going to be any use unless someone here's a tanner."

He enters Ruby's room and opens the drawers so that he can paw through the clothing she'd collected.

"I'd have been better off without living with a pair of skinny women. Are you going to take any of this? It's useless to me."

[blackmagus]

Fortescue bites her lip to hide a smile as she follows him. Tanning is right out, for her. She knows how smelly that work is, mostly from fictional sources — but some of it had to be true, right? Killing she does just fine. She's been trained to kill from the age of sixteen. Dealing with dead bodies of any kind, on the other hand, isn't all that thrilling. Someone else can deal with that, if there's going to be a need for furs.

"Would you rather have been roomed with a pair of geese?"

She looks inside the drawers and, shrugging, pulls out a few shirts and another pair of pants. If she's going to be working on the construction committee, she's going to need more work clothes.

"Someone will need the rest of it, eventually." Are they going to have to set up a full barter system? She's not sure how much of this stuff she was cut out for. "If whoever moves in doesn't want it, I'll take the rest and hold it in my room."