ph_logs | [OPEN] When your seams have come unknitted and you cry out to the sky

[OPEN] When your seams have come unknitted and you cry out to the sky

Who: Cerrit Agrupnin and you
When: Early December
Where: Yes!
Warning(s): Will be in comment subject lines

1. All the pins inside your fretted head [Patrol route]
It's a dark and stormy afternoon, or perhaps a morning with fog thick as pea soup, and Cerrit is in it up to his elbows. The enforcers' patrol doesn't let up for a little weather. No, Cerrit left his beat cop days in Avalir behind decades ago, but here he is again, starting from the ground up. Perhaps you're in a shop when he ducks in to get a moment's reprieve from the beating rain, or perhaps you're another enforcer assigned to patrol with him.

Get your noir detective drama here.

2. And your muttered whens and hows [The bluffs and the beach]
It is a clear, if crisp day that Cerrit chooses to make an investigation of the barrier. If you're in the area, you might see a large winged figure flying right up to that ring in the water that marks the barrier, or standing on the sand and staring contemplatively.

It's relatively clear what he's up to. Care to discuss the matter with him? He could use a rubber duck.

3. All your mother's weaves and your father's threads [Jean's training grounds]
With the work a certain nugget's put into trying to organize people, Cerrit's thrown a good deal of support behind the project. If someone needs training in basic weapon forms, he's glad to spar with his escrima sticks or a quarterstaff--though he's wary of hand-to-hand, given exactly how sharp his hands are. Or he might simply take someone on a run along one of the trails, because conditioning is just as important as fighting form, and running away will save lives.

Either way, there's a huge-ass bird offering his expertise to anyone who wants it. Perhaps if you get him talking, you can get other types of training as well...

4. Let me rob them of you now [Wildcard]
Find me at darkersolstice to plot.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“You’re not telling me that, with all the knowledge you held, they simply discarded you. Please, that doesn’t make any sense. You’re a learned man and they can’t have had all they needed in terms of experience and steady hands, to let you go.”

He’s startled out of the fighting mood completely.

He hesitates again, wondering briefly if he's being made fun of before dismissing the thought as unlikely. Watson lowers his cane and settles into a comfortable posture again.

"I was very ill," he says, his voice stiff, "and Her Majesty's army decided that I was unlikely to be of much use to anyone in the near future. It was more than a decade ago," Watson adds, the tension in his body easing. "I am much recovered from those days."

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stir up the sediment of old troubles. I imagine in a world without magic, major illness is all the more a threat. They really did lose out, letting go of you, though.”

He bristles, feathers fluffing like he’s trying to shake the whole matter off, but everything remains a little poofed up.

"It's all right. You didn't know." Watson gives himself a shake; internally, he's talking himself down, slowly regaining his sense of calm. "Especially if the magic of your world is that powerful. I'm not sure the army lost that much, but thank you for saying so."

Cerrit tucks his sticks back away. “Would you like me to grab you some water? I have some set aside for training.”

Let him take care of you, silly human.

"... Yes. Yes, I think I would appreciate that."

Watson hunches his shoulders, resigning himself to... whatever this is. He wishes he understood more bird body language. "I don't mean to be a bother."

“Hardly that.”

Cerrit gets the water out of a small barrel set aside, handing Watson a normal cup and filling more of a pitcher for himself. What follows, Cerrit drinking, probably looks a little ridiculous. Birds do not do a little sippy, after all. He has to dip his beak into the pitcher to get water in it, and then tilt his head up. He’s long since gotten over being self-conscious at people seeing him drink back home, but here it’s a new adventure every day.

Watson stares, then catches himself staring and tries to disguise casually looking away again by taking a drink of water. "At any rate, you say 'discarded' but I wouldn't say they discarded me. Why, they gave me an entire eleven shillings and sixpence a day."

His sunny smile is mirthless. "Though perhaps you don't have shillings where you are from, and you're wondering if it is a lot of money. It is not."

“Is it enough money to justify your vigorous defense of them in their absence, knowing there’s no way I can bang on their doors and demand they do better by you?”

Another of those goofy mouthfuls of water and a bit of feather fluffing. After his work today, he’ll need to spend some time straightening his feathers…

Oh no, that sounds like something he could use help with!

Watson laughs, because it strikes him as funny, and because this is the least alone he's felt in long months, and because for a moment Cerrit had reminded him so painfully of Holmes. "Not remotely, and I would like to see you try. Did I sound in earnest? I didn't mean to be. I'm only... tired of being angry, sometimes."

“Well. Here, you might find yourself called upon and seen as a valuable asset to the city. You might remember why ‘May you live in interesting times’ is a curse.”

Cerrit steps back a little, spreading his wings and checking what shape they’re in with a soft annoyed beak-click.

“The worst part of being the only eisfurra here is trying to handle preening alone.”

That's a very impressive wingspan. Watson is, at least, getting over the shock of "large bird man," or at least he thinks so.

He mouths the word 'eisfurra,' trying to commit it to memory. "That's... That's something you need help with?" Is that a hint? Is he being asked? How friendly of a relationship does that imply? Cerrit is sometimes so alien to Watson that it's hard to read him. "Is there something I can do to help?"

"I was mostly just grousing. But." Cerrit considers Watson for a moment. "You are a doctor, you'd probably have gentle hands. If you really wanted to help, you could. I just...I wouldn't want to impose on you and your time."

He glances down at his own hands, automatically and uselessly. "I like to think I'm somewhat good with my hands," Watson shrugs. "And if I can ease some discomfort, if it's appropriate," because good lord does it ever seem intimate to him, but perhaps Cerrit might see it differently, "then I would gladly help. But it is worth mentioning that I don't know a great deal about... feathers."

Cerrit watches Watson for a long moment, the feathers of his crest drooping.

"Appropriate by my culture's standard is out the window here. Back home, preening would usually be something we'd do as a family at the end of the day, as much a bonding ritual as a grooming one. Checking in on one another, asking how everyone's day went, smoothing feathers and bad moods. Lately, I'd been taking care of myself at work, late nights alone while my kids watched out for each other. I can do most of it myself, and be fine. It takes longer and involves some stretching, but I'll be fine. So if you have some concern about if it's proper, don't worry about it."

There's a lot of subtext there. There's a lot of text there.

Watson muses silently on this for a moment or two. He has the brief thought that maybe he's being seduced in some strange way, and then discards this as unlikely.

"I am trying to be certain of what I am being asked," he says slowly, feeling out his words, "but it does seem to me that what you are truly asking for is company. Do I have it right? As it happens, I am also a lonely man, and might well appreciate that offer."

There's almost a little startle, as if Cerrit's surprised that that's what he seemed to be asking. And then a sigh.

"I don't think I'd managed to realize myself, that that was what I was asking for. Yes, I...yes. Sorry."

Watson laughs, briefly and silently. "No, don't apologise. It's quite all right. I get the impression that I would enjoy an evening or two with you."

There's a pause, before he admits, "You remind me terribly of a dear friend. I ought to recall that you are not he."

This time, it's Cerrit who isn't quite sure if that first bit is a flirtation, but he doesn't want to make assumptions about anything, yet.

"You've mentioned him before. I imagine you have some stories of your time together that would be incredible to hear."

"I do. I've even published a few of them. Come to think of it, I suppose I won't be able to fulfil my contract, as I am apparently sadly deceased and here instead of London. Damn."

That's... annoying, in a silly way, but also ultimately irrelevant. He shakes his head. "We had ten years of working together, never official agents of the law but operating out of the lodgings we shared. I met my wife through one of his cases. Holmes was a wild eccentric at times, clever and dramatic, an artist, and I mean this in the kindest possible way but he could be equally oblivious about his own motivations." Watson flashes a smile. "You're not the same, no. I see that already. I cannot imagine him ever having children of his own, for one. But you are cut from the same cloth, I suspect."

"I was never any kind of artist. Though I did see the value in using art to learn something of the artist--their culture, their values. And what art people collect often speaks to their mind as well."

The feathers on his crest lift at the sight of that smile. "And I'm hardly dramatic, of course. No, no drama to me at all. No brooding, no swooping at criminals, no dramatic monologues..."

"Certainly you're not," Watson chuckles. "You're the very picture of sober gravity. I look forward to hearing your next dramatic monologue for myself, however. I do enjoy those."

He thinks he's maybe starting to get the emotion behind that lifted crest.

"Are you hungry?"

"I am, but I've learned that watching me eat disturbs people, especially when meat gets involved." Not that Watson hasn't seen it before, but he still wants to give the warning/reminder/out if the good doctor doesn't want to watch a cooked carcass picked apart with a beak and talons.

"Hm, yes. I recall."

But that hardly seems fair. Most of the niceties of table manners seem to be quite impossible for someone without lips or molars. "I shall just have to get used to it, then." Watson says this as though it were the only possible solution. "I'm sure it won't take me long. If I stare -- well, forgive me. You're quite an astonishing sight for someone who's never met a man who was not also human, that's all."

He smiles, a little embarrassed, and shrugs with one shoulder.

Cerrit lets out a little self-conscious chuckle. "We could pick something up at one of the shops or restaurants and take it back to my place. Or yours, if that's more comfortable. Not everyone should have to get used to me, if they don't want to."

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