Fernweh

WHO: Xue Yang and open!
WHEN: Mid-late January
WHAT: Shenanigans! Xue Yang hasn't gotten into trouble in far too long. Also probable cuteness with his Daozhangs.
WHERE: Gazin
WARNINGS: Violence! Will update/add in thread headings any ones that crop up.


I. Meditation
Ever since Song Zichen had taken the time and effort to sit him down and teach him how to meditate properly, it's become one of his favorite things to do in quiet moments. Even when it's cold out, Xue Yang tends to do his daily meditations outside. Focusing on keeping himself warm from the inside, bringing the energies out so he doesn't freeze when there's snow on the ground.


II. Dark part of Gazin - Closed to Song Lan (Xiao Xingchen is welcome to chime in too)
Xue Yang is a man used to living dangerously. The fact he's stopped in the past year, has turned his talents and strengths to forge work and farming changes nothing. He doesn't usually go looking for trouble either, sometimes...it just finds him anyway. Today he'll admit was partially his fault, as he'd taken his spirited stallion out for a gallop and they'd ended up in the opposite side of Gazin on the way back. The shield works quite well, but there are still some creatures in the city itself that are...less than happy.

And they're making sure he knows it now. He slashes with Jiangzaid, his stallion wheeling and striking out with furious hooves and angry teeth - together they make a mighty team! But it's not enough he escapes completely unscathed as claws slice through the air in a lunge that otherwise misses. Those claws rake over his back, earning angry hisses of pain as he urges his horse to run as fast as the mighty beast can.

It pisses him off of course, and his teeth remain bared the whole way home. He could go to Merlan for healing...but right now all he wants is the tender care of his husband and Xingchen, even if they might scold him for getting hurt again.

So by the time he manages to slow by the house, he's sagging against the stallion's neck and slips down to the ground, held up only by the strength of the horse. If Zichen isn't already outside, the stallion whinnies his distress. Jiangzai is at least sheathed, though he hasn't set it back across his gashed back.


III. Wildcard!

WHO: Kassandra
WHEN: September
WHAT: Being well-adjusted and normal and not at all a proto-assassin
WHERE: Above Gazin
WARNINGS: She's not terribly well adjusted but none so far


All over Town - OPEN


Kassandra had gotten used to having purpose. That purpose might not have been the pursuit of glory, whatever people thought about her, but it was important to her. She'd wanted to find her family, to have somewhere to belong for the first time since she was forced from Sparta. Now that purpose was as barren and scorched as the battlefield of Plataia, and even if she could determine a way to return to Greece, there would be little left for her there. She could resume her meandering voyages, making her way around the world looking for whoever would pay her to work for them, but it would be empty without the family she'd dreamed of.

But here, she doesn't even have her friends, or her reputation. She's found some people occasionally to work for, taking on bandits or running errands and playing messenger here and there. Times aren't as hard as they'd been on Kephallonia, but they're not good, either.

With less work, and a lot less warfare, she needs to find some ways to keep up with her less obvious skills. So on some days -- today being one of them -- instead of walking around Gazin on the streets and paths, she scales the wall of a building and does her best to move above the streets. The climbing is still easy: run and leap, grabbing onto a windowframe, and haul herself upwards. Some buildings a little more difficult, and she has to climb using gaps in woodwork or masonry as footholds. Then, it's a pause to assess her surroundings, and the rooftops are hers. She moves confidently, sure that most of the people below her will never look up to see her.

But anyone who does, might see her leap from one rooftop to another, or lightly balancing along a rope or plank of wood that runs between two buildings. When the gap is too far to jump, she shimmies down, or drops over the edge, and darts across the intervening street before scaling the next building again. It's freer up there, and she's far less likely to run into people. It's comfortable, in a way the crowded marketplace isn't.


The Marketplace - OPEN


It doesn't help, being without Ikaros. He'd been alongside her, even on Kephallonia when she'd been barely able to eat when work was lean. She doesn't miss him quite as much as she did when she first arrived here, but the loss of his companionship still hurts. And, more practically, she still feels incomplete without the ability to reach up through his vision into the world around her. So while she's on the rooftops, Kassandra makes her way to the tallest building overlooking the marketplace, and once she's climbed it, she perches on the edge of the rooftop and watches the scene below her. There's information to be found in the movements of the crowds, and in the way individual people go from one place to another, about their daily business, or perhaps, some of them, preparing for a special event, like the man who visits a jeweler and a tailor and then engages in a long discussion with a man who trades in wine.

She tells herself she's scouting, looking for trouble, but she knows she's really just making up for missing her eagle. And eventually, Kassandra knows she has to come down, so she moves around the edges of her rooftop, searching until she finds what she needs: a cart loaded with straw, waiting to be hauled away by a pair of horses. Kassandra springs from the roof, turning the leap into an elegant dive with a half-somersault at the end so she lands on her back in the straw.

To anyone watching, it might seem reckless, dangerous. But Kassandra emerges from the cart a moment later, springing out and beginning to brush straw from her clothing. She assumes nobody noticed her, but if someone did, they'll have a moment to approach her as she picks pieces of straw out of her braid.