[ Setting: a campfire at night, just off a road through the woods. It's cold but not too cold. Occasionally an owl hoots or a distant wolf howls. There are remnants of dinner (vegetable soup, roasted rabbit kept separately) next to the fire if anyone wants seconds. Their cart is laden with treasure, because they're awesome. Fabrizio and the mule are both asleep, and Xio is lounging against her bear like he is a pile of pillows. ]
Points, [ she announces. ] Fab gets ten for using that statue as a bridge. That was cool. But I get fifteen for destroying the old bridge.
[Fivera is sitting cross-legged, straight-backed. And she was ready to begin meditating, except that this conversation is distracting her. So is the smell of Xio's bear, which is pungent. And she is hungry. And her hand hurts, and she is giving some experimental pokes at the bruise which is rapidly forming upon the heel of it--so, all right, she was not ready to begin meditating. How would one meditate with Xio around anyways?
She frowns.]
Why you would get fifteen points for this needs to be argued to me.
[ She holds up five fingers, for the five points that is clearly worth. ]
Biggest dust cloud.
[ Five more. ]
Woke up the bats.
[ Fifteen total!!! One hand still on Caballero’s ear, she uses the other to pick up a rabbit skewer and take a particularly pleased-with-herself bite. ]
[Very seriously, Fivera counts along on her fingers. Five. Five. Fresh start on the right hand, another five. When the count is through, she looks down at her traitorous hands and frowns.]
Oh.
[Hm. She folds three of her fingers at the top knuckle so that they look particularly bony and skeletal and wrong, an affect carried over from childhood.]
The bats weren't good. You probably did not notice, so suffused with success, but I was bitten by one bat, because of course I was, [mournful, not self-pitying,] so, I say two points for bats only. Total of twelve.
[ Evelyn scoffs as she settles down with the little notebook she'd gone in search of, flipping through reams of numbered lists until she finds the next blank page. ]
You're lucky we don't subtract points for the bats and the dust cloud, since it was either made up mostly of bat shite or else you terrified the bats into incontinence flying through it and either way I'm going to have to burn that jacket.
[ Xio lifts herself forward from her bear nest to look Fivera over, squinting in search of a bat bite, maybe a little concern beneath the skepticism. They need a healer, that's what they need. No more recruits except healers. ]
You,
[ is aimed at Evelyn, despite her continued examination of Fivera, ]
can't burn that jacket. It's lucky. You've never died wearing it.
I've never died in any of my jackets [ is the immediately skeptical response, but then Evelyn cocks her pen at Xiomara ] but if I have to replace it, who knows about the new one. [ So maybe she'll have to keep it after all. Just to be safe.
BUT. ] All the more reason you shouldn't get points for endangering it.
[Fivera looks back at Xio and, guessing at what she is looking for, holds up her arm horizontal to the ground. In the fabric at her forearm there is a little rip, a place that has been punctured by tiny bat teeth, small as grains of rice. No obvious blood. It is probably an equally tiny wound underneath the swaths of black and brown and burgundy fabric that Fivera shrouds herself in.]
It would be a nice jacket to be buried in. I pledge that we will leave it on you, when your hour comes. I will not let Xio steal or sell it.
[ Xio leans in and in and in—further in than really necessary—until she can see this minuscule wound. She does not protest the idea that she would steal or sell the jacket. Rather: ]
When Evie is dead I should be allowed to buy it.
With my points.
Which I have three hundred and seventeen plus twelve of.
—and Fivera, this is barely a bat kiss. But do you have a fever now? If you have a fever you are going to die.
The bat may have killed me. Xio's guilt is but indirect.
[Fivera turns her arm so that she can look at the bite. The kiss. She frowns as she pokes her little finger in the rip of the cloth, roots it around until she works past all her layers and finds her skin.
[ Xio is saying, but the end of that sentence—a thorough questioning Evelyn's laundry skills, it would have began with, and ended on a list of what else is worth way more than two points—is lost to concern. Real concern! ]
Fuck.
[ Now she moves far enough away from Caballero that he stirs, flexing one broad paw and lifting his big, shaggy head to regard Evelyn, specifically, like he's waiting to know why she woke him up from his great dream about eating beetles. ]
Can you stand? Are you dizzy?
[ Does rabies work that fast? It doesn't matter. She sounds like she is already planning for a week of horrified nursing and a funeral. ]
No, [she is not dizzy, and,] no, [she cannot stand up, and to demonstrate this second point and perhaps accidentally disproving the first, Fivera lays back on the ground. The effect is rather like a puppet collapsing after having its strings cut.
On her back, Fivera stares up at the sky in quiet funerary contemplation.]
You can sell my cloak. I do not think it will bring as good a price as Evelyn's coat. Even with bat shit on the coat.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
good times, a year ago or something.
Points, [ she announces. ] Fab gets ten for using that statue as a bridge. That was cool. But I get fifteen for destroying the old bridge.
no subject
[Fivera is sitting cross-legged, straight-backed. And she was ready to begin meditating, except that this conversation is distracting her. So is the smell of Xio's bear, which is pungent. And she is hungry. And her hand hurts, and she is giving some experimental pokes at the bruise which is rapidly forming upon the heel of it--so, all right, she was not ready to begin meditating. How would one meditate with Xio around anyways?
She frowns.]
Why you would get fifteen points for this needs to be argued to me.
no subject
[ She holds up five fingers, for the five points that is clearly worth. ]
Biggest dust cloud.
[ Five more. ]
Woke up the bats.
[ Fifteen total!!! One hand still on Caballero’s ear, she uses the other to pick up a rabbit skewer and take a particularly pleased-with-herself bite. ]
no subject
Oh.
[Hm. She folds three of her fingers at the top knuckle so that they look particularly bony and skeletal and wrong, an affect carried over from childhood.]
The bats weren't good. You probably did not notice, so suffused with success, but I was bitten by one bat, because of course I was, [mournful, not self-pitying,] so, I say two points for bats only. Total of twelve.
no subject
[ Evelyn scoffs as she settles down with the little notebook she'd gone in search of, flipping through reams of numbered lists until she finds the next blank page. ]
You're lucky we don't subtract points for the bats and the dust cloud, since it was either made up mostly of bat shite or else you terrified the bats into incontinence flying through it and either way I'm going to have to burn that jacket.
no subject
You,
[ is aimed at Evelyn, despite her continued examination of Fivera, ]
can't burn that jacket. It's lucky. You've never died wearing it.
no subject
BUT. ] All the more reason you shouldn't get points for endangering it.
no subject
[Fivera looks back at Xio and, guessing at what she is looking for, holds up her arm horizontal to the ground. In the fabric at her forearm there is a little rip, a place that has been punctured by tiny bat teeth, small as grains of rice. No obvious blood. It is probably an equally tiny wound underneath the swaths of black and brown and burgundy fabric that Fivera shrouds herself in.]
It would be a nice jacket to be buried in. I pledge that we will leave it on you, when your hour comes. I will not let Xio steal or sell it.
no subject
When Evie is dead I should be allowed to buy it.
With my points.
Which I have three hundred and seventeen plus twelve of.
—and Fivera, this is barely a bat kiss. But do you have a fever now? If you have a fever you are going to die.
no subject
[ Evelyn also leans in, though not as far as Xio and she veers away after a second to reach for the last skewer of rabbit. ]
Three hundred and seventeen plus ten is the highest I'll go, since you might've killed Fivera. Unless you've done something else worth two points?
no subject
[Fivera turns her arm so that she can look at the bite. The kiss. She frowns as she pokes her little finger in the rip of the cloth, roots it around until she works past all her layers and finds her skin.
It feels warm.]
I think I have a fever.
no subject
[ Xio is saying, but the end of that sentence—a thorough questioning Evelyn's laundry skills, it would have began with, and ended on a list of what else is worth way more than two points—is lost to concern. Real concern! ]
Fuck.
[ Now she moves far enough away from Caballero that he stirs, flexing one broad paw and lifting his big, shaggy head to regard Evelyn, specifically, like he's waiting to know why she woke him up from his great dream about eating beetles. ]
Can you stand? Are you dizzy?
[ Does rabies work that fast? It doesn't matter. She sounds like she is already planning for a week of horrified nursing and a funeral. ]
no subject
On her back, Fivera stares up at the sky in quiet funerary contemplation.]
You can sell my cloak. I do not think it will bring as good a price as Evelyn's coat. Even with bat shit on the coat.
no subject
I think you're underestimating the bat shit. And it's a perfectly nice cloak.
[ She pauses, biting the end of her pencil thoughtfully as she considers her friend on the ground. ]
Do you think you might haunt the cloak, if you die in it? That could have a definite effect on the price.