IC Inbox

[untiltheyarent]

[Verbal correspondence and scenes only! Ya girl can't read.]

Comments

[cozen]

[ He nods. Distracted, still, by what she's said, but he unsticks from it to answer, ]

I faked a limp.

[ A poor target for press gangs. ]

And it worked out for me. I got out of the Game just before it started, and it was—a kind of cover, I suppose. Everything was in chaos. My friends assumed that was what had happened to me, the war or the riots. No one was looking for me anymore when I came back to Val Royeaux. I passed some of them in the street and their eyes went right through me.

Of course, [ dropping his voice, because it's a secret, ] I am very good.

[untiltheyarent]

[A wry smile, almost amused-- it's very Bastien, and although it might be easy for some to get angry that he evaded the war so easily when others didn't, all it really means is that he's clever.]

To disappear so easily has its upsides. [but,]

You'd no family holding out hope?

[cozen]

[ Bastien shakes his head, arranges his mouth to say something, shakes his head again, and says instead: ]

They'd been gone for a long time.

Was it only Jacques, for you? Did you have any other family left?

[untiltheyarent]

[a silent nod, acknowledging the meaning of that: no family, not for a long time. rather than poke at it, she moves on, but a piece or two of the Who Bastien Is puzzle start to click into place.]

My father still lives out in the plains, [she confirms,] a shepherd. I'm going to try to visit him soon, with the eluvian.