[open]

[hasapoint]

Type: Video
Sender ID: hasapoint (Lashan)
To: Public
Subject: waterproofing charms
Warnings: none!

[FIRST: You get a very close shot of Lashan's eye as she squints at her shellphone. We have here that double-doozy of a medieval and an old person and while she's pretty sharp, these devices are not intuitive to her.]

'S it working? The bead's glowing.

[aka 'the light's on'. The video pulls back a bit but like, it's still pretty close and the angle is unflattering. This whole thing feels completely unnatural to her and the lines between her brows are deepened in a frown.]

I'm Sister Lashan. I'm a lay sister, not a nun. I've made some charms for waterproofing. They're not well-tested though. If you help me with that I'll give you one. Want to know their tolerances and if I have to tweak anything before I start selling them. I'm on Elrut.

[yeah this has made her feel ridiculous and stilted. She prods at the phone with a finger.]

...How do I- [she found out how to end message! this was Not guaranteed.]

Comments

[hasapoint]

It's not a bad thing to pick up something that's out of your usual range, but the human brain can only handle so much at a time, yeah. What that range is can shift, too. Did for me.

So how long have you been here?

[forgeabettertomorrow]

Shifted for you? How so?

[Darin has to stop and think about that for a second.]

About...half a year? I think?

[hasapoint]

It's got to do with the fact that I'm about seventy, kid. Ever see an old fighter who's not making any effort to learn to do anything else? At best they coast on their savings, or on someone's support, or they teach. Me, I was just about gutted on a random battlefield and started thinking about getting out of the merc business sooner rather than later.

[she sounds almost fond about it.]

Huh. I would've thought longer.

[forgeabettertomorrow]

Oh come on, you barely look a day over fifty!

...Wait, you were a merc?

[hasapoint]

Psh. I feel sorry for the fifty-year-olds in your life!

I was, and for a good while. That wasn't what my poor fathers trained me to be, but it turns out being a fighter is broadly applicable. Why?

[forgeabettertomorrow]

No reason...I just...I guess it's kinda funny. My dad...my biological father. He was a mercenary. Traveled the world and got into all kinds of trouble the way I hear it.

A lot of people looked up to him.

[hasapoint]

[The thought of jokingly claiming she could be his father crosses her mind, but Lashan's pretty good at tempering that sort of impulse. Time and place!]

And you among them, eh? [Not unkind:] You miss him.

Mercs are rough, for the most part. The job's rough, terrible sometimes. It's not the kind of career you want to take up to see if there's good in humanity. But I've met good ones, too.

[forgeabettertomorrow]

Well...yeah. I didn't get the chance to spend a lot of time with him. I lost him when I was little so...everything I have of him now is just...stories.

It's easy to look up to someone when all you have are the legends people spin about him, you know?

I had to do some merc work before I came here. It's...well, the stories made it sound a hell of a lot easier than it was.

[hasapoint]

I know. Memory goes like that in time, regardless. I lost a lot of people when I'd just been made an adult, and everything I haven't made into some kind of a story, even if it's not one I told anyone else, is pretty faded now. I had to get a number of years between me and them before I could see them as flawed people at all.

[Her twin included, maybe most of all.]

Join any companies? Things can be easier if you're part of one and it's any good, but you lose a lot of freedom too, and a bad company's an absolute nightmare.

[forgeabettertomorrow]

Ah no...it was kind of an impromptu thing. I was on the road and needed money for supplies. Getting involved with a company like that would have been a bit troublesome...

[Considering that he was wanted and had a massive bounty on his head at the time...]