Thorn Without a Rose |
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────Calming Presence in Effect: Figaro Affected
8th January, 2026
In the days following the harrowing experience at Tenūsa, Piérre had taken it on himself to attempt to pull himself together. This was an attempt that had been several years in the making, and for just as long had done nothing for him except culminate into further and newer and somehow more ineffably unbearable depths of personality flaws that he was learning about himself every passing day. But try try again he did, disregarding the saying of same repetition and insanity, believing that somehow this would be the time in which he would successfully break down his own walls and weights that were holding him back from being the very successful, very happy, and very wanted version of himself that he knew he could become.
He was a young man now, after all, not a boy. It was high time that he started acting like it, wasn't it? High time that he stopped bemoaning or cursing his foul luck and instead took countermeasures to break through and shatter his own expectations, true?
His ability to brew a certain potion for his brother would be more integral than ever soon enough. That alone was a responsibility and ergo a reason for why he had to hold himself to a certain standard. He had always been of the mind that it was always for the purposes of those around him as opposed for him alone that he existed, and it seemed that he would soon have an opportunity on several fronts to execute that clause of his belief.
At the moment, he was actually feeling up the armpit of one of the suits of armor on display in the hallway, one that was on the right hand side of the statuette of an old witch whose left hand had broken off some years ago. He had been expecting a drop here, and he wasn't in the mood to discover that some of his trade routes had been discovered by wandering eyes and ears just because he was a few hours or days late in picking it up. Fingers crept up further, feeling around the inside of the pauldron and down towards the rerebrace before changing directions when he could reach no further and instead trying for the outer edge of the inside of the cuirass. He furrowed his brows. Surely nobody was stupid enough to just drop it in the cuirass cavity, were they? How in the world was he supposed to get to it...? Maybe it was in the bevor...? No...
Then where the hell was... Ah! There it was. It had been up closer to the bevor, in the place where the gorget connected to the cuirass. The edge of the bag had been stuck soundly in the very small crack there and held by the weight of the gorget on the chestplate. Clever. Yeah okay he was alright with that. Withdrawing it carefully, he opened it and inspected the goods. In it were three rounded stones that were mostly clear with an opalescent sheen, a small phial of bright scarlet-red liquid that swirled with unusually fiery fluidity, and beneath those two things were a large collection of mistletoe-sized silvery berries. With it was a note.
Piérre sighed. The location they had agreed on. Right.The final item is the hollow, as we arranged.
Leave the payment there.
The trade was enough for three months. Then he would have to arrange a better price with someone else or get creative again. It was a situation he hopefully wouldn't have to dance with for much longer. Once he was cut free from the school, he'd be able to_
He looked up just in time to behold through the passing crowd a young student just across the way on the other side of the hall. She looked distressed, or--perhaps more accurately--she looked like she was "shut down". Piérre was... unfortunately quite familiar with the body language associated with it or adjacent to it. He glanced back and forth. It didn't... seem like anyone was bothering her. So that meant that it was likely concerning something more... unseen. Personal.
He was familiar with things like that as well. He leaned back and forth for a moment on the balls of his feet, considering for a moment to make off and simply archive what he saw. He had to go and pick up the goods... and yet...
He had time, surely?
Figaro seemed to catch his intent and trotted over to him, weaving his way through the legs and bags to reach his master. Piérre slipped through the crowd as well, more sinuously and slippery. He had gotten quite used to the pattern in which the student body moved and how to slip in and out of its riptides with fluidity that in his younger years he would have considered unprecedented in ability. He eventually stood to one side of her, a little awkwardly, letting the left side of his face linger in shadow so that the raw and scaly red patterns looked a pattern of his hair and the light in the compromised illumination of lamplight.
"Hey..." He broke the moment as neutrally as he could. "You okay? Are you lost?" Hogwarts had been getting more than a few transfers lately, and with the new semester having just started... maybe it was a little overwhelming getting used to a new class schedule and an alteration of the status quo that had been established in the first half of the year.
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
@Violence Bloodthorn
Jesters do oft prove prophets. 𓀚
I am the brother account to Romeo Marchonné & Zyva Hel Fae Skógrwight