The Ninth Trial

[advisories]

Who: everyone
When: Day 18, starting just after dawn
Where: The Hermit's Tent, and all around

[This morning as the sun begins to pour through the train's windows, there's the tremor that signals a Trial.]

Come hither, Heroes. Prove thy worth. Or something like that!

[It's the same older man's voice from the sixth trial, and outside is the same fortune teller's stall. Today the front flap is lifted to show a normal interior -- there's a wooden table, carved with geometric patterns and painted in bright colours, lit by teal-coloured carved candles.

At the table sits a man of indeterminate age, somewhere between 30 and 60. He's wearing what appear to be monk's robes, teal with patterned trimming. In front of him is a crystal ball and a stack of bingo cards, along with a stand-up sign bearing the rules of this Trial.

Across the top in large font, it says:

Icebreaker Bingo

Good luck and have fun!]

Comments

[desirestruth]

Fair enough.

[She considers the card. He already avoided the trust fall, so to get bingo...]

...We're going to need to find a chair. I don't think I can reliably reach your shoulders otherwise.

[bad_crowmance]

[ Look, trust is hard and he doesn't wanna. ]

A chair? I'm not following.

[desirestruth]

Shoulder massage, Crow, it's the last square I need for a line.

[Pause.] Assuming diagonals count. I'll worry about that later.

[bad_crowmance]

You've already pretended to be an animal, huh? Gimme a sec, I'll go get a chair.

[desirestruth]

I am my favorite animal.

[That's probably cheating somehow. But, she'll stay put while he gets a chair.]

[bad_crowmance]

[ He lets out a huff of laughter. ]

I should've guessed!

[ It doesn't take him long to locate a chair and bring it back over, though. ]

[desirestruth]

Jackals are the best. A fox is fine in a pinch.

[She says this with an air of sage authority.]

Hmm. Probably best you shrug the coat off...[She's clearly wondering if she can do this with his shirt still on.]

[bad_crowmance]

[ He slips his coat off, resting it against the back of the chair. ]

Ready when you are!

[desirestruth]

Of course.

[Well, she's going for it. And, to be fair to her, she's actually pretty good at this--she knows a lot about the body and how to heal it, even if her usual advantages are gone. She can cheat how much blood flow he's getting to an area, helping to loosen things up, but that probably feels a little odd, as any use of her magic will. She pauses after a second and takes the gloves off, which means her hands are cold, as they always are. In this context, that might actually feel a little better on tense muscles.]

[bad_crowmance]

[ His muscles are very tense-- not as tense as they could be, he got a massage from 80H a few days ago, but still pretty fucking tense. He rarely relaxes, if ever, and it shows. There's knots already starting to reform carelessly, nasty and obvious.

Despite his attitude, his body betrays that he's not actually any good at relaxing. ]

You really know what you're doing, huh?

[desirestruth]

I am a healer, Crow. The more I know about how the body works, the better I am at my job.

[She grunts a little, puts more pressure into it...without her other magics to cheat this, she knows this is just going to be hard work to work these out, but she's stubborn and determined. ]

You're certainly making me work for it.

[bad_crowmance]

What can I say? I like making other people put in effort.

[desirestruth]

And never relaxed a day in your life, apparently.

[She mutters it, but it's hard to go unheard when you're this close to someone. She's honestly kind of baffled--nothing crow fronts would make her expect him to be this tense. Cagey, sure, but...]

[bad_crowmance]

[ He heard that but he's going to pretend he didn't! He doesn't want to sit here and try and justify himself-- that his fight-or-flight instincts are stuck on the "on" position and he can't even explain why, but he's constantly tense and alert and ready to act but he can't let anyone know that. He doesn't even realize he's doing it, not entirely. It's natural, it's instinct. It's every bit as much a part of him as remembering how to count cards even if he can't say where or how he learned.

Instead, he's going to roll his shoulders slightly and let out a small sigh as he lets her do her thing. ]

[desirestruth]

[She'd understand it better than he'd assume. But, she can't wrench anything out of him he doesn't want to share, and she isn't going to try, either. So there's just silence, for the next few minutes, while she wrestles these knots into submission.

She will, eventually, for the record. But you can't really rush something like this.]

[bad_crowmance]

[ It's not that he thinks she couldn't possibly understand any of it so much as his own internal walls are built up far too high to share his reasoning. ]

Mmmm..... That's nice....

[ The words come out in an almost-sleepy mumble. It really does feel good. ]

[desirestruth]

Don't fall asleep now, Crow.

[Though she'd prefer him getting sleepy to any other reaction to it. She doesn't even know about the last massage he got!]

[bad_crowmance]

[ She'd have to go farther than a shoulder massage to get that reaction. ]

'M not gonna....

[desirestruth]

[She's just sayin', mostly she knows how to do this for that kind of reason.]

Well, I'm done, so.

[And she is! Her hands hurt now. Crow why are you like this?]

[bad_crowmance]

[ He stands up. ]

Good job! Now it's your turn, sit down.

[desirestruth]

Alright, alright.

[She takes her coat off herself. And after some consideration, the vest, leaving the button-down blouse. Not a scintillating show, but too many layers makes this harder, and she knows that. She also pauses and pulls her hair forward, off her back, before she sits.

She had to anyway, or she'd sit on the ends of it. Why so much goddamn hair, Naeva.]

[bad_crowmance]

[ That's so much hair.

But once she's ready, he starts working on her shoulders. He's not quite as practiced or skilled as Naeva or 80H are at this, but he definitely has a pretty decent idea of what he's doing. ]

[desirestruth]

[She almost gets tenser at first. The hands are wrong, the smell is wrong, the person is wrong--but she catches it, forces herself not to freeze up.

She's not as tense as he is, no. But she is so much daintier than she appears, and yet her body is in intensely good shape. Even without her normally unnatural shape, she is clearly athletic. The knots she has now are nasty, but there are fewer of them...they must be recent. She's had a very stressful week.

She sighs a little, though. She is sensitive to touch...at least he's not petting her. She can deal with this. It's just shoulders.]

[bad_crowmance]

[ He's definitely not petting her and also not going for anywhere that isn't the shoulders or neck. He's getting to work on those knots, slowly loosening them up as he does. ]

You're not comfortable?

[desirestruth]

...I'm not used to being touched.

['By most people' goes unsaid. She doesn't need to paint that kind of target on herself when she's sure he can figure that out himself.]