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Date & Time: the day after her return from time-travel shenanigans
Location: ANYWHERE UGH THIS IS AN OPEN POST HAVE AT THEE specify a time and place or something.
Characters: Anora, whoever else decides to show aka OPEN
Summary: everyone's favourite queen is back from her trip through time. and of course she needs to do things so she doesn't sit around and mull about the fact that she had been high for the majority of that trip.
Warnings: um none as of now.

She was home.

Well, not home. This realm will never be her home, nor would it ever have the same comforts of Thedas. But, it was familiar-enough where, upon return, all she wanted to do was clean up and curl up in bed and she would feel perfectly fine doing so. She had not said a word to Alistair or Martin since she returned, not that she was particularly conversational with either of them to begin with. She had simply locked herself in the bathroom for two hours to scrub herself down in the bath and trim her hair.

But today was a new day. Her hair was back in its usual set of braids, her outfits were back to being tightly laced around her body. Her vision was clear and no longer bleary and distant, and she felt...relatively herself again.

She would spend today out and about, going to the library to pick up a new book or two, wandering the market place to pick up fresh food for the flat. She could even be found wandering the whole of the city, lingering by local theatres to see if there was anything of interest to be found, and pausing by establishments where a solid alcoholic drink or two could be found.

It wouldn't be until late when she'd return to her living quarters, and even then she wouldn't go to sleep until much later, choosing to curl up on the couch to read a book instead. She was tired, but at the same time her recent venture had caused her to grow even more restless. And unfortunately, she found there was never a happy medium to satiate both feelings.

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The natives were quieter then normal. It might be that during the rioting, a few had been injured and were still recovering. One of the group's more boisterous individuals was missing entirely - fallen some said, accidentally hit in just the right way that cracked his skull open. Those speaking were the quietest, some of them trying to edge away from the lone Japanese man sitting at the bar.

Takegami ignored the quiet and the whisperings. Instead he nursed a stout beer and smoked a thin roll-up. When he saw her, he raised the mug in a slight toast.

"So, you've returned."

Alistair hadn't taken much offense to Anora not saying a word to him. It wasn't as if their relationship approached anything near normal, after all, and as far as he was concerned it had been months since he'd left (even if the Initiative told him it was only a small number of days). The whole thing had put him off-balance.

And what had it done, really? He'd gotten Martin into some awful danger (all right, not entirely his fault, but it wasn't as if he'd stepped in to tell the natives that they weren't gods in the first place even though he was pretty sure it was a new level of blaspheme) and he'd had to fend off hungry villagers. If that was the sort of war they wanted to fight, he wasn't planning to be a part of it. He too came home late, having spent most of the day out and about -- and yes, when he's kicking the door closed with his foot, his mouth is already full of food.

At least it isn't spray cheese -- it's just gouda. He was a little surprised to see Anora on the couch, but he approached cautiously. He still had to put his own groceries away, after all, and the kitchen wasn't so far away.

"Is your sleep schedule gone all pear-shaped again too?"

She wasn't surprised when she was picked out from the native crowd by a fellow non-native. She had been hoping to duck in to take a look around, and duck out without being spotted by anyone she knew in particular (a tavern was not an establishment meant for a queen, after all), so there was a moment when she debated whether she should have pretended not to have heard Takegami and take her leave or acknowledge that she had been, well acknowledged.

Anora sighed, smoothing out the front of her dress out of habit as she approached, not yet taking a seat. Her arms were crossed as she continued to look around the bar with a careful, studying gaze.

"So I have." Her tone is curt and simple, as though she wasn't exactly thrilled to be back.

Which she wasn't. She would have still preferred to have been brought back to her real home.

She was sitting on the farther side of the couch away from the entrance, practically reclined with her elbow resting on the arm of the couch and her legs curled up underneath her as she read. She didn't even bother changing into her nightwear seeing as she knew she would be up for Maker knows how long, and her hair wasn't even out of her plaits.

She turned the page, not even looking up nor changing her position to something more dignified. She was comfortable, and after months of living with both Alistair and Martin in such small living conditions she found she didn't exactly have to sit straight-laced and proper all the time.

There was still the usual rigid dismissive tone to her voice, her lips pursed. "I fear it no longer has any distinguishable shape at this point."

"Did you have a good trip?"

He knew exactly why she went back, but was not going to ask if they did accomplish what they needed to. That would be rude of him and he had a feeling that she wouldn't tell him anyways. She was that kind of person; prickly and proud and Takegami respected it.

Well, to a certain point.

The other patrons seem to shrink back even more. If Takegami made them uncomfortable, the fact that he was easily talking to her without veiled threats made them even more timid. The one group actually paid quickly and left.

Alistair shrugged his shoulders and finished chewing on the piece of cheese he'd popped into his mouth. He wasn't sure exactly what he'd been expecting from Anora -- for all he knew, it could have only been a few days since she'd left this place for her where it had been months for him -- but she didn't seem as different as he'd been expecting her to be.

"I never got around to asking you where you ended up going. Are you in a sharing mood?"

She made a noise at the back of her throat at that question, and there was about a minute or two of silence as she took a seat at the bar. Not directly next to him, she left a spot open between the two of them. He didn't make her uncomfortable, per-se, but rather, she was simply not in the mood to be in close proximity of anyone.

"That all depends on what you define as good."

Anora knew he was going to ask, but nevertheless she felt herself...flush at the question, her ears turning pink as she pointedly kept her nose in her book. There was a moment or two of what felt like awkward silence on her part (it's not like he knew what she did, after all) before she shifted a little in her seat and cleared her throat.

"No." It's followed by another turn of the page though she's no longer reading her book. "And it is not as though you would recognize either place even if I were in the mood to share."

"You know, I thought that as a Queen" who, he assumed, had made up a bunch of half-truths in order to keep herself in power after Maric's death, "you'd be delighted to talk about all the vastly important things that you did during your mission."

More to the point, he wasn't sure he wanted to mention the whole 'accidentally allowed people to worship me as a god' thing until he had heard whether Anora's little jaunt in time had gone just as strangely as his had.

Well, there were those half-truths...coupled with the fact that there was nobody to challenge her for the throne until some bastard child of Maric's meandered out of the woodwork. And of course Loghain sort of...took a bit of the reigns after Cailan's death.

She closed her book with a snap and it's dropped harshly on the side table next to the couch as she turned to finally look at him. "Then as King why don't you tell me what vastly important things you did. I am certain they're far more interesting."

Was that deflection? It might be.

Okay it was.

Unfortunately for Anora, the way she was acting just made Alistair all the more curious about what it was that she was hiding. He slid down onto the other side of the couch and raised an eyebrow at her.

"Only if you tell your stories. I asked first, so really -- it's only fair."

He could understand wanting space, so after a moment he just waved the bartender down and ordered her a drink. Not a stout beer but a light wine, something that might actually had more than a vague hint of fruit to it and not too dry.

"I define good as returning with all your limbs and mental capacities intact."

Takegami turned slightly, facing her and resting his elbow against the bar. His fingers had faint lines of scabbing across them but he showed no pain from them.

"Well I suppose I have succeeded in returning with two out of the two." The wine is placed in front of her and, despite spending the majority of what felt like the last month under the influence of...substances, she was grateful for the wine and she took it after letting the glass sit for a few seconds.

She honestly would not have said no to a shot of tequila at this point.

"And you?"

"There really is not much to tell, in all honesty."

She shifted again in her seat as he settled down on the couch, but made no motion to sit up properly. She looked away, tapping her fingers against the arm of the couch in an impatient manner.

"I barely remember."

Normally, he might have met her in one of those areas providing a solid alcoholic drink or two, but as it would happen today he managed to meet her in the library. It was just difficult not to notice someone with such... stature. And laces. Laces were nice.

He was personally in the library for a handful of reasons, some more interesting than others, but the foremost amongst them being simply a desire to see if there was anything interesting in this whereverthehell that would help him get out of it and back to ahhfamiliarhell, at the very least. He would, at this point, sooner take a punch to the face with a chair, or an atomic bomb even, before he chose to stay somewhere that screwed around with his head. Even passively.

Even if, you know, again, laces are nice.

'You seem... important.' Hi, hello. 'Browsing or just, searching badly?'

Anora was in the library for less...complicated reasons. She was politically minded as opposed to scientifically minded (and, coming from a medieval fantasy world with magic and monsters, scientific minds were not in fact all that common to begin with), so she was searching for books related to the history of this world.

She had been standing on her tip-toes trying to read the spines of some books on an upper shelf when she hears a rather forward voice addressing her.

Her hand drew back from the book she was reaching for and she turned, coming face to face with someone she had seen once or twice over the network.

"And here I thought my search was going relatively well." There was a considering pause and a raise of an eyebrow as she examined the stranger. "Are you really interested in what I'm doing, or are you interrupting me for the sake of idle talk?"

"The natives decided to try to kill us."

All she had to do was ask for something stronger. He was in a spending mood after coming into an extra amount of money. It was honest money too; it seems that his piano playing was popular.

Alistair leaned forward, squinting very slightly before proclaiming, "Ooh, you're lying! No, you are most definitely lying."

He grinned. "So that either means you did something that you don't want to admit because it was naughty, or you did something that was embarrassing."

Despite the growing tensions between the natives and the non-natives, Anora's brows raise with surprise at that, and the glass of wine hovers an inch or so from her lips.

"I can see that their attempt was...unsuccessful. Now how did they go about attempting that?"

"I assure you, I am not."

There was the urge to snap at him and tell him to shut up, but instead she continued to drum her fingers on the arm of the bed, staring at an unimportant spot on the wall of the living room. Her ears are noticeably pink again, likely out of annoyance.

"...don't you have food to put away or something?"

"The usual angry mob approach." He glanced at the mirror, noting the remaining natives did not look as belligerent as the group that had left.

"Running through the streets and smashing things, attempting to drown us out or steal our stuff, jet packs from the sky and even a raid on the Hold's armory. It was quite the busy time."

Taking a sip of beer, he shrugged, eyes closing a little.

"As you can see, there had been no lasting damage."

"It's not warm enough in here for anything to go bad in a matter of minutes." That's right, Alistair understands the basics of why food goes bad -- he's had a lot of food liquefy in his backpack.

"Is whatever happened while you were gone really so embarrassing?"

"Is it really of your concern?"

There's an exasperated sigh on her end, and she turned her head to look at him. "I'm not in the mood to talk about it. Not now, at least."

"I just find it a bit boring here when nobody in the household actually speaks to each other." Eventually he'll probably give up, but right now he still feels a little -- bad about the fact that they're married and apparently Anora is miserable. It isn't as if he ever wished her dead.

There was a thoughtful hum as she took a sip of her wine. She had no clue what a jet pack was, but the imagery she was beginning to conduct in her head resembled something of the past events that had taken place in her own home.

An angry mob was nothing compared to a civil war and a Blight, she supposed, but nevertheless, it was troubling.

"And did it simply just...resolve itself? Did any of those in power make any attempts to intervene?"

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at the bar

At Home

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