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Noriko comes into Milliways looking slightly...different today. Her hair is sleek and pulled into an elegant twist at the nape of her neck, bangs combed neatly down to nearly her eyebrows. She's still wearing a berry-colored cape and long pants and...truly interesting shoes with needle-thin stiletto heels, and looking more or less polished.

More or less being a loose term. (She's not taking that cape off yet, but when she leans against the bar she may be showing flashes of bare skin up to her ribs.)She's also coming in with a faint headache from too much alcohol too quickly, and sits at the bar to drink some ginger tea and arare crackers.

Skipping dinner for alcohol was not a great decision.

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There's a woman sitting nearby in elaborately embroidered mage robes in blue and silver. She has white hair in a complicated braid, pointed ears, dark tattoos over her right eye and on her left cheek, and a staff strapped to her back.

"Too much fine dancing and fine company?"

Ysalwen's voice is carefully quiet, just in case a hangover acts this same across all realities.

Even Liranan, the mabari hound at her feet, is kind enough not to bark.

"Nah," intones Noriko, shaking her head gently. "Just too much alcohol. Kind of figuring maybe actual food and something non-fermented will help."

She rubs the back of her neck, though she doesn't undo the knot of her hair, as she looks over, still clear-eyed but with a headache building behind them. The appraising look is quick, and calm, but there's a lot to take in with that woman in the robes. "...That's a hell of a look you've got going."

"It usually does. That, and sleep. Not that I can talk much about that nowadays, nor hangovers, either."

Her mouth twists in a wry smile.

"Though I will say, my robes hardly seem any more fanciful than yours. Differently so, perhaps, but that's true across any kingdom's borders."

"I'm sure I'll get to the sleeping part sooner or later," she says. "It was just a date, but drinking when you're having a really good time is easy to lose track of."

She looks down at the raspberry wool, and unbuttons the collar to pull it off. Underneath is a top that's no more covering, but a great deal shinier. It matches her earrings, and leaves her back completely bare, not even a string tied around her ribs, just the chain at her neck. "Maybe."

"That part I really wouldn't know much about."

She sounds very slightly rueful.

"What's a date? I'm assuming, you see, that in this context you don't mean the fruit."

"That whole fine company and dancing thing? That," she says. "Date like a calendar date, not the fruit, no. Though for me in five inch heels, dancing is optional."

"That's usually called a party, where I'm from. Or occasionally a feast, if someone high in the trappings of power has decided to throw it."

Her smile is still pretty crooked.

"So it was just a day, then, if a very, very long one? Huh."

The concept of 'dating' is one that Ysalwen is not familiar with, either culturally or personally.

Even if she does have a romantic partner.

"Nah, not so many people. Dates are usually just two people, like a romance thing," she says. "I don't usually do feasts, they tend to be above my pay grade."

Though in her case neither of them is sure if they're heading for romance. It's...interesting so far.

"Well, that's certainly -- interesting. Feasts used to be above mine, but not anymore. Apparently I'm soon to be expected to throw them."

This is not high on her lists of 'things I like to think about'.

"You could always say no. Expectations don't need to be met," Nori suggests.

"When you have responsibilities to other people -- a lot of other people -- occasionally they do."

Her mouth twists again, just a little.

"At least I'll have help, or so I imagine."

"Oh? Friends in high places?" she asks, utterly comfortable in a basically-topless state.

Ysalwen doesn't appear to notice, or to judge if she does notice.

Being far from home and well aware that customs differ will do that, for someone used to travel. (That and the past year has been full of a lot more strangeness than Noriko's bare back.)

"One friend, at least. But I think mostly the seneschal and the mistress of the treasury will keep me on the straight and narrow when it comes to feasting and guesting. At least I hope they will."

(She'd be concerned if that was the oddest thing anyone had seen. Very concerned.)

"...What are you, a princess or something?" she asks.

"Maker's breath, no."

Perish the thought.

"But the Wardens need a base, and as I am Commander of the Grey in Ferelden now, the King thought providing me with an arling would be helpful."

The expression on her face suggests that she disagrees. Or wants to disagree.

"He's probably not wrong."

"Almost all of that made zero sense to me, just so you know," Noriko says slowly.

"Fair exchange for all the talk of dates, perhaps."

Ysalwen's lips twitch.

"Well. I am the military commander of an order responsible for saving the world from Blights, of which one has just passed. In order to re-establish our diminished numbers, I need a fortress. The King, my friend Alistair, has given me a fortress and the surrounding lands and cities -- what we call an arling -- as space for the Grey Wardens to be quartered, as well as a way to re-establish order after the previous arl was proved a disgrace and something like a traitor."

A pause.

"If that -- helps?"

Noriko's eyebrows raise. That's a lot of information to absorb.

"Yeah, that...that helps. That's a hell of a lot to be for someone who doesn't look much older than me." People have made this statement to Noriko before, given she's in a not-terribly-dissimilar position.

She huffs out a quiet breath. There are some who might call it a laugh.

"It's not as if age matters much, when it comes to terrible things. At least I've never found it so."

Being the governor of a reasonably-sized principality just happens, sometimes.

Edited 2015-01-21 03:15 (UTC)

"Well. One you're considered an adult, no. Then again getting considered an adult is kind of a pain in the ass, when you're dealing with some people."

She's not at all talking about people she knows, why on earth would you think that?

"Don't terrible things happen to children, where you're from? It would be amazing if they didn't, I won't deny that, but -- "

Well. People.

"What do you mean 'considered and adult'? Is there a ritual?"

Maybe a series of epic tasks. Or a jumping puzzle.

"Terrible things happening to kids is the exception rather than the rule where I'm from," says Noriko. "Unless you happen to be a mutant, then it's a free-for-all most days."

She speaks from experience here.

"Usually there's an age at which you're no longer considered a child legally--for us, where I'm from, that's eighteen. Societally, however, it can be a long time before people stop seeing you as a kid. Especially if they disagree with your points of view on basically everything, when their default excuse is immaturity."

Jumping puzzle is way, way more accurate than Ysalwen thinks. In a nutshell.

"It sounds better to be seen as a child than a rebel, or an agitator -- so far as these things go. Particularly if terrible things aren't done to children."

She doesn't quite mean to sound like that seems too good to be true.

"Unless we have different definitions of 'terrible'. This is Milliways, it seems infinitely possible."

"Generally, yeah. People don't usually kill children because they dislike them."

That may have been drier than Noriko intended. But as a young woman who's had several people try to kill her while she was still a child...yeah, she ca't excuse herself over that.

"No," Ysalwen agrees. "Usually they end up more as collateral damage."

Wars are a bitch, man.

So are hate crimes. And poverty.

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