[ota] pride is not a substitute for knowing how to swim

[messire_messer]

Spades on the third floor of the east wing apartments would have woken to a passing pounding on each of their doors early in the morning. Raphael's already long gone before they've poked their heads through the doors to answer, tapping at any wooden furniture and practically singing as he goes.

Well. Not really singing. Maybe a bit of light-footedness, though.

Because it's the Day. The Day of his bridge being completed at last. The previous day had seen sunset with only a few parts left to be nailed into place. Raphael fully intends to impart it with all the ceremony that it deserves.

It's an impromptu party atmosphere. He hadn't intended there to be a much bigger celebration than himself and the people he'd roped into working on the bridge with him, but someone's brought food and there's beer from somewhere. Probably Ben. He'll have to remember to thank him later.

For now there's a jaunty pounding into place of nails and a small balancing act on the rails to proudly declare the bridge to the ruins "OPEN!"

Later he'll be soaked and miserable and have to plan fixing the bridge up from its sudden breaking and dropping him into the ocean. But after all, hubris affects even the worst of men.

[ooc: Minnie will be the one actually saving him, but everyone else can tag before or after.]

Comments

[messire_messer]

Sigh. Perhaps he'll get Ben to reexamine his ornamentation on the far posts some other time. "True, but I believe everyone should be acknowledged, no matter how little work they contributed overall. It was still a help, you see."

And now he'll be taking a beer for himself, thank you.

[intotherough]

After it's proven to be stable. Or not proven to be stable at all, as the case may be. But Ben will pull a beer out of the ice bucket and handing it over.

"Congratulations on getting it all done, I must say."

[messire_messer]

Oh, good. Appealing to the ego again. When Rap preens, it could almost be seen from space. "I know! It seems almost incredible that I've made it this far. And all for a wall."

[intotherough]

He has his tricks, Ben does, for distracting a pout. It's what made him an excellent babysitter during those hardly-missed-at-all days in Diamond Castle.

"Right," he says. "And when you put up the wall, it won't look lonely without three more, a roof, and a window?"

[messire_messer]

That will have Rap squinting at him, lips drawing tight against the neck of his bottle. "Nonsense. The wall'll be to highlight the loneliness of the door. Turning it into a house sends a different message altogether."

[intotherough]

"Uh-huh." Why did he even ask. Why. "It doesn't look more lonely when it's just a door?"

Yes, he's going to regret that question too.

[messire_messer]

"A simple door holds the effect of possibility. Potential. Something new, especially compared to what else is near it." He punctuates this with a sweeping gesture towards the ruins. "Whereas a lone wall with a door has the image of being left over. Abandoned. Alone."

Does Ben want more? Rap could talk more. Lots and lots more.

[intotherough]

The look on Ben's face is akin to the one he used to wear when teenage punks tried to explain what they were doing in the container yards at the Port of Aberdeen. Or, more recently, the expression he wore when a much younger Victor Fox told him exactly how many munitions they were going to smuggle over the North Sea and then over the Irish Sea.

It's one he's had a lot of practice with.

"So in order to affect a feeling of loneliness, you decided you needed to enlist the assistance of over a dozen people," he says, "and build a bridge to create something essentially depressing instead of leaving it as is and affecting a feeling of optimism."

He's just checking.

[messire_messer]

He folds his arms as best he can with a half-full bottle of beer. "My wall was conceived before there was need for a bridge. And you're forgetting what exactly it's a door for. The entire point of it was that it led to their land and they keep us from using it. To us- it is just a door. They do not want us to follow."

[intotherough]

"And you'd like to follow them there, then?" Ben asks, his brows arched.

"I just find it interesting," he adds. "That when presented with 'just a door,' you find inspiration in depression instead of hope."

[messire_messer]

"We ought at least have the choice," he mutters, taking a swig. "Nor's there any point to sitting in front of it day to day trying again and again to make it open to elsewhere than here."

[intotherough]

"Life isn't fair," Ben said with considerable dryness. Sometimes Rap seemed a lot younger than nine years younger than Ben.

"You could explore the big wide world Outside," he added, "instead of yet another insular one not so removed from this one."

[messire_messer]

This sigh produces a rather nice whistle over the top of the bottle. Not very illustrative of his irritation, but so few things are. "And what about the world's art haven't we already seen? Mm? I've been out of the Deck before. There's plenty of places I've not been, but that's not the point. The point is the places we cannot go."

Swig. "Besides, can you imagine what art they must have? I'd have loved to see more than their castle had to offer. Thousands of years with only their own influences..."

[intotherough]

"Thousands of years with only their own influences just equals a society that never grows, never changes, and finds itself stuck in the same ways forever," Ben says. "Innovation and creativity to a point, and then stagnation because they become convinced that they are the supreme society, and nothing else could be better."

His smile over the top of the bottle is warm, genial, and Diamond sharp underneath it.

"But I've never thought anything created in a vacuum was very interesting."

[messire_messer]

"I suppose we shall have to differ in our opinions, then. Believe me, there's always at least one artist who believes he can improve on his predecessors." He's not one of those. Surely and certainly not.

[intotherough]

"I suppose we will." He highly doubts that Rap is not every single one of those artists. "Historians and artists have a different perspective on history, after all."

[messire_messer]

"Can't be helped-- oh!" He doesn't quite bounce, but the half-twist at his waist accomplishes the same thing. "Do excuse me, there's someone I wasn't expecting." Sorry, Ben. He has a butler to lord over.