[ota] sleeping under strange skies

[thepupthatmatters]

He's ready for this. Of course he's ready for this.

He wouldn't be here if he weren't ready. Holló wouldn't have sent him through without being prepared. This isn't, after all, the sort of place a person gets sent without it being purposeful. Even the people who wander here 'by chance' are the people who need to be here, he's been told.

So it's the right time for Aleksei Volkov to be stepping out into the cold sunlight barely warming the walls of the Castle Spades, newly minted and processed and told he'll have to start working his way up from Two now.

The few things he'd brought with him have been settled into the cramped quarters he'll be sharing with a few other recent arrivals. What's stuck from his grandmother means he'll be starting off under the apparently quite severe Spade kitchen staff.

Hopefully it isn't the end of the world that he needs to pause when he's sent out to Town to pick up a few extra bottles of truffle oil and vanilla extract. Hopefully being 'ready for this' doesn't mean he can't take a moment--take a deep breath--as he lets settle into his bones the fact that he's here.


{ooc; He can be bumped into at the castle or being lost in Town. Also tag plz?}

Comments

[falsepretences]

Julien is the kind of Spade who doesn't challenge in a way that isn't clearly a battle. He can't imagine Julien doing what his uncle Davin did - challenging a Nine in Scrabble, for instance.

But Aleksei hasn't asked that question. He's asked one that's a bit harder.

"I think...that knowing how to defend you and yours is still integral to what Spades are," he says, looking over at the younger boy. "But if you limit yourself to just that, you miss out on what all you could be."

[thepupthatmatters]

It's something to ponder. It's something he'll be mulling over likely all the way up the ladder he's intending to work up. It's the sort of thing he'll look back on, years from now, as one of the moments that helped bridge between boy and man.

"...I see." And he doesn't, not fully, but he sees as much as he can without mulling over it. "How did you?"

[falsepretences]

"How did I challenge?" He's only done it twice in this Suit, actually, which made him a little bit of an unusual Nine. "I challenged once in...knife-fighting, and once in a kind of race."

Part of the reason of choosing the second was to appease the then-King, who'd also been his favorite cousin. But the other part had been to show that challenging without killing or maiming was something they could do. Somehow that had been important.

[thepupthatmatters]

It's a line he's fairly certain everyone has to walk alone. Time will tell, of course, which side of the line to be walking on.

Little bits and pieces for now, clearly.

"A... kind of race?"

[falsepretences]

"A race on horseback, over obstacles instead of on a flat track." Steeplechase, it was called, but Jordan doubted that terminology had be drummed into Aleksei's head yet.

"Do you know how to ride?"

[thepupthatmatters]

There would have been some good questions on what steeples were being chased and if they were actually some variant of fox. Another time, perhaps.

"No." He'll learn not to admit things this readily with time. "But I will learn. From the Hearts."