stripebacked | open post!

[A wedding may have come and gone, but the rents still needed to be collected. Except now, Claire felt safer. Protected. Silly words he had said that night, but sweet all the same. She has his name, now. No longer Claire Beauchamp--or Randall, for that matter--but Claire Fraser. It's a name she says over and over in her mind, astounded at how easily it fits. Claire Fraser. Jamie doesn't seem to mind it overmuch when her mind drifts and she catches herself staring off into nothingness, or staring right at him. And she's not terribly embarrassed by it anymore, either.

A cold, rainy night makes the roads too muddy for the horses to traverse and so Dougal diverts them to a small inn that hardly has enough room outside for the horses. There's grumbling about who gets rooms, because there's certainly not enough for everyone. Dougal and Ned, of course. And the married couple begrudgingly gets sent to the more private of bedrooms, though upon opening the door and looking at their home for the night, Claire isn't impressed.]

You're barely going to fit into that bed yourself, let alone the two of us. [She clicks her tongue as she takes the candle the inn keep had given her and goes to light the others in the room.]

[There's another festival happening in Wyver.

Surely they must have jobs they tend to. Lives. Day to day activities that are interrupted by these constant festivals, and yet no one ever seems inconvenienced. It would drive her mad if she lived here, but luckily, Rosalind is only a visitor, and so can observe it all with a snobbish and amused air.

God only knows what they're meant to be celebrating this week; the moon or the stars or simply still being alive, but what it boils down to a deliberate excess of everything. Drugs and alcohol flow freely, passed out in little cups and colorful tabs. She's already had to decline twice, but now that she's entered a bar and gotten herself a whiskey people seem content to leave her be.

Sex is rampant as well, but that's little surprise. Something's in the air tonight, something that leaves everyone heated and reaching for one another. It's hardly the first time Rosalind's experienced something like this in Wyver, but it still leaves her squirming, pressing her legs tight together and ignoring the ache there.

She won't throw herself at a stranger. But she might amiable towards spending the evening with a friend, and perhaps she will, once this is over with. Perhaps she'll call one of her gentleman callers, or--

Oh. Oh, hello, and she turns, eyes focusing on the man who just walked in. She knows that man, that's--]

Jamie!

[She calls it out, pleased to see him here. She's not the only one who travels between cities, but she is in the minority there. It's nice to see a friend from Olympia here.]

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the one where it's a nysa au;