datadiving | into the woods

His mouth hangs open and he doesn't move from the tree's edge at first, taking in every inch of the clearing that he can see. It's gorgeous here, well worth the trip even if he doesn't get anything out of the witch that may or may not live in the cottage. It's almost a shame that anyone lives here at all, really. How wonderful would it be to have this as a hideaway of his own?

The thought brings a smile to his lips and he lets out a giddy little laugh, a spring in his step as he hurries over to the door, giving it a few raps and waiting.

At first, it seems like nobody's here to answer the door at all. And then, perfectly ordinarily, the door is opened by a masked stranger who...well, he certainly dresses well, at any rate. His clothes are hard-wearing, but cut and crafted to suit him.

"I admit, I didn't expect to have such a prestigious visitor," he says, his voice amused. "What brings a prince the land loves to my doorstep, I wonder?"

(When he was young, his mother had taken him to the public celebration of a prince's birthday. "Your paths will cross," she had said to him as he grasped her hand tightly, still afraid of the crowd. "I know not more than that, but I need nothing else to know that your life will be a surprising one."

The words had stuck.)

"Curiosity, mostly," Avery replies. He reaches up to pull down his hood, figuring it won't matter any seeing how the man already knows who he is. "You're the guy, right? The witch who lives in the woods?" His cheeks hurt from grinning. It's the first time they have in a long, long while.

"I mean, it looks like it, but..." He supposes the man could just be some random hermit with questionable choices of living spaces.

"What were you expecting, I wonder?" He still sounds amused, and a little teasing. "A spirit? A fae? A monster, even?"

Then he bows. "But I am the witch. You are correct. And fortunate, too." He doesn't elaborate on this at all.

"Would you like to come in? I'm afraid that I don't have much ready. I wasn't expecting so noble a visitor."

Avery snorts at that, waving a hand dismissively. "Just because I'm used to luxury doesn't mean I need it," he assures the man. "But yeah, I wouldn't mind coming in."

A pause.

"Uh. Wait. Do I have to pay for coming here to sate my curiosity?" He honestly isn't sure. Witches did deal with the intangible after all.

That gets a sharp laugh, as he steps aside to let Avery in. "If I was another kind of person, perhaps! But you need not pay, unless you desperately desire what I offer."

Those were the terms he had set, with the forest, with himself. If someone needs or wants him, they will find him; the forest will part for them, lead them to his door. In all other matters, he's nearly impossible to track.

The house itself is warm and cosy. It's relaxing, most of all; even if the decorations range from the ordinary to the macabre (there's plenty of bones, apparently just for ornamentation), it's easy to feel unthinkingly uncomfortable here.

"Feel free to sit anywhere. Make yourself comfortable." Woven rugs are draped over a couch that has clearly seen plenty of use; a chair or two set aside for a table collecting books and papers. Even the floor seems amenable enough, what with the brightly woven rug that decorates it. (Just don't look at the patterns too hard, or think about if it moved or not.)

Ekkehardt himself is content to arrange himself in a chair, draping over it in an almost catlike way. Watchful and angular.

"Mostly curiosity brought you here, you said? Might I ask if there was anything else?"

Avery doesn't bother to sit. Not yet. There are too many things to look around at. Some send shivers up his spine, others he tilts his head this way and that to try and figure out how they work.

He still can't quite manage to examine the rug for long.

"Well, that depends... They say you take payment and do things for people. What sort of things and what's the payment scale like." He lifts his head up, eyes wide as a thought occurs to him. "Wait. Do you pay taxes? You are paying your taxes right?" He leans his head forward staring at the man intensely.

There's a pause.

"Nobody told me I had to pay taxes," Ekkehardt says, after a moment, a bit thrown by the sheer mundanity of the request. "And by the nature of my work, I tned to operate on a barter system, so coins are in short supply."

He has plenty of resources, of course. But they don't translate into coin evenly, or - for the more esoteric ones - much at all.

"But if it's for kingdom records, I can try my best," he adds, after a moment of thought.

"Barter system..." Avery muses, rubbing his chin. He shuts his eyes, brows knitting. "As I recall from my textbooks, farmers would give a portion of their crop as tax. But that doesn't really count in this case, does it? What do you usually give out?"

He supposes a certain number of free services would be equal in this case, but he doesn't know enough about this man to know how well that would go over.

"Oh, and what's your name, anyway? You know me, apparently, but I don't have anything to call you besides... you know, 'witch' or 'man,' and both sound kind of rude."

"Names are power in my line of work. Witch is a fine title, but since you've come here alone, I suppose I should give you a welcoming gift." He flicks his fingers and the door closes, a red spark of magic running through the threshold and tracing a line around the windows before vanishing.

"My name is Ekkehardt. I won't ask for yours unless you wish to give it. As for what I give out, I perform services. Healing, medicine. Blessings. The doing and undoing of curses." He leans back in his chair a little, settling himself more comfortably. "The occasional hunt."

He tenses as the spark of magic makes its way through the room, unsure what exactly it is. Briefly, very briefly, he wonders if he's made a mistake, and if he'll ever be able to leave again.

"Hunt, huh?" he continues, trying to sound casual. "That include kidnappings?"

Ekkehardt's eyebrows raise, and he leans forward in his chair. "It's not often I get asked to spirit someone away, but it's not beyond my skill." Sometimes for a day, sometimes for a year, sometimes forever. To a place in their memories, or a place where they are a stranger, or simply somewhere where they can no longer be hurt.

"Are you looking to remove someone from your presence, then? A troublesome advisor or courtier? A rival? Someone you hate - or love? You wouldn't be the first." He watches the man in front of him with an intense gaze.

"Huh?" He holds his hands up. "No, no! Nothing like that. I was thinking about me, actually."

He wonders why that's so surprising to him. A prince versed in politics would surely understand why other people would desire such.

The answer leaves Ekkehardt completely silent for a moment, his surprise clear on his face.

"And for what purpose?" He's much less intense, now; the power and intensity that he wears as easily as another would wear a cloak disrupted, tossed aside. It's clearer that he's someone who matches Avery's age, more or less, rather than some kind of ageless being who looks like a young man.

Truth be told, Avery wasn't expecting Ekkehardt to be so... human. He'd joked about whether or not Avery had been expecting a spirit or the fae, but after all the stories that he'd heard, the truth was that that was closer to what he was expecting than anything else.

This is a man. A man his age, wise and strange and very, very human.

It takes him a moment to reconcile that, another to explain. "Honestly? I'm sick of politics. I'd rather not be a prince at all, but I can't exactly stop that on my own."

"Very well." He can't help but crack a slight smile at the sheer recklessness of his impulse. "And have you thought about what happens when you disappear? The space you leave behind to be filled, and the lengths they might go to in order to rescue a lost heir?"

Kidnapping someone of such high station is no simple task, not if it's to be done properly. He can't risk even the idea of a hunt that disrupts the peace of the forest he loves, through fire and steel.

He looks at him, his eyes steady; that intense, ancient gaze turned on him once more. "Are you willing to abandon not only your home, but perhaps even your old life?"

Is he?

Avery knows what he's doing is dangerous. Even if he ignores the fact that he doesn't know this man and doesn't know if he can trust him, even if he only has just the barest idea of what it is he's getting into, it's nothing compared to the social ramifications of it all. He's playing with fire here, and it's impossible to tell how many people will get burned in the process.

But then he thinks of his father, puppeteered by nobles, dancing for their amusement, barely able to think for himself, and he meets Ekkehardt's eyes with steely resolve.

"Screw my old life."

That gets a laugh out of him. "Very well."

He steeples his fingers, his eyes ablaze with crimson light and his face in shadow. For the first time, he looks more spirit than human.

"False death, or false life? To be grieved by all those who knew you, or to be a stranger to them? I can do either. Or perhaps you want something else...

What shall it be?"

Avery doesn't reply, staring into the crimson light, the shadows of the room (or perhaps the shadow of something more) slipping over to devour Ekkehardt's face.

"You're kind of over-dramatic, aren't you?"

He huffs, the light receding somewhat but not snuffing out entirely.

"It's not as if you're making an easy decision," he says, settling back into his chair. The shadows still linger. "If I were to kidnap you ordinarily, who's to say they wouldn't burn down the forest to get you back? What you ask of me is difficult. You should treat it with the respect such a change in your life deserves, though you don't have to treat me with the same."

"I know that!" Avery insists, going a little red in the face. "It's not like the choices don't make sense. It's just..." It's the way he said it, he supposes? It's impressive, sure, but...

(But maybe he's a little more nervous about all of this than he thought. His mouth does seem a little dry.)

"False death," he decides after a moment. "They'll grieve, but royalty dies all the time. It'll be easier for the kingdom to deal with than a disappearance."

"I suppose that's fair enough," Ekkehardt muses. There's a slight frown at 'royalty dies all the time' - he was old enough to remember a funeral, where the whole kingdom grieved, though not who it was for - but otherwise, he doesn't have any reaction.

"And where will you go, afterwards? I at least have a responsibility to see you to your destination." If he wants to shed his old life so badly, surely he would rather leave the land he was born in, too. So his thinking goes.

He shrinks into himself slightly. "I, uh... I didn't exactly get that far in planning." He wasn't even sure it was possible.

He stares at him for a moment, and then sighs. The shadows recede entirely, the fire in his eyes burns out to embers, leaving him human-looking once more.

"And you're certain you want to do this." He's not just doing this on impulse, or on a whim? Something he's going to regret later?

"Look, I didn't even think it was possible before now, okay? Hard to think of what you're going to do after when you don't even think step one is going to work!" he's quick to retort. "I want this. I'm sick of politics. I'm sick of being told to shut up and smile. I'm sick and tired of everyone and their brother thinking they're clever and discreet whenever they try and make a tool out of me. I want out."

into the woods

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