OTA| Open

[domesticaffairs]

WHO: Byerly Vorrutyer
WHERE: At Byerly's house on the front porch
WHEN: When the auroras are out and about
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: None yet
STATUS: Open

---

Wrapped up in his pea coat along with new black fur-lined hat and gloves (thank goodness for all the gifts he's received. What was the holiday called again? Not Winterfair as he's used to), Byerly leans forward on the railing of the porch to his house, bottle of red wine at his feet as he looks upwards towards the green auroras dancing across the otherwise inky dark night sky.

It's very cold out tonight--not typically a night one would just stand outside to watch the auroras. Byerly's cheeks are tinged from cold, though there's a cheery fire burning in the fireplace in the window behind him. This cold is about how cold it gets where they are in Vorbarr Sultana back home, snow and all. It's something he's used to if not displeased with the thought of it--though how can he complain when he looks his best in clothing designed for cooler weather? Unfortunately, he doesn't have many options here.

And so it's while mourning his closet back on Barrayar that he bends to grab the bottle and takes a small swig straight from it--he's only just opened it. He turns towards movement out of the corner of his eye.

"You don't look nearly drunk enough to be outside in this weather."

† monstra evenerunt mihi

[ad_dicendum]

WHO: Gaius Gracchus
WHERE: Outside the Inn
WHEN: During the aurora event, around Jan 6
OPEN TO: Anyone willing to try talking to the guy who knows barely any English
WARNINGS: Slightly squicky injury reference
STATUS: OPEN

---

The gods are speaking.

It is hard to look at the sky at night and not think that. Gaius has never been a man to let omens stand in the way, but twice now, he and his brother had continued their work under ill-favored birds, and it had ended badly for them. Tiberius, he's been told, had split his toe crossing the threshold as he set out for the forum on the day he'd been killed. And the omens in Junonia had been nothing but bad, wolves stealing the boundary markers, winds breaking the standards and scattering the sacrifices, and he's been wondering ever since his return to Rome if those omens weren't for the colony, but for him. Nothing had gone right for him since Junonia. He'd lost his support, he'd lost the elections (or had them rigged against him) and he'd found his enemy elected to the consulship.

And now here the skies are afire at night, blazing in greens and blues and colors he's never known the night sky could have. It can surely bode no good to this strange village he's found himself in that the gods have set their aethereal flame every night for more than a week now. It can bode no good, but that hasn't stopped Gaius from going out to stare up into the dancing light and wonder at it. Wonder, and marvel, too, for all his fear.

"O, Iuppiter," he murmurs, the start of some half-formed evocation to the sky god, king of the gods of Rome: tonight, the skies are brighter than ever.

He's wrapped up in his coat, but the Roman is standing in the middle of the path that runs past the inn and paying no attention to the weather, or to anyone who may approach: instead, he's entirely absorbed in the sky.