faderift | [ Open ] You are a Giant Redwood, Falling on a Family of Deer

Entry tags:

[ Open ] You are a Giant Redwood, Falling on a Family of Deer

WHO: Avery and OPEN
WHAT: Another post-shardbearer-plot (this one) post! This one a slightly wider spread catch-all
WHEN: Late September/early October
WHERE: Around Skyhold
NOTES: Warning for grouchy, injured baker! Also, potential references to violence and torture and gore from said shardbearer plot

Kitchens

Anyone coming in for a visit or just down here passing by over these few weeks is probably going to be hearing a lot more banging and clattering and cursing than usual before they even reach the doors. Sounds which further investigation will reveal to be the sweet music of a very frustrated Avery trying to navigate the narrow spaces between counters in here sporting a sling on one arm and a crutch under the other. What with her junked-up shoulder and still heavily bandaged leg, y'know?

If they're lucky, they might even get the pleasure of seeing her fumble at doing simple tasks one-handed or knock over a tray of breadrolls with her crutch and transcend anger into a quantum state of silent fuming. The kitchen has never betrayed her like this before.

Healing Tents

Hopefully it won't be like that for too much longer though. And it's this hope that has Avery diligently visiting the healing tents at the appropriate intervals to have the progress of her wounds checked on. The shoulder, thankfully, is not so bad, as long as she makes sure to keep from moving it around too much for a while, but the leg... Well, it turns out giant, magical wolf bites don't really give a damn about magical healing. They're stubborn like that and refuse to go away on anyone's schedule but their own!

Stables

During those moments when Avery doesn't have reason to visit the healing tents but has been shooed out of the kitchen to do this thing called... relaxing? (She thinks she might have heard of it once, but she really has no idea what such a strange and foreign concept could truly be. It sounds like a trap.) She usually wanders down to the stables to check in with some of her favorite horses and maybe have a go at brushing out their manes and tails while she's at it. Hopefully without being disturbed by anyone, but everyone knows how likely that is to work out for her.

Training Grounds

Though lately she's been spending a little time watching the soldiers train as well. She's not a terrible fighter herself, but most of what she knows is about how to make your average bully or mugger eat their own teeth. If she'd had real battle training like these people, would things have gone differently on that last mission? She can't help but wonder about it as she silently observes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's been... well. Cosima spent the first while after they got back in the healing tents dealing with the nasty after-effects of being experimented upon. Perhaps ironically, though, she's physically more or less fine now that she's been fed and her broken arm has been seen to. She feels weirdly guilty about that, considering the state of Avery. (And other. And the state of Ruby's still-unoccupied bed.)

She's allowed to be up as long as she doesn't "overexert herself," whatever that means. She doesn't know how lyrium convalescence is supposed to go, really. But she needs something to do.

She winces, as she hears something clatter to floor. When she arrives properly and sees the silent fuming, she observes a minute, then says, "What do you need me to do?" It's not a favor, at least not a favor for Avery; Cosima has two hands and a mind that desperately needs occupying.

(Neither of them ever talk about nightmares. It's probably better that way.)

She wants to be mad. Wants to rage and shout and throw things. But it won't do her any good, and it'll just make more mess that she can't clean up and will have to ask someone else to take care of for her. Which is basically the exact opposite of what Avery wants right now, since it's feeling useless like this that's getting to her so badly.

It takes her a few seconds to say anything at all after she hears the question and turns in Cosima's direction, as she tries to put a leash on her temper right now. "Can you pick that up for me? I can't really..." She trails off and motions toward the floor.

"Sure, no problem." The rolls, living up to their name, have taken off in several directions, so she gets down to salvage what she can and clean up the rest. "I don't know if it'd be more frustrating to try and direct someone else, but I'm happy to peel or chop or... whatever, too," she adds, from the floor where she's stretched out trying to reach a roll that made it all the way under a low shelf.

"Do you peel and chop and whatever a lot?" Avery asks after a moment of surprise at the offer, though she supposes she really shouldn't be with this one.

She also leans against the counter and holds her crutch out in Cosima's direction, in case she wants to use it to reach that last, pesky roll.

"I mean, I'm not like, a professional. But where I'm from, if you want decent food, you cook it yourself. Well," she says, after a brief pause, "unless you're totally loaded, I guess, then you pay someone else to do it. But I learned how to make, like, stir fry and risotto and stuff to keep myself fed."

A slightly longer pause, then: "I don't know if Thedas has the ingredients for me to teach you to make either of those things, but both do involve chopping vegetables up." They might have something like orzo. Based on what Cosima has seen, she's a little more skeptical about soy sauce.

She takes the offered crutch, after a moment, because as entertaining as her reaching for that last roll doubtless is... she's not going to get it.

Rubbing at the her brow, at the headache she can feel trying to form there, Avery slowly explains, "I was just about to make some soup, but maybe we can try those later. I've been a bit off meat since..." Since what was basically a giant balloon made of people popped directly on top of her?

"Soup's good." Even as a habitual vegetarian, Cosima could sympathize. If they'd talked about it, which they haven't. She straightens up, mess at least contained, even if the rolls may not be salvageable. "I used to make myself tomato soup and grilled cheese when I needed comfort food. Does Thedas have grilled cheese? It's just melted cheese between slices of toasted bread."

Oh, they haven't talked, but if Cosima was even marginally aware of what was going on around her back in those dungeons, well... Let's just say, when Avery left her to go find Ruby she had a little blood on her shoulder and leg. When she came back she was covered in it head to toe.

"Sure," she answers lightly. "Suppose every world's a bit of bread and cheese. But we've got all this winter squash coming in now, I was thinking I'd do something with that for the soup. Butternut maybe."

"Aw, nice." Cosima's demeanor has been dampened since they returned, but the smile is genuine enough. "I love squash. Something a little creamy and warm."

The truth is, she doesn't know how to help Avery - or herself, really - but aggressive normality seems as good a tactic as anything. Offer practical help, keep them both occupied. It's not enough, but it'll have to do.

"You can talk me through what you need, okay?"

Better than standing and cursing at a dropped pan, at least.

Needing help in the kitchen isn't Avery's idea of normal, but keeping her mind focused definitely helps on some level. And, y'know, MAYBE she cares about whether it's helpful for Cosima as well. Shut up, don't make a big deal about it.

Anyway, she nods at the assessment of her soup selection. Excellent. Glad everyone is in agreement. "You ever peeled one before? It's not so easy as a potato."

"Okay, don't laugh, but in our markets you usually buy it peeled already. And in chunks." She misses her local co-op. She'd even take a Whole Foods. "But I'm definitely willing to give it a go."

She's carved a pumpkin, at least. How hard can it be...?

"Right," Avery responds, eyebrow raised. "Well, there should be a few in that bag there if you want to grab one."

Cosima selects a likely-looking squash and brings it to the table. "Cooking is basically science, you know," she says, lampooning herself at least a little. "Or so I'd find myself saying in the middle of a recipe that was more complicated than I thought."

She lets out an amused and slightly perplexed huff of breath, before shaking her head and saying, "Alright. Let's see if you can science this one up then. The skin's quite thick, and the size and shape a bit awkward, so we'll take in stages. First the tip, then the shaft, then the base."

Get your jokes out now.

Cosima looks wry, and several jokes clearly occur to her, but she either doesn't settle on one or decides that discretion is the better part of not making dick jokes.

"So I assume we're discarding the stem part. Then cut it..." she points, "here, where the neck meets the body?"

Impressive self-control.

"Exactly," Avery confirms. "Though you could also cut it after peeling the neck so you can use the body as a handhold and keep your fingertips attached."

"Fingertips are great, I'm in favor of keeping all ten." She sets to work. Taking care means she's going much slower than Avery would probably manage on her own, but she also seems unlikely to hurt herself or to waste a great deal of the squash through sloppiness.

"You know, frustrating as this is, I kind of envy you having actual work to go back to. I've been doing things, but it's not like anyone else cares whether I stop or not."

Avery approves. No need to rush it if she's new at this and get herself hurt.

Briefly, her gaze flicks up to Cosima's face, but then back down to knife to make sure she isn't about to hurt herself. "If you're looking to be helpful, there's plenty that needs doing around here. Maybe even things they haven't thought of yet. What is it that you do back home?"

Cosima pauses, deciding how to put it. "Research," she settles on. "In the broadest sense, I'm trying to work out how life is influenced by the world around it. It's like... say you have identical twins, right? But one of them in raised in... Kirkwall and one is raised in Halamshiral for some reason, and they don't have any contact with each other. Will there be physical differences in the two sisters as adults? Except I work on a way, way smaller scale than full human beings."

"Maybe you should talk to Helisma then," Avery suggests after a moment. "She does research as well. Mostly on how people and animals are affected by the rifts, I think. But other stuff too."

She motions toward the scraps from Cosima's peeling of the squash. "When people out on missions find any bits of demons and red lyrium and that sort of thing left behind, they bring it to her to study. She figures out how they work, and how we can protect ourselves against them better."

Cosima brightens a little almost despite herself. "Yeah? I mean, I knew there had to be researchers with the Inquisition, but I wasn't sure they'd be interested in help from a Rifter."

And she'd been unsure how much science she would or could share, but Maris had shifted her position on that fairly firmly.

Besides. She's always believed science should be collaborative. Too much Clone Club may have pushed her a little the other way.

"Trust me. She won't be afraid of you or anything."

Awkwardly, Avery scratches at the back of her neck. "She can't be. She's Tranquil. A mage the templars cut off from her magic because she was too big a risk of demon possession or... something. I've never asked her for details, but... when that happens, the magic isn't the only thing cut off.

"She doesn't have emotions anymore. At all. It's a bit unsettling at first, but she does a lot of good for us still."

Her expression dims a bit. "I've had it described to me, though I haven't met anyone Tranquil yet in person. It sounds unnerving, but it's not her fault, either."

Cosima is still careful, about what she says about the templars or anything to do with them. But she can't help but feeling that the two wrongs of demon possession and Tranquility couldn't make a right, regardless of the context she's still learning. She's more inclined to be compassionate to the Tranquil than afraid of them.

"It's not unwilling, usually," she comments. "Just so you know."

Avery's heard of Circle Towers where Tranquility was used as a punishment, but what little she knows of the process is that that's the exception rather than the rule, and generally frowned upon even if the templars don't seem to care quite enough to do something about it. "I mean, sometimes it is, but it's not meant to be. I'm no expert or nothing, but from what I've heard, Circle mages eventually have to prove they're strong enough not to get possessed. Not to be a danger.

"Being Tranquil is supposed to be their choice if they think they'll fail and become abominations."

Honestly, on some level it bothers her as well, but when the other options are killing them or risking them becoming monsters and endangering who knows how many lives... It's a difficult call.

"I mean that's... fair, I guess, but my understanding was that the other choices are generally death or possession and then death. Is that not true?" It's an honest question; it's a charged topic, and not one she expects anyone to be neutral on. But she's also open to the fact that her information so far is limited enough to tilt one way or the other.

"I can see why someone would pick it, but I can't imagine anyone would want that choice in the first place."

Kitchens

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject