faderift | seeking knowledge [open]

WHO: Sansa Stark
WHAT: Settling in
WHEN: 11 Harvestmere - the end of the month
WHERE: Around Skyhold
NOTES: Feel free to find her around in another place that her log text doesn't mention, just let me know. Some implied mention of abuse/sexual assault in the Tyrion-Sansa thread but nothing explicit.

Sansa has settled into this place, so much as one can settle into a place where she's dropped from the sky. It's not a terrible one, really, and once she'd been brought to the keep called Skyhold, she'd felt a little better about things. She spends quite a lot of time in the keep. There's great libraries full of books and papers and letters and all of them have information about the place she's landed herself in; Sansa spends most of her days educating herself on the place she's wound up and reads for hours and hours until her eyes are tired and the candles have burned low.

The nights are a bit different. She has stuck close to Lord Tyrion since he's the only person she knows from Westeros, and they have found lodging close to one another. It makes her feel a bit safer, all told, and she just wants to keep close to him for the time being. If he minds it, he hasn't said anything to her, and she's happy to go on as they have.

Currently, she's curled up in a chair in one corner of the keep, one of the journals in her hands. She's trying to learn all about the politics of this place but the names and places keep running together and she doesn't know if she'll ever keep them straight. She wants, desperately, to learn them so she feels like she has a purpose but she knows it won't happen in just a few weeks or even a few moons.

"You have to be patient, Sansa," she mutters, diving back into her work.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"That one's actually not bad," Cosima says, because she can't help herself. "Have you read any of Lady Vauquelin's? They're limited in scope, but also pretty up-to-date, which is more than you can say for some of the stuff in the library."

...belatedly, with a sheepish smile. "Uh. Sorry to interrupt. Just... I had that same look for like, my first three months."

Sansa lifts her head and gives the woman a smile. She actually hasn't read the aforementioned journal so, really, it's good information. She grins a little.

"I'm just trying to learn as much as I can. I want to be knowledgeable about this place so that I know what I can offer it and know what it can offer me in exchange, if that makes sense?"

"No, yeah, it makes perfect sense. I'm still trying to do the same thing. If I ever figure it out, I'll make a welcome packet." She shifts the basket of... what seem to be baked goods to one hand, so she can offer it for whatever sort of greeting the young woman is comfortable with. Even if not everyone shakes, most people recognize a clasp as a friendly gesture, Cosima's found.

"I'm Cosima, not-quite-as-new arrival. I came through one of the rifts a few months back."

"Oh, so you are not from here either? You are one of the few I have met who is not," Sansa explains, cheeks pink at that. She's been looking for others like her, other Rifters, and she's glad to have found one.

"I am Sansa Stark. I came here from Westeros. It's not...terribly different from this place, really, but I am having to learn all new names and new political players. It's a bit daunting."

"There aren't a ton of us, who've come through. At least as far as I can tell." She smiles. "We do tend to stick together, though. Where I'm from is, uh, pretty different from here, so I had some major culture shock to deal with. Plus all the names and politics, which have the stubborn habit of being different depending on who you ask about them."

Cosima looks a little rueful, but adds, "On the plus side, everyone I've talked to has been more or less eager to share their opinion. Put enough opinions together, you might eventually get some idea of what's happening - or at least, that's what I'm trying."

"That is what I aim for as well," Sansa agrees. "I want, very much, to contribute here since they could have just left me for dead in that canyon. Did you arrive in a similar way? Dropped from the sky with no way to defend yourself?"

It had been frightening for her, yes, but Sansa is made of sterner stuff than most. She'd come through it only mildly shaken.

Cosima nods. "I mean, defending myself isn't exactly my long suit, even if I'd had something on me, but yeah. It was the middle of a demon attack, I would have been in major trouble if the Inquisition hadn't been there." She looks a bit rueful. "It was quite, um. I'd never seen a demon before, so it was an eventful introduction."

"Neither have I," Sansa agrees. "I have seen...men who are terrifying," she admits, "But never anything like that. It was neither man nor beast."

It's something like one of her nightmares, the ones she'd had when she was small and dreamed of things that weren't real. Now she dreams of things that are all too real.

"I hope I never see another one. They don't come to Skyhold, do they?"

"No, definitely not. Not since I've been here, and not that I've heard of. There are a lot of heavily armed people between us and them, here." Which is reassuring... most of the time. "I've heard there are people outside who are afraid we're demons too. Rifters. But I haven't really run into that sort of prejudice within Skyhold so far."

Sansa looks to the shard in her hand and back at Cosima, wondering how anyone could mistake someone with such a kind face for one of those horrible creatures outside.

"No, I don't think that's the case at all. I don't know what it means," she says, touching her palm lightly, "But I don't think we're like them. We can't be."

"I mean, I am firmly team 'I'm not a demon,' yeah. But people get scared by stuff they don't understand, I guess." Cosima shrugs, then adds, "Did you close your rift, when you came through? Or see someone else do it? It's a weird feeling."

"I think we closed it together. There were a few of us," Sansa explains.

"Myself, my lord husband from back in Westeros and a young man called Harry Potter. Between the three of us, we managed to close the rift off. It was...strange. I don't know how we managed it."

"Strange is right," Cosima says, settling her basket on her hip. "I've never felt anything quite like it before. I was thinking about offering to help do some research about the shards - it seems like there's a lot even the people here don't know yet."

She pauses, then adds sheepishly: "And maybe I miss research, a little."

"I was never a scholar before coming here," Sansa admits. "I was a lady of a great house, meant to be married and bear children. I had been married, even, twice over...but this place bears more investigation. It's something I must learn how to do, research, and I have set myself to the task even if I am not the best at it."

She gives Cosima a smile. "What did you research?"

Sansa looks very young to be twice-married, in Cosima's opinion, but without knowing more about the circumstances she decides to keep that thought to herself. Instead, she smiles, and said, "Something that hasn't prepared me much for politics, unfortunately. I'm not a doctor or a healer myself, but I researched things that were meant to help us better understand how our bodies work, so that down the line doctors can use that knowledge to help people."

A simplification, but not untrue.

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