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[Open] But finally one day roses fade away
WHO: The Medicine Man and You!
WHAT: A catch-all for March/Drakonis
WHEN: Drakonis
WHERE: Skyhold and beyond!
NOTES: Will add as necessary
WHAT: A catch-all for March/Drakonis
WHEN: Drakonis
WHERE: Skyhold and beyond!
NOTES: Will add as necessary
Old Aching Bones - The Baths
The hotsprings had been a pleasant surprise - a little reminiscent of home, for whatever measure one could consider the winding road (or the overgrown wooded path when one took a wrong turn) home. It had struck him that Skyhold had, in a way, become the closest thing he ever had to a place to belong - at least with regards to the duration he spent in one general area.
As he set aside his clothes and pinned up his hair, it dawned that he may have to rethink how he was going to adapt to this strange new world and how that meant changing his methods. Sinking into the water, he stretched and flexed his hand where the Rift Shard had lodged itself. It was what tethered him to this Inquisition and all the trappings thereof which limited his options. He couldn't stray too far from other shard-bearers unless he had a nice stash of opium to keep the pain in check.
That made things... tricky.
He leaned back, letting the hot water drain the tension from his muscles and bones. It occurred that one possible solution might be actually working with others.
Which meant giving other people some modicum of trust.
His nose wrinkled at the very thought. How dreadful. Nothing good ever came of that.
Raw Materials - Outside Skyhold
The Medicine Seller was testing just how far he could go before the pain in his hand grew unbearable. The shard, it seemed, kept him on a relatively short leash, but he could at least get out from the stone walls of Skyhold and enjoy the clean mountain air.
There was another purpose to his wandering aside from just it being relatively nice out. The warm winds carried the promise of spring and a few brave, early blooms were making an appearance in the valley below. It was time to see the natural habitat of some of the new herbs he'd be working with in the days to come.
Elfroot seemed capable of growing in just about every condition imaginable. He'd stocked up already on that just by wandering along the perimeter of the market place. He couldn't go a few paces without a few shoots of it peeking up.
On these little outings, he could sometimes be found following a mountain creek to a clear pond, traversing its muddy shore, picking blood lotus and spindelweed. Other times, he could be found sprawled out comfortably in the boughs of a dogwood tree that sported a few early blossoms - perhaps he'd be enjoying a smoke from his pipe or just the simple fragrance from the tree.
A Strange Stranger - Skyhold
The Medicine Seller was like a very large house cat in both habit and demeanor. He was simultaneously curious and aloof, and had a tendency of vanishing for long amounts of time, only to turn up when he wanted to buy a warm meal.
He moved quietly, his wanderings around the fortress seemingly aimless. Sometimes he would stop dead in his tracks and stare unblinkingly at a crack in the wall or at a corner of a ceiling. Occasionally he'd pause to watch the training in the courtyard, or eavesdrop on gossiping servants to entertain himself.
Sometimes he wouldn't stare at or listen to anything in particular, but instead mutter wordlessly to the strange jeweled blade he sometimes kept tucked in that ludicrous sash.
He didn't seem to have any regular sleep cycle, but then that was centuries of traveling that had left him with that particular issue. Rather, he tended to catnap for a few hourse wherever a warm fire and relative absence of hustle and bustle presented itself.
And sometimes he'd be sitting comfortably, legs dangling off the side of the battlements as he gazed out over the Frostbacks. Despite his mask-like expression, there was a sense of melancholy as he took a long breath from his pipe.
raw materials
It also forced Waver to continue to be outside, which he wasn't happy about in the still melting snow. Sitting on the ground drawing when everything was cold or wet was no fun.
But it was during a smoke break of his own while mapping that Waver looked up to notice the Medicine Seller.
"Comfortable up there?"
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Maybe he just got blissed out just by being outside? Who knows.
"It is..." He sought a description for his perch.
"...Not as damp."
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"Good view, at least?"
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"You are welcome to join me up here if you wish to dry your feet."
It wasn't as though the tree were particularly tall, after all.
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"And I just lit up, so you'd be waiting until I finished my smoke at the very least."
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Out of context it would have seemed a very odd question. One would expect something about aching legs or feet.
But they were, both of them, Rifters.
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He held the map-in-progress above his head, as if the Medicine Seller could actually read what was writing down.
"I'm charting the changes of intensity of that pain."
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"To see how far this leash goes."
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"Where have you covered so far?"
The idea of not having to walk around Skyhold twenty thousand times was an excellent notion, really.
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Give or take the occasional boulder or herd of wild druffalo that he dutifully went around.
"The ache is only dull. Less so since your arrival."
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"Interesting. I suppose that is a factor in why the feeling is so minimal within Skyhold itself."
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"Do you know where these shards came from?"
That may explain why they reacted to being parted from their brethren.
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And if there was any being done, Waver wasn't in the right circles to learn about it.
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"Whatever they are, it is no easy feat to open ways to other worlds."
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Sure, you could jump into Thedas. But leaving? That was uneven, and Waver found it suspect.
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"Even if we succeeded in opening a way back, there is no guarantee we would survive a return trip."
He wondered, briefly, how many Rifters may not have made it through. Or if they had, how many had appeared hundreds of miles from the Inquisition, their hands a rose of blinding white agony? How many had appeared before hostile elements?
It was not a pleasant thing to contemplate.
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Fuck, Waver's head was starting to hurt from craning upwards to talk. Looking down at the cigarette in his hand, he gave a sigh. It was three quarters of the way done, he could stub it out without any guilt. He dropped the thing down on the ground and then stamped it out to ensure the embers were put out for good.
"Finding a way to navigate between worlds would require a lot of people willing to take risks. What branches did you use to get up there? This angle is proving to be uncomfortable."
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He smiled a little to himself, as though the theory of the Fade unraveling because a few plucky outsiders wanted to go home was mildly amusing.
It was. But only in theory.
"There is a lower branch a little ways around to get started on."
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Waver imagined that come the autumn, there'd be the satisfying sound of crunching leaves under his feet. As it were, the bare forest floor made no noise at all, and truthfully, it felt far too silent here.
Upon finding the branch in question, Waver began to make his way up very, very cautiously. His upper body strength was improving but not great, but it wasn't too high of a climb either.
"And absolutely. Tearing even more holes in the universe could cause this whole coming through the rift nonsense to occur elsewhere, where there's no framework for understanding what's happening. Then you accuse someone of being a witch or something, and chaos ensues."
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Statement of the century there, Medicine Man.
"Though it would seem the Rifts do not surpass only distance but time as well."
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His flat tone belied some actual astonishment at this revelation. Universe wasn't a particularly big word, but it had some rather big connotations. The plural was mind-boggling.
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"But I see no reason to simply limit things to worlds." Besides, his home system of magic accounted for parallel universes.
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Still, he couldn't exactly claim a broad world-view. He was well-traveled in a respect, but outside an island nation that had been largely isolated for a good third of his life was a much bigger world he'd only glimpsed at through stories and foreign traders. It was likely Waver knew a great deal more on these matters than he did.
He finally noticed that Waver was a bit stumped.
"To your left," he said, gesturing to the branch in question.
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"I guess that's a matter of what your perspective is on this kind of theory. I'll admit, the only reason I said universes is because we do have parallel universe theory within my school of magecraft."
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