faderift | [Open] But finally one day roses fade away

Entry tags:

[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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The shard obscures some things, but not the ache and hurt of wanting freedom. Which is the single fastest way to draw Cole's attention, a feeling of being trapped and wanting out.

It doesn't pass his mind that he's being inappropriate when he appears next to the pool of water, crouched and hunkered down, fingers curling over the lip of stone to lean on his hands.

"If you stay with others with shards, you can go further."

He's still got that ridiculous hat.

It didn't occur to the Medicine Seller that Cole was being inappropriate either. He was quite used to baths being a social thing even if he weren't the most sociable person around.

He cracked open one eye open. It was, indeed, Cole who had partially confirmed what he was dreading.

Other people tended to get in the way. Worse if those people happened to be the sorts who didn't bother to ask questions and just cut down anything remotely threatening.

So very troublesome.

"That is ... interesting."

Perhaps it worked a bit like adding more rope to a line.

"But what are they anchored to?"

"Not everyone's like that," Cole replies promptly. "Though some people are."

He's becoming more attuned to this individual, which means picking out bits of him through the aura of the shard. Sorry about that.

"... I don't know. I don't understand. It's anchored to you. And itself."

He rocks on his feet, fingers tapping on the stone lip between his feet.

That was, indeed, true. The Medicine Seller knew it as a matter of fact, but it was tricky to unravel many centuries of dealing with the dregs of human greed and ambition. Such things left him a little cagey where people were concerned, however warranted his feelings were.

Still, he couldn't sulk about it. It was a nuisance and it meant he couldn't simply go or do as he pleased, but he could play nice if he had to.

"So there is no central force to hold it."

If he understood Cole correctly, it was less like a leash and more like an elastic. It could stretch only so far in one direction or another, and the more directions it was pulled, the more strain it endured.

Snapping it would probably fall somewhere in the vicinity of 'bad'.

"Was it my thoughts that brought you here?"

Cole had mentioned something about liking to help - but then again, maybe spirits here also liked hot springs. At home they had not, by any means, been a pastime solely of humans. Perhaps the same was true of Thedas.

"Not how you're thinking." In Cole's mind, the anchor was the centre and each of them was the anchor. The whole wanted to stay together, even scattered as it was.

He shrugs a little, still watching the soft ripples of the water. "Yes? Mostly. You're more- familiar. Other Rifters are so different, distant. You make more sense. And you were upset about not being able to be free. That matters a lot. I've been trapped. It's-"

He shivers slightly. "No. Not trapped."

That was interesting to know. The Medicine Seller could likely guess the number of factors as to why, but he was loathe to give any kind of voice to them beyond what his own work encompassed.

And 'upset' was a terribly strong word. One he was almost as loathe to admit to as any other small, personal details like who and what he was.

Cole's shudder elicited something resembling concern in the Medicine Seller. Something about being trapped seemed to deeply disturb the young man.

"...'Not trapped'?"

Cole manages to smother the keen at the rush of emotion trapped brings, from both the other man and his own feelings on it.

"Trapped is bad. Small space, dark space, pressing in, silence smothering speech and sight and surety." He hunches in more, trembling again. "Cole died in a cell. They trapped him and left him."

A slow death in a cell. And judging by this Cole's appearance, the other Cole must have been young. A terrible memory, to be sure.

The Medicine Seller was not generally a man prone to sympathy or compassion. In many cases, people brought suffering on themselves. His job was to clean up the mess. Oftentimes it was very difficult to resist the temptation to say 'Well, maybe if you hadn't murdered a woman in cold blood and threw her off a bridge you wouldn't have a demon ghost hellbent on tearing your face off now would you?'. But it would do little good. There was no helping some people.

This was not the Case for Cole. There was little anyone could do that would justify chucking them in a cage and leaving them to rot. And that seemed to left its effect on the Compassion spirit.

Much like Tamaki's fate had left its mark on the Medicine Seller.

"Was that the Regret that drew you to him?"

Not a day over twenty, if that. Cole still had the gangliness of not having finished growing into his limbs combined with the gaunt looks of Cole's death.

Cole's fingers rubs over the stones slowly, feeling the heat seeping up into his bones. "He was alone. Scared. He'd been alone for so long and he just wanted someone there, someone to care. I couldn't help him in the Fade, so I came through to sit with him. Hold his hand and let him know he wasn't alone while he died."

People's behaviour often mystified him. He was fairly certain though that people's behaviour mystified other people.

Spirits generally made sense - they had their compulsions, odd as they were, but you could predict them. Cole was a spirit of Compassion - he was compelled to quell others suffering, just as an Abura Akago was compelled to drink oil from a lantern.

He probably should have left his questions at that - Cole was no demon or abomination so there was no reason for the Medicine Seller to pry.

But he had habits and compulsions of his own.

"Why did they put him in a cell?"

Cole shuffles back a tiny bit, looking more uncertain. Looking, maybe, a little uneasy. Afraid. But he still pushes on, doesn't look, but pushes on.

"Because he was bad. He was an apostate. He'd never been in a circle and when they came to take him, he was scared and ran from them, set fire to the bushes to stop them chasing him."

He leans forward. "He wasn't bad," he whispers, like this is a great secret. "They just scared him. Men only ever hurt him."

The Medicine Seller's face was normally mask-like, impartial, with only subtle changes that barely registered much of an expression at all.

Now... now his features were strained; eyes narrowed, mouth pulled tight and thin, the tips of his fangs peeking out from the corners of his lips like an animal about to bare its teeth.

This rare expression wasn't directed at Cole - his gaze had flickered away from the young man for a brief moment.

He'd heard mutterings about the Templars' treatment of mages, and though he really didn't much approve of the Circles, most of the mages he'd talked to seemed to find them necessary, if in need of improvements.

Perhaps one of those improvements should be not leaving people to rot in prison just for setting some shrubberies on fire, the Medicine Seller thought bitterly.

"And so Cole's Regret became your own," he said, his face relaxing back into something more neutral

"But it did not consume you as it would other spirits."

"Cole wanted another life, where he wasn't a mage."

And Compassion had become Cole. Maybe because of that. Maybe because of another reason, of the fleeing soul confusing the spirit, the spirit simply trying too hard to understand and help.

"I forgot who I was. I thought I was Cole. Now I know I'm not. But I have his memories. There was- Rhys. He helped me. Helped me to become Compassion again, even though he didn't know he was doing it."

The Medicine Seller was fairly certain Cole might have settled on having a life at all, but if there was a choice to be had he couldn't blame the man.

"Mages do seem to face their shares of troubles," he said, as he regained his composure and his expression settled back into its usual neutral state.

"You seem to be many things all at once. Was Rhys a friend to you?"

"Mage, not mage, things are difficult for lots of people." Especially now, when people openly war in towns and on the streets.

One finger dipped into the water, trailing back and forth softly. "I-" He looked up, slightly lost. "He was everything. Once. When I had nothing, he was everything."

"How true," he agreed, leaning back to relax again. Despite how, for all outward appearances, he seemed recumbent and close to dozing off, he was actually quite alert.

He was a master of multi-tasking, and was more than capable of listening to Cole and letting the water soothe the aches the day had brought him.

"A little more than a friend then."

He wondered how a spirit of this world would conceptualize friendship. Cole was, certainly, more complicated than his brethren.

He cracked open one eye, glancing at Cole stirring the water around.

"You can have a bath too, if you like. No one will stop you."

"Yes. More than a friend. I don't have words for what he meant."

When no one could see him, Rhys saw and Rhys cared. Enough that Cole had overcome his fear of Templars and people to follow him and help him. Protect him.

"Why would I have a bath? I don't sweat like mortals do."

"It may become easier to put words to your thoughts and feelings the longer you live on this plane," he remarked, eyes drifting close again.

"My apologies - you seemed interested in the water. Though you may not sweat, there are some in my world who believe a good spring cleanses the soul as well as the body."

He didn't personally believe that - usually it just came from inn owners trying to sell the benefits of a nice bath. As far as the Medicine Seller was concerned, spiritual cleansing came from a great deal of internal self-reflection.

But there were few better places to that than soaking in hot water full of minerals that did wonders for the skin.

"Maybe." Cole didn't know one way or the other, but it might.

"It's warm and it doesn't have impressions or emotions. The stones do, but not the water. It moves and heats and everything down here is... peaceful. I've never had a bath in a bath. I usually wash off the dirt and blood in a bucket or the river."

This got a soft, amused huff out of the Medicine Seller. Amused, and just slightly sympathetic.

Poor man really was missing out.

"It is a comfortable place to sort one's thoughts. If you wish to try, I will not stop you."

"I know which thoughts are mine and which are other people's. Is that a problem for you? You hear too much and can't tell what's you, so you come here to sort it out?"

Comfort is so alien to Cole's self, as much as he's concerned for others.

"...Not quite."

He knew his own thoughts very well - he didn't have the degree of empathy that Cole possessed where the thoughts and feelings of others poured into his own head, where he was sure they'd get jumbled together.

The trouble lay in simply being in another world - and worse, tethered to a certain radius. He'd been doing the same thing for centuries, he had methods that worked. Now he needed to make changes and he felt like he was fumbling around in the dark.

That, and he wasn't immune to a bit of culture shock.

"Certain adjustments are necessary. I am simply contemplating what those shall be."

Things inevitably changed with time. Even the Medicine Seller.

"Oh."

The sound clearly meant "I don't understand, but I'm not going to ask or push any further". Because he didn't understand, but he also didn't think he could, maybe.

"So, hot springs aren't just for getting clean or warm after being cold." That was what he was taking away from it.

There was a sense of relief from the Medicine Seller now that his personal problems were no longer under scrutiny. He was loathe to reveal much of himself, let alone any troubles that may plague him.

Besides, Cole already saw the worst of people. He seemed a nice young man and he certainly didn't need a double dose of that filtered through the Medicine Seller's own cynical view.

"Yes. They are for relaxing, socializing, thinking - the uses people find for them are multifarious indeed."

Sometimes he saw flickers, of other people's hurts and pains that had to be dealt with.

He shifts to stretch out on his stomach along the warm stone, cheek pillowed on his arm and the other hand reaching to just touch the water again, hat hiding his face.

"I shouldn't be here. I should be outside helping."

Old Aching Bones

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