faderift | You don't expect to be bright and bon vivant

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You don't expect to be bright and bon vivant - OPEN

WHO: Cosima, Anders, Herian, YOU?
WHAT: Catchall open post for Kingsway
WHEN: Your choice if it needs to be specific within the month - Cosima's not going anywhere that I know of
WHERE: Various around Kirkwall
NOTES: If you want a specific starter, hit me up on plurk/discord/etc.

I - Infirmary

Kirkwall has seemed to agree with Cosima, overall. It's easier to breathe, out of the cold, and as vertical as the city is, at least it comes with stairs. Still, she's careful not to miss her scheduled sessions with the healers all the same. Given the unknowns about her disease, her anchor shard, and whether or not they affect one another, she's not eager to take unnecessary chances.

It's been over a year now, so she's on a greeting basis with a lot of the people who work in and around what used to be the healing tents. But she's ready to greet new faces too, if they seem open to it. (Especially right after treatment, which is inarguably the best she feels all month.)

II - Library

Doing formal research for the Inquisition has offered the advantage of focusing her efforts, at least a little. But after her recent discussions about microscopes, she's come to wonder if trying to have a simple one built might be a good idea after all. She can think of several uses, both regarding the Fade and red lyrium, and maybe someone higher up will be willing to secure the funding necessary.

She's working on some detailed sketches, with concentration, but not so much that she can't be interrupted.

III - Tavern

It's important not to burn out by working all the time. Cosima would be quick to tell that to anyone who asks -- but no one does, really, she's just reassuring herself. It's true, though, and she can let herself relax into an evening out now and again. She wears gloves and keeps an eye out for trouble, but she also has a few drinks and even joins a friendly card game now and then.

Kirkwall doesn't feel like home; Thedas doesn't feel like home. But she's sometimes surprised how much it's come to feel something like normal. Especially with some friendly company.

IV - Wildcard

[Choose your own adventure]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Knowing how to swim is important, especially in a port. Granted, finding a relatively private place to learn is more challenging, and it requires a day trip outside the city. (Possibly not a full day trip if Herian had gone by herself, but she'd made no sign that Cosima's slower pace bothered her.)

For Cosima, the main challenge of swimming is managing without her glasses; swimming itself is a skill she'd mastered very early, and it comes right back for all she hasn't used it in a couple years. She's never taught it before, though, and as the two of them sit on the bank to dry out a little, she observes, "You're going to have to be patient with me figuring out how to teach you," a bit ruefully.

"Patience? I must confess myself unfamiliar with the concept."

It's spoken with typical Herian severity, though her mouth tugs into a smile at the last moment, and she nudges Cosima very slightly. "I'm inclined to think you did well." Biased would also be a good word, maybe.

Her legs still hang in the water, Herian carefully wringing some of the water out of her hair. She isn't a self-conscious person, really, where others might be; there are burn scars visible on the right side of her back, where it's exposed, and then other heavy scarring down her legs, that look like pits and cracked glass. All the scars are old, though, more subtle against the skin, and the only more obvious ones are nicks and slices from battle. More likely to catch the eye, at a distance, are the tattoos that run down other side of her spine in parrallel lines, abstract floral patterns that run across each shoulder, and down the backs of her arms.

Cosima's own tattoos are almost covered day-to-day, but are visible now: a Nautilus shell on one forearm, a dandelion on the other. She makes no secret of checking out Herian's. "That's beautiful work, by the way," she says (presumably not of the scars). "Did you get it all done at once?"

She imagines it took a while, given the technology level, though perhaps magic made up for the difference.

"Mercifully no," Herian replies, with a bit of a smile. "I had to return to a village in Orlais a few times over, during my travels. Enough times to allow up to get this far — I'm not sure if I should consider expanding if, if ever the artist and I cross ways again."

She grins, catching Cosima's wrist, so she can start to idly trace her fingers over the scattering of the dandelion fluff. "I thought I would be able to endure it all at once, but I was much relieved to uncover that was not a path that Maxence advised. But here," and she lightly taps the dandelion, "I did not realise you had a secret passion for herbology all this while."

Secret passion, not quite emphasised enough to have something scandalous implied, but close.

She laughs at that assessment. "I don't know about that. Do you guys have dandelions here? They're little yellow flowers in the summer - hearty things, considered weeds lots of places. When autumn comes, they turn into little fluffy..." She gestures at the tattoo. "People blow on them. The theory goes that if you get all the seeds off in a breath, you get a wish. Not that I believe in wishes. Or didn't, I guess," she amends.

"They sound familiar. I think my mother would gather up something similar, when she was able, she'd say you could tell the time by how many of the seed were left. I think she used the roots for tea."

She sounds a little uncertain, trying to draw at some long-distant memory, but sets it aside for the time being. Botany was not a matter she was much invested in, and the healing magics were beyond her almost completely. "And is it arriving hence that suggests wishes might be real, or something else?"

"Oh, that too - how many seeds are left are sometimes supposed to be how many kids you're going to have." She shrugs. "But I sort of meant more 'magic is real here, so possibly wishes too?' Like, I was not big into believing in the supernatural back home. Which is sort of funny, because like every other girl I dated in undergrad was super into astrology."

And now she's dating an actual mage so. Irony.

Herian leans back as Cosima talks, stretching back into the grass, a slight smile just coming out of hiding.

"Alas. Here I supposed you had made a desperate wish for my return, spurred by great longing." Her faux-seriousness would be convincing if not for the subject matter. "I'm beside myself."

She does not sound remotely beside herself. "In theory, perhaps, but the closest thing I can think of would come only of making dangerous pacts. Better avoided, no doubt."

She pokes Herian in the side for the deadpanned joke. "Probably. Anyway. I didn't get the tattoo for wishes, I got it because it's about change. Cycles. I think life is beautiful because it's always in motion."

Easily, Herian catches Cosima's hand before she goes to draw it back, and pressing a kiss to her knuckles, an "apology" that's more lighthearted than truly anything resembling sorry.

"That's very poetic, Cosima."

Unlike her deadpan humour, that is sincerely meant. It is difficult to articulate, what it is to listen to someone find joy in life itself - not one form of it, not particular life having value over another, not governing of what life should or should not entail. It's strange and comforting and a little disarming, all at the same time.

"Yeah, that's totally how most people describe me. Intensely poetic," she says with a rueful little grin. "I mean, the piercings are just because I thought they were pretty, so it's not like I'm not a little vain, too."

Despite the light response, she's warmed by Herian's reaction all the same. It feels like much of her days in Kirkwall are devoted to practical considerations, putting out fires and trying to solve problems that have increasingly become more urgent. It's unexpectedly refreshing, talking about nature and art with Herian and listening to the water nearby.

Herian laughs quietly, holding out her arm so she can look at the intricate pattern where it stretches down her forearm. "I, however, am immune to vanity."

H a h. No, if there's one thing she is, that she knows she is, vain is one of those things. Or perhaps not vain, but at least appreciative of her own appreciate, confident in it. "It is not vain to enjoy art your own skin. Perhaps if you spent all your days gazing upon a looking glass in self-admiration."

She sits up, just enough to press a kiss to Cosima's cheek. "I think your mind would sooner ponder the wonders of the world than just yourself, wonderful though you are."

She smiles, a little ruefully - a year ago, she was intensely diving into her own genetic sequence, which was strangely close to the self-study Herian was suggesting (if inadvertently so). Sometimes it seems like she's only just left that work; sometimes it feels like it's been much longer than it has.

But that's not a pleasant topic, really, and she doesn't want to spoil a pleasant afternoon. Instead, she runs her fingers along Herian's arm, lightly, as if measuring it. Or tracing the design, perhaps. "I think it's all of a piece, really. There's nothing in the world that isn't interconnected to other parts of the world, here or at home. I enjoy myself because I'm part of nature too." She was resolved to be, even if her origins were far from what most people would call natural.

"Do you remember the first time we met? A stream near Skyhold, and you were pulling up rashvine barehanded." There is a note of fond amusement in her voice, easy nostalgia. "My fondness for rashvine has heightened considerably, since then."

She's being a little silly, albeit in an understated way. Her focus is more on Cosima's fingers grazing over her skin, and the warmth of the late summer sun, if it could still be called such.

"I think you are right, though. It is part of why life is so sacred." Even when there is the darkspawn, the Venatori, beings and moralities taken by corruption. "There are times when I feel that the connection mages have to the Fade is a great blessing. It is an aspect of the world that is untouchable to some, that mages are able to harness - we have a gift that can do so much." Her smile turns a little bittersweet, and she shakes her head, idly starting to trace her fingers across Cosima's collarbones. "But there are times when I suspect it would be better if mages were considerably less connected to nature."

"What's the Fade like? I mean, if you don't mind talking about it. I guess I'm there when I sleep, but I don't really register it feeling substantially different than dreaming at home." She supposes her world must have some connection to the Fade -- how else could she be here -- but Cosima is curious what it's like for someone who can retain consciousness there.

For a few moments, Herian is quiet, though it's a pensive silence rather than one that is locked down and distant, maintaining contact as she ponder.

"Frightening," she replies, eventually. She hopes the response is not unknightly, in some way, that being afraid at all does not undercut bravery before it has a chance to show itself. Be brave, always be brave. "It is... concerning to know that we are so linked to something that allows us to do such harm. But— not all terrible. It is ever changing, I think."

"It's sort of mind-blowing to think about. I mean, not only that there are a bunch of different worlds out there -- people where I'm from have theorized that -- but that there's the Fade gluing them together."

She shifts, tucked against Herian's side. "It's a lot take in, even after all this time."

"It is." She smiles a little with Cosima settling closer, and drapes one of her arms across Cosima's waist, a loose embrace. "The sentimentalist in me cannot be entirely against that connection. You seem proof enough that the unknown is not always so terrible.*"

For a moment, her smile brightens. "I'll gladly brave demons for the sake of knowing you."

*Unless the unknown is Dalish, and then it is always terrible.

Cosima beams, though she seems on the edge of a laugh. "That's maybe both the sweetest and weirdest thing anyone's ever said to me. What is my life even."

"Would you like to me attempt to answer that, or allow it to remain wholly rhetorical?"

She grins, or at least it's a Herian grin, which might be considered a warm smile on most other people. "Are sweetness and weirdness heights to which I should continually aspire?"

Cosima reaches over to fondly touch Herian's jaw. "I don't think you have to try, honestly, it'll probably just keep happening if you stick around." Which sounds, oddly, like please stick around the way Cosima says it.

Leaning into the contact, Herian presses a glancing kiss to Cosima's wrist. "I'd say that's more than likely."

The dangers that might see her act otherwise aren't totally immediate, at the very least.

"I'm so glad you came back," she says, almost abrupt except for its warmth. "I didn't think you would. Or if you did, I wasn't sure I'd still be here."

With Rifters, more than usual, it felt like nothing was promised.

Herian's not totally sure how to respond. Too often it feels as though her words are clumsy things, in moments like these - too crowded and too measured in the same moment, as though she needs far too many words to express what others can convey succinctly. I, as well seems inadequate to convey the depth and nuances of it.

Instead she leans down, catching the corner of Cosima's mouth with a lingering kiss. That might better serve.

A kiss seems like the perfect answer. It's much easier than wondering whether she'll ever go home, or whether Herian will be called off again sooner than she'd like, or any of the dozens of problems hanging over their heads.

Better to taste the lingering salt from where they'd been swimming not long before, and feel the sun on their skin.

For Herian

pls forgive me for this excessive Physical Appearance exposition fml

O no, what shall I do

weep for days, probably

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I know you're hiatused, but I couldn't resist:

i mean i always return for cute nonsense so

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