faderift | [open] love, love is a verb

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[open] love, love is a verb

WHO: Sina and you!
WHAT: She's awake more often and able to sit up in bed to do things. Visits will be more productive now.
WHEN: Early Drakonis
WHERE: Sina & Nari's tent in the garden
NOTES: Follow-up to this log and the direct result of this one.

The past month has been rough, and Sina has spent most of it in the Fade. Only now is she beginning to look a little more alive, able to converse and laugh without hurting herself, eating more than what Nari can manage to spoon into her mouth while she's conscious, spending her days reading tomes on magic and elvhen history from the library.
She still can't get out of bed without assistance, and the stuffiness of the sick tent is wearing on her. Sina is pale and thin, a shadow of herself, with bags under her eyes and protruding bones. She still smiles easily, however, and is grateful for company and news of outside goings-on.

She will get better. She is getting better. But it will take time.

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Usually tents mean refugees or healers. He doesn't really associate either of those with hanging out in the gardens, so he eyes this tent a little suspiciously. And you know something that sucks about tents? There's nothing to knock on. He can't even be polite about it even if he wanted to!

"Uh, hello?" He awkwardly calls from outside. "Hey, are you supposed to be here? Like...none of the gardeners or anyone has a problem with you parked out here?"

Sina is dozing, but a voice startles her awake. She props herself up on her elbow to sleepily look over, and is surprised to see a human that she doesn't know.
When she sits up, the shard in her chest becomes more obvious, and he may notice the tent interior has a constant green tint to it from the thing glowing through her shift.

"...I am a gardener," she says confusedly, still waking up. "...I don't... think it's a problem?" No one has complained, at least, and she's been here for over a month.

...What, the green, that's--well that's interesting. It means someone he can talk shop with! Probably!

"Oh. Uh. Well then. ...I mean, I obviously don't have a problem with it if you don't. Are you glowing?" Is that a weird question? Maybe that's a weird question. "I mean. That's just a thing some people do. Sometimes."

As Church stammers out his response, Sina just stares at him uncertainly. At his question, she looks down at her shard, then back up at him and nods. "As are you," she observes, and smiles in mild confusion. Does he not know a shard when he sees one, despite having one himself?
"Are you from a rift?"

"I just...thought people usually had 'em in their hands." He waves said hand a little. "Maybe it was something different. I don't know a lot about magic, not being from around here." He lets that hang for a second. "That's a yes on the rift thing, by the way. That's...not a problem, is it?"

"Oh. Yes." Sina slouches a little, self-consciously. "Most do. I was unlucky." Hence... y'know, being stuck in a sickbed all day.
"Of course it's not a problem," she replies, her smile widening sympathetically, "several rifters are good friends of mine. Have you been ill-treated?"

"We're kind of given the evil eye by a lot of people. I can't say I blame them, weirdos falling out of demon portals and all, but still, it's nice to see some people giving us a chance." He shrugs, pouting. "A little less so after the whole rift opening in the middle of here thing happening."

Sina nods, her expression remaining sympathetic until that last bit. Then, looking distinctly uncomfortable, she glances away. "...of course," she says quietly, one hand unconsciously moving to touch the shard. Oh dear.

"Yeah, I mean, it's like nobody cares that we can close them? Which, by the way, was news to me. I hope nobody's giving you any shit for something someone else did. You, uh. Kind of look like death warmed over. No offense. Catch something from the cold?"

Sina opens her mouth to speak, and just kind of freezes there like a deer in headlights, at a loss for words.
"...no," she finally answers, after a good five seconds, and then doesn't say anything else. Her eyes dart toward the tent flap, then back to Church.

Oh boy. He's done this song and dance before. He raises both hands. "Okay. What'd I say? Am I being too forward? Am I being too human?" He's scared off at least one elf he was just trying to be nice to before. Apparently there's a thing about humans and elves. Or something.

Sina continues to stare for a moment, but now it's because she's confused. Does he really.. ? not.....?
She decides to end both their suffering. She lowers her head and mumbles "I opened the rift," almost too quietly to be heard.

His hands are still awkwardly raised, because he's trying to make sure he heard that right. "Wait. What?"

Creators, could he make this any harder? Sina winces, and slowly looks up at him. "It was me," she says, a little louder.

Don't ask that question. She wouldn't like the answer. (The answer is yes.) At last his hands drop. "It was you? You opened up that rift that had everyone going crazy and a bunch of us feeling like we were losing our arms trying to figure out how to close it and fight off scary-ass demons??"

Sina cringes when he starts going off, and glances at the tent flap again, hoping for Nari to conveniently return before this can get ugly. As for the human, when he has concluded his string of questions, she simply purses her lips and offers a timid nod.

"Dude! Do you get how much fucking scrutiny we're under right now because of this? Bad enough we're dropping from the sky from other planes of existence, now people are going around thinking we're gonna rain demons on them because, what, because you just shrugged and said fuck it let's see what happens?! I mean, gah! What- the fuck- were you thinking?! People almost died!"

No, his care for the fact that she looks half dead has now gone straight out the window. Can it get worse now?

When the diatribe begins, Sina recoils slightly, her expression a mix of fear and incredulity, though it quickly changes to full out offense as he continues.

"Do you actually think I did it intentionally?" she snaps, "I almost died!" She's tried to avoid talking about the fact, but now that it's right out in the open, she lets it slip.

"I didn't mean to make everything worse," she continues, with less confidence.

"I don't know! Did you??" If it's possible to close them with their fucked up hands, maybe they can open them up, too. No reason it can't be two-way like that.

"Wait--wait, what the fuck were you doing where not only did you open a demon hole, you also almost died? These things don't open on their own! ........They don't, do they?"

"I don't know!" Sina yelps, her voice pitching higher in her distress, "I was practicing spells, and...!!" And it just happened. She can't recall any details beyond that on account of being too busy asphyxiating.
She doesn't dignify his other point with an answer. If he can't piece together why a chest shard might be more dangerous than a hand shard, she assumes explaining will be hopeless.

"And it just happened? Are you for real right now??" Church can, unfortunately, do a little bit of the higher pitched as he gets more wound up thing. Not as bad as Wash, but still pretty bad. "I can't believe you were just going about your magical business and then bam you opened a demon portal! Do you, I mean, I just, seriously, you get how afraid the general populace is of people who can, I don't know, just magic open a glowy green netherworld portal full of fucking demons! I mean, what, were you--were you just playing around with your like chest glow while you were hocus pocusing or what?!"

Though she's been holding her own ...relatively well, Church's words hit their target in quick succession. Sina wants to keep arguing, but is at a loss for words; instead she just starts to cry, drawing her knees up to bury her face in them. She shakes her head behind the self-made barrier, whimpering, "I didn't mean to...!"

"Hey."

Church is quickly going to fall himself falling in the shadow of a very large, very stern-looking Qunari. He'd only heard part of the conversation in passing, but it didn't take much to see that the guy's fit was not doing the little elf any favors.

The little elf he remembered from the early days at Skyhold, as he recalled. Skittish little thing who'd brought him some herbs and things in a little care package.

So yeah. This is him, raising an eyebrow at Church, telling him without so many words that he needs to ease up off of her, real quick like.

"There a problem here?"

On her way back from the kitchens with a small pot of herbed broth--not too far from the entrance to the gardens--Nahariel hears a sound. A faint but distinctive sound. The high, thin, wailed vowels of her First in distress.

The pot hits the ground with a metallic clatter followed by a liquid splash, as the hunter's languid amble turns to a dead sprint towards the tent.

Oh god woman crying how do deal with that--he doesn't really have to deal with crying back home because, tch, guys in the army don't cry. Except Caboose. Grif when he eats the last oreo. Donut, maybe, if someone messes up his homely stuff or if he breaks a nail. Look he just doesn't ever have to deal with women crying and it's kind of freaking him out?

Church whirls on the holy fuck he's fucking huge guy--god damn, qunari, maybe you guys could like chill out with the natural steroids or whatever--and is torn between doing the smart thing and letting his anger get the better of him.

As usual, he lets his anger get the better of him. "This is the person that randomly threw open a fucking rift in the fucking middle of the fucking castle!" He gestures emphatically to her. "Sorry if that's kind of important news to me! Rift things don't just open on their own!"

[open] love, love is a verb

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