faderift | OPEN: Cloudreach Event

OPEN: Cloudreach Event

WHO: Anyone at Skyhold
WHAT: Cloudreach showers bring weird shit.
WHEN: Cloudreach 15 onward
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: For information about the illness, its effects, and its cure, please make sure to also read the OOC Post.

This high in the mountains, snowstorms are to be expected. But this one is large and lingering, hanging over the valley and the fortress for days. In Skyhold, with its eternal spring, the snow becomes rain before it hits the ground, leaving inhabitants and visitors to wade through puddles and mud in the courtyards. In the valley, snow and ice accumulate under cloud cover—and worse, when the clouds finally thin, a whole winter's accumulation of snow begins to melt in the sunlight.

Within a day, the ground is sodden and mucky enough to give the survivors of the Fallow Mire (or Ferelden in general) unpleasant flashbacks, and those who live in tents are issued additional hastily-constructed wooden pallets to raise their floors above the mud. It is worse outside the fortress: streams and rivers have overflowed their banks, rapids run twice as fast as normal, and flash flooding has made even road travel treacherous.

On Cloudreach 17 a mudslide buries the pass into Skyhold from the west, and on the 19th a sheet of snow loosened from a mountainside collapses into the shadowed passage from the east. An Inquisition supply caravan is caught in the latter, scattering wagons and goods across the hillside and leaving a dozen people and horses in need of rescue and medical care.

Healers may find themselves stretched thin, as in addition to the usual rash of blisters and sniffles that come from days of rain and flooding, an illness begins to sweep through Skyhold's ranks from around the 16th onward. It's marked first by climbing fever, then by flashes at the edges of vision—green light and jagged formations that aren't there, beings of light and shadow gathering around people or clustering in corners—and distant voices, coherent for brief moments if you're quiet and still and not trying too hard to listen.

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Most of the healers are stretched too thin by the efforts to curb the sickness, but not all of them have a spirit crackling under their skin. It's Anders, then, that Cole goes to check on, in one of the moments where he's let himself rest.

Anders will drift out of his dream, away from the lullaby, to find that someone is still singing. The voice is breathy and frequently comes just shy of hitting the right note, but not so often that the song is unrecognizable.

Cole is sitting cross-legged at his side, softly singing in the language of the Anderfels.

He shouldn't have fallen asleep. There's so much more he needs to get done, but he'd taken a seat for just a moment and slipped into slumber while trying to alter an herbal blend to do more aid. This time, though, instead of jolting awake, he opens his eyes slowly, still hearing...

Anders' gaze jerks over to Cole and he stares in shock.

"You..." No one's sung that to him in forever. He closes his eyes again for a moment, this time to simply enjoy what he's hearing. "Do you see her at all? In the memory?"

He can't remember what his mother looked like, her face, hair, anything, but if Cole can hear that song, maybe he can see something Anders has tucked away somehow.

But he can see her, in a sense. Not her hair, her eyes, her hands, or her dress, but her all the same.

The memory is a fleeting, wriggling thing, and trying to hold tight would be like trying to catch a fish in a stream. Cole answers as soon as he has the words to describe it, before it has a chance to slip away - and in the process, something else catches.

"She kisses my forehead every night, wishing me sweet dreams. Father stands at the doorway, watching. Did he ever trust me?"

He takes a shaky breath. That's right. That's right, and it's a fragment he's not thought about in so long. His mother had loved him, and he wonders if she still does. If she's still alive out there, if she misses him.

"Thank you," he finally says quietly. "Are you doing all right, in all of this? It has to be chaotic for you."

Or maybe it feels welcome, having other spirits around. It doesn't for Justice, but Justice is not Compassion.

"It's like they're more real than they were before." He's interested, more than anything else, in this moment. But not all moments have been the same.

"I'm not used to hearing dreams. They're like stories you can see — songs half-formed, reflections in a rippling pool." Then, with a touch of regret: "It's hard, hearing all of them at once. I can't stay among the sick for very long."

"The other spirits feel more real?" That's downright fascinating, coming from another spirit. How long has Cole been outside the Fade?

'His words are scattered, disjointed. Too long,' Justice supplies. Which means he thinks Cole's gotten worse, but Anders doesn't think either of them have known Cole long enough to judge. At least the sensation Anders gets from Justice is protective rather than judgmental, another thing Anders finds fascinating.

"Don't force yourself to be where you're uncomfortable for too long. I enjoy seeing you and speaking with you, but if this is difficult..." He doesn't know if Cole can get sick, but he does think that whatever winds up working as a cure for most people might not work for Cole - all the more reason the spirit not linger overmuch. "Are some of them good rather than bad, though? The dreams. You heard my mother."

If Cole heard what Justice said, he gives no indication. He swings his head this way and that while Anders speaks, half of his attention drifting elsewhere, but not enough to make him wander away.

"Yes." Not all of them are bad dreams. Some are a strange muddle. Some are simply good. A piece of one catches at his consciousness: "Tall grass tickles my chin, soft seeds floating on the breeze. Laughing as we look for each other. It's a game."

The nature of the dreams isn't what makes them overwhelming. "It's loud, when there's a lot of them at once. That's all."

Edited 2016-04-21 14:38 (UTC)

"Small room, many people, and suddenly hearing more." It makes sense.

Anders brushes his hair back, gathering the notes that had been spread when he'd fallen asleep on them, rubbing off ink from his wrist a moment later. That's not exactly what he wants to be wearing.

"I'm glad some of it's pleasant, like that." A beat, and he gives Cole a curious look. "Do you dream?"

"I don't sleep." He assists in gathering up the notes, though he doesn't know the order they ought to be in. The few stray papers he picks up get offered back to Anders. "I used to think I was supposed to, but it wasn't like that. It was darker — like disappearing for a while."

He takes the offered notes absent mindedly, expression curious. "You used to think you were supposed to, but you weren't?"

Anders has been working on the assumption that the mix of boy and spirit wasn't too dissimilar from what he could have become if he'd been younger and more broken. If he'd let a spirit in while in solitary, for instance, or just after they'd taken Karl from Kinloch Hold. But he'd always needed sleep, despite how it seemed overly long and wasteful to Justice.

"You're more spirit than boy, anymore?" It's not purely Compassion standing before him, he's nearly certain. Despite how Cole is often clearly not quite human any longer, there's still humanity to him. He's not quite like the other spirits Anders has known.

"...I don't know." It's easier, sometimes, to say what he isn't than what he is. He's not human. Not a mage. Maybe a spirit, but one that's... different.

At least it's easier than it used to be. At least he knows enough to say which questions he can't answer.

"For a long time, I couldn't have started to say what I am. It felt like I was alive — but I walked through the Spire, silent, rarely seen." Other people had had ideas about what he was, then. They had been wrong. "I'm not a ghost. I know that. Something of a spirit, not quite human... I'm just me. I can't break it into parts."

"All right." There's so much that they don't know about spirits. Maybe if they're able to stay free, that can decrease. Knowledge spreads when communication is allowed, research is allowed, creativity is allowed. When fear does not rule. That doesn't mean they'll find answers about what Cole is at the end of the day, or a way to split Anders and Justice, but it does mean they can do better eventually.

He doesn't have many hopes, but this is one he holds onto. The longer freedom lasts, the stronger it will be, and the more fruit it will bear. They can keep this.

"I know you're not a ghost, and I know you're not just spirit or just human. I don't need to know more." He hopes that's some comfort or reassurance. He also knows Cole is no demon, but that part feels obvious enough it doesn't have to be spoken.

"Do you ever miss the Fade, though? The part of you that is Compassion." Or was, or however it goes.

Cole tilts his head to one side. His chin is tipped too far down for his eyes to be visible, but they're trained on Anders' chest, looking through to a point somewhere near his heart.

"Do you?"

It's a question for Justice, and Anders doesn't like the answer.

"He doesn't." Of late, Anders has been hoping to find a way to become unpossessed if they can't balance out and find peace. The situation as it is isn't going to work long-term, he worries. "I wish he did. But he feels like he can do more here to further the cause of justice."

It's true. But they've already crossed lines. Anders doesn't want to cross more.

"Yes. I'm the same. This is where I can help."

Justice gets it then — that part, at least. There's one thing he said earlier, however, that Cole took exception to.

"I'm not broken. I know now what I was — what I'm supposed to be. That's enough. The words don't matter."

He's quiet for several moments, processing that. Someone with a purpose isn't broken. Would Compassion as it had been or Cole as he had been see this form as something not broken? Anders can't say, and if the Cole before him says he's not broken, he has enough, then who is Anders to say otherwise? Just because Anders feels divided and conflicted and a mess doesn't mean anything. Part of why he speaks to Cole, beyond simply liking the boy, is because he seems far more whole than Anders has achieved.

"It's enough to know what you're supposed to be," he agrees after that time. He's not sure he knows what he's supposed to be. Not this. Not being in fear that Justice will harm someone, not struggling to find balance. He needs to find a way. A purpose that's more concrete than mage freedom, because there are a thousand ways to work toward that.

"How did you figure that out?"

In the pause before he answers, Cole turns, begins heading back toward the healing tents. Anders will want to get to back to work soon. They all will.

"Pieces. Parts. One thread at a time, until I started to see the picture." He has to think back, to before the Herald, before the Templars, before Rhys. It does seem that it came to him in stages.

"I was almost me by the time the Herald came, but only almost. I'd thought I had to follow the Templars so they could kill me if I went wrong again. She opened the door to something different. I think it was always there, but I hadn't seen it."

He walks with Cole quietly, thoughtfully. Cole isn't broken, but if he had to put himself together, then he once was. And Anders... has not been. Not that much. There was certainly a time he had to find himself again, but that was before Justice, after a year spent in the dark. There are parallels, but he doesn't know that there's enough to help them find a way here. The rituals Adelaide's found may be the only hope of solving things for himself and Justice.

"Hope?" If Cole had been ready and willing to die, then he'd certainly not seen hope at the time.

"A different direction. A new way to help." The concept of something greater he could dedicate himself to. In a way: "Hope. Yes."

"Maybe I can find that again." It would be helpful. Right now, all he has is his causes and what he can provide before he loses his life, as well as a little joy with Nate and finding that he actually still has friends. Hope, and faith, are things he's very short on. "Right now, at least I've some direction. Perhaps it will be enough if I can't find hope."

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OPEN: Cloudreach Event

Dreams

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