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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It takes a moment of untangling himself from his current mass of layers and furs and woolen scarves to give himself space and room enough to heave himself into the hammock and tangle himself in those blankets and Sera's bony limbs instead. There's muttering and swearing and one mumbled 'andraste's breath' before he buries his face in her hair and passes out properly.

The dreams, when they come, are relatively kind.

Tangled like this (but nude) the woman laughing under his ear as she tosses gold coins from a stack next to them on the bed to a cup held by someone standing at the foot. There is quite a bit of gold, quite a bit of skin- and all three share the black curved lines of Zevran's tattoo on their face.

All three are Crows.

A much smaller Sera, seven, eight at the very most and dressed in fine silks and satin, walks silently through a lavishly decorated hall. Too many of the doors are locked, places she's not allowed in, but she tries. Tugging hard at each one, tears building as one after one is blocked from her-

Then she opens one to the scene of Zevran in the bed and she's no longer a child. Just Sera, how she's supposed to be in patched rags and plaid weave, and she wakes up with a sharp, reflexive elbow to the ribs of the body against hers. It's not hard enough to make the hammock even shake, not in her current condition. But she's awake.

"Ngh...Pretty? You're all...slimy hot."

Inarticulate mumbling in Antivan. A child? There shouldn't be a child. His eyes film over with- what? Grief? Anger? Confusion? All of it as he shifts to get away from that elbow, the vestiges of coins clinking and old laughter yet ringing in his ears. "I just took a bath."

Like that would make it better. And it should have, rinsing the sweat off, but it has not.

"You're sweaty 'nough I'm dreaming of you."

It takes some wiggling and some flexibility, but she manages to move so her eyes are out of the blankets and she's looking up at him while still being mostly snuggled together, blankets in place. Her own dreams don't bother her anymore. Too many years, too much just throwing away her own stupid. But he was a living furnace, far more than her tiny fever.

Not good.

"You an' friends."

"I am simply that awesome." He grumbles, burying himself deeper into the blankets, even with the sweat he feels a bone deep chill. "Everyone dreams of Zevran. Usually they are hot dreams so- I cannot imagine what yours must have been."

A child, doors, tears. He tucks those away for a moment.

"I have many friends. You will have to be more specific."

"'Draste's tits."

She wraps her arms around his neck, one leg thrown over his hip, and settles her head in under his chin. People being people, no matter who they were, just doing what was best. They were both cold, so best meant snuggle up tight. Nothing more than that.

"Marked friends. Didn't know crows meant spending life like a jaybird. All bare. Mm, one of 'em was my type."

A comfortable, meaningless tangle of limbs that is far more familiar to him than perhaps doing the same with a lover or sleeping on his own. For years there had been at least one other body curled around his. This is familiar and all the more comforting for it. "Ah...Taliesin and Rinna."

His thoughts had lingered on them quite a bit the past week. "Mmm. Rinna was a marvelous woman. Very curvy for an elf; though with all the sweets we would sneak her when we could afford them it should come as no surprise."

"Shut it. I'm not wandering in your head. Just...you smell. Getting' in my head."

She doesn't move, but weird talk like this is high on her list of Nope, No Thanks. They were sick. Maybe he'd been mumbling and it got in her brain. Easy enough, that.

"...friends of yours?"

"I have been hearing and seeing things all day. I thought they were hallucinations that come from fever." This is slightly less creepy. Slightly, but not much.

"Lovers, as much as I have any. Taliesin I'd known since I was a child. Rinna? Since I was sixteen. You she would have liked; she always did have a fondness for little butch elven girls."

Dead, dead, dead. She knew that kinda talk well enough. Known, would. Sera gives a big yawn against the side of his neck, then shoves her face in close. He was warm. And she wasn't stupid.

"Maybe not all the killing friends when you were bitty, then."

Poke at a wound, no matter how long healed, often enough and an ache will form. He aches a little at the offhand dismissal but all the same? Not something that needs talking about. He has talked about them often enough as of late. "Tali did most of the killing, to be honest. Kept me safe. I did not have to return the favor until I was twelve. Assassins do not often live long. Especially when the retirement package is garbage."

"But you three lived a bit. Long enough to be all pretty. Hell of a deal."

Must've been a deal. 'Tali' killing. Zevran...also killing? Or something. Then pretty tits. Too much to think about now, when all she wants is to stay very, very still. But it was the story of the streets: the powerless pooling power until they could turn it on each other.

"We worked well together." As long as they remembered who was really in charge. The human, of course, but-

No. Good thoughts. Good memories. "They were terribly pretty- but I was the prettiest."

"Right. Well. I'll play...coins in a cup."

She almost doesn't want to ask. Weird dreams with whispers in here ear, fine. That being right? Demon shit. She'd have to crawl over to Cass' bed next and find out what was happening to her head.

"Whatever made it to the cup we'd spend on wine. Whatever made it into the boot? Sweets or chocolates or something else that wasn't important. Whatever missed went to weapons and equipment." He rubs Sera's back idly, not thinking much. The Warden had wandered through his dreams once before- and saw a great deal worse.

This is nothing.

"We got very good at aiming."

Other times, she'd freak out right and proper. But the back rubbing is nice, and for all she knows this is another fever dream itself, so she'll play along. It comes with giggles softly instead. The shrieking will come later.

"Nice dream."

"Better than wandering about and attempting to open doors. Terribly symbolic, that." He should probably find that more strange but- Fadewalking in the Circle, strange shit happens. He'll panic later.

That has her tensing. Wandering about other people's thoughts, sure. Having her own poked at? She pulls back enough to scowl at him.

"You dinnit see that."

"Alright, I didn't." He shrugs and resumes his attempts at passing out. They're futile. "I saw nothing at all."

"..."

There is a weight to the silence. Tension in her shoulders, scowl on her face. Until she just can't take it.

"Yes you friggin did! Demons and magic and shite, that's what it is."

"Being ill makes- there was an announcement about this on the sending crystals. It was all very comforting and sensible." He mutters. "Sera this is one of the things that you choose to worry about after the fact."

"Demons."

She hadn't heard any chat, had kept off the crystal thing since the headache started. But it'd be a stupid lie to pick. Too easy to see it's wrong. But-

She rests her check against his chest again.

"Demons got no right poking round my own bitty times."

"Well, I am no demon." He pets her hair gently. "And you know my door will always be open to you."

Wait, that was sentimental. But- she's small and young and scared and he shouldn't care except for a small part of him that does. He said he'd keep her. This means sentiment.

That lovely sentiment, rather than any teary confessions or what have you, gets a tiny scoff.

"Right, fever's really got you now. Don't go thinking too hard on it, yeah? Some things just are what they are. Most humans with gold don't go and leave doors open to thieving elves. Even kept ones."

"Not smart humans, at least." Zevran crackles a soft laugh. If it must be nothing? It shall be nothing. He is not so clear of mind to make something of it.

DREAM LAND

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