OPEN: Cloudreach Event

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[arsebiscuit]

"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?"

[ombranera]

"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."

[arsebiscuit]

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."

[ombranera]

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."

[arsebiscuit]

"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.

[ombranera]

"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."

[arsebiscuit]

"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.

[ombranera]

"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."

[arsebiscuit]

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."

[ombranera]

"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.

[arsebiscuit]

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."

[ombranera]

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

[arsebiscuit]

"..."

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."

[ombranera]

"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."

[arsebiscuit]

"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."

[ombranera]

"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.

[arsebiscuit]

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."

[ombranera]

"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.

[arsebiscuit]

"Wouldn't give her that much."

It's hard work. So hard. Appreciate her, Zev. But she pulls back enough again to peer at him.

"You needin' something? Wine, honey, a well hung man?"

[ombranera]

"All three." Not that he could do more than this with the well hung man- but if she is offering? He'll take it. Honey'd wine from a well hung man. Mmm.

[arsebiscuit]

"Not in my hammock. Blegh. But the first bits I can do."

It's a testimony to her dexterity that she can wiggle out from around Zevran and slip to the floor without really rocking the hammock or blankets much. Truth is she'd been more or less living on that diet of wine and honey for that past day or so, meaning she just has to nudge open a chest for her for to get the wine skin.

When she hands it off, it surprisingly isn't the cheap tavern wine. Someone's dipped into Josie's reserves.

[ombranera]

"You could kick me off to the bed." It's an option, even if he does not wish to move. Losing her meant losing her warmth but he rolls into the hollow space left behind, vanishing under blankets. Not even the tips of his ears or his hair visible from the pile, at least until he feels the bump of the wineskin against his fingers. He tugs the wine close and takes a swig- freezing at the quality.

"You...sneaky, lovely woman."

[arsebiscuit]

"Hehe, wait until Josie holds her next big stupid thing and serves what I switched it with to Lord Snooty-faces. Bet half of them don't know the difference. Not that there's much of one."

Wine was wine was wine and it was all for getting drunk. Or nursing achey bodies during fevers. So doesn't so much as curl up next to him again as flop on top and then burrow back into place. Some ribs may be nudged. But clearly exile to the bed was not on the list.

[ombranera]

"It's like I came up with you in a dream." He reaches out to ruffle her hair, crackling a soft laugh between sips of wine. "The ideal pranking partner."

With none of the sexual tension that might come otherwise. "You are a delight. Never let anyone say otherwise."

[arsebiscuit]

"Hm. You're all sicky talky."

Fever brought hallucinations. Or honesty, of a kind. Wine didn't hurt, at that. So she leaves the skin with him as she settles back into the sickness cocoon fully.

"So what's...that you're doing. With the nice talk to me."