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

Quieter nights, Rinna stretched out on a rooftop with his head in her lap, her fingers making tiny braids in his hair where it is simply he and she and nothing hurts, there are no bruises or wounds or shadowed hands clinging to them both. They could slip away. They could run. The thought's a short one, this again on a beach with them and nothing else, no one else-

Red drips from her throat and beads against Zevran's skin as he twists and it's dark, no stars, the only roar of the scrabbling Darkspawn, blood and bile ankle deep as he twists a dagger here or throws another there. Fighting at a Warden's back, fighting to keep him alive, to keep them alive-

The room, the hook, and none of this is so. Cuts like daggers along his skin, tiny needling things as blood wells and mists and they will break him, this is all it has ever been, him, the hook, the blood, whispers in the dark and hands long since dead clawing at his skin-

There was a great deal of personal pain in Zevran's past, a pain that roused a fever in Michel though he wasn't feeling at all ill. It was an ache that burned from the core of his chest, he was not at all used to standing on the sidelines and simply watch while events unfolded. He was better with a sword in his hand and something to strike out at.

This was a dream...a vision...a memory...a feeling, he wasn't certain, he was certain these was nothing he could do to help. There was no way he could assuage all of this pain, what he could do was roll through it, brush his lips across his fevered brow, pull him close. Slide their limbs together so that he could hold him close, keep him warm, sweat it out. If this went on much longer he would have no choice but to carry Zevran back down to the healing tents. If his fever became dangerous, if his dreams made him delirious.

It is the closeness that wakes him between one night tangled with the two of them and standing over Taliesin's lifeless corpse, between a leash on his throat and an Antivan noble praising him for his beauty, his obedience as he dragged him through the hall. At the small room in the brothel with the other children where all he could hear is 'three sovereigns, and that is final' before he is taken away.

He shakes awake, bleary eyed at the expanse of fair skin before him.

"...Alistair?" No- no freckles. But fair and human and holding him close; who else might it be?

Ah! He was finally coming around, from his dreams, the last of it having been more distressing to Michel than the acts of gruesome violence in his previous visions. Leashed like a small animal, a child, and he had the urge to punch someone much like he did when he was a child taking on all of the alienages brutes.

There was nothing he could do for the small boy, there was only what he could do for the man presently curled up against him. Shaking as he finally started coming around, shaking the dreams, and...of course he expected Alistair. He had to choke down on his pride at that, it struck something in him he could not name, could not identify, and it shouldn't...but it did whether Michel liked it or not. He kept it to himself, however, Zevran was under strain, unwell...

"Non, chéri, I'm here..."

Orlesian? Michel. Why in the Maker's name was Michel here? It took Zevran a bleary moment to place where he'd been last. Stairs, attempting to walk out to the Valley. To see Alistair and make certain all is well. He attempted to peel away, wincing at the tacky slide of cold sweat long since dried beaded on his skin. Not at all alluring or sensual in the right way, that.

Maker's breath this is worse than he'd thought if he couldn't remember being carried. "Why- how did?"

Michel rolled onto his side, propping himself up onto his elbow as Zevran peeled himself away from Michel's chest. The Chevalier's free hand still rested against Zevran's side, having no desire to be out of arms reach of the elf, thumb stroking a hip gently. He knew Zevran was still bogged down in a fevered cloud, dizzy, eyes glazed over.

"I found you, brought you here...dried you off...you were soaked through with sweat. Then I bundled you and laid with you...are you feeling any better," Michel looked both concerned and somewhat pained beneath it. Concerned for Zevran's well being, pained that he wouldn't expect Michel to be there when he was feeling unwell.

"Ugh." Zevran scraped a hand over his face, frowning at the feeling of his skin. He'd been- walking down to bathe. As though sweating through his clothing would cause him to desire anything else. He did not become ill quite like this easily but when he did? He felt fit to die. or at least drown. More often than not he spent the entire time bundled around a bottle of wine and waited for it to either kill him or blow over.

"I feel like I am going to die." He mumbled, tugging the blankets away from his body- he's shifted from freezing to burning, throat dry and lips chapped. The least sensual he's ever been around Michel- and Michel was in bed with him. Marvelous.

Michel Shook the blankets out and folded them down toward the end of the bed before shifting beside Zevran to sit up. He did not have a bottle of wine, but he did have a pitcher of water, a basin of water, and a soothing ointment made of elfroot, mentholated oils, and other oils with soothing and health benefits. Michel levered himself up and threw his legs over the edge of the bed, water would be better for him than the wine anyway.

"Perhaps we should visit the healing tents then," he offered pouring a glass for Zevran and handing him the offering. He was completely unaware that part of what ailed him was having Michel see him this way, as it was the Chevalier felt helpless seeing Zevran this way, he was glad to have found him...even though his dreams had stirred things inside of the Chevalier.

"Where there are more sick people? How is that going to help?" It won't, he knows it won't. He's seen plague doctors and plague tents before- he knows that what goes in may be coughing and treatable and what comes out is a corpse for a single massive pyre at the end of the day.

No thank you.

He sits up, twisting his hair in a knot off the nape of his neck to help with the sweating and heat. It works to an extent. The water he sips little by little as he focuses on not falling back over onto the bed. He's fine. He'll be fine. "Why do you keep looking at me like that?"

"You're already sick," Michel offered, if they all had the same illness could it truly get any better or any worse sitting here? Still, he could sense that this was something that truly bothered Zevran, "what if I brought one here? Or if they had something that they could, at least, give me for the fever?"

Michel was out of his mind with not being able to do anything at all, and this was so unlike him, it put him on edge. Those dreams as well kept coming back to him, revolving in his head and perhaps he was staring at Zevran in a way that would make someone curious. He tore his gaze away after a moment pondering his hands and whether he should admit to seeing something so personal, "you had dreams while you were delirious."

"Sick, not dead." He is not going to the plague tents and he is not so poorly off that he needs a doctor. He is fine.

"Brandy, honey, and elfroot." That is all he needs. That- he has, actually, even if all he has in his hands is water. Brandy later, perhaps, along with the honey and the elfroot. "Did I talk in my sleep?"

Michel simply gazed at Zevran in silence, for now he would let him have his way, but if he deteriorated in anyway he would be hard pressed to stand by and watch it idly.

And Michel would be happy to get him some brandy, in conjunction with the water. He was sweating so much and losing so much fluid through his skin that he would dehydrate and Michel would be forced to act, he could already see it in those dry lips. At least in this he was somewhat reassured, "no...I would not say that you talked in your sleep so much as projected your dreams...this is...why."

"..." For a long moment he went still, swallowing water and considering what he'd dreamed of. What Michel had seen. Maker's breath why couldn't it have been Alistair that found him? Alistair that knew everything, Alistair that did not care.

Michel now knew. Michel would care.

"Dreams are dreams." Not memories.

"Certainly," Michel agreed with Zevran, but whether he believed it entirely was another matter. He cared, of course he cared, he'd allowed Zevran to see more of him than anyone ever had and mark him in such a way. Still he curbed his feelings and his enthusiasm and it left him feeling leaden and hollow, but he couldn't claim an ounce of anything that was real about himself.

"It was just a dream," Michel preoccupied himself, pouring a glass of water, if he didn't he would certainly eye Zevran some more and this had to be better.

"Nothing more." It is not something he wishes to discuss. He had the water in his hands and a heavy weight on his mind- thinking through the fog and attempting to consider what Michel might have seen-

There are a great many things. He could lie. Ask if he saw anything arousing (he probably did) rather than terrible. He survived the Crows, survived that room, survived Antiva.

Nothing more needs to be said.

"Of course...!" Michel rarely spoke above his polite and civil tones, even when he was frustrated about something, but there was a heat in his voice that elevated his tone. If it didn't surprise Zevran than it certainly surprised him and he pushed himself into a sitting position, legs hanging over the edge of the bed.

He ran his hands through his hair, his own body damp with sweat, most of it Zevran's the rest of it was from holding Zevran. Gaining control over that spike in his demeanor, Michel set the water aside, steepled his fingers and watched the opposite wall with interest.

"Pardon...I agree with you...of course," the calm was back in his voice, that usual air of politeness that clung to Michel like an old habit, trained into him.

Never one to flinch- Zevran went damningly still. His version of twitching away, of flinching at the tone is to lock up entirely for a moment as his bleary mind attempts to pick out what he had done wrong this time. Tempers of men flared often when the man was passionate and Taliesin had passion. Under the polish Michel did as well.

He ought to know better than to speak out against such a man when they were nude and in bed.

That Michel could reign everything in again so neatly, so coolly gave him pause. Making him lose composure in a certain way was half the appeal of knowing the man, knowing he could keep it was no surprise.

But anger was new. Frustration that wasn't sexual? Was new. "...clearly you have your own opinions on the matter."

Michel could feel Zevran lock up, it rippled across the bed, and whether it was something that Zevran had done wrong or Michel had done wrong...or perhaps both of them, the Chevalier couldn't say. There were a number of things running through his head right now and perhaps keeping so much of this to himself was driving him crazy. He curled in on himself after a moment, immediately regretting it, how a man as broad and tall as he could look as though he were disappearing, but it didn't last.

After a moment he twisted back around on the bed and bowed his biddably, as tractable toward Zevran as he'd ever been toward the Empress. It came with so many years of service and practiced dissembling, "...I apologize...it's nothing that really matters right now."

"Clearly it does, otherwise you would not be so upset." And what was curling up tight against the pressure and weight of frustration other than a sign of intense emotion? He knew well enough Michel felt it but there were times when it was easier to ignore them. Dancing around the matter of Sentiment had been easy enough in the past.

Why must it come to a head now when he was not thinking clearly?

Michel stretched out across the bed, hooking his arms around Zevran's tense body, his face pressing into his stomach. This was not something they had to discuss while Zevran was feeling this way, but a few things would put the Chevalier's mind at ease, "do you want me here, bel homme? Do you find me to be a reliable enough man?"

Alright- this was new. The closeness, the intensity, the asking. Did he find Michel reliable? Was there an answer he could give that wouldn't end in some manner of complication? Without words for a moment Zevran combed his fingers through the Chevalier's hair, stroking it gently in an attempt to sooth. "I do."

As much as he found any human noble reliable- but the qualifier does not need to be said.

"Then that is enough," for how long? Michel wasn't entirely certain, but for now it was an answer that would serve him, and he relaxed against Zevran, luxuriating in the feeling of fingers combing through his hair. For now he had this, but he was certain Zevran would cut him out soon, that was his expectation anyway. He might have marked Michel, but the Chevalier doubted he would be kept. It simply was not done, not in his experience.

"And yet, the sad face." He murmured, attempting to soothe this ire, to gentle this upset. "You should not seem so sad, Soleil, it is not becoming upon your handsome face, these eyes, this pout."

Not that the man is actually pouting and not that he can use his normal means of distraction in the slightest- but it is something he can try. To tease out a smile, to coax something closer to normal for them.

I...apologize..." because he really wasn't certain what to say, he wasn't sad or upset very often and it was in fact very rare that he found himself in such a state of upset. He usually swallowed such things and moved on, but in this case it was easier said than done. How did one go about describing their heart being tossed around anyway? The emotions he's built upon and attached to Zevran were compounded with frustration, was he truly sad? Or was he on the verge of a break down?

If that was the case he wouldn't be of any use to anyone in such a state. It wasn't something to talk about now, but he would have to get it out of his system before it killed him, "...it is not something you need to be concerned about, we'll discuss it when you're feeling well, yes?"

In the meantime he pushed himself back up and smoothed his hands against Zevran's sides, "what can I do for you right now?"

"You do not need to apologize. Tell me how to make you smile." Wait, that shouldn't have been what he said. How to cheer you up was- that was sentiment, not sex. But he could not offer anything sensual while this ill and finds himself hopelessly sentimental, if confused, in the face of Michel's upset.

And part of it is habit. Please the human to earn his own peace of mind. He's had to do it plenty with Taliesin throughout his life- a decade long break from that mentality hasn't done much to erase it.

"More water, I think. And an elfroot potion to help with the fever- there should be one in my desk."

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