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

[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."

[ombranera]

"At least I am speaking in common. Normally I slip to Antivan and not many understand me then." Which hurts more than it helps, especially if he's asking for something or someone. Perhaps it is not as bad as he thought.

"...Acceptance?" A beat. "It is a strange thing, isn't it?"

[arsebiscuit]

"Freakier than the friggin dream sharing. Makes me wonder which nostril you'll be sneezing the dagger out at me."

She says from her current position as a lifeless bone pile on top of him. Whether Sera may be able to make out a bit of Antivian she's not saying. Never pays to play a hand or even try to bluff if not called on for it.

[ombranera]

"This is where I would go 'ah it is so sad you have never known such a thing' and you go 'Shut your trap with that shite'" Sera is now a proud member of the people Zevran can imitate to some degree of accuracy. Feel proud, Sera. "And I shut my trap and we move on. Or I can say I like you as you are and you never need change."

[arsebiscuit]

"First one. Second puts you off the good list."

And now he was sounding like her. Maker. That...mm. Gave her ideas.

"But all's forgiven if you do me next time you're in Bela's bed. If you don't go and get offed by these sniffles first."

[ombranera]

"...I don't know if she'd find that hilarious or hot. Probably both." He snorts a soft laugh, patting her back. "I'll do it, just to see her face."

[arsebiscuit]

"Better not be near her face when I pop in. I'm for the lady bits."

During oral or nothing, Zev. Them's the rules when you play pretending to be Sera.

[ombranera]

"If you insist." Crackling a laugh shouldn't hurt so much- and yet he laughs all the same at the mental image.

[arsebiscuit]

"Good boy. Now stick with happy dreams, yeah? I've not no room for your teary bits."

She has enough of her own, thanks. But if it happens. Well. It happens, she supposes. But she'll be waking him right back up again.

[ombranera]

"Or my manly bits. But we both have room for bleary tits." Wait, what would that even be? Tits smeared with something? Beary tits? Tits covered in beer? He squints at nothing for the long moment it takes his mind to wind back around to 'don't care' and lets himself stop to drift.