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

[girlinthebox]

It's going to be a while before she has the strength to meander out of the tents, and Simon's not looking to well. She doesn't necessarily want to leave him alone when he can see the ones that stare at him so often.

But staying still when you're sickly isn't as appealing an option as you'd think. River wobbles slightly on her feet as she makes her way through the tent, still managing to slip through everyone with little to no trouble, as though some sort of drunken master of staying out from underfoot.

The coffee momentarily has her interest, a delicate sniff given to the aroma drifting from that side of the tent.

[fleurdesel]

"River." Gently chiding from where she was taking a (brief) break, a mug of coffee in her hands. How it was she managed to slip through the tents and weave through patients, guards, and healers like without attracting attention-

Well.

She's come to expect such things from her by now, honestly. "You should be in bed."

[girlinthebox]

"Can't."

Her eyes shift to Adelaide where she sits, eyes drifting around her briefly as though following something unseen, before fixing on her again. "Not while they watch. I...don't want to run today."

The illness has exhausted her, and while sleep might help? It just as easily puts her in the path of those she constantly has to rebuff and push away. She'd rather not sleep, if she can help it.

[fleurdesel]

"The spirits?" Or demons. The girl's odd sensitivity must be doubly troublesome with the symptoms of this illness- she cannot promise utter protection but she might offer a reprieve. Adelaide offers River a hand, Compassion brightly blue along her skin, peering over her shoulder. "And if we can keep them away for awhile?"

[girlinthebox]

She hunches into herself almost instantly. She's been 'helped' before, with the best of intentions, and her skin still crawls at the memory.

"Blind and numb, scrabbling in the dark. Everything goes gray and slipping away. I don't..." She shakes her head, her eyes going a little wider as she edges back. "Don't make it quiet. It's worse. It's so much worse."

[fleurdesel]

"River..." Adelaide's lips press thin, something twisting uncomfortably in her chest. "It won't be silent. Peaceful- but not silent. The fade will still be yours- it'll be a little more empty for awhile, that is all."

Talking Spirits into leaving the area, into letting River rest- it'll take time but it is something they can manage if it helps.

[girlinthebox]

There's still a whimper of protest, but it's a small one. Compassion's glow draws her gaze up once more, and though she's shaking slightly, it isn't in fear of this one. She knows what she is, all that she is, and her song is not the one to fear.

Swallowing hard, she lets her hands lower by degrees. Being exhausted and not able to sleep is a chore on the body on the best of days, let alone with this illness coursing through her on top of it all.

[fleurdesel]

Slowly she reaches out, Compassion a pale blue echo, to take River's hands in hers. Other spirits might flit about in the background, murmur or whisper, but Adelaide will mind them once she has River settled.

"There's a cot we've kept off to the side for healers that need rest. Compassion can mind you there." Someone to keep it from being so silent and Adelaide can take an hour or two to rest or grind herbs or anything that doesn't require the spirit's attention.

[girlinthebox]

There's some comfort in that, then. Not alone. A friend, an echo of a friend, to keep watch where others cannot see, to banish those that creep in when she lets her guard down. Maybe...maybe she can sleep, after all.

Her fingers carefully twine around Adelaide's as she takes a shaky breath and nods her head, slowly. Too quickly and it becomes very dizzy.