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

[laurenande]

Beleth's shriek and the desperate grip that suddenly seized her from behind were, finally, enough to rouse Galadriel from her dream. Feverish and confused, the elf woke in turns. The demon that rose up before them lunged but, as Galadriel blinked awake, it faded into smoke and vanished, absorbed by the hazy candlelight of the library. Galadriel stared at the space it had occupied, momentarily thrown, and hardly seemed to realize that she had twisted in her seat.

She looked down, at the blanket that hung over her shoulders, at the hands that grasped at her sides, and followed the path of her own arm. It had moved without her leave, she'd reached behind herself on reflex as she woke, and it took her a moment to realize why. A pair of arms that had gripped her and she, in turn, had drawn someone to her side. Half asleep, for a fleeting instant, she was somewhere a very long time ago and her heart was in her throat--but then she started to come back to herself.

"Beleth?" Galadriel asked, her voice rougher than it ought to be. She didn't release the Dalish elf, not immediately, and her confusion was plain on her face.

[arlathvhen]

Not being released immediately suits Beleth just fine, because she's not quite ready to let go of Galadriel. The panic and fear had escalated too far to simply be stopped by the disappearance of the monstrous creature, and even with it gone, she clings to Galadriel, struggling with her breathing. She considers it a personal victory that she doesn't just hyperventilate right then and there, but it's a small comfort when she's in tears, whole body shivering.

Her name dimly registers, and it's a few gasping breathes until Beleth can try to acknowledge the elven queen that she was clinging to. The first thing that registers is a deep, profound embarrassment. Once her breath is under control enough to speak, she immediately begins to apologize.

"My lady," And, slowly, her hands free themselves from Galadriel. "I am so, so sorry, my lady. I know it was a dream, but it felt so real. I could feel the heat. I could hear it."

[laurenande]

Galadriel stared at the elf, at the top of her head, as she shook, until she understood what she was speaking of. If she hadn't been half in dreams, herself, she would have never realized.

"You saw the demon?" Galadriel asked, quietly and, before Beleth could answer, turned and drew the dalish woman into a proper embrace.

Of all people, Galadriel knew well the horror of such creatures, the dread that they inspired. To see one in Thedas? That must have been jarring. She could not imagine how she would have reacted to such a fright, even knowing what she saw. That Beleth had been reduced to trembling was nothing to be ashamed of.

"Av'osto, Beleth," Galadriel said, softly. "It is terrible to behold, but it was not real. They do not walk these lands."

[arlathvhen]

"That was like no demon I have seen before." Beleth whispered, as though the creature could somehow hear and take offense. She accepts the embrace, and returns it, wrapping her arms around the older woman. It's a comfort she won't deny herself, even if it's still rather embarrassing to act like a child in front of Galadriel.

Even if Galadriel was infinitely older than her already. It's the principle of the matter.

"I'm glad that it doesn't exist here. I can't believe it's a thing in your world. Your world has always sounded so--" So idyllic. A land where elves are dignified rulers who lived without being touched by time. Even Sam, with his surprising idealism, painted a picture without trying of some kind of paradise. "I wanted to see it. That's why I didn't wake you up sooner. I should have, but before that monster, I saw a land that seemed..." How do you even describe it, or that other woman? "...Like the world that had once been, and may be again, some day."

[laurenande]

"Like it had been?" Galadriel repeated and, after a pause, and attempted to recall the beginnings of her dreams, before heat and the smell of smoke had warped them. The old world was what had spawned those creatures--how had she dreamed? What had Beleth seen that had been so separate from them?

"Melian!" she announced, almost surprised, as the image returned to her. Her laugh was the confused sound of the freshly woken, but it held a thread of genuine joy. She released Beleth so she could look down at her. "You saw Melian?"

"You saw that dream?" She asked but, it seemed expected no answer. "Melian was a dear friend of mine, from ages long past. Her lands..."

"Arda is...much darker than Thedas, I fear. Great and terrible things slumber in it but, despite them, there was much light as well. Melian kept safe the elven lands of Doraith, not even the demons could cross the bounds that she drew."

"Had I a choice, I can think of no image I would have rather shown you, no memory brighter than Melian."

[arlathvhen]

Once she was released, Beleth straightened up, quickly wiping away the remnants of any tears with the heel of her hand. Crying?? No, there was just. Dust in her eye. "I saw a woman," Beleth admitted, "One who looked like you. Tall and fair, and--Incredible."

She hesitates for a moment, then glances up to look at Galadriel. "...Arda feels like a story--like something the hahrens told the children around the campfire at night. We hear about Arlathan, but..." She shrugs. "...I wanted to see it. That's why I didn't wake you up. I'm glad I got to see Lady Melian." Even if it was offset by the terrible things that followed.

"What happened to her?" Curiosity drives her to wonder, for Galadriel spoke of Melian as if she was no longer there. What could happened to someone so great, so fair?

[laurenande]

Beleth's hesitance, the redness around her eyes and the set of her shoulders, spoke of deep curiosity but a certain delicacy as well. She wished to know these things, to know of arda, but there was a thread of hope tangled within her thoughts. It was a thread many of the Dalish shared and Galadriel did not intend to tarnish it.

Not if she could help it.

"I admit, even to my own ears, my life and memories sometimes sound like legends. They are things long passed, mired in time and nostalgia; it can be hard to recall that each name I knew was one that a person bore, that I should not think on them as symbols or the function of their power.

"That woman might've been me, for I spent much time in her company ere the end, but I cannot say for certain. Melian...grew weary, with both her grief and loss," Galadriel explained, her tone slowing as she recalled the fate of Doraith, as she thought on the cousins she now avoided, if only passively.

"Her daughter was lost to her, wed to a mortal man and bound to his fate, and her husband was slain for the want of a glorious treasure. Her lands were no longer tolerable, they reminded her of the dead, the passed, and she traveled to my homeland, to a place where she could find rest and reprieve from all her sorrows."

"She is there now, I expect, and I hope that I might see her again, but I do not think that is my fate."

But this was sad, and their conversation had come from such a grim vision. If she was not careful she would be consumed by these thoughts.

"Tell me, what does hahren mean?"

[arlathvhen]

Beleth listens intently to Galadriel, nodding along as she tells her about Melian--Though she pauses when Galadriel touches on Luthien, blinking in surprise. "Her daughter married a human? Why in the world would she do that? Is--Is that normal, in Arda?" It was certainly taboo here, and the elves here weren't immortal noble beings, splendid and ethereal. She couldn't imagine what an elf who was would find attractive about a mere human man.

Because Beleth doesn't like human men!!! They all suck!!!

It's depressing, the story, aside from that, but the mention of a homeland peeks her curiosity. She wondered what kind of homeland a woman like Galadriel was from, what had caused her to leave it--and why she didn't think she'd be back. But Beleth's curiosity wasn't so great as to be oblivious to the reluctance Galadriel possessed to discuss it, and the Dalish could understand. She also had someone waiting in her homeland, and she also wondered if she would ever see it, and him, again. So she filed it away for another day.

"Hahren--It means different things to the Dalish, and the city elves. The word means elder, and that's what they are to the Dalish. We honor the long lives they've led--" She pauses for a moment, suddenly acutely aware that even the eldest hahren in the Ashara clan must seem like a child to Galadriel. She cleared her throat, and quickly moved on. "They keep our stories, and care for the children. Our oldest hahren is a man named Anan. He's of poor health, and can't walk around much anymore, but his spirit still burns brightly." She paused, giving a few moments for remembrance, smile fond.

"But for the city elves...I'm not exactly sure, but they seem to serve almost as a Keeper would. Perhaps because they used to send all their mages off to be locked away in a tower. But they lead the alienages, I guess." A small shrug followed the much less interested explanation. Who cared about city elves anyway.