[ OPEN ] We shift and turn and swear and yearn

[fleurdesel]

WHO: Adelaide & you
WHAT: Catch All for the month
WHEN: June/Justinian
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Wine, swearing, PUPPIES, allusions to demonic violence. Prose or Brackets are fine, roll with what you like most. If you want a specific prompt hit me up on plurk @ here!

[ Courtyard -> Stables ]

When her sister wrote 'their arrival is imminent' Adelaide had not quite considered how imminent Juliette meant. Perhaps she might have been better prepared for signing off with the courier when they herd the rather rambunctious litter of several month old mabari pups to one of the few empty stalls in the barn. Playful things that they are- Dennet is a horse master not a hound master and it will be some time before the appropriate point of authority finds their way down to check on the five puppies ready for imprinting or...whatever it is these dogs do- but they will need minding until they are handed off and as she'd had the fortune to sign for them- Adelaide finds herself sitting in the barn, trying to keep the dogs from gnawing on one another, on her, or on anything valuable. Moments like this are a thorough reminder as to why she is a cat person.


[ Library ]

She can be found, as ever, at her table tucked into one of the unoccupied nooks of the library- a cold cup of tea at her elbow, a sheaf of notes she writes and reorganizes- a quill on occasion hovering over a sheet of blank paper and mimicking her notes stroke for stroke so she might produce them in duplicate. So long as she remembers exactly how she's laid out the paper, it works well enough. For questions, comments, concerns, condemnations or complications that have arisen during research she has made herself thoroughly available.


[ Return of the Attache ]

"No." That is all she has to say. No. She won't bother to stop or listen, she won't bother to mind him in the slightest- that same family attache doggedly tails Adelaide about the hold, hovering just behind with a leatherbound sheaf of papers in his hand while he awaits for some sign that she'll take them or at least listen. He spends the bulk of his time holding the odd extra book or pen or, in a singularly distressing moment, a pad of gauze against a seeping wound as she mends a patient in the healing tents. He's a step down from a personal valet- he is not meant to be dealing with literal bloody commoners and yet- this is his life. Someone please help him convince Adelaide to at least take the papers and look at them.


AFTER JUSTINIAN 19th

[ Stairs ]

After the final ritual is all said, done, and finished Adelaide finds she has a wealth of extra time due to no longer needing to spend several hours picking apart what went wrong with the last and what could go wrong with the next- and at least a few hours extra that she'd otherwise spend training with Martel in the evenings due to the incontinence that is her leg. Magic, even hers, can only do so much and the nasty break in that last fight leaves her less walking with the calm poise she's known for and more hobbling from place to place, staff less an afterthought and more a requirement for keeping her weight off her leg. At the moment she's glowering at the stones underfoot as she takes one slow, shuffling step up the stairs at a time. Her research is in the library- and eventually she would make her way there. Just- give her some time.


[ Healing Tents ]

Here, at least, there are fewer stairs. Adelaide splits her time between minding patients and beginning new notations on old research she'd set aside- tending to those she could while moving as little as possible for the first few days. Her humor is...subdued, somewhat, but that is easily explained by the weight of her work of the past months finally catching up now that she is forced to spend less time on her feet. Now and then she might be caught dozing, chin tipped to her chest, fingers still holding the page of her book in place.

Comments

Re: Library - before the 19th

[sunshinethroughgrey]

"My sister would have said - never go with the first solution. It's usually the one people decide on when they are pissing their pants in fear." She mused for a moment, before reaching for a cookie. "Marian always does have a good grasp on verbiage."

[fleurdesel]

"She seems a remarkable woman, from what I have heard of her. It makes you no less so." A fear she'd had as a child, briefly, before she became far too different from any of her sisters to make a comparison worthwhile. That simply because they were exceptional, it made her less.

[sunshinethroughgrey]

"I've never compared myself to Marian. We're two different people, after all." She smiled then, "But you're right, she is extraordinary. Only more so when you find out just how normal she is."

[fleurdesel]

"Is that not the way of extraordinary people? To seem so all the more for how normal they might be?" That was what she had always thought, honestly.

[sunshinethroughgrey]

"Hah, I suppose that's so! Being ordinary and then doing extraordinary things -- that's the mark of someone to be watched." She dimpled at the the thought, before sipping her tea once more. "And honestly, all I ever wanted before becoming a Warden was to be normal. Now it's all I want again - yet it's different now. Before I did not even want to be a mage. Now I want to be a mage without the binding of the Wardens over me."

[fleurdesel]

"It is the duty that cannot be foresworn, yes?" There is no deserting-

Well.

Anders proved that was not quite so, but normally one did not desert. There wasn't much of anywhere one could go to avoid the marks that made them a Grey Warden, or so she'd heard.

[sunshinethroughgrey]

"For various reasons, yes. But there are ways to retire, that I shall look into." There had to be a way to reverse it. She just had not found one yet.

[fleurdesel]

"Truly? So Felix may not have to spend the whole of his life in the Wardens?" A life he'd never truly wanted. He had been ready to die on that bed, until they took him.

[sunshinethroughgrey]

Here she paused, and here she spoke more cautiously, "I don't know ... yet. For most of us, being a Warden is what we must bear until we hear the Calling. Others die in battle before that even occurs, or from illness or otherwise. I ... am going to be searching for a way to free us from such obligations, but it will take time."

And the right resources...

[fleurdesel]

"...If you wish assistance, whatever I might be able to offer? I shall." Felix's induction into the organization, the whole of his cure and sudden revival- it sits ill. "From illness, you say- I thought becoming a Warden meant being cured of the taint?"

[sunshinethroughgrey]

"Well, just because you have survived the Blight doesn't mean you're going to survive some sort of other disease. We're more resistant but we're not immortal." She smiles then, before she shakes her head, "You're not as much ...cured, as it is changed within you, when you become a Grey Warden. There is a time limit though - a cost that must be paid."

[fleurdesel]

"...so they went through all of- whatever they did to him when they did not even want him- and they are merely putting off the inevitable?!" Adelaide needs a moment then- air around her going sharply cold, frost spidering across her fingertips before she can shake it off and tuck it back.

[sunshinethroughgrey]

"Ack!" Protect the books, protect the books. She modulated her fire magic just enough to keep the temperature around the books and the tray as close to room as she could. "... I. Wait, I thought he chose to become a Grey Warden?"

[fleurdesel]

"I do not know what they said to him as they removed me from the room." She remained sore about that. "But if you were on your death's bed and such an opportunity was offered, would you not take it? That is no choice."

[sunshinethroughgrey]

"... Yes, I quite remember that choice." She leaned back in her seat, her expression softening. "And yes, I took it, because my sister wanted me to live. I won't say I haven't regretted it, but I also can't say I haven't lived in honor to save lives."

[fleurdesel]

"But what is it that they do and why is it so secret? Even a temporary fix is better than none- more time alive is more time to study the taint, to find a proper cure for it before it becomes whatever it is Wardens carry. Whatever you have? it is not the same. The ache is different." Changed, tangled, altered- she cannot discern it quite so well as she could Felix's chronic pain.

[sunshinethroughgrey]

"If I could tell you that, I would. But I have been sworn to secrecy, and while others in my Order don't seem to carry much honor these days ... " She shrugged her shoulders. "I still do. But if I can find a way, I will share it. And if you would like to work with me ... it would help with the Blight victims."

[fleurdesel]

"Yes because anyone with any manner of answer simply cannot share it." Foolishness. But if she could not wrangle the truth from Bethany- making certain she has a hand in helping with the research might tell her more at the very least.

[sunshinethroughgrey]

"If we could, we would, but let us just say that all manner of problems will arise. We sacrifice, so you do not have to. It is our way." It is simple, that truth, but the only one she could give. "If you know a place to start?"

[fleurdesel]

"If anyone had any manner of idea, this would be researched into a definitive 'this is impossible' by now. All we know is that the taint is too dangerous to risk study."

[sunshinethroughgrey]

"Well, then we shall have to find a way to study it ... without giving it to anyone else."

[fleurdesel]

"Or catching it ourselves, if we are not a warden." Which would be just as difficult.

[sunshinethroughgrey]

"Well, at least we'll be doing something, hm?" She gave a wry little smile.

[fleurdesel]

"I will speak to Felix's father. Perhaps what he has done can be of use." It can't hurt, honestly.

[sunshinethroughgrey]

Now there was something she hadn't considered, and she sat up a little, "Would he help us? All things considered. I know he did all that he did to save his son."