faderift | [OPEN] Running with my roots pulled up

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[OPEN] Running with my roots pulled up

WHO: Bruce ~~Banner~~ and whoever else
WHAT: Rumors abound. Bruce is good at pretending he can't hear anything. A dracolisk makes everyone's life hell.
WHEN: Across Justinian
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Belated open log thing for the remainder of June; prompts and such are under the cut. Starting in brackets but feel free to switch to prose and I will follow. If you want specific prompts/starters, let me know @

knightblazer or PM this journal!

one. trouble on four hooves. (stables)

[It's not exactly the first time the horsemaster is on his case and it probably won't be the last as well, if the current situation is to go by it.

Horsemaster Dennet wasn't exactly thrilled with the dracolisk that had decided to trail all the way back here with him (muttering along the lines of 'as if one of them wasn't enough'), but the one that Bruce... was stuck with had a tendency for more collateral damage. Nothing major, at least, but after breaking three gates and four fences in its apparent nightly ritual of getting out of the stables there were some lines that needed to be drawn. Thus, this current situation.

The hammer in his hand pounds loudly against the nails as Bruce does his best fixing up the damage the dracolisk had caused in the last few nights. The sleeves of his threadbare shirts are rolled up, for even with the chill here pounding away like this still made him sweat quite a bit, especially as he continued to toil away the hours.

Beside him the dracolisk chewed delicately on some hay, clearly much calmer and less prone to violence now that its human was around.]

two. not quite back to business (healing tents, courtyard)

[It was impossible to ignore the rumors, even if they weren't that hotly circulated, for better or for worse. But still the damage had been done and it would be a lie if he said that things were the same as before.

Nothing was the same as it used to be. After the fallout with Adelaide things didn't really quite look up. Patients who once came to him for help now avoided his gaze entirely and went to others, and the new ones who came in now looked at him with wariness, with all the suspicion that frustrated Bruce more than anything else. This was one of the reasons why he hid his magic away, why he stuck to herbs and what he could do with nothing but his head and his own two hands. He was here to help and he didn't need his magic to do it. It wasn't worth any of this.

(But of course, he deserved it. He knows that. He deserves every bit of this.)

Still, regardless of everything, he came here to do a job and despite all that had happened, there were always going to be people who needed help. So Bruce does the best he can, going around the courtyard to treat whoever was willing to accept his help and aiding anybody who came to his tent while he was in there.]

three. midnight mulling (battlements)

[The battlements had, in a way, become something of a sanctuary to him now. When the night gets this dark and most of Skyhold is asleep, the biting chill of the cold and the silence of the night comforts him well.

On most other nights he'd have the excuse of potion brewing to be up here but tonight that desire isn't there. He sits on the floor, back against one of the walls as he glances out to the mountains that surround them, the sky above that twinkle with countless stars. When everything feels so vast and overwhelming its easy enough to lose himself into the sight, to let them take him away from the chaos of his mind and his soul. To find that momentary peace within himself again, when every part of him rages for something else otherwise.]

wildcard.

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[What a mysterious horse.

She might have thought it would eat flesh. It has the look of a cruel and biting sort of thing that rips and tears to her. A lurking sort of thing. But she's not accustomed to very large land animals still and the Western Approach had lots of things that seemed to exist exclusively to want to murder her so it seems a reasonable assumption.]

If I was the horsemaster, I would be more sensible in asking favours from a doctor - say setting a bone if one of these things kicks me because they are prone to kicking. Or even helping to heal the horses. Or the...the new thing. What is this mysterious spiky dragon horsebeast? This is a waste of your many talents, isn't it? Hammering nails?

[It does indeed eat flesh, but right now its placated enough with some hay and the company of the human its chosen to stick itself to - not that Bruce wants to admit the latter, since that leads to things he'd rather not think about. There's so many reasons why being actually responsible for something won't end well for him.

The words from her bring out a small laugh from Bruce, though the amusement that it brings is little.] It's called a dracolisk. [He begins to explain over the pounding of the hammer.] They're mounts, albeit more exotic than your average horse. And while I do appreciate your confidence in my abilities, my surgical skills don't quite apply to animals. Though if you do end up needing a bone set, I'll do my best to make it painless.

[Well once at twelve, a girl in need of a little settling down was handed a baby fox that got into every sort of mischief that could ever be thought of and look at-- So he's her partner in crime, quite literally, but her life is all the richer for having him in it.]

Why are so many large creatures upon the land in Thedas so strange? Is this some rule you are all taught that no one thinks to tell us? I read extensively prior to the Western Approach but still I was not quite prepared for having to take down a quillback when I had to. [And then there were the varghests whenever she wanted to cool off somewhere by the water. Rude. Incredibly rude.] A leg is a leg, no? Lux, you would agree with me? [The fox is happy to be including and thus makes a show of strutting over near Bruce, plopping himself down and extending one paw out as Araceli comes around to join him, crouching down to lift a few nails. Because she heard rumours. Confirmed them with her favourite and most reliable sources. And she isn't sure what to think really.] Would magic make setting a bone painless?

[Her question is light: he can lie if he wishes, he can evade. This isn't like the almost interrogation of Anders when Korrin came into their rooms furious but a little bit of her is hurt since she remembers what he said when she met him all that time ago, and she took him for a man of his word.]

I wouldn't call them strange - more of 'exotic', if anything.

[Then again, he supposes to one who has no knowledge of Thedas before... he supposes he can see how these can all seem so strange to her. In a way, there's envy in that thought. Of being in some place that wasn't Thedas, a land where these sorts of sufferings were unheard of.

He finishes hammering the nail into the joint just as the fox trots over to him, and Bruce glances down at it, blinking at the outstretched paw for a few moments before her next words take his attention.

--to the matter at hand, then.]

It depends on the severity of the injury. [Bruce takes a nail from the pile near him and sets it where it needs to be.] There's only so much pain magic can numb away before the healing itself becomes compromised. [He starts to hammer down the nail after that, the loud thunks sounding out once again.]

Everywhere I live is surrounded by the sea, anything big lives in the water or in other countries, it's too expensive to try to keep them. I only saw pictures of horses until a rift spat me out here.

[There is some land and some larger animals but they're generally pigs or goats, the few hardy things that can eat anything and don't tend to take up all that much space on islands where it's sand and rocky shores where they haven't built upon, and where any soil is heavily laden with salt. Castileos is the place that farms salt, not animals or crops.

Even war was only a memory there. One war terrible enough to never be repeated. It makes her feel like a naive girl when she tells people that though.]

How does being numb do that? [Giving Lux a nudge out of the way, she crouches before him so he can see just how confused she is because really, Bruce, any mask she might have worn is gone because that made absolutely no sense to her.] I have been shot. It was so painful. But it's a little ball and sometimes it goes through and out the other side, or sometimes it doesn't and you have to get it out, and you can't always see a doctor. When I had to fish it out with my fingers… [A shudder passes through her, Lux puts his paw on her leg in apparent sympathy.] I downed a whole bottle of rum between readying myself, getting it out, cleaning it and stitching it shut.

[It's hard to imagine how life is on a land like that - even Seheron didn't have it. But Seheron was a different place entirely, so its not like its a good basis of comparison in the first place. He imagines it something closer to Antiva, except maybe surrounded with more water? Who knows.

When she moves towards him Bruce pauses in his hammering to glance over to her, frowning a little at some of the words that she uses. A little ball could... cause that much damage? What? Had it been enchanted or something?

And also--]

Being intoxicated isn't a good idea when you have to treat yourself. [He murmurs, more of a remark than anything else before mulling over the rest of her words.] What's this about a ball?

[Snow is strange to her. Mountains she has to climb are strange when they have some sea cliffs but they're for sea birds and everyone has the good sense to leave them be.

If her mother were here, she might attempt a sheepish grin for all of five seconds but her mother is not so she doesn't even try, still managing to keep the cheeky grin instead.]

And if you're in so much pain you see stars? Or that you'd probably jump off the bed and kick the doctor if you had one anyway. [If they'd been by the healing tents she'd offer to show him the scars but seeing as they are where they are, she gives a little shrug, twisting her hair over her shoulder as she continues.] We call it a shot when it comes out of a pistol, though some of our other weapons called muskets fire things called musket balls, they're round balls of lead and they travel very very fast. You aim like so-- [Standing, she nudges Lux and he darts ahead of her, poised and ready as she holds out two fingers, making a noise as close to a little explosion as she can and her fox flops to play dead before he runs back over.] And well you can try to dodge, or to seek cover. But like I said they move very fast and in they go and they go very deep. It isn't like an arrow that has so much sticking out of you, they're tiny compared to that but lead can make you sick so you need to get them out.

[Her face pales a little, remembering a couple of not so pleasant experiences.]

Edited 2016-06-27 06:41 (UTC)

If you're in that much pain, all the more reason to not get drunk.

[He says that with a mildly unimpressed look, although he supposes its too late to really say that now, since its clear that she's speaking from past experiences. But hopefully now she'll keep in mind if something like that ever happened again - if she gets... 'shot' at.

Speaking of that, Bruce can only blink at the explanation and subsequent demonstration that is given to him. He... can sort of see what she's trying to show, although its still hard to wrap around his head. (For one, what exactly is a pistol. Or a musket.) As much as he can understand from her, it feels like she's describing some sort of portable catapult. Which, given how large catapults were, only made it all the more confusing.

But besides that, he could get the gist of it. Whatever a 'pistol' or a 'musket' was, they still sounded dangerous. Bruce wouldn't want to be at the end of one.]

It sounds very bad. [...that's the best he can say, really.] I suppose its a good thing you don't need to worry about something like that hurting you here.

But you have never been shot. [For a brief shining moment, she is the expert, only she's teasing before she has a question of her own.] Would magical healing do anything to alter my state of mind at all?

[There was also whatever they gave her on the mercifully separate occasions where she broke her wrists, a rag over the mouth and nose until the world went dark around her and she woke up with a mouth that felt dry as the desert.

One day she'll draw her pistols again since the person that called her a demon when she spoke about them is a friend, and since rifters aren't treated with so much fear and hostility. Although that...that's less of a concern now, since she counts herself as Inquisition, and it does make her wonder about how much the Blights and wars must weigh on them here when there are so many things she takes for granted that they simply don't have. They have magic, true, but they don't even use magic for many of the things she'd think they'd use it for.]

Who is to say what the future holds in Thedas when we spill through the rifts? [Araceli and the Outsider might have talked. Araceli might know how to make gunpowder back home anyway. What could go wrong.] You're saying there's nothing at all between magic and the variety of weapons to hand that couldn't do the same sort of thing?

An injury is an injury, regardless of what the nature of the injury is. [Be it being stabbed or burned or... shot, the result is still the same. Wounds bleed, infections are a danger and pain is always a constant. And treating injuries is what Bruce came here to do in the first place - be it through magic or working without it.

The next part of her words has Bruce pausing. It's a fact that the Rifters are... well, they're certainly nothing like what Thedas has known. Somedays he can believe their claims of other worlds and places, but other times he can't help but wonder if they just came from some distant land that went beyond the borders of the world that their maps show.]

Not to my knowledge. [Well, maybe besides the Qunari blackpowder, but Bruce's knowledge of that is only minimal. Only tales of what it could do in Seheron, and what he saw in the aftermath.] But I suppose you can't discount the possibility.

You have spells that freeze people solid. Or they make it look as if people have been struck by lightning. Mines or walls of flame, or ice. I cannot begin to truly comprehend the entropy spells when I read about them as a break from my studies, or spirits. Especially not the spirits. [Not for lack of trying but that's why she's resolved to speak with the mages on the Council or a great understanding rather than just relying on her books after all. Treating most injuries she can do, or she knows enough about, even some of the nastier things she's seen. Including what happens if people get poisoned by the things in the waters of her home.

What magic can do? She wouldn't even begin to know how to treat it.]

Rifts have dropped things from places, is what I am saying. It spat out these ridiculous spectacles that shaded the eyes but oh what a sight they were, I couldn't look at my companions for fear I would laugh instead of sealing the rift shut. A pistol could fall through. [Or her and the Outsider could meet a blacksmith. And Anders could tell her one thing and Araceli would know the correct substitution to make so she could make gunpowder. Waterproof gunpowder at that.]

[Unconsciously Bruce curls his hands into fists when spirits are mentioned. Spirits are always... well. They're never a comfortable topic for him for many reasons, many of which he'll never speak about. But the issue always lurks in his mind, silent and unspoken.]

Most mages don't understand them either. [The closest, he supposed, would be Solas. But that aside...

An uncomfortable expression crosses his face. Bruce isn't going to lie and say he's not thought of the possibility of something potentially dangerous coming out of these Rifts - something worse than just spirits and demons. In fact, it seems all too plausible considering everything that's happened.]

Then let's just hope that these items never fall to the wrong hands.

[Not the best thing, but its the best response he can give.]

Calma, calma. [The words slip out without Araceli really thinking about them; Bruce is a healer but he's a man, a bigger man than her, and still mostly a stranger; she's fast, agile, she's sure she'll be faster than him but well, a girl learns to be wary sometimes.]

There are things that I can accept about home but...some things I was told about spirits, that they always watch? Or that they press very close where there have been lots of deaths and then possess the corpse? It makes me uneasy. [Dead should be dead, and she doesn't really like the notion of being watched. She doesn't really like the notion of their Fade either anymore, not after it took Korrin, when a demon wore Araceli's face and spoke with her voice.

Araceli had been called demon to her face as well once. She'd been able to joke about it almost, still with an edge to it but now? Now she doesn't know if she can.]

That just puts us down the road of philosophers though - are there such things as the wrong hands or the right hands, and all those other sorts of questions that come with them. I always liked to think that money was better off in my hands where I could spend it to buy food for everyone that lived in my building but my hands broke into the homes of the rich and stole things so… [Instead of finishing what she's saying, she holds her hands out, palms up, raising and lowering them as if weighing some invisible weight in each.]

Edited 2016-07-05 21:28 (UTC)

[He doesn't really mean it - and he doesn't quite understand what she means - but the tone and her patience helps nonetheless. He relaxes after a beat, exhaling loudly, one hand absently rubbing the side of his jaw.]

It makes most people uneasy, and we've had our entire lives to get used to it. [Including Bruce himself - though not for usual reasons. His relationship with spirits isn't exactly good, considering his condition. But that's neither here nor there right now.] So I don't blame you for thinking that.

[If anything, this just goes to show exactly how little control anybody ever has over the Fade and what it brings - so many Ages have passed and there is still so little known of the Fade. Bruce is pretty sure they'll never fully understand it - and that lack of knowledge is what will be their downfall eventually. The unknown always finds a way to strike when its least expected.

He's silent for a moment longer as he hears her continue to speak, not quite able to think of the best things to say. A lot of what he says comes from an experience that few others have, if not none, so he knows his words aren't really the best to go with. But still, she deserves something - and Bruce will try, at least.]

Well, for starters, let's just keep it to us and Corypheus. [A wry smile as he says that.] They've got enough of an advantage as it is.

[Bruce was kind to her, and so long as he doesn't go casting aspersions on her personal life, she finds it very hard to dislike people once she gets to know them. Smiling, she sets one hand one his shoulder for a moment, squeezing just for a second before it's got. She's handsy, it's a habit, but there are plenty of people here who really aren't.]

We have the sea but the sea is around us, it's a constant. And the moon, and that is another constant. They're forces, not things that can hurt us like that. It was why I was glad to meet a real doctor so soon since - and don't laugh, this might sound so silly, I realise - but I don't want to be changed? A doctor is going to fix things the proper way. But spirit healers? That...no. They can go help everyone else. They can help all the people I love here but not me. [If her hand at times is too much for her when she's better about it now that she's finally closed a rift without anything terrible happening in the aftermath, she can't really put into words what else she's afraid of beyond not being the way the sea made her, the way her mother and father made her and raised her. Which probably sounds like a stupid sort of thing but it sits in her throat sometimes and tries to choke her at very odd moments so the point still stands.]

At least none of his forces have beaten us to a rift when anyone has arrived yet. We've been fortunate there, and if he knew about other worlds, he might get ideas.

[The touch is unexpected, but Bruce takes it in stride. He only tenses for a brief moment before making himself relax, and he sends a tiny smile towards Araceli, giving a nod of understanding to her words.]

No, it's not silly. I can understand what you mean. [Magic was--is--unnatural. Even the common folk here recoil at the sight of such unnatural forces at work, let alone people who weren't even from around here, where magic either didn't exist or wasn't like this. He can only imagine how that must be like.] At the very least you're nicer about it than most. People will appreciate that.

[He glances down to his hands, staring at the hammer that he's still holding.]

It'd be good if it stays that way. I wouldn't wish anybody to have their first knowledge of Thedas to be about Corypheus.

I love Korrin's magic, so long as she never sets my hair on fire or I will find a way to chip part of one horn off. And it's useful for so many things - you can freeze food! I spoke to Adelaide about it, about if it was possible to freeze food so things could be brought to Skyhold so they would keep for longer and I don't know why people aren't doing that, and for the work being done in the valley, or in battle but healing is...it's different. [Hopefully her excitement about the ability to freeze food isn't alarming but finding out about the possibility of shrimp and fish being kept fresh to survive the journey to Skyhold was kind of a revelation when a girl craves her favourite dishes and more than the usual boring Fereldan swill she's forced to endure.] Healing is putting magic in where it wasn't before? Isn't it? Sort of? I don't know I will read, pester Dama de Oro about it I believe.

[Moment of silence for Adelaide enduring this girl and her nonsense.]

You do realise that by saying this we have shot everyone in the foot. Even the mysterious spiky horse, in all his mysterious spiky horse feet. [But at least she can still manage a smile since that luck wasn't ever going to hold, they're going to have to deal with Corypheus very personally sooner rather than later.]

Healing magic is... [Bruce trails off for a moment, lost in thought. The knowledge of it is right at his fingertips, of course - he may not use his magic, but that doesn't mean he's rusty or out of practice. He's dedicated a good chunk of his life learning about healing magic; that kind of knowledge doesn't just go away.

He brings up the hammer and shifts, eyeing the nail that's halfway into position and starts to hammer it down properly.] The human body naturally heals by itself, with enough given time. Healing magic usually just... encourages the process to quicken, and the magic itself gives the hastened healing the energy it needs to accomplish this.

[Pause as Bruce hammers one more time and pulls away from the fence he's working on.]

At least, that's the best estimate I can come up with. I could be entirely wrong, of course.

I have a friend at home, Rajai, who rides horses in her own country, and she has a saying about encouragement: the carrot or the stick. I don't suppose you have an estimate on what sort of encouragement healing magic provides to the body? I suppose a little wound wouldn't take much but I can imagine you can heal grievous wounds. The sort of thing a doctor might shake their head at. [There's still a smile on her face since well, it's better to keep it to the lighter side of things when he seems such a sad and serious man, when she wants to do her most daring leaps around him just to see if one day she'll make him laugh the way the patients laugh when she backflips off something and lands on one leg, dropping into a bow just so.]

You don't seem the type to be entirely wrong. Everyone can be wrong, shades here and there, wandering down alleys here and there, looking at it backwards and upside down but I don't think entirely, you're considerate and considering, that makes it very hard to be wrong about the entirety of a thing.

[Bruce pauses a little at the question, mulling it over, finding the best words to describe it. All the jargon about magic tends to fly over the heads of anybody who doesn't use magic, after all.]

Whatever it is the body has that allows natural healing to happen in the first place. [A small shrug comes after this, though.] It would be nice if I had a better answer to that, but that's really the best I can think of.

[But with that said, her words are appreciated, and Bruce manages a smile.] In the end, I just do my best in whatever capacity I'm allowed to help. I just hope it helps in some fashion.

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[OPEN] Running with my roots pulled up

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