You can't concern yourself with bigger things

[faderifting]

WHO: New rifters & their helpful rescuers
WHAT: People fall out of a rift and get attacked by stuff, it's pretty old hat by now (sorry Jefferson).
WHEN: Solace 7
WHERE: High in the Frostbacks, within a day of Skyhold.
NOTES: This log is open to any characters who would have volunteered to go welcome the rifters, whose arrival sites can now be predicted, thank you Solas. Rifters are also welcome to begin RPing at Skyhold as soon as they are ready.

You were asleep--deeply or fitfully, for the last time or just resting your eyes for a moment-- and then you were not. And wherever you were was not, anymore, replaced by nothing but the sensation of falling, tumbling into endless, bottomless nothing. If this were still a dream, you would wake before you hit the ground. You can't die in a dream, they say. In some worlds.

In this world, something has definitely died. But not you; not yet. When the afterimage left by a flare of too-bright, greenish light fades, you will find yourself in a pile of bones, stripped by teeth and weather, bleached almost as white as the snow that covers most of the rocky, mountainous terrain around you. Beneath its threadbare blanket, it's easy to pick out heaps of earth and stone and debris arranged in a rough ring-shape on the ground around you and the rift that just spat you out. Almost like...a nest? Whatever might once have lived here, it must have been very large, because the bones scattered about are the size of large livestock, at the least. Some of the bare rocks show what look like marks from very large claws, and where snow doesn't cover, the stone looks suspiciously scorched. There are no recent tracks, but maybe that's a good thing.

Less good: the cluster of demons that is emerging from the rift to take over the job of killing you. Some are tall, spindly stick-things with too many eyes, some hunched and hooded with no eyes at all, others mere wisps of greenish light. None look friendly or familiar. Also unfamiliar is the narrow splinter of light the same sickly green as whatever brought you here that now glows out of the palm of your left hand. It aches, a bone-deep pain that gnaws even through all the distractions. Hopefully you can set it aside enough to pick up a bone club and get to work in self-defense, because there is no immediate sign of road or path or settlement anywhere to be seen.

Comments

[rowancrowned]

How does one respond to that? Even with kindness and decorum, there is no way to handle that admission. 'My family is dead. I am alone'. She does not need to say the last piece, he knows it, that resignation, the avoidance of his eyes, the softness of her voice.

"Your clothes," he starts. More horsehair than thread, and more leather than cloth. The leather is worn most at her thighs. "You ride, my lady?"

They will hold this camp for so long. Not everyone thought to bring a cloak. With the summer heat, who would have considered? They will need to move soon, and she will be subjected to being a special kind of Other as a Rifter.

Well. At least she is not elven as well.

"Lady Targaryen." He has manners, and he suspects them likely to comfort. "Are you in any way injured?"

[unsullies]

The question somehow surprises her and she looks up again at him, silver brows raised curiously. Dany hesitates, then replies:

"I do." Clearly he does; he'd demonstrated as such when he first arrived. "Not much, though, before my marriage. My husband is of the Dothraki - horse lords. I learned much from them and have since learned to ride."

She wouldn't be a very good khaleesi if she couldn't. Dany also doesn't mention that her husband had been killed and most of his khalasar and horses abandoned her once Drogo had died.

"No, thank you." He is exceptionally gentle and the effect on her is calming. "I arrived unharmed and the... demons did not touch me."

Though they tried. She shivers faintly, remembering too easily their many eyes, their deadly claws.

[rowancrowned]

"Good." It pleases him, though the opposite would not be true if she were injured. "I believe we have horse enough to bring you back to Skyhold."

And if she doesn't get her own, he's glad to share- she's a slip of a woman, enough weight that whatever they put him on cannot possibly protest. All that's left is to move her from the fire back down the mountain and back to the fortress, and he can consider the job finished.

"Are you warm enough, my lady?" Shock is something to consider, but he suspects it won't hit until they're back at Skyhold, and she's been fed and slept. It's best that way.

Keep her talking about herself, he thinks, as he guides her through camp. "'Horse lords'? Then what, may I ask, are your people?"

[unsullies]

Shock certainly hasn't hit her; though Dany feels sudden pangs of anxiety and fear, the true realization of what's happened hasn't quite made a home in her mind, yet.

"I am, thank you." He's incredibly dutiful in his attentiveness and she smiles again in appreciation of his efforts.

"Human," she amends quickly. "The phrase is often used as a slur. They are called as such because of their way of life, centered around their bond with horses, because many other so-called civilized kingdoms misjudge them."

Though she has certainly taken in Dothraki culture, Dany will always be somewhat of an outside. Even so, her passion for her own khalasar, at least, is clear in her emphatic tone.

[rowancrowned]

He is a gentleman. There's a code of manners called into play in every interaction, if one knows the right words, obligations of someone of his line- of elves in general. Despite all else that may be said about him, he has a soft spot for children of all races, and women too.

"I know you are a Man, my lady." Careful intonation, to show that he says Man, not man, and done with a humored little smile- he is only teasing.

They come to where the horses are tied- well, nearly all, for one, though he is leashed to nothing and wears only the most perfunctory of saddles, stands untethered, though content to remain with the group. The bay gelding's ears prick forward when Thranduil whistles, and he meanders over to the two of them.

"And how, my lady, would you define uncivilized?"

He kneels, offers his hands laced together as a place for her to rest a booted foot so that he might give her a boost up onto the gelding, who is tall enough to suit someone like Thranduil.

[unsullies]

There's an interesting inflection. She assumes he isn't saying that she's male and has to take his meaning to be the difference between himself and her - that he is an elf and she is human. Or, Man, as he put it.

Dany smiles despite herself at the horses, pining briefly for her silver and for the world she'd left behind.

"Cruelty," she says simply. "Violence to the innocent, mercy to the wicked."

Slavery, sexual abuse, slaughtering children. Her list goes on in her mind and her expression steels to a cynicism beyond her years. She does accept his help, inclining her head gratefully as he boosts her up onto the gelding.

"And you, my lord?" Dany asks. "What do you think?"

[rowancrowned]

He waits until he seats himself, an easy swing and a soft landing on the gelding's back. Thranduil reaches around her for the reigns, and with a soft word, the gelding makes for the pass. An early start means they might walk slowly; go at a relaxed pace. He'll take advantage of that.

"An ignorance of their history." The inability to learn from past mistakes, or to grow from them. Men too often engage in a willful sort of forgetting. "Do your husband's people fit your definition?"

He doubts it, but it's an easy opening for her to fill with examples of peoples who do.

[unsullies]

He's very sharp-minded, she thinks, admitting an almost hesitant smile.

"Sometimes," she admits. "My husband was the leader of... a part of the Dothraki, called a khalasar. When I decried some of their ways of life, he took my advice and made changes. He honors my wishes, respected others in ways that can go against the nature of the Dothraki." Her thin smile fades, then. "It put him in danger, since those changes were... unpopular."

It killed him, in the end.

"Many of them act the way they do because they always have, not out of cruelty." Even as she says it, though, she frowns, not quite believing. "... It is no excuse. I will change the ways of my own khalasar. I will not allow such things."

[rowancrowned]

Happiness looks good on her—he resolves to coax it out more often. But it’s impossible to miss the past-tense of it all—‘my husband was’ ‘he took’ and so on. That she describes the ‘khalasar’ as hers now, well—she is small, but she is fierce. Could be fierce, if she were not half-frozen and wholly dazed.

“You loved your husband.” He states it anyway. “And he loved you. That is good. I have heard that discontentment is oft found in marriages ‘tween mortals. I am pleased you went without.”

The gelding is antsy, perhaps smells the rift in the air—he wants to go home, to his stall and to his oats, and Thranduil is inclined to agree. “Can you bear a smooth trot, my lady?”

[unsullies]

She wonders briefly what marriages are like within his world, his people, but doesn't ask. Not now.

"It was an arranged marriage, I... was terrified of him, of it all, at first." She hesitates, not wanting to recall too much, to look back and forget where she is now. "... But, yes. I grew to love him, to appreciate his world. He was more gentle and caring than I could have imagined."

He loved her and she loved him and then he was killed. This is her reality now.

"I can," she confirms, eager to be at their destination, considering the events of the day. "Thank you."