faderift | (OPEN)

WHO: Cosima Niehaus - and you?
WHAT: Catch-all log for August
WHEN: Handwavey depending on when your character will be around Skyhold
WHERE: ...Skyhold
NOTES: While Cosima is going to be ill in one of the starters, it is fair to assume she'll be back on her feet within a week or two, so feel free to assume she looks fine if you run into her outside the healer's tent. (Alternately, if you'd like her looking a little peaky as a hook, that works too!) If you want something other than the hooks below, or want to chat first, DM me or grab me on plurk.

I. Healer's Tents

Cosima has been instructed to rest, and at first, the instruction is unnecessary; she's too weak to do much else. But spirit healing seems to have done the trick, at least temporarily, and as her strength starts to come back, it brings her curiosity with it. Thus, whenever no one is there to order her back to her cot, she wanders - mostly respectfully keeping her distance, but occasionally asking a question if she thinks she can get away with it. Some of the healing is related to medicine as she understands it. Some of it she has no frame of reference for at all. But concerns like "not wearing herself out" are secondary to learning more about what's going on as they patch people back together. She's not as well as she'd like to think, but she's well enough to get restless.

II. Kitchens

It is well known that convalescence requires baked goods. Cosima is still hesitant about overstepping, since she technically hasn't joined the Inquisition; she's a refugee, and she's well aware of how long she wouldn't last if someone decided to kick her out. So she is very scrupulous about asking first before she takes anything and about trying not to be unreasonable in how frequently she asks.

It's not her fault that those little buns with the jam that tastes like peach in the center are so addictive.

III. Various Around Skyhold - Roommate Search

Once she's determined that she's eligible for a barracks room, Cosima has decided to get one. What she hasn't entirely resigned herself to facing is a randomly assigned roommate. She's too old for that nonsense. On the other hand, she doesn't exactly have a huge roster of acquaintances to ask. So she's compromising by asking around. If someone else is looking for a roommate, at least they can have a beer together and make sure they don't hate each other before committing to cohabitation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She makes a bit of a face. It's not like he's wrong. "I know, you're right, I just... I don't even have a book, and I'm feeling well enough I've resorted to counting stitching in the tent flaps."

A pause, then: "Wow, that sounded really ungrateful. Sorry. I'm just a crappy patient, is all." She bites her lower lip, briefly. "You're sure there's nothing nontaxing, non-recovery-threatening I can help with?"

For better or for worse, it didn't seem like Bruce was ruffled by her words. He simply quirks a wry smile and gives a small nod.

"No, I'm just doing some routine check ups, that's all." A pause of his own as he considers what she had said a little more. "But if you want, I can see if I can get anything that you might be interested in at the library." Or maybe informative, even. He's pretty certain there has to be a history book about Thedas somewhere among all those tomes and other rare volumes. He's well aware how lost the Rifters could be when it came to many things about Thedas, so hopefully it'd be killing two birds with one stone.

"God, could you?" she asks, relieved despite herself. "If I can't be helpful, at leas I can get back to trying to play catch-up. If Rifters keep coming, maybe someone will make a 'welcome to Thedas' bibliography."

Maybe someone has? She hasn't run across it, though, at least not as such.

"Thanks," she adds. "Really." And, after a moment: "I'm Cosima, by the way. If we were introduced, I'm afraid I don't remember."

"Of course." Frankly, he's more surprised that it hasn't occurred for anybody to actually do this, now that he's thought about it, especially since its already been so many months since the first of the Rifters has appeared here in Thedas.

Maybe its something that could be worked on in time. Possibly.

...its something to think about, at the very least.

"It's not a problem," he replies to her, then inclines his head and introduces himself back in kind. "And no, we haven't. Bruce - its a pleasure to meet you."

"Nice to meet you. Have you been at Skyhold long? Wait, is that a rude question? I'm still getting a handle on what the Inquisition is even doing, sorry."

Her curiosity is genuine, but so is her apology. She's gathered no one here particularly wanted the Rifters dumped in their laps any more than the Rifters wanted to be dumped. It's an awkward situation for everyone. But she's also never going to learn if she doesn't keep askingn.

Bruce can't quite help the wry smile that crosses his face at her words, more amused than anything else. A lot of these Rifters were inquisitive ones, weren't they? Then again, if he were the one who got inexplicably thrown into a foreign land he would probably be doing the same thing as well, so. He doesn't have much place to speak.

"No, it's fine." It's hardly rude by any means - and he can tell that she means well, so it doesn't bother him at all. "I've been in Skyhold ever since arriving here with the Inquisition from Haven - that's where they used to be based at. As for what we're doing... well, restoring peace to Thedas is the short version of it." The long version was... well, it was a story by itself.

"I'm pro restoring peace, yeah. I mean, it's an ambitious goal, from what I'm gathering, but still." She smiles back. "The rifts can't simplify it much, huh?"

Considering that her introduction to Thedas was "try not to die while fighters take care of the demons," it's probably not a surprising thought. She's picking up things, here and there, but she knows there's a lot she's still ignorant of.

"Not really." There's a small, humorless laugh as he says that because - yeah. If there was one thing that could be even more impossible than the rifts...

But well. It's not like things always had been like that. Though it is getting harder to remember those days now.

"But everyone's doing the best they can." Or well, almost everyone. "After all, if Thedas is gone its not like there'll be anything left to fight over."

"That's a really reasonable point of view," she allows, still faintly smiling. "But if this world is like the one I come from, some people can still lose sight of it in the heat of whatever it is they're pursuing."

Another quiet, humorless chuckle. "Yeah," he agrees, a corner of his lips quirked into a wry smile. "Some people just use this chance for their own personal gain instead." Because if the world is going to end, then what does politics and other people matter? No point troubling yourself with it if everything is doomed anyway. Might as well enjoy the world while it still lasts.

Not really a good way to think at all, obviously, but Bruce can see how it would happen.

"Wow, that sounds depressingly familiar." Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we use up the world's crude oil reserves. "I guess people are people everywhere. But it's nice to know there are some people who can be bothered to try and keep the world from ending."

"I'd like to think most of us here in Thedas do have an active desire to keep our place in one piece, generally speaking." Though of course he's been proven otherwise a good number of times already, but a few bad apples didn't spoil the tree or something, as the saying went. And in this case there are a lot of apples, so it made sense that the proportion was larger in turn, too.

"Well, as long as I'm here, I'm willing to help. I'm generally against the destruction of places where all kinds of people live, self- or otherwise."

Of course, for now she's still not up to helping do much at all, but those are minor details. Between spirit healing and ignoring the problem, she's sure she'll be just fine.

A smile crosses Bruce's face at that. "That's nice to hear," he returns, then casts a pointed gaze in the direction of where she came from. "So I hope you understand why we all want to insist on you resting up."

A tired, sick person was not going to help anybody out here. As much as Bruce understood her distress, it was a fact that rest was the best thing for her right now as well.

She raises her hands in the universal gesture of "I surrender." (Now that she's feeling better, the ache in the one with the shard registers again. But that's another day's problem.)

"I'll head back. But it was nice to meet you."

The smile turns wry at that, and Bruce does look a bit more apologetic instead now.

"It was nice to meet you as well," he returns. "I'll drop by later to pass you those books I promised from the library." Its the least he can do, since he did promise and he certainly wants to do whatever he can to make her time in bed easier.

(OPEN)

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