For my bones have found a place to lie down and sleep

[foxsays]

WHO: Araceli Bonaventura; open
WHAT: Wow was closing those rifts a bad time and double wow guess who is a terrible patient
WHEN: post plot/early Octoberish; we can handwave time a bit
WHERE: Healing tents; her + Korrin's room later
NOTES: Okay there will be discussions of injuries here as well as what went on in that plot, I'll try to put warnings in headers if specifics come up but if there are things you aren't comfortable with discussing, let me know (Araceli's ic/ooc inbox, plurk or discord all work!)
Also let me know when you're catching her since that'll change how injured she is/if she's still lyrium'd to the gills!

There isn't much of a choice in where she goes when she comes back to Skyhold. Araceli is sent to the healing tents, too hurt, too tired, too out of her head to even attempt to argue. Half her arguments aren't even in a language the healers about her understand until one of the Rivaini mages agrees to step in, knowing decent enough Antivan but she drifts. Tries to sort through memories with her right hand curled against Lux who visibly bristles even at friends throughout the first awful days. Her left arm is useless, bandaged tightly to keep her from hurting it more, right leg not much better. Healing potions and spells are turned away. Sleep, she just wants to sleep.

(There are too many nightmares but she presses her face to Lux, and at least she can open the flap of the tent to breathe fresh air when she struggles for air when she fights herself awake.)

Later, when she's able to argue a little better, she attempts to sneak out. Attempts. Being that her right leg is weak and aching and useless. The bandages are off to reveal stitches closing up the wound in her calf, maybe with another poultice slapped on if someone argues her into it. But she's been stuck somewhere against her will already for so long that she can't explain the itch under her skin or that she can't breathe when she's trapped in the tent, that no she never just lies down to sleep all at once, and the longer she's cooped up, the worse her temper gets. Her head feels more like hers; she's Araceli, she's been here nearly a year now, she's Korrin's kadan, she knows all of that. But she looks up at the walls with longing, testing her thumb, attempting to put more weight on her leg--

(I've been shot, I've been stabbed, I've broken bones worse, I can climb again, I can, I can--)

Eventually she gets to go back to her and Korrin's rooms, either for a few hours or because she's well enough that they don't have reasons to keep her. Still, she's always running around doing something. And she's bored. Tremendously bored. Stuck in a chair or more likely the bed because she doesn't like admitting how sore and how tired she is, not really, and there's an open door policy if you know to look for the one with the blue seashell. There are books scattered about, and all of Araceli's cards and dice but playing games with herself is no fun when she wants a distraction.

(You should probably give Korrin a break, having to deal with this pain in the ass all the time.)

[[ooc: any mix is good - like bringing cards etc to the healing tents - or wildcard it up, just check in if it's when she's still full of lyrium for memory flash stuff!]]

Comments

[foxsays]

"No one ever tells me what's in them half the time, probably so I can't complain at them." Which is fair because she might. There was a lot of bargaining to get her flask of rum back. She might have turned on the tears on purpose to get it back but worth it.

Rum is the water of life on the waves, no one has actually countered that argument even if someone - can't remember who, every face blurs into one until her head spins trying to remember - bit their tongue they were so annoyed and left.

"I can't climb. Can't push off with that leg, can't bend the other thumb enough to do anything with it. I've been shot on a roof before but I was already running - there are a lot of things you do hurting because you have to, because otherwise you can't really think on what will happen, you only know it'll be bad. Maybe you end up in a cell, maybe you end up dead and the fish eat your face and your mother finds you floating face up three weeks later." From the way she says it, just casual enough at the last part, it means she knows. Has seen it. Usually thieves that don't have families or any sort of group that they work with meaning no one watches out for them or comes looking, because guards do know that and well thieves stick together. Make life hard for the people that hurt them.

After a sigh where she does get up, a little unsteady but it's to go back to the tents (she's cold, and she got Korrin to bring one of Asher's ugly bear slanket things for her because she has swallowed her pride at last) she continues. "When I got shot in the leg before, I was already up on the roof and running. Swimming is easier when you're shot and bleeding. Then it's just limping home. Now getting shouted at because you tracked blood and silt all over the carpet? That's worse than the shot and the running and the stitches and the healing put together."

[justice_is_blond]

He gives her a smile, amused and a little warm. "Would you like to have the ingredients listed? I can run you through them." Either it's complaining because she's in pain and complaining comes naturally then, or she's genuinely interested. He can't judge her whichever it is. "Though it could take some time if you want the properties of each herb explained."

He holds out an arm as she gets up, listening to her talk. Cells he knows, people vanishing as well, and even running while injured.

"Or having to scrub your blood off the tiles with a rag when you've been injured and hauled back, and once again are denied freedom. It's insult to injury." He pauses for a few steps. "We'll get you back in a shape that you can run and climb in, Araceli. Now. Are we heading for the tents, or your room?"

[foxsays]

Snorting, she shakes her head. "I'm not-- and you won't know the joke because you don't come from my world I forgot." This time she genuinely forgot, and the punch of it almost takes her breath away. "Just what's in my leg to make it better, I don't really care about plants much." Only as far as her studies require her to and no more. Which, again, is more than most for a bard but right now? She wants to know what's happening to her. She doesn't even know how much lyrium they gave her, only that it was mercifully the blue stuff although how people willingly drink it boggles the mind.

"Ah, I know how to get it out of carpet. But I grew up in a brothel so the children? We helped out with whatever we were needed for. Getting stains out of things serves you well later in life." Even if the brothel Araceli was raised in was far nicer than most in Thedas - from the way people speak of them at least - if you're a child you do as you're told fetching and carrying and scurrying about until you can escape. Considering the question, she sighs. "Tents. I need to tell Korrin to put things away, probably go see it first before I go back and have her move a few things here and there so I'm not stretching up on my toes all the time."

Guess what bit she sounds most annoyed at, hint, it's not the bit about going back to the tents or the stretching. If there's one good thing about Araceli as a patient, she at least keeps her few possessions in the healing tents tucked neatly out of the way, including her fox. (It's not that she thinks Korrin will have made it messy, it's more that Araceli is probably unsurprisingly fussy about what goes where in the room.)

[justice_is_blond]

There are times he wonders how alone the Rifters feel. They're in an unfamiliar world, caught in the middle of other peoples' war, far from everyone they love, and it reminds him of when he was taken away for being a mage... except worse. At least he knew why it was happening and he'd a hope of escape. The Rifters have no known way back and no reason for this. Anders gives her arm a gentle squeeze where it wouldn't hurt, knowing she might not understand the gesture but hoping it still works as a small form of support.

"It does. Scrubbing Circle floors meant I knew how to scrub the surfaces in my Clinic later, as well as what a couple of different types of blood trails looked like." His voice is a little amused as he steers them toward the tents.

"At least I'm certain she'll do it quickly for your sake. ...Perhaps not if you tell her it's so you can get home visits from me, so maybe mention that portion after the stuff is put away." He's still teasing; there's no edge to his voice when he talks about Korrin this time. There's no friendship there, but at least she'd held her own in their mission together.

[foxsays]

The touch is appreciated when she's trying to make sense of everything, waking up and almost thinking she can smell the ghost of her mother's perfume, the familiar curl of salt and tobacco that meant her father had stepped off the ship to come visit. Sometimes all she wants to do is lean on someone, just to breathe, to not think, to see if it will go away, all the aching and the loneliness. It won't all at once, and she's old enough to know that. The tide has to wear it down. Smooth it out. Carry it away bit by bit.

"More than some of them, I think." Which is a polite way of saying that she's amazed some mages made it to Skyhold at all, from passing conversations she's had with them or about the Circles. But that's for another time, when her head is screwed on tighter.

"I'll just tell her Lux will eat things. He cannot defend his own honour without me. We must all make sacrifices at times." Right now Lux is probably going to hide from her at times when he spies the crutch, since he's never been too fond of things that might come down hard on his tail anyway. Lux is more likely to want to bat things about and hide them but Araceli has had Lux from the time he fitted in the palm of one hand, so Korrin can't call her out on anything she says regarding his behaviours and habits.

[justice_is_blond]

He's amazed as well... but glad. Of most of them. Most of the mages who were used to being pampered were learning that it's not an awful thing to have to make a life for one's self, to not have things handed to them in the confines of a cage. A few, the ones who felt being spoiled was their due for some bizarre reason, weren't learning. But most were. And it's that most that could carry the future.

"Lux's dignity can take a temporary blow for your sake. You spoil him otherwise and have earned this." Carefully he pushes back the tent flap as they reach their target. "Besides, he'll benefit as well. He'll not be at so much risk of being underfoot as he is in the tents. I can't imagine he enjoys that, being a fox but also wanting to be near you."