faderift | (no subject)

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{ ariadne }

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WHO: Those who didn't go to the Fallow Mire
WHAT: Some people were smart enough to not go to the Fallow Mire.
WHEN: Firstfall
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: None as of yet. Any threads that need to have content warning please tag them properly.

While the exit of the volunteers to the Fallow Mire had left Skyhold a bit more quieter, there were still things left to do in the mountain stronghold. Just because you didn't volunteer to go fight undead doesn't mean you get to shirk on your duties! In fact, you should probably pick up the pace. Less people around meant it might be easier to stand out and get in trouble, and you don't want that, do you?

But always, the Inquisition is there for you. There to help, there to overcome any challenges that might be presented. Make new friends, chat to old ones.

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The music was heartening, a way to hear something other than whispered secrets echoing in other people's heads or the vibrations of the Fade. It reminded her of simpler times back home in Cumberland.

She stood there a moment, listening, taking in the beat, the rhythm of the thing. Then she took a step, feet pivoting in the mud, her robes spinning out around her as she twirled. Yes, she remembered how to dance, of all things, and the music was rather compelling

Seeing the girl dance delighted Ariadne.

It was something of an act of defiance back home. Dancing. Dancing in the face of the Red Dragon's approach. Dancing out of joy that life still went on. Dancing in honor of the three goddesses of the Elves, goddesses Ariadne had begun to adopt as her own.

Her long fingers played deftly along the shaft of her flute and she stopped trying to catch a scent for a moment, more enraptured in the display than in secrets and hidden meanings.

The corners of her mouth twitched slightly, though.

The lilting music turned her about as if a guiding hand in its own right, and River breathed deeply before turning into the pull of the notes, her hair streaming behind her. It must have looked deeply odd to any onlooker, one young woman playing the flute in a tree while another danced about in the mud without a seeming care in the world.

But perhaps the world needed a few more frivolous things, untethered to the sorrow that had lain over Skyhold like a shroud as of late.

All songs had to end. It was an unfortunate truth. Ariadne tried to keep the last notes going as long as she could, but eventually, she had to stop.

The regret was written all over her face.

Still, she smiled at the girl, tilting her head so that her long braid fell over her left shoulder. All Alastrians wore their hair long. The braid dangled down from the branch, swinging like a rope. "You're a wonderful dancer," she said.

River was slightly out of breath, flushed, but happy. Clearly happy for the first time in a long while, and she peered up at Ariadne with unabashed joy.

"They missed moving to the songs of instruments. The other songs were sadder, deeper. I didn't want to forget the other music, either."

It wasn't the sort of answer she would have expected from a Human. Which intrigued Ariadne far more than the dancing itself.

"You can never forget bright and happy music," she said. "That's inside of everyone, no matter what. When your heart beats, it's playing a song."

She normally didn't say things like that. Not right off. Too Alastrian, too strange.

But there was something about the girl...

"Sometimes the other drowns it out. So many songs here. But they don't play the way you do. Theirs is older, echoes. Ripples in the pond."

Some of that sunniness faded a little at a time, the euphoria waning. But she still felt lighter. And what's more, it seemed the woman in the tree could understand. What a wonderful thing to speak and be understood.

Ariadne slid off of her branch, falling to the ground and landing softly in a crouch. Despite having given up her wings, she retained her natural Alastrian grace. And anyway, it wasn't that far of a drop.

Standing up, she was slightly shorter than the other girl. It was unfortunate, because the best scents came from the hair.

Of course, Ariadne was shorter than almost everyone she met, so she'd make do.

"It won't last forever," she said, offering the girl a reassuring smile.

"Nothing last forever. Permanence extended but not guaranteed. The world's in flux and it bleeds where he ripped it open." She tips her head towards the sky, a deep breath taken as a swift wind courses through the stone courtyard.

"It's all going to change. I can feel...like...prickles on the skin before lightning in a storm. They're watching, waiting, pressing in from the other side."

Ariadne's braid caught up in the wind, unfurling off to one side like a rope, danging from the yard arm of a ship. She caught up the end pulling it protectively back toward her body. And turned to look at the girl.

Had she done that? She must have.

So she wasn't just some girl. It stood to reason. Looks were almost always deceiving. Even if Ariadne sometimes struggled to remember that when it came to Humans.

"Who's they?" she asked. "People like me?"

She hadn't. But Ariadne wasn't wrong on the other account, regarding appearances. The breeze stirred the edges of her dress, the loose tangle of her hair about her face, but when she focused on the demon it was with utter calm.

"No. You're noise from the outside." River's nose wrinkled faintly. "Makes it muddled. But sometimes you don't want to hear them. Better to have interference. You sleep better at night."

She'd been called many things in her life. 'Noise' was a new one. And, honestly, Ariadne decided it was one of the least offensive. Noise was just a part of the landscape. And that was what she'd been trained to be. To get by. To survive.

But if she was only the background, what was the object?

"Then who are they?"

"You don't know."

An opportunity for education. River brightened, then dropped down into the dirt, reaching for a rock and promptly beginning to draw out little figures and circles across the ground, where Ariadne could see.

It might be easier this way. Never mind how dirty her dress or knees or hands got. A line was drawn decisively down the center before she pointed it out.

"They're kept apart...on the other side of the Veil. We live on one side, they live on the other. In the Fade. We only visit in dreaming, only touch it when magic draws it through."

Ariadne squatted down beside her, watching the drawing intently, trying not to think of how much it reminded her of some of the strategy sessions of the doomed soldiers, marching in their final stands against the Red Dragon. She'd survived. That's what she was built to do. But she would never forget the faces of her friends, trampled in the dirt, their blood washing away final plans the way the waves washed footprints off the beach.

"The Fade," Ariadne repeated. The term was at least somewhat familiar. "That's what they say we fell through. While we were dreaming in our own worlds."

"Everything shifts there, changes. Abstract. But it's a place. You can find your way if you know how. They live there." She dropped the rock, fingers tracing faint squiggles into the dirt, some smooth and some jagged.

"Hope. Fear. Compassion. Envy. Rage. Pride. They're drawn to us. They press up against the windows and try to see to see. They miss tasting and touching. But we have to keep the doors shut."

Her eyes fix on Ariadne, dark enough to seem almost black. "They don't make good guests."

"I think I understand," she said.

At least, she was starting to, anyway.

Ariadne had lived in Valeria long enough to know about things like incorporeal creatures and cosmic prisons. Or whatever else the Fade might be. It still didn't make sense to her, how she'd ended up passing through. But she was glad she'd passed, instead of getting stuck.

It didn't sound particularly nice.

"But everything shifts there?" she repeated, glancing down at the skin of her own hands, pinkish though it should have been green. "Can it be changed back?"

"Back?"

At that, River seemed confused. "Back," she murmured again, her brow furrowing. "It...was different, once. Torn apart and they fell down deep, lost. Forgotten. They remember everything."

That much Ariadne didn't understand. And for the first time, she found herself wondering about the girl's strange speech patterns. They weren't strange until they didn't make sense.

She'd been living among Humans too long...

"I don't understand," she said, trying to push aside that horrible prejudice.

River's brow furrowed in concentration, trying to keep the words from scattering. "They remember how things were, before. Now things are separate."

She points to the line again, the Veil she'd mentioned before.

"Things on this side are rigid. They have rules. You didn't fit before so they made you. The Fade is. It's what it needs to be, what things want to be and need to be. Pulls us back when we're dreaming."

She listed, trying to make sense of it. Magic had always confused her a little. Most likely because she wasn't born using it. The Elves of Valeria used it as naturally as she used her nose to catch scents. And they found her equally baffling.

Everything balanced out a way.

But that didn't help her in the moment.

And a little spike of fear crept through her as the girl told her she didn't fit before. Was her secret completely transparent? Or was it a casual use of the word 'you?'

"My world had rules too. But different rules."

"They won't help you here."

Blunt, but the truth. The Rifters had to learn to adapt, to fit the pieces together, if they hoped to return from where they'd come from. Some place they belonged.

She could almost be envious. Almost. The echoes from her were sad, regrets, haunted things. Despair would hunger for her if it could catch her scent. Had to be careful.

Eyes still steady on her, she pointed at the side of the dirt with the squiggles, as if prompting her to start picking up on the information being given.

The blunt directness reminded Ariadne of the soldiers again, preparing for their final defeat. She respected that bluntness. Even if she didn't like it very much.

"We're like round pegs," she said, looking down at the drawing. "Being forced through square holes. And changing shape to fit." The generic 'we' would suffice for now.

River took a deep breath, nodding. She appeared to be grasping some part of it at last.

That could suffice, for a time.

"The Fade might remember your shape. They might. They'll be watching to see what you do, the ones that don't try to follow."

Ariadne's gray eyes lifted, levelly meeting the girl's. There was a lot to parse out in that, but the concept that she was being watched was by far the most...

What?

It was alarming, she supposed. Maybe upsetting. But it didn't surprise her, exactly. She knew about gods and monsters. And it only made sense that there had been some kind of design to this place.

Hopefully, a design that could send her home.

"What would you do?" she asked. "If you were the one in my position?"

Poor woman. Tossed into a world she knew nothing about and expected to fight for it, to save it, or otherwise be blamed for what was to follow. The Veil was shredding all around them, chaos close enough to see in waking hours. Who could say what could be done? Even the mad little girl had no answers.

She only knew what she would attempt. She could give her that much, her round face so very solemn now.

"Find a way home, before it's too late."