You don't expect to be bright and bon vivant - OPEN

[youwonscience]

WHO: Cosima, Anders, Herian, YOU?
WHAT: Catchall open post for Kingsway
WHEN: Your choice if it needs to be specific within the month - Cosima's not going anywhere that I know of
WHERE: Various around Kirkwall
NOTES: If you want a specific starter, hit me up on plurk/discord/etc.

I - Infirmary

Kirkwall has seemed to agree with Cosima, overall. It's easier to breathe, out of the cold, and as vertical as the city is, at least it comes with stairs. Still, she's careful not to miss her scheduled sessions with the healers all the same. Given the unknowns about her disease, her anchor shard, and whether or not they affect one another, she's not eager to take unnecessary chances.

It's been over a year now, so she's on a greeting basis with a lot of the people who work in and around what used to be the healing tents. But she's ready to greet new faces too, if they seem open to it. (Especially right after treatment, which is inarguably the best she feels all month.)

II - Library

Doing formal research for the Inquisition has offered the advantage of focusing her efforts, at least a little. But after her recent discussions about microscopes, she's come to wonder if trying to have a simple one built might be a good idea after all. She can think of several uses, both regarding the Fade and red lyrium, and maybe someone higher up will be willing to secure the funding necessary.

She's working on some detailed sketches, with concentration, but not so much that she can't be interrupted.

III - Tavern

It's important not to burn out by working all the time. Cosima would be quick to tell that to anyone who asks -- but no one does, really, she's just reassuring herself. It's true, though, and she can let herself relax into an evening out now and again. She wears gloves and keeps an eye out for trouble, but she also has a few drinks and even joins a friendly card game now and then.

Kirkwall doesn't feel like home; Thedas doesn't feel like home. But she's sometimes surprised how much it's come to feel something like normal. Especially with some friendly company.

IV - Wildcard

[Choose your own adventure]

Comments

For Anders

[youwonscience]

As promised, Anders has let her know when he has an evening free, so she turns up outside the infirmary around the time he's winding down for the night. Given the tone of the last talk they'd had, she's not entirely sure what tone the night of drinks is going to take. Even so, it's nice to see him in a context that's not treatment-related; she suspects he doesn't get out enough, though at least in Kirkwall she can guess why.

"You got a place in mind?" she asks, once he looks like he's reasonably close to being ready to go.

[justice_is_blond]

He finishes putting his feathery pauldrons back on before nodding and turning to head out the door.

"I do, actually, if you don't mind. There's a place that hugs the border of Hightown and Lowtown, even has its own stairs inside to bridge the divide. It's called Straddle and," he shrugs, with a very wry, faint smile, "no one knows me there."

It's a big perk. Sometimes seeing the usual faces in the Hanged Man is nice, but there's stress to that too.

"Does that sound like it will work for you?"

[youwonscience]

"Yep, totally." Considering the conversation that led to making these plans, she can hardly blame him for wanting a little anonymity.

(She resists the temptation to reach over and flick one of the feathers. Because she is an adult human and not a cat.)

"It's kind of nice getting a stipend from the Inquisition," she adds as they head out, "even though I guess they were paying for all my food and drinks anyway, even when I wasn't officially on the payroll. I still feel less weird about it this way."

[justice_is_blond]

"Being on a payroll is nice, isn't it." There's amusement in his voice and expression as he starts leading the way through the Gallows' halls.

"I spent a vast majority of my life without any sort of money at all. I prefer this. But in the Circles, of course, there's no income, and then when you're running for freedom there's no time to earn money, and healing in Darktown as I did for seven years will get you paid in vegetables when you're lucky. Or, every now and then, fresh bread. I rather liked the fresh bread." His tone is light and easy. As much as things had gone wrong in Kirkwall before, there had been good points and he'd enjoyed being part of a community.

...And before even that, he'd had fun running away. Escaping and pissing off Templars had been exhilarating.

[youwonscience]

"Fresh bread is great," Cosima agrees, not especially facetiously - there are a lot of things she's doing without, but bread from scratch all the time is not a hardship. "Is it common, outside the Inquisition, paying in barter? I'd imagine so, but I honestly have no idea."

It's not like she's done a lot of wandering outside the Inquisition's purview. Or any at all.

[justice_is_blond]

"It's not particularly common. But Darktown has a heavy refugee population and while it's eased up, there had been many in Kirkwall who wouldn't hire Fereldan refugees. I wasn't going to charge them, especially not Chantry prices, but I did have to eat."

They're at the boat taking them back to the mainland by now, and he's very aware of how many people are noting his departure. Doubtlessly there will be reports made on his trip later, but that's not something he wants to focus on right now.

"Most currency is fairly uniform anymore between humans and dwarves and elves. The Dalish use it or don't, with different tribes deciding how much outsider influence they want to accept. And the qunari..." Anders shakes his head. "I think it depends on their roles in qunari society, though don't quote me on that. And I'm speaking of qun-following qunari. I think most of the ones who have left it are fine with golds, silvers, and coppers."

[youwonscience]

"That makes sense," she says of his explanation. "Given that trade language is so widespread, I'd assumed a unit of value would be too. But I'm not an economist, so that was just an educated guess."

"Man, you know, I feel like I've learned so much since arriving, but there's still a lot of basic shit I don't know. Like, obviously no one knows everything about the world, but things anyone who grew up here would take for granted."

For Herian

[youwonscience]

Knowing how to swim is important, especially in a port. Granted, finding a relatively private place to learn is more challenging, and it requires a day trip outside the city. (Possibly not a full day trip if Herian had gone by herself, but she'd made no sign that Cosima's slower pace bothered her.)

For Cosima, the main challenge of swimming is managing without her glasses; swimming itself is a skill she'd mastered very early, and it comes right back for all she hasn't used it in a couple years. She's never taught it before, though, and as the two of them sit on the bank to dry out a little, she observes, "You're going to have to be patient with me figuring out how to teach you," a bit ruefully.

pls forgive me for this excessive Physical Appearance exposition fml

[dashing]

"Patience? I must confess myself unfamiliar with the concept."

It's spoken with typical Herian severity, though her mouth tugs into a smile at the last moment, and she nudges Cosima very slightly. "I'm inclined to think you did well." Biased would also be a good word, maybe.

Her legs still hang in the water, Herian carefully wringing some of the water out of her hair. She isn't a self-conscious person, really, where others might be; there are burn scars visible on the right side of her back, where it's exposed, and then other heavy scarring down her legs, that look like pits and cracked glass. All the scars are old, though, more subtle against the skin, and the only more obvious ones are nicks and slices from battle. More likely to catch the eye, at a distance, are the tattoos that run down other side of her spine in parrallel lines, abstract floral patterns that run across each shoulder, and down the backs of her arms.

O no, what shall I do

[youwonscience]

Cosima's own tattoos are almost covered day-to-day, but are visible now: a Nautilus shell on one forearm, a dandelion on the other. She makes no secret of checking out Herian's. "That's beautiful work, by the way," she says (presumably not of the scars). "Did you get it all done at once?"

She imagines it took a while, given the technology level, though perhaps magic made up for the difference.

weep for days, probably

[dashing]

"Mercifully no," Herian replies, with a bit of a smile. "I had to return to a village in Orlais a few times over, during my travels. Enough times to allow up to get this far — I'm not sure if I should consider expanding if, if ever the artist and I cross ways again."

She grins, catching Cosima's wrist, so she can start to idly trace her fingers over the scattering of the dandelion fluff. "I thought I would be able to endure it all at once, but I was much relieved to uncover that was not a path that Maxence advised. But here," and she lightly taps the dandelion, "I did not realise you had a secret passion for herbology all this while."

Secret passion, not quite emphasised enough to have something scandalous implied, but close.

[youwonscience]

She laughs at that assessment. "I don't know about that. Do you guys have dandelions here? They're little yellow flowers in the summer - hearty things, considered weeds lots of places. When autumn comes, they turn into little fluffy..." She gestures at the tattoo. "People blow on them. The theory goes that if you get all the seeds off in a breath, you get a wish. Not that I believe in wishes. Or didn't, I guess," she amends.

[dashing]

"They sound familiar. I think my mother would gather up something similar, when she was able, she'd say you could tell the time by how many of the seed were left. I think she used the roots for tea."

She sounds a little uncertain, trying to draw at some long-distant memory, but sets it aside for the time being. Botany was not a matter she was much invested in, and the healing magics were beyond her almost completely. "And is it arriving hence that suggests wishes might be real, or something else?"

II

[circleprodigy]

Inessa, a regular at the library, glances over at Cosima while taking care to place her books back in the proper order. She's not about to leave a mess in her wake for someone else to sort, after all. The slight elf has to step around the bulk that is her napping mabari, Garahel making quiet contented noises in his sleep and paws twitching as though he's dreaming about rabbits or nugs.

While she doesn't intend to snoop, exactly, the last few books she needs to place take her closer to Cosima. Given that they share two projects, she can't help but wonder if it's related to those. So she'll dart a glance over at the papers, keeping her voice quiet when she speaks so as not to disturb other visitors. "Is that for our red lyrium project, or the veil? Or something else altogether?"

[youwonscience]

She doesn't exactly draw to attention, but her posture straightens a bit all the same. "Either," she says with muted enthusiasm. "Both, if I can convince someone to spend the gold to make one. It lets you see things way too small to view without magnification. It might give us a better idea of the structure of the red lyrium. Or of the anchor shards - see if either one is something we'd recognize as biological." A chuff of air, frustrated. "But I'm trying to reconstruct something I used back home - I never built one, or even saw someone build it."

[circleprodigy]

Her eyebrows lift, impressed with the usage Cosima describes. "Such a device would be marvelously useful, both for the projects and more general research. I can see why you wish to recreate it." She frowns in thought, leaning against the books she'd just shelved. "It may be a long shot, but items which have appeared out of rifts often arrive at a vendor's stall, whether in Hightown or Lowtown. Persistence scouting might yield blueprints or even the item itself."

[youwonscience]

Cosima brightens. "Oh man, I hadn't even thought one might appear through a rift - that'd save a lot of time, and it'd be way easier to build another one if we had a prototype. I'll start keeper a closer eye out. And I can pass around a sketch, if you think other people on our projects might help?"

Inessa is right; it is a long shot. But it can't hurt to be on the lookout anyway.

"I'm not a chemist or a geologist, so other people might be able to put it to better use on the lyrium project. But for the anchor shards, especially, I'm really curious to try and figure out how it's interacting with living tissue. Whether it's alive, for lack of a more precise description. And whether there's variation in people who've had it longer than others."

[circleprodigy]

"If Alistar can find a box of fancy lady's undergarments and Kaisa a pair of wheeled shoes, why not something more practical?" Inessa's lips twitch, still amused about their bizarre finds. She's interested in seeing what she can find from a rift as well...but something less of a gag gift.

Focusing once again, she nods. "You bring up some interesting points. I would love to see what results from such an inspection. As for our other project, I'm certain Christine will be quite interested a device which would help us learn more about red lyrium."

[youwonscience]

"Man, everyone laughs, but I've been really grateful for that second bra in a style I understand," Cosima says, of Alistair's find.

"But thanks for the suggestion. I'll talk to Christine about it, maybe? If she has some uses in mind, she might be more motivated to keep an eye out, or at least familiarize herself with what she's looking for. I think we could learn a lot -- that's why I've spent time trying to reverse-engineer one in the first place."

I

[thecookery]

Less and less has this duty fallen to Avery recently, but every so often she still volunteers to bring meals over to the infirmary, for either patients who can't or healers who forget to visit the dining halls at normal hours.

Today, it's a fairly large pot of soup (which, okay, it often is for the sake of patients who can't handle much more than that), but Avery doesn't seem to be straining overmuch with the weight of it as she carries the warm dish over to a side table, where she sets it out and then begins pulling bowls and even a few fresh crusts of bread from a satchel hanging off her shoulder. Cosima gets a nod from across the room when she's noticed, but otherwise Avery seems pretty focused on her task for now.

Clearly this is unsatisfactory behavior.

[youwonscience]

On the one hand, Cosima respects that Avery's there for work and has things to do.

On the other, if she offers to help, surely that's on the level.

"They're done with me for today," she says as she comes over. "What do you need me to do?" Because, unlike "can I help," the answer to that question is unlikely to be a flat "no." (Probably.) Avery and Cosima both have their hands full in Kirkwall, and this seems like the perfect opportunity to spend at least a few minutes in her friend's company while they're not both asleep.

[thecookery]

"Slice some bread for me?" Avery offers after just a moment's hesitation, removing the lid from the pot and giving the ladle a stir. "I'll get the first few bowls of soup, and the healers'll likely have someone take over in a few minutes."

Most of the people here can feed themselves after all, and as for the rest... well, Avery's bedside manner tends to leave something to be desired.

"After that, it's just carrying back the dishes when it's all done with."

[youwonscience]

"On it," she says, moving to do so. "I can even help do the dishes, if you want. I took the afternoon off in case they needed me to stay longer than usual."

At this point, that's probably an unnecessary precaution. Still, she'd rather be careful than promise to be back when she can't be. "If I don't help you, I have a bad habit of trying to get people to explain how spirit healing works, which given my shaky grasp of magic does no one any good."

[thecookery]

With a shrug, Avery starts filling bowls with a mild, but nice-smelling sort of broth.

"If you like. I've a bit of time to kill before that, while everyone eats." She was just going to find some other busy work to get done, but nothing's going to collapse without her for an hour, probably. "Up for a walk?"

[youwonscience]

"Totally," she says with a little grin. "I feel like we're both probably due a break, right?" Being busy is better than the alternative -- for both of them, Cosima's willing to guess -- but they can be spared for a little bit, surely.