[OPEN] i've never seen such high hopes

[paladingus]

WHO: Simon Ashlock and OPEN
WHAT: NO IT'S COOL I'LL JUST WALK IT OFF. FOREVER
WHEN: Over the course of the next week and a half
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Illness, etc.

Early Stage

"Why don't we talk more?"

A question like that could be redolent of sarcasm, could drip with irony--but Simon looks nothing but absolutely earnest as he asks it.

"We're all Inquisition, aren't we? Isn't that what counts?"

Intermediate Stage

Never again, he'd told himself, after escaping the drudgery of the Ansburg laundry rooms. It had only taken a full-scale uprising to free him from that miserable duty, and he's never yet seen a reason to go back to it of his own accord.

But what else is he supposed to do right now? There are only so many model ships a man can hole up in his room and build, and that task is now verging on impossible when every surface in his room is strewn with bits and bobs and nuts and bolts and gears--these last from a half-baked idea on how to improve the wooden frames, pursued a third of the way to its logical conclusion and then forgotten. The room is no longer big enough to pace around, and too many of the pieces he'd need are now crushed beneath his feet.

Hauling and boiling and stirring keeps him well enough occupied for a while, but when they set him to folding, it's too much to ask focus of him. Half-realizing, mind seething like the great vats of bleached water, he carries the basket right out of the room, folding one-handed as he goes.

Is that your shirt? Why does he have your shirt?

Later Stage

How long Simon's been out in the frozen training yard is probably difficult to discern. Five hours, perhaps, or six, oblivious to anyone who might have occasion to notice or worry. It feels like feeding a hunger, like shoveling food into a bottomless maw; it's not enough, can never be enough, but he can push harder and harder and harder and it feels almost like it will make a dent if he just tries that little bit more.

Does frantic pacing and jogging count as a warmup, if one has been doing it for two straight and sleepless days? It wouldn't seem to, if the degree to which he's favoring his right leg is any indication, but even that hasn't slowed him and isn't going to.

He hasn't registered the color of his skin as cause for concern. That's what happens when you're out in the cold, isn't it? Not that it feels cold; he never really feels cold, he thinks, but not now, especially not now, when even stripping down to his shirtsleeves in the frosty air hadn't helped, when the sweat drenching his shirt has iced over and he still feels like he's boiling out of his skin. He has only the most distant idea that his perception of the temperature could be anything other than accurate. Recognizing the cognitive dissonance is beyond him.

Wildcard

Just come up to him at any point during this whole roller-coaster ride, I'm down for anything!

Comments

[onlyhymns]

Cade is an agreeable soul. He's quiet and shy and rolls over easily, except, apparently, when the conversation is about cake.

"I've had it, of course I've had it," he says with a twitch in his brow, a strange, intense look in his eyes, "I just didn't like it that much, Simon, because cake is meant to be spongey and not made like cheese. That's not even a cake anymore." Simon is being unreasonable and anyone with sense should be able to see that.

[paladingus]

"How is it not cake?" he demands, seemingly unaware at the moment of the rarity of Cade's display of spine, despite having spent the better part of a year in his close company. Then again, Cade has always been more willing to challenge him than most.

"It's sweet and you bake it. What else does a thing need in order to be a cake? And--it's better than the spongey kind, anyway. The spongey kind gets stale. This kind can't go stale."

[onlyhymns]

When Cade talks at full volume it's a reminder to everyone of how raspy his voice can be, either from misuse or just... that's how it sounds, and he speaks so quietly most of the time that it's like a different person.
"What else does it--" He shakes his head like this is the stupidest thing he's ever heard. "Icing? Anything, anything at all that identifies it as a cake and not a cheese tart?" He is downright disgusted by his friend's ignorance, and is starting to get a little red in the face. "Real cake doesn't go stale if you eat it in time, which is the idea. Of cake. Not to see how long it'll last, Maker, it's not a survival trial."

[paladingus]

"Oh, it's about icing now? Something's not a cake unless it's got icing?" Why he now feels compelled to defend the honor of icingless cake, he couldn't explain if he tried, but it's a thing to do.

"Who says a cheese tart can't be a kind of cake? Why's the definition of cake got to be so narrow? And who eats an entire cake so fast it hasn't the time to get stale at all?" Simon would, and has, and will happily do so in future, but he's arguing on behalf of all cake-eaters now. It's the principle of the thing.

"You don't have to be such a knob about it. 'Survival trial.' Andraste's underthings."

[onlyhymns]

"The fact that it's called a tart! A cheese tart!" This is just asinine. Pushing his hair back out of his face, Cade is becoming visibly agitated and apparently feeling a little called-out. Maybe... someone... he knows would eat an entire cake in a sitting. And then run for three hours after. How dare you come for him like this.
"I'm not being a knob!" he retorts, suddenly outraged, the Rich Boy bleeding through as it does only in the strangest moments.