faderift | [OPEN] I'll keep on making those new mistakes

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[OPEN] I'll keep on making those new mistakes

WHO: Fern, Colin, Chloe, Anders + OPEN
WHAT: A general catch-all for early March... plus, Fern discovers a new anchor shard ability.
WHEN: ...early March.
WHERE: The Gallows, around Kirkwall, specifically the alienage.
NOTES: None yet, will update as needed. Starters for specific characters can be added!

(ooc: yes, it's the song from zootopia, fight me, it's perfect)

I. HERB GARDEN (closed to Chloe)

It's been kind of nice knowing that, whatever else may be going on within the Gallows--the fallout from the Chantry forest burning, conflict amongst her elven friends, her insecurity over her place with the Inquisition's mages--Chloe Price is bound to turn up in the herb garden to keep her company while she works.

And it's a pleasant day for company today, too. The bitter winds that have been blowing in off the Waking Sea for the past few days have abated, taking with them the cloudy overcast to allow the sunlight back in. It's a good time to start getting one's hands really dirty in the garden soil, so that's precisely what Fern is doing, absently chatting to Chloe about her plans for the garden while she clears out the dead growth in preparation for the new. (It's not an especially riveting conversation, but it keeps her from shyly, awkwardly tripping over her words every few sentences.)

"I thought about maybe finding a spot with indirect sunlight for some orchids--" she starts, before she hisses in pain abruptly and sits up, tugging off her left glove, "--oh, ouch--Maker, I think something bit me--"

She gives her left hand a shake before staring at her palm with widening eyes; abruptly, she goes pale. The anchor mark there has begun to glow and crackle.

II. FERN'S ROOM (closed to Colin)

Sometimes it's easier to practice her letters when she knows she won't have an audience--or at least, not an audience she doesn't know. She doesn't mind so much if Colin catches her practicing the work given to her by Casimir for that day; he won't tease her over something she has no control over.

So it's the end of a long, and Fern is seated on her bed with a book in front of her, quietly mouthing very small, simple words to herself, before trying to write them down with painstaking difficulty onto a piece of parchment.

III. THE GALLOWS (closed to Anders)

Fern is still not entirely clear on what the rules and mechanics of this 'table top game' entail, but she knows that if nothing else, their 'dungeon master' is going to have an exciting outfit to wear while they do it.

At some point, she turns up outside Anders' quarters with a basket containing a bit of folded fabric, which she's been self-consciously glancing at every so often and trying to arrange so it doesn't inadvertently wrinkle on her trip across the Gallows. She knocks on his door and calls out, "Anders, are you in? It's Fern, I--um. I need a bit of help with--something."

IV. KIRKWALL - THE ALIENAGE (OPEN)

Fern possesses only the vaguest memories of alienage living from her childhood--not because she spent any time living within their walls, but because her family took the occasional trip back to Denerim before the blight to visit her grandmother. (Her mother, Hazel, hadn't allowed her to play with the other alienage children the last time; they'd had a cough, something that was catching, she'd said.)

Kirkwall's alienage doesn't feel so different. Bleaker, maybe, without the grass and the colour.

Fern stands beneath the large vhenadahl at the centre of the small square, but she isn't looking up into its boughs. Instead, she's taken an interest in the bit of earth that grows around its massive roots, considering thoughtfully some of what had been discussed the other day with Nari and Sorrel and the others. Could Keeper magic really do what Sorrel claimed it could--but more importantly, would such a thing even be welcomed by the elves of the alienage?

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"Fern?"

Adasse called out, from where he was helping one of the elven merchants move his wares onto a cart. He put the last box on, slapped the elf on the shoulder, saying, "There you are, Harren. Let me know if they've got anything good on the road markets, I'll ride out."

He turned back to Fern, giving her a warm if not quizzical smile, "What you doing down here?"

Fern looks up from her careful consideration of the soil to blink at Adasse, and while she does return his smile (more out of habit than anything else), it's done so cautiously. She's still not entirely sure how she feels about him, and it's clear on her face.

"Dunno," she answers him with a shrug of her skinny shoulders, and then gestures at a few of the market stalls. "I come here to look at the shops sometimes, and I thought, after what Sorrel suggested..." She trails off and glances down at the roots of the vhenadahl, threading a bit of hair behind her ear. "I thought I'd come look at things, that's all."

Considering Fern's expression - Adasse kept a respectable three feet away from her. He also stuck his hands into his pockets, offering a faint, game-if-you-are smile.

"Well, you picked the right part of the day. Plenty of business, plenty of people around. If you want, I can show you which house is the hahren's. She'd be happy to show you around, tell you how great it is here."

Something that he and the hahren didn't quite see eye to eye on - but then again they didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things.

It also wasn't immediately clear to Fern whether Adasse meant that last sentence, either. She gives him a skeptical sort of look, her brows drawing together. "You think it's great here," she repeats, sounding perplexed.

"No." Was Adasse's quick and firm answer. "I've seen how the other half lives, and I know we're getting the short end of the stick. However..."

He looks around, his gaze softening, "These are our people. Despite the odds, despite the lack of proper most things, they carve a life out for themselves. They raise children, have successful businesses. It's not Arlathvan or anything, but it's a pretty decent start. We can't wait for some elven god or the Maker or whatever to save us from this.... we got to save ourselves. So this is a good starting point for pushing back."

"Pushing back?" Fern realizes she's simply repeating things that Adasse is saying back to him, but there's clear incredulity in her expression regardless. She may not have grown up in an alienage, but she heard awful stories about the one in Denerim from her mother. "You mean against the shemlen?" This she adds with a slightly lowered voice, worry in her eyes.

"Yeah, you know ... turning this place into an actual jewel in Kirkwall - wait, what?" Adasse gave her a surprised look, before he snorted softly, "I honestly don't think we need to go down the road of Halamshiral. I think we can do it by the only way it matters in this world ... by money and trade."

He nods around at the marketplace, "Some of our people have already started making enough money to move into decent housing, or fix up their own down here. I think we can beat the shemlen at their own game - buying our way into power."

Colin never learned how to write until he was taken to the Circle. Like algebra, it was something he never believed he would need to use. When he was taken there, his inability was scoffed at, laughed at, considered a sign of his stupidity and simplicity along with his accent.

He is studying from a book about spirits, knowing the lack of judgment will be mutual. After a moment, he speaks suddenly.

"Have you ever met a benevolent spirit in the Fade?"

Startled by the question, Fern looks up and blinks across at Colin in surprise. "A what?" she repeats, hears the question properly, and then shakes her head. "No, never. I mean, they're all meant to seem nice and friendly while we're there, aren't they? My aunt taught me to ignore them."

She looks back down to her work and starts to form a few more letters on the pages, but the question sticks in her head. She shoots Colin a worried look. "...you're not trying to talk to them in the Fade, are you?"

He glances at her, considering how freaked out she could get over this. Enh, she'll be fine.

"Sort of," he admits. "Not yet. Anders is teaching me spirit healing. Eventually I'll need to attract a spirit to work with."

"Oh."

The worried look on Fern's face fades easily, replaced by something else that's harder to discern. She looks back down at the book in her lap--is there an illustrated picture of a horse on one page? Probably.

"That sounds like rather advanced magic," she says at last.

"It is." A flash of a smile intended to reassure. "That's why I'm learning from the best. In Ferelden, we weren't really taught spirit healing after Uldred's rebellion. We had to be at least Harrowed before we were allowed to even learn about working with spirits. So this is all new to me."

"I've heard a little, about the Harrowing." The words are ventured quietly, rather cautiously. "My mentor, Nell, she taught me a little. You didn't experience it?"

"I did." A one-shoulder shrug belies the actual horror the experience had been, for him and for many others. "But it was just a short while before the rebellion started and the Circles dissolved. No time to learn sensitive spirit-magic."

He glances over at her again, face impassive, but he is curious about her cautious tone. "What did she tell you about the Harrowing?"

Fern's expression grows uncertain. "Not much," she admits, though that, she realizes, was probably her own fault. She's discovered, with Nell, that if she expects an answer on certain topics, she's got to ask the right questions first. There's a learning curve there. She peers back to Colin and seems to deliberate over her question, before turning some on her bed to look at him more fully. "What was it like?"

"Um." Colin's eyes go wide for a moment as he tries to sum it up. "Say one day, a lot of shems woke you up and dragged you to an arena and made you fight a lion while they waited to kill you if you took too long at it. Except the lion can talk, it knows who you are and why you're there because it's seen all this before and it knows exactly how to get in your head. I don't know if you've ever been confronted by a demon, but it's...different. It's not exactly like being tempted, either, it's more like it's digging through your head and finding old wounds to reopen. Mine was a despair demon, and it wanted...what demons want, and said that if I gave in, obviously I would die, but I would take as many templars down with me as I could. That it was the only escape I would have from the Circle."

It also suggested templars were doing things to him while he slept, but he knew mages also attend every Harrowing. And that old fear is private, and he wants to keep it private.

That was... not the answer Fern was expecting to hear.

Or, to be more truthful, it was too much like what she'd expected to hear. As Colin speaks, she hears echoes of what Nell told her about her training as a Knight-Enchanter, and the betrayal of her supposed Templar allies when she became a convenient scapegoat. She remembers everything that Anders spoke about at the gathering of other mages within the Inquisition, of their shared stories of pain and suffering; the stab of guilt is something she knows isn't earned, but it's there anyway. Fern grew up with a family who loved her, safe from those experiences. Safe from being forced to confront a demon in the Fade at the behest of soldiers trained to kill her.

If she looks a little pale, it should be understandable.

"I'm--so sorry, Colin," she tells him softly.

"What?" Colin looks a little confused, as he always will any time anyone feels sorry for him. "No, sorellina--no."

He stands and comes to sit by her.

"Lots of worse things happen to people, both inside and outside the Circle, than Harrowings. And they're pretty much the only thing about the Circle I understand, although they needed to be done differently. But don't be sorry for me. It was a long time ago. And some people got through it like it was nothing. It was just a fact of life, back then."

Chloe had at least gotten into a routine in this place, if nothing else - and while she might not look forward to all of that routine (working was stupid and she decided she hated it and wanted nothing to do with it anymore), she was consistently excited about heading to the herb garden the moment she had a chance; usually first thing after waking up, still shoveling some kind of breakfast into her mouth as she all but ran there, because it was past noon and why couldn't she ever wake up early?

She'd gotten herself a comfy seat on the ground, vaguely listening to her talk about dirt and orchids like she absolutely understands (spoiler: she has no fucking clue what she's talking about - she was a nature lover, but not much of a gardener) and had been about to insert some sort of 'that'd be cool' or 'sure why not' or whatever generic answer at least made it clear she was paying attention, when she'd seen her go to yank off her glove, talking about a bite and immediately looked up to check on her hand.

Except that that's... not a bite and she hasn't seen an anchor really do that, so it's enough to make her nerves pick up and hesitate on just reaching out to grab her wrist to try and see if she was okay like she had planned on. Bites she could handle this stuff was out of her element. "Uhh - it's ... not supposed to do that, right?"

Fern's face has quickly contorted into a grimace of pain, and she holds her hand out away from herself--and away from Chloe--as though that is somehow going to do anything to protect them should this--whatever it is--decide to up and explode. She sucks in a breath, a pained gasp coming with it, and blurts out, "It--no, it hasn't done anything like this, not since I got it--shit--"

Good news: her anchor mark doesn't explode.

Bad news: something does appear to explode out of it, a bright flash of green light that seems to coalesce quickly into a shimmering energy shield projected by the anchor mark in her palm. The force of it has knocked Fern backwards into the dirt, but aside from a cry of shock, she doesn't appear injured, and the pain ebbs quickly.

The shield, though, that sticks around. She stares at it, wide-eyed, then looks to Chloe. (dude what the fuck!!)

She hates seeing the look on her face, the way she pulls away trying to shield her, the sound of the gasp. Had she ever even heard her curse before? She's pretty sure she hasn't. All of it is enough to make that worry that much more evident on her face, a scared - "Fern!" escaping her when she watches the sudden explosion erupt from the thing because a flash doesn't mean she's not hurt until --

Until she's very much... not. And there's something weird and shimmering is in front of them and she looks, from what she can tell, no worse for wear. Chloe stares from it, to her, to the anchor in her hand, and back to the shield again before she gives a sort of shake of her head that shows that this? This is weird and weird is not comforting in the slightest.

Every time she liked a girl, weird shit happened, and then bad shit happened, and... She swallowed roughly, immediately going to grab her hand so she can look at her anchor and at least make sure it's not doing any other weird shit (and also it means she's holding her hand, but she needs to not think about that right now, holy crap).

"Are you okay?" She's trying so hard to not look scared and failing just as badly.

There's still garden soil on Fern's hand when Chloe grabs it, along with a bit of a scrape from her fall, but the anchor shard itself appears to be fizzling back down into near-dormancy. Near, because as long as the translucent green shield remains before them, shimmering and pulsing with energy that seems benign, the anchor mark itself continues to glow a bit more than usual.

"Are you okay?" Chloe asks her, and when Fern looks away from her hand to her friend's face and sees the fright and worry written so plainly there, she feels a rush of--something--that just evades her ability to name it. Guilt, gratitude, regret, maybe a mixture of all these things.

"I'm all right," she tries to assure her hastily, wide eyes on Chloe's, before she looks again towards the shield of magical energy. (Her fingers have curled protectively around her palm, but she hasn't yet moved her hand out of Chloe's; possibly it hasn't even occurred to her as something to do yet.) "I have--no idea how I did that, it just happened..!"

Her grip on her hand doesn't loosen any and she goes to try and use her thumb to at least get the dirt away from the scratches. She should offer to clean it, but it's not like she even has anything to do the trick with her, and she's sure Fern knows how to clean out a cut just fine. Besides, there's more pressing things.

Like what the fuck that shield was.

"Has anyone else done shit like this with their anchors?" Someone they could talk to, someone who could say this was a normal thing for them, not some unique strangeness saved solely for Fern. Unique strangeness meant unique responsibility and also unique backlash. It was the latter she feared the most.

Now she notices Chloe's grip on her hand, at first because of her efforts at getting the dirt away from the scratches. She startles, blinks, and then blushes a bright red, but tellingly doesn't draw back, not yet. It's--nice, to have someone looking out for her, even in such a small way. (And it's nice, having her hand held like that, though the instant the thought crosses her mind, she tries to squash it, no, this isn't time time--)

"What?" she asks, looking up. Chloe's said something, she's sure of it, and it takes a moment for her to backtrack and piece together the question--a perfectly sensible question, now that Fern remembers it. "Oh, I--I don't know. I've never seen anything like this happen before." A hesitant pause, in which she tentatively flexes her fingers a little in Chloe's grip... and then as abruptly as it arrived, the shimmering green shield promptly fizzles out and vanishes, leaving only the barest traces of magic floating in the air around them.

The residual crackling of her anchor fades to its usual dull green glow. "...There's a rifts and veils project here, I suppose I could ask them," she mumbles. (But truthfully, she's far more preoccupied by her hand in Chloe's than she should be, considering present circumstances.)

She was still rubbing the dirt off her hand, or maybe she was just rubbing her hand in general now, when the shield cracked and fizzled out, the anchor returning to normal, identical to the one in her own palm once more. She frowns slightly, not letting go of her hand, but still staring at it, like she's waiting for it to start pulsing again and wanting to know how to make it stop.

Sh nods. It's smart to talk to someone who knew better. But if she's never seen it, if she hasn't heard people talk about it, there's a bad feeling in her stomach that it is something new. She doesn't know why that makes her stomach feel so twisted up - or maybe she does, she just doesn't want to put together the connections.

She doesn't realize at first that her grip had tightened slightly, but she's rather quickly letting go once she does, standing up and wiping the dirt off of her pants to distract herself. "Yeah. That's - That's a good idea. Maybe they'll have answers for you."

Edited 2018-03-09 22:40 (UTC)

"Yeah. That's - That's a good idea. Maybe they'll have answers for you."

"Yeah," Fern answers a little too quickly, and fumbles to get to her feet as well, dusting dirt off of her tunic and leggings. Out of habit, she reaches up to adjust the scarf that she wears draped around her neck and shoulders, but once her fingers touch the fabric she pauses, and the full impact of what just happened seems to settle around her, thick and heavy. The scarf was Sina's--Sina, whose anchor shard above her heart had killed her.

Was that going to happen to all of the shard bearers, one day?

"I, um," she begins, her voice suddenly a little unsteady. She reaches up a hand to press against her forehead, pushes it through her hair, something to still the slight shaking in her fingers. "I'll send them a message over the sending crystals." She takes a few steps away from the garden bed, before remembering that she's left all of her tools strewn about, and then doubles back towards them, looking for all the world like she's on the cusp of a panic attack and is in pretty fierce denial about it.

The shift in her emotions isn't hard to notice - or, at least, for someone who's dealt with trauma for years and also had an overtly anxious best friend before that, it is. Chloe's eyes flickered over to her, watching her movements; the shaking hands, the steps away then back, the look on her face. She might not get why, but given the little she knew about recent events, she could take a guess.

"Hey --" She's taking a few steps towards her, a hand going to grip her shoulder firmly, like she was trying to ground her. "I can clean up if you needed to get inside. I don't mind."

Chloe's grip is firm but not rough, and it has the desired effect. Fern looks up at her, wide-eyed and anxious, but the offer to help makes her pause and think through her immediate surroundings. Where the tools go--and Chloe's been around the herb garden enough to know. It helps.

"Would you?" she asks her earnestly, and though her voice hasn't fully regained its strength, the relief in her expression is impossible to miss. "Please--I just--I need to talk to someone from that project. Maybe splash a bit of water on my face, too." This added with a self-conscious half-smile.

She nods quickly, waving her hand at the mess and giving a shrug of her shoulders. "Yeah. Easy peasy. You uh - you go." She lets her hand drop from her shoulder, offering her a reassuring smile. "I've got this." Besides which, she could use her own time to breathe and focusing on something like cleaning might distract her from her own panic.

"Just... tell me what you find out? Eventually, you don't have to right away." There weren't a lot of people she cared about in this place, but Fern had certainly managed to earn a place in her heart fairly quickly. "Let me know that you're alright."

"I will, soon as I know anything, I promise."

The answer comes out of her very quickly, like it isn't even a question of what she'll do, once she has her answers; of course she'll tell Chloe, why wouldn't she--best not to think about that, not right now.

"Thank you, Chloe, really," she says and gently clasps her friend's hand a moment. Then she turns and heads quickly from the herb garden, making a beeline for the special project offices.

Despite the business of the alienage there is always a stillness to the area that surrounds the vhenadahl. It is what draws Saoirse here daily whenever the weather is good and her schedule allows the opportunity. She sits among the large roots, busily weaving dry grass and river reeds into the shape of a crown that, though dull without the usual burst of colorful flowers, is given life in a different way with smoothed pieces of river glass hanging from it.

She sings as she works, eyes seemingly closed as her fingers move both out of memory and out of having done this a thousand times over. It is only when she pauses, holding the crown out in her hands so sunlight catches the colored glass that she finally notices that she is not alone.

"Hello again," she says with a pleasant smile. Carefully she sets the crown down in her lap and regards Fern with a warm look. "Here to see the vhenadahl?"

It's hard to miss the sound of singing, especially when it's that melodic. Inquisitive, Fern follows the sound of the song around the periphery of the vhenadahl, until she spots Saoirse tucked into the shelter of its roots. She smiles a little, recognizing her of course.

"Yes," she replies, cheerful and friendly, and turns her gaze up to look at its branches. "My parents brought a little cutting from the one in Denerim with them when we left Ferelden during the blight. We still have it on our farm. I don't know if I'll ever see it grow this big, though."

"Yet it is still good that you have been able to see even a little piece of it." She explains with another smile, glancing up toward its bare limbs and excitedly imagining the coming warmth of spring and the appearance of new buds. "Some, inlcuding those born and raised within an alienage, are never able to see the vhenadahl."

For a multitude of reasoning. Illness within the tree, cutting it down for wood in the winter or human lords burning it down. "I was happy to see the one in Starkhaven had not changed much while I had been away."

"Oh, you're from Starkhaven! I thought I recognized the accent a bit--that's where my friend Simon is from." Having said that, her smile falters a bit, both because she's not sure how freely she should be sharing the fact that she's befriended a Templar, and because it occurs to her that she hasn't seen much of him since the strange plague came to an end.

She brings her attention back to the present. "You were in the Circle?" she asks, a little careful, a little cautious. It's always hard to judge how Circle mages will react to an apostate.

"You're a friend of Simon then? I know him myself but I did not truly get know him as well as I did Cade," she says lightly. Speaking of befriending Templars, either way there is not much in the way of a reaction from Saoirse to her confession if it could be called one and glances back to her weaved crown.

"I am... or rather I was." Hmm. It was always hard to tell where their place in the world still stood. "I first lived at the Circle in Starkhaven but when it burned down, I came here to Kirkwall and the Gallows."

"...when it burned down, I came here to Kirkwall and the Gallows."

"Oh," Fern starts, awkward, and fidgets with the basket slung over her shoulder a little bit. She grew up on a farm and knows well the dangers posed by fire, but the thought of something as big as a Circle burning down... how much fire would that have to take? Probably better not to ask.

"I was never part of a Circle," she admits instead, considering Saoirse somewhat anxiously after she says the words. "I'm, um. I was an apostate. ...I'm never sure who I ought to tell that."

He's not expecting a knock and finds himself in quite the predicament - he has two cats on his lap. There's a pause before he answers in which he considers this and decides there's only one solution.

"Come on in, it's not locked!"

When she does come in, she'll find him in one of the chairs at the table, blanket around his shoulders and parchment in front of him.

"Please, pull up a chair." The orange kitten stretches as if he's considering investigating the new company, but the tuxedo cat doesn't even open her eyes.

She opens the door into this scene and promptly smiles, giggling a bit at the sight of Anders completely covered in cats. "Should I come back later?" she asks, still quite cheerful, and takes a step or two into the room with her basket on her arm. "I wondered if you could help me a bit with something I'm doing for Chloe. For that," pause, "game she'd like to get started."

He grins at the question, waving her over to the table as an answer.

"Of course. Or, more accurately, what is it that you need help with? I'm willing, but let's see if it's something I can do." Slowly Anders sits up a bit more straight, getting a disgruntled claw in his leg from Purrelden as Pawdric abandons him now so the kitten can try to sniff at Fern's basket.

"If there's anything edible in that, you may have to pull him out a few times. Pawdric's as insatiable as a Warden when it comes to food."

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[OPEN] I'll keep on making those new mistakes

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