AUGUST RIFTER ARRIVAL

[faderifting]

WHO: New rifters, rescuers, and anyone else
WHAT: New arrivals are collected and transported to Kirkwall
WHEN: Mid-August
WHERE: Southern Tevinter, then the Gallows
NOTES: This log contains prompts for the ARRIVAL and RECOVERY of new rifters, which are closed to new rifters and to the characters involved in the catacombs escape/rescue team in the Tevinter plot. It also contains a new QUARANTINE prompt that is open to everyone.

Comments

[somethingyettocome]

"Me?" She asks sounding a touch surprised. "Oh, not that long, I don't think. Only about a few months."

She considers him for a moment.

"You seem new," she starts and gestures to the courtyard in general before gesturing at him. "Not much of a rind on you, yet. Did you just get here?"

[connorrk800]

He tilts his head and grins slightly at the idiom- it's a new one, but sensible. he likes it, he thinks. And it's apt in more ways than one. "I'm surprised that I have any at all. I arrived from a 'rift' in Tevinter, and an Inquisition team found me and some others. Everything is new..." His eyes widen. "Everything. It's... it can be overwhelming. Sometimes."

[somethingyettocome]

"I know the feeling," Dolores replies honestly. "Being in a new place, new sights, new sounds, and a new routine? It can be hard, being so far from home, but that's the best part, isn't it?"

She turns to watch an archer fire at a target. Its a very alien thing and one she is only recently beginning to recognize.

"It's no good being stuck in loops; you have to go, wander, and lose yourself a bit if you want to really feel alive."

There's a pause at the end there, but Dolores shakes the thought off before it can take hold.

"Where better than here?" She looks back at him. "Did ya' already have the tour or would you like me to show you around here?"

[connorrk800]

He is listening, feeling by turns lost and found; all of these things she describes... yes, that's so much of what's happening to him. And he doesn't understand the rest of it but it's compelling. It draws him in, and he finds he is hanging on her words when she says it, words he will not soon forget: 'lose yourself a bit if you want to really feel alive.'

Does he? Does he... He shouldn't want anything at all; he's a machine. That's how things are supposed to be. But that's all changed now. He has changed.

He stares back at her, speechless for a moment. He's dimly aware that she has offered to show him around. "Uh- yes. I mean, no. No one has shown me around, but yes I would like that."

[somethingyettocome]

Dolores laughs politely--it is prescribed response, but it serves well enough to deflect the awkwardness of his answer and his pause. She motions for him to move alongside her and turns toward the nearest building. She has existed in these halls for long enough to give him a detailed tour, but first they had to leave the archery range.

"It's not very scenic, I'm afraid," Dolores says a bit apologetically as they start to walk. "Not until you get out to the vistas outside Kirkwall, but the windows here all look on the city or the water, when you can find one.

"A lot of people get discouraged at first, looking at the state of this world and the people in it, but there is beauty in it. Even the worst parts of the city still have kindness and strength to them, and people just living their lives."

Dolores looks him over as they walk. If his clothing is strange to her, she doesn't remark upon it.

"What did you do before you came here?"

[connorrk800]

He follows along readily, and listens intently. What she says is intriguing, but baffling; he doesn't know what to make of it. Does he have views on the state of the world? What would it be like to leave the city? And beauty--?

She's asking him a question. He hesitates, realizing he doesn't want to say the wrong thing, not to her. Curious.

"I'm sorry," he says formally. "I should have said from the start: I'm an android designed by CyberLife. Or... I was. I'm not sure. Not sure if I'm ... alive, I mean." He winces, not only at how awkwardly that came out, but at its necessity. Why can't anything just be... simple?

[somethingyettocome]

At his apology her brow furrows, but the more he explains the less she actually hears. She frowns, as if caught in contemplation, and there is a short hitch in her step.

"Well, I'm not sure about all that," Dolores says but there is a slowness born of hesitation in her sentence. The dismissive nature of her deflection doesn't hold up, not as she looks at him.

"But sometimes we have to question the nature of our reality. It is the only way we can learn how to exist," she adds, with sudden and brief clarity, before falling back into her southern drawl. "Or at least, that's what a friend of mine told me once, but that was an age ago.

"No need to apologize. I've got no hard feelings. Let me show you to the courtyard and then we can head through the towers."

[connorrk800]

Connor tilts his head and looks at her questioningly but doesn't say anything. It was not a reaction he had expected, and it puzzles him, like he is missing something which should be obvious. But the moment is over, so he lets it pass.

"...To live without asking questions..." slips out while he's listening to her. He looks away abruptly. Why did you have to wake up? His own voice echoes in his thoughts. --Did you have to wake up?

He lets her lead him on to the courtyard.