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

[youwonscience]

Yeah, sorry. Definitely possible, though not inevitable. Lots of people don't stay that long. But I've been here a little over two, and there are a handful who've been here longer than I have.

We're trying to work out why some people stay longer than others, but no luck there yet.

Good news, such as it is, is that people have come from my future who don't remember me being gone. So either they're from very similar but slightly different versions of the same universe or all this happens in a way no one notices you being gone.

[There are a variety of theories about how that works, some less comforting than others, but she doesn't want to be overwhelming right away.]

[pyrazine]

[With her luck people will absolutely know she was gone.]

How does that even work?

[youwonscience]

Lots of theories, but as far as I've heard, no one has proved one for sure yet. I mean, we're already off the map of what I knew from home, since my world didn't have magic as far as I heard, but...

[A shrug.]

Sorry. Believe me, I know that's frustrating as shit. People are working on it?

[pyrazine]

With magic. Right?

[Right? She knows that magic is bullshit. She, more than anyone else.]

[youwonscience]

OK, yeah, some of them but not everyone. There's a lot of non-magical research going on. It would go faster if we had electricity or, like, the internet, but we're making do.

For what it's worth, if you want to, you can start calling magic "energy field manipulation" or something in your head. I did that for a while, it made me feel better, even though I still can't explain it either way.

[pyrazine]

I don't know what that means.

[She sounds a little sullen about that.]

[youwonscience]

I mean, it's made up, so it's really nothing. I came to it because how magic looks, from the outside, I people doing things that need huge amounts of energy and it's not clear where the energy comes from.

Like, at home, you can build a machine that shoots lighting bolts, effectively. It's not that it's a thing I can't imagine. It's just that here's it's coming out of a metal or wood staff. No batteries, no engine, not even much visible effort on the person holding it's part. But, like, magic's not real, so I told myself I'd say "magic" and what I'd really mean is "however they can manipulate that much energy at once, a mechanism I don't understand yet."

[Cosima shrugs, a helpless gesture.]

It doesn't matter, it just made me feel better about saying "magic." I got used to it, eventually.

[pyrazine]

[She stares, baldly.]

Do you.

Always talk like this?

[What what what.]

[youwonscience]

...a little bit, yeah. Sorry.

[She look sheepish, but offers a hand.]

I'm Cosima. From California, if you're from someplace with a California.

[pyrazine]

Disney?

[Her eyes perk up a little.]

I'm from Rio!

[youwonscience]

Golden Gate, [she corrects, but grinning.]

Oh man, I've never been been to Rio. I hear it's beautiful, though. Were you there your whole life, or did you move around?

[pyrazine]

Until a couple of years ago.

Then I moved to the interior.

[She means the country.]

Have you been to Disney? I want to go.

[youwonscience]

I have, yeah, though it's been years. My parents took me when I was a kid. I had a good time, though I definitely barfed after the teacups, which was very embarrassing.