faderift | [open] conceived sorrow

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[open] conceived sorrow

WHO: Anna and Open
WHAT: Getting to know you~
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: the Gallows
NOTES: Very much explore the setting and meet some people driven. Put her to work, teach her a thing, etc. She won't balk, much.

GALLOWS

the courtyard
She dislikes the Gallows. It reminds her too much of the jail the snatchers would dump you out into if you were not quick enough to slash them apart first. Tucked away from the main city, where there would be impunity to do ugly things. She has not found proof of the ugly things in her head, but that does little to dissuade her from the idea that they are all here to be harvested for something other: their eyes, their blood, their minds.

She sits in a shadowy corner of the courtyard, watching the comings and goings around her in grim solitude. She had known the Hunt's ways like a ballet. She will have to begin all over again. Where to hide, where to strike, when to run.

She does not look at all natural, sitting there in her charred leather cloak and leather hat that covers most of her face, worrying away at the leather gloves she wears with her thumb. She looks tense and distrustful of everything. The fire-charred coat smells faintly horrifying and subtly intoxicating.

training & armory
The only thing that makes her less tense is the training yard. She sets up hay bale targets and decimates them with her notched whip. The trick weapon is unique, at first looking like only a bladed cane, but then she flicks its compartments loose with just the right gesture and suddenly a serrated wire butterflies around her, slashing, pulling, gashing. She does it until she can't anymore, breathing heavily and lowering her arm.

She repeats this a few times more, panting heavily and sweating between each round as she recovers herself. At the end of it all, she looks as frowning and tense as she started.

She goes off into the armory to look for some tools comparable to what she is used to. Its a delicate weapon that needs to be repaired and resharpened often, that is why she had chosen hay over wood for today.

infirmary
She's seen others come in here... It's been a long time since there were healers about. Healers that could be trusted. She doesn't trust these people either, but the inside of infirmary at least looks clean. When greeted here, she balks back with a frown, shaking her head and turning to hurry away.

"No, nothing."

She doesn't need anything. She has her blood.

'accommodations'
She is not interested in your accommodations. Comfort makes her nervous. She sleeps tucked away in hidden places at odd hours of the day. At night she prowls, looking for the hunt...

around
Anywhere she shouldn't be, you will probably find her. She mistrusts this place. She mistrusts anything it might call secrets.

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"Are you sure?" People don't come to the infirmary for nothing, generally speaking. Her hasty departure speaks of fear, but he's more worried about her possibly being injured than her being afraid.

Anders steps out to follow her. "I've seen you in the courtyard, I think. For a couple of days? Sitting there? It's the coat. If you've been hurt, I'm here to help."

Her face twists, taking another step back. His voice doesn't have that saccharine reek of the Choir, half-mad with their own self-righteousness. She straightens her back, angry at herself for her skittishness.

"I came to see what you do in there," she answers, accusation in her tone even though she hasn't found anything that confirms her dread.

He stops following her, letting her keep her distance as she wants it. Now that she's stopped he can tell she's not showing any signs of injury or illness.

"I heal. I'm a spirit healer. I also put together potions for various matters as well. I can... I can't demonstrate the healing at the moment, we've no waiting patients, but I can show you the potions if you'd like." A short beat. "And the kitten. Do you like kittens?"

"Kittens?" Confusion, almost as if she doesn't know what he's talking about. But more like anything resembling a 'kitten' had been eaten by the crows and the rats a long time ago. "I'm not a child."

Something she has been protesting since she was one, and even as she approaches 30 she still has a childishness to her , large eyes and a sullen bee-stung mouth in a round face. A face that hides its emotions poorly, the conflict obvious in her expression.

"What kind of potions?"

Edited (WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT HER FACE LORDY) 2018-10-02 21:08 (UTC)

"I'm not a child either and I like kittens," he replies mildly as he leans against the doorframe. She's on edge. Is it magic? Medicine in general? Doesn't like men in robes? He dismisses the last one.

"The one I'm currently making to restore our stock is a salve for burns. But we've a great many various ones ready - healing potions, potions to prevent pregnancy, potions to deal with the aftereffects of wandering into rashvine or other itchy things, salve for open wounds, and so on."

Everything she'd use the blood for. She has twenty vials of blood in her pouches, and awash from Yharnam she will find no more. She could die her. She purses her lips.

"What's in it? How do you make it?"

Someone had to suffer for such a convenience, didn't they?

"Plants, minerals, activating agents, magic in some of them. Would you care to see?"

What else would he make them out of? Perhaps the knowledge is restricted where she comes from. He rather likes going against societal restraints like that, though it's pure speculation right now.

She has yet to stop frowning, all this time. But she did come here to investigate, she just hadn't expected to be given a tour. How can she trust anything she's shown when it's guided by the minister himself?

"Yes," she decides, the sternness in her voice is directed more at herself than at him, but he doesn't need to know that. She actually takes a few steps forward, at last.

Good. He likes stern, possibly angry and scared, people looming over him. Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he'll always be a bit intimidated by people watching him. Anders gives the woman a very wry look before tilting his head at the interior of the infirmary and heading in himself.

Without a word he sets back to work, lining up the empty vials again the kitten has poked a little out of order before resuming chopping a small pile of leaves.

"This is elfroot. It's used in most restorative things, potions and salves alike. And sometimes tea, though that... isn't just for restoration. Some use it for recreation as well."

Her expression sets sternly at the look her gives her. She's not here to be bemusing to him. She doesn't know why she's here in this world, she assumes it involves some foul and psychotic sorcerer. She assumes this infirmary is full of poison and needles and stolen eyes.

Instead it is clean, lit, and inhabited by kittens.

She crosses her arms over her ribs, shrinking protectively into her charred leather coat. It's like the lack of evil-doing here disturbs her more than anything. She's lived in the depths of a stinking corpse pit for so long that fresh air and sunlight makes her feel sick and dizzy.

"These restorative properties... what is their root?"

Something nefarious!?

Connor picks out a training bow from the rack at the yard and takes his place before the targets. His too-serious expression masks the calm he feels as he runs through the motions, just as Warden Howe had instructed him. He had observed the veteran closely, noting minutely how to handle the bow, the missiles. Now, he often needs to be reminded to stop shooting so he can tend to the needs of his new body. The need to master this weapon drives away all thought of sleep and nourishment.

There is something peculiarly exact and perfect about his form- almost unnaturally so. Likewise, his posture seems almost dancer-like. But he stops between each shot, peering intently as if he could pierce the target with his gaze as well.

After some time, as he's collecting arrows, he notices the others training in the yard. He tilts his head curiously at a woman using a strange cane on some hay targets. He walks over and watches from a distance, waiting for her to finish so he doesn't disrupt her focus.

"Hello. My name is Connor," he says from deeply ingrained habit. "What kind of weapon is that?" he indicates the cane.

Edited 2018-10-04 20:24 (UTC)

Anna certainly wouldn't find his repetetive perfection strange. That was the nature of the Dream, that even when you lost all will to fight... you simply awoke in the Hunter's Dream and were free to kneel before a tombstone and try again. The night was always the same night. The enemies were all the same enemies. One learned the dance.

She does, in a way, seem to mind his attention however. The expression on her face is distrustful, and she is hidden beneath layers of leathers and ratty dark hair that obscures most of her. She breathes heavily for a moment without answering, her shoulders rising and falling.

"We call it the threaded cane," she finally responds. "Many hunters carry them."

Connor twitches his head like a curious bird. "Hunters?..." he eyes the cane again. "What kind of animal would you hunt with something like that?"

There's a hollowness in her eyes, the subtle sense of a shudder hidden in all the leather. What kind of animal, indeed. Her mouth is dry and she lowers her eyes.

"Not animals-- beasts," she mutters. "We hunt beasts... Among other horrors. The demons that attacked when I fell from the rift... not so different."

She does not always string her sentences together fully, so used to only having herself to muse to.

"Oh," he says with a note of understanding. "A different kind of hunter..." that's what he once was too. He was created to hunt. He hunted his own kind.

"We didn't have ...beasts or demons or anything like that, where I come from. I'm a rifter too," he nods. "I became human when I came through..."

Became human... what an absurd notion, that it should be a desired outcome. Didn't everyone want to become some monstrous god, no matter who suffered for it?

"How do you like it?"

Being human, that is.

Edited 2018-10-16 17:13 (UTC)

The Gallows are not Merrill's favorite place, either. She remembers when the Gallows were a Circle for mages. She knows the Gallows remember being a Circle and what came before as well, the memories having sunk into the stone along with the blood. As soon as Merrill returned to Kirkwall, she returned to her home in the alienage... but the Inquisition had the Gallows, and Merrill was still a part of the Inquisition.

She doesn't belong in the Gallows; everything from the vallaslin on her face to her bare feet stands out. Her dog doesn't stand out as much, all brown and white and clearly a mutt... but with a Dalish elf? He's something that's a bit more difficult to ignore, even as he scampers back and forth between people and objects in the courtyard. Merrill's aravel is one of those objects, safer here than in Kirkwall proper, where Merrill couldn't trust the people not to destroy it simply because it was a Dalish object. Barkley soon settles under it, with Merrill following after.

"No repairs today," she muses, smiling softly. Her smile is still there when she turns and spots Anna, raising a hand in greeting. "Sorry if we've disturbed you."

She's thinking about huge crows with the heads of dogs, that had screamed like birds on the battlements of a nightmare. That's what she's thinking about, staring at the little dog. She almost doesn't even hear Merrill, but she hears everything and her eyes follow the elf's hand as it rises.

It's tempting, to stay where she is and simply stare frowning at the elf, the dog, the aravel. Frowning in silence is one of her better skills, but she is also aware that she will not learn half as much as she needs to if she says nothing. She moves from her perch for what feels like the first time in days. Walking over.

"Are you a trader?" That's how she's understood the use of the vehicle at a glance.

"Nope!"

It is extremely chipper - perhaps frighteningly so, if you're not used to as much cheer as Merrill can sometimes project. Her hand drops in favor of adjusting her scarf, and then again to join with her other hand, fingers lacing together.

"I don't expect I'd be very good at it, really. But the Dalish are nomads; we live in aravels like this, most of the time."

That doesn't explain why it's in the Gallows, of course, but Merrill doesn't feel like going into that right away is going to cause less confusion.

The cheerfulness seems sincere, but that didn't mean the elf wasn't some kind of threat. The insane loved to laugh and to smile, it makes Anna distinctly uncomfortable. She preferred the sullen and the dour, their misery tended indicate their relationship with reality to her. There was nothing to be happy about.

"That's clever," Anna decides. She's never really heard of an entire group dedicating themselves to being nomads, but she supposes if one were to do so, the cart would be a way to go about. "Cumbersome though."

Cheer certainly didn't mean not dangerous. Merrill had her staff and a knife at her belt, and for all Barkley was small, he still had teeth. There was no move toward any of that, though; the staff was on her back, the knife safely sheathed, and Barkley was nodding off.

"They're usually pulled by the halla - beautiful creatures that look a bit like deer, but white and with twisting, entwined antlers." Usually, because Merrill had not found a halla to ask to pull her aravel and instead had her great horse do it. Honeysuckle, however, was not here; he was in the stable, enjoying a break.

"If we pulled them ourselves, I imagine we'd carry fewer things by... well, a lot."

She folds her arms on the edge of the aravel, contemplative. While the image was beautiful -- the precious little cart pulled by some beautiful, benevolent white deer -- it was too much whimsy for her to really find palatable. She had very much missed the time in her life for fairy tales and whimsy. She had been an orphan girl in a disease ridden world, scrabbling in mud to prove her worth, feed and protect a younger sister. Maybe her sister had dreamed more about fairies and elegant white deer. As for Anna, it sounded preposterous.

"Another mouth to feed," she says instead, sounding skeptical rather than delighted. And as for that other bit.... "Or you'd need to be much burlier."

Anna has no sense of humor, this is not a joke so much as a logical conclusion.

It may not be a joke, but Merrill giggles all the same. The mental image of herself as burly as the Iron Bull or some other qunari is, in her opinion, pretty funny.

"We don't feed them, really; not like a horse or a cow. They graze, or nibble leaves off young trees. We could never make a halla do something they didn't want to do. It'd hurt dearly if we tried." Their antlers were sturdy and their hooves could break a rib, if not more, if the halla so chose.

"Have you seen any of the harts that some members of the Inquisition ride? Think one of those, but- smarter. Smarter and much more likely to take offense if you take a heavy hand to them."

The idea of such high sentience delights Merrill and fills her with reverence. It unnerves Anna. She did not like creatures with such precocious intellect. One never really knew what they were getting into with such things. One moment a miracle, another moment a curse.

"Much too much fuss."

She'd had a better relationship with animals before things had gone wrong in Yharnam. She'd seen herself in them, the hungry forgotten curs in their packs. And then... She had continued to see too much of herself in them. It was something which had be struggled against, lest she join them. The dogs at least had remained familiar, but then were the rats, the boars, the snakes, the insects. All turned and changed, morphing into versions of themselves with too many mouths and teeth.

"I wouldn't make much of a Dalish, it seems."

"I don't make much of one either, according to plenty of them."

Merrill shrugs before crouching down to reach under her aravel and scratch Barkley behind the ears. What the other clans think still bothers her - they don't understand. But Merrill knows who and what she is, and she knows what she has done for their people. Someday, they'll know it, too.

She hopes the Inquisition helps with that, but if it doesn't... well, it's still a good cause.

"My name is Merrill," she offers as she straightens, wiping her hands on her thighs. "That's Barkley, under there."

Her eyebrows rise without her really meaning to. Anna's eyes have a way of giving away her emotions -- in this case a bit of bemused surprise -- despite her otherwise rather tight-lipped and stoic face. Large, expressive eyes like a child. She hates them, has hated the notion of her childhood since she was old enough to walk and talk. There was a reason she normally hid in her leathers, put up a unified front of armor and diversion...

"I'm Anna, and I wouldn't know any better. You can be whatever kind of Dalish you like."

She says this without the warmth and empathy that might've made such a statement touching. Instead it comes with a self-aware disregard that it's not like her opinion on the matter would change it.

"Is your Barkley good in a fight?"

Wow, one track mind, Anna.

"He's a good distraction, if he has to be."

Merrill doesn't like taking Barkley out into battle. In Lowtown, where she's likely to be mugged, it's one thing; a dog is sometimes enough of a deterrent, even a little one. Barking raises an alarm, and he's got teeth that will latch onto ankles, tugging with enough pain to make whoever he's got a hold of turn their attention away from Merrill.

That's their mistake, usually; it's hard to dodge a lightning strike if you don't see it coming.

"Better at keeping rodents and such out and away from dinner, though."

That was when Barkley's ferocity truly shown. When she had been traveling, it had been a godsend; she imagined it would be much the same now that she was back in her house in the alienage.

She looks at the dog, and then she looks back at Merrill and tells her, arms spreading to several lengths of the dog.

"The rats in Yharnam, they're like this."

Ew.

Merrill looks between Anna and Barkley, a quick back-and-forth like a startled bird.

"Well. I think he'd still try."

And probably get eaten for the trouble. Ugh. Though that begs the question-

"Goodness, how big are the cats?"

Edited (spelling!) 2018-12-03 16:45 (UTC)

"Oh... all the cats fled, a long time ago."

They'd had a little more sense than the rest of Yharnam, leaving the packs of men and beasts to hunt and devour one another. Or maybe they'd been the first prey of the first men who had turned. Anna couldn't really have said definitively.

"I wouldn't mind a cat," she adds thoughtlessly. After all her comments about other pets and companions being too much fuss, she could see herself feeding an alley cat.

Edited 2018-12-03 18:20 (UTC)

"They're very independent, very smart," Merrill muses, even as she wonders what the cats fled from. The giant rats? Maybe, but if the rats grew that large, why wouldn't the cats?

Then again, other worlds were other. As much as everyone said that the Rifters were spirits - and maybe they were - that didn't mean their realities weren't other.

"They weren't very common among the Dalish, but there's a few in the alienage."

"Alienage?"

She's heard the word but not quite pieced together its implications, and Merrill seems keen enough to answer her.

"Where elves in the city live, if they don't live under the city itself."

The alienage was better than Darktown on the good days. On the bad... well. Maybe that depended on the city.

"Elves in Thedas are viewed as less than humans, at least among the Andrastian nations. Second-class citizens. Grouped together in our own section of town away from everyone else - so that we can be shut in or shut out, if they want. Conditions are... usually very poor."

Ah. A slum, where they could easily be rounded up and burned. Already she assumes there is some comparable Djura stomping about for the kind souls to be left to their own business. She hadn't really understood Djura, until it was much too late-- until she'd spilled so much blood that the hypocrisy would have been inescapable.

"The cart seems preferable."

Not that Anna cared overmuch, she expected things to be terrible. But not everyone had to live in a nightmare world.

There is. It's Iorveth - and it's Merrill, too.

"Very," Merrill agrees, with a sad tilt to her smile. "But not everyone feels that way."

Some people preferred the slum, the illusionary safety of the walls of a city. Most of them didn't know anything different. Others were like Merrill, who were there because they felt they had to be.

No, they wouldn't. Even once it had been burned there had been creatures clinging to their lives in Old Yharnam. How persistent human nature could be, and apparently it was not so different in elves.

"Well, now I know this world is as ugly as any other."

She hadn't actually needed that explained to her, she had assuredly assumed it.

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[open] conceived sorrow

infirmary

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Training and armory

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the courtyard;

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I'M BACK. LORDY.

welcome back!!

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where did the month go

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