faderift | OPEN: Kirkwail

OPEN: Kirkwail

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Ghosts
WHEN: Wintermarch 20
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC post. More content warnings than you can shake a stick at, probably, including allusions to slavery and violence in the body of the log post. Please use appropriate warnings in the subject lines for your own threads.

The storm sweeps in like an assassin: unexpected, in the dark, and throwing sharp pricks of sleet at exposed eyes and noses with expert aim and enough force to almost draw blood if the angle is right. Half an hour after the clouds crest the cliffs is all it takes for the city to retract indoors and huddle around fireplaces, settling in for a long night that will, unforeseen, turn into a long two days.

The Gallows, too, is pelted with ice; the walls of the cliffs and the fortress protect much of it from the worst of the wind, but when it can find a path over or through the walls, it slams through windows or doors to scatter papers and snuff out fires.

In the dark, in the rain, hurrying between towers or already accustomed to jumping firelight casting strange shadows and the wind howling like a wounded animal, people might be forgiven if they don't notice at first. But there's a hanging in the courtyard, a dozen translucent wisps of bodies dangling from the idea of nooses, and there's a girl's voice in the basement of the templar tower screaming for her mother, and there's a ghostly man in the library holding the blade of a knife to his palm and whispering this is it, this is it—or maybe there isn't, actually, when you lift your head to pay closer attention.

But as the night wears on they multiply, and they brighten, and even if you haven't noticed them, they begin to notice you.

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Someone clears their throat.

It isn't Salvio, actually. He is there, in the doorway: hunched back, slumped shoulders, the worn sleeves of his well-washed robe bunched nervously over his hands. He looks cautious, nervous, his eyes blinking rapidly as he takes in the sight of the room.

But he didn't clear his throat. The tall spindled specter beside him did. The man is wearing a pale green robe, and a fine belt. His goatee is neatly trimmed. He looks almost corporeal, but catch him in the right light and the stone of the wall behind him might be visible.

The man scowls, disapproving. "This is it?" Fereldan by accent, but the sharp sniff that he gives next is universal, obvious. "Really, the widespread fragility is worrying. Astounding. Room after room of a kind of mundane sadness--"

Salvio is ignoring him outright, not even looking around at the spirit as the man talks on, adding to his litany of critique. Salvio wouldn't be looking at him, anyways. He is focused on Tessa.

"He's," he starts, from the doorway. Unwilling or unable to cross the threshold. He winces, tries again. "You're, um. Aware?"

Tessa hears the voice, and though it startles her, she doesn't immediately turn to look. What if she does and this scene fades away? Her phone died ages ago with the few pictures of Mike she had on it. Silly her, thinking she could retrieve those images someday. Thinking society would stabilize and not be sent back to the middle ages. But if she looks away and Mike fades away, that's it, isn't it? He'll be gone forever. And his image in her memories will grow fuzzier and fuzzier until she can no longer remember what he looks like, or the sound of his voice, or the smell of his jacket as she'd cuddle up beside him at night when it was too dangerous to light a fire.

She swallows the lump in her throat. It has to end sometime, doesn't it? Then she hears a voice she recognizes and blows out a shaky breath.

"Aware that there's some weird thing with spirits going on? Yeah, sort of. I don't really get the particulars, like why, or how to make them freaking stop, though." Her shoulders slump. "This is Mike. From home." And finally she looks back, moving from her knees to resting back on her thigh, a hand pressed to the stone for support.

"Who's that?" He kind of looks like a sci-fi villain with that goatee. Like in that episode of that one show where they went to the mirror universe and every comedy show after spoofed it for forty years.

"Oh," Salvio says, weakly.

The man in the green robe gives a dismissive snort. He casts his eyes up toward the ceiling in a look of long-suffering, as if that one word has caused him a great deal of pain. Salvio catches sight of it out of the corner of his eye, but goes on looking at Tessa, and--

Mike. Mike. In his mind, Salvio flips backwards through the ledger labeled with Tessa's name. Mike is toward the beginning of it anyways, a name she has said before.

"Taller," he says, after a moment. "Um. Taller, than I would have expected. If it is accurate. Uh, this is-- the seneschal. A seneschal." There's more of them, he should warn her. Just down the hall, moving slow like a cloud across the mountains. For now, it's only-- "Seneschal Cenric. If you leave this room, your, Mike. He may follow. If you've not tried that, or if you try it--a warning, that it may not. Work."

Cenric scoffs, again. "Well-said. Of course that won't work, you witless fool. It's barely a suggestion, let alone a plan."

Tessa swallows hard, looking from Salvio to the spirit, then back at Mike. She considers something for a moment before cautiously asking, "Mike?"

But unlike the seneschal, who can apparently hear Salvio, Mike doesn't acknowledge her in any way. There's a long moment where she wonders if she shouldn't just spill out everything she was too big of a wuss to say to his face in the past, but decides against it. Not now, when she isn't alone.

"I think he isn't aware. He's just my memory of him." And in a way, that's easier. She's already lived through this scene once, so it won't throw her any curve balls. Pushing herself up to stand, she turns back to Salvio. "It's okay if he doesn't follow. It might be easier that way." She's already feeling pissed and devastated that he's here but not really, and it would probably be healthier to walk away than get consumed by the memory of him.

Because of that, she keeps her back to the image of Mike and forces herself to close that chapter in her life. If she focuses on something else then she won't start crying, which is key. Tessa hates crying.

"So what's the deal with this asshole?" She flicks a vague point at the spirit. "Cenric? More like Cendick, am I right?"

"It could be more complicated." Could be. Salvio winces again at his own limp assessment, and Cenric snorts again. The former seneschal actually smells--faintly, but perceptibly. Something musty, like the back of a box or a drawer no one has opened in a long time. "I mean, a memory seems... reasonable. Um, spirits of... Well. If you have spirits, where you are from--I don't recall if you have said--or if you have said how they operate. But I think these might not follow, directly, but manifest themselves... elsewhere? Unexpectedly. That seems to be what, uh, what we can expect. To prepare you for a visit again from this--memory."

Though it is strange to think of him as a memory, even to Salvio, when the figure appears so clear and defined. Deaf, yes, but still present. Tessa stands and turns her back on him, and the figure's eyes do not seem even to track her, as if he is somewhere else entirely. A scene played out in a dream, played again with the Gallows as his stage. Did this happen to her, a room like this and a person like this? It is hard to say. How well he knows Tessa has been entirely at her admission, information based on what she has told him and what she has held back. It is not in Salvio to pry, to inquire, to press on points of conversation or circle back to a previous thought. Tessa is; Salvio is. They exist in the Inquisition, together. For all his faults, Salvio is not one to dwell on the past, but confronted now with Tessa's, he thinks perhaps he should have asked her more.

"Um." Fortunately she offers a new tack, and Salvio looks around again at Cenric, who is regarding them both with a flatly unimpressed gaze. "I do not know him. Er, not-- Well, I have read his notes. On paper."

"Meticulous notes," Cenric drawls. "Better organized than any before me and any who have come since. Especially this current administration's notes. And you can try another insulting name, if you like. I have heard them all. They bother me little."

Salvio smiles, quick and a little pained. "Uh. Yes. Well-- He's following me. And--the others."

"Great," she says with little enthusiasm. "So he may turn up again." So she can experience the heartbreak in reruns. Just what she needs.

At least this situation with Salvio is a distraction, except he doesn't seem to be having an easy time of it. If the old seneschal is dogging his heels bitching about nothing, then Tessa's going to do her best to reassure him.

"You mean he's following others, or other seneschals are following you? I hope you know that the opinions of dead people mean zilch in the here and now. You keep on doing what you're doing."

Salvio offers her another small smile, as apologetic as it is pained. "May."

The world should be colored with certainty. Shades of black and white and nothing in between. There should be no may to this. Tessa's ghost should remain here. There should be no bleed. But the world, to Salvio's eternal dismay, does not obey those rules. Much to Tessa's dismay, too, no doubt. Likely in this case, even more.

Salvio's more pressing dismay is Seneschal Cenric, and all the rest of his train. He dares a glance down the corridor. Already the dissatisfied muttering is creepy closer. "Both, I think. Following me and following him. I do not dare ask. I don't know that I would-- you know. Want to hear."

Cenric fixes him with a sardonic smile in return. "You know better than to believe her. The weight of history means everything. Legacy."

Salvio coughs into his fist, interrupting what else might come next. "Um, you can-- Will you stay here? Tessa? Or will you leave?"

Tessa wonders if she can steel herself for another encounter now that she knows it's possible Mike may appear again. It's hard to just shut off that part of her brain that holds a torch for him, but she's been here for something like eight or nine months now and completely in the dark about whether or not Mike's still alive. Maybe that's why the spirits are doing this: they know she can't let go.

The question makes her inhale a deep breath and then release it, like she's trying to release Mike. It probably won't work, but she tries.

"I think I'd better leave. Besides, I think you need me to distract you from a bunch of nobodies no one remembers. Have you eaten recently?"

"Oh--" Salvio looks quickly to the former seneschal, who stares blankly and yet somehow angrily back at him. Nobodies. "Well, they, um. They were of course-- er, that is. They earned their titles, certainly."

"A glowing endorsement," Cenric says, flatly. "One wonders how you come up with these."

Salvio looks back at Tessa. And only Tessa, really. Not at the spirit of her old friend, staring fixedly at some unknowable point. Not at Cenric, or the others down the hall. He offers her another pained smile.

"I have not eaten, rece-- I have-- uh, I do not know that I am hungry. Um. Are you?"

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OPEN: Kirkwail

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what happened to january sorry this is LATe