OPEN: Kirkwail

[faderifting]

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.

Comments

[thorndergod]

It's not a good vintage, even for Kirkwall, but it's something, at least. He sips his and watches her, takes in the disgust. Does she dislike the name or the namesake? Or is she used to people knowing who she is? Thor looks her over again and rules out the latter. Their worlds seem to be very different, but she doesn't carry herself as if she expects respect or recognition.

"Would you like to be called something else?" She's a Rifter. She honestly could have told people any name and likely they would have called her it. Someone with a shard could pretend anything. He thinks it would be just as complicated as it would be freeing, though. "And how are you feeling?"

[notched]

"Like I wish I was dead," she answers, dull and irritable. Her head is ringing and she feels sick, this does not stop her from lifting the cup again. She swishes the foul tasting brew in her mouth, trying to find any redeeming quality to its taste, and then swallows with another heavy sigh.

"And there's nothing else to call me, it doesn't matter..."