faderift | RIFTER ARRIVAL: Guardian 9:45

It's strange, Wysteria thinks, to recognize ones' self so utterly in another person. She thinks it when they're first making camp and she spies the young woman looking shocked and unsteady while the rest of the world - or rather, this very small cross-section of it - moves about her to make arrangements for the new arrivals, to tend wounds earned in the battle at the Rift, to stoke cooking an put pots to boiling. But it's a passing fancy and no more. After little more than a brief moment of recognition, Wysteria too is swept away into some task. She'd been more or less useless in the shadow of the Rift itself except to close it, and someone or other in camp is keen to make her attend to some work to make up for it. 'This isn't a holiday, Miss Poppell,' someone probably scolds her.

Which, no of course it isn't. She knows that very well, thank you very much. But maybe it's good that the resulting work sours her mood. Otherwise, she might of forgotten about the pale young thing entirely.

As it is, her search eventually bears fruit in the form of the aforementioned lady all wan faced and tear streaked which - honestly -, it simply won't do. With her skirts freshly come down from where they'd been knotted up into her belt, Wysteria makes her way over to the woman. She's carrying two steaming bowls (though both lack spoons; hopefully the new arrival doesn't mind sipping directly from her dishware).

"Hello? Pardon me? Are you hungry? I've an extra bowl here if you care for something. And you should. I believe it would do you good to get something in your stomach. I know when I first arrived, I thought I'd never be hungry again but it turned out that the moment food passed my lips that I was perfectly voracious. You'll see - have a little soup and your good sense will come straight back to you."

By this time - at least - the man with the strange box has come and gone, and tended those wounds, wrapped them up. She means to tell him, that she will look after it, very soon. But he was kind, and she did so hate to intrude - and the... kindness might be her undoing, really. She is so lost, and so hurt, and so confused.

Blinking away tears - tears that still leak like she doesn't really know what is happening but at least is no longer sobbing - she looks up from where she has kept herself hidden and small for as long as possible.

She doesn't know what really to say. Wetting her lips, salty, but no more than usual, she thinks. So the default is... plain. "Thank-you." Does she really want it? She hardly knows, but the girl seemed sure. At this point, anything had to be better.

"Of course. Here." Whether the young lady wants it or not, she will now be passed the bowl. "It's nothing special, mind you. It comes out of chips that have been hardened and carried around in a pocket all day, but its warm and that's something."

For her part, Wysteria takes a seat on a bit of rock near at hand. Balancing her bowl on her knees, she quickly shoves back a few fallen strands of hair and begins resetting the pins.

"I was much the same, you know." This mumbled through the little rods pinched between her lips. "Not crying exactly, but I believe I was close to it. It was all very shocking-- is shocking, I suppose. But not to worry. The urge to cry will pass. I know for my part it helped to be spoken to and to have people ask me questions. Conversation is such a good way to ground yourself in a new place, don't you think?"

She sets the final pin with a decisive stab. "What's your name, my sweet?"

It's wrong to be jealous of being able to pin your hair away just that easily. Because no matter how she might try with so little, that veritable halo of hair wouldn't go back that easily. Rather as she goes to accept the bowl, she can only hope the tangle the knots back on themselves and push them out of the way of her face, not with grizzled bandaged fingers, but the flat inside of her wrists.

It sort of works.

She doesn't really know what to say to all of that - if it would help. People are the last thing she wants. Or, just, not strangers. She wants her siblings. She wants her mothers' hands taming her hair for her. She wants her fathers to have a rest, and it will feel better in the morning.

Neither comes. You're being rude, Gilia. She lowers her head and breathes across the top of the broth. "Gilia. Gilia St. Loe, Second Child."

"Now there is a proper name. How would you like me to call you? How do friends speak to you at home? You may call me Miss Poppell if you like, though I will warn you that in Thedas everyone is very familiar with first names particularly with Rifters such as ourselves, and so most people will call you Gilia unless you are very stern to correct them. You will hear lots of people say Wysteria to me even though I should really object to it."

A pause (for breath, a sip from her own bowl), and then: "Oh, but I don't actually mind it really. So if you prefer to use first names, that would be perfectly fine as well. Wysteria would be, I mean. As that's my name. Wysteria Poppell," --a glint of good humor in her open face-- "First Daughter."

Ha ha, we have fun here.

Edited 2019-02-14 16:05 (UTC)

It's a lot, and - she talks very quickly. Oh, it reminds her of the Fanfers. Their father always talked to fast and there wasn't - wasn't an advisor. Not a warm creak of wood to tell her what to do. Gilia blinks, trying to catch up. Confused still and -

It's First Daughter St. Loe, she thinks in vain, and gives up immediately on bothering. "Well. If... Gilia is what is well, and is so correct for you too, Miss Poppell." Was that what she said? She thinks so, somewhere in all those words. "That is... that is fine."

And because - she doesn't really know what to say that is proper, right now. What question to ask, right now. Sipping the broth is easier. So, she does that. Lowering her eyes to it, lifting the edge to her lips and begins to sip.

"Gilia it is then."

This she says decisively in some way, as if they've come to a great conclusion of a rather important topic. Though to be fair - it is very, isn't it? Knowing how to introduce a person may be the most important thing to know about them, given the givens. Which is to say - there are friends to be made in Thedas if people like them are meant to keep their wits about them and their heads on their shoulders.

Wysteria takes a swift sip of her broth, then continues nearly unabated--

"Now then Gilia - would it comfort you at all to talk about the place you came from, or would you rather avoid the topic entirely for the time being? If you'd rather, I could tell you all about the place you've arrived in. Well," --an amendment, in the name of honesty-- "Perhaps not everything, but I've been very keen with my studies these last months and I like to believe I know at least a thing or two these days. So you must tell me which you prefer, and which would be the best distraction for your current state."

Please stop talking so quickly. Her brow knits, so pale on her skin it's barely there to be seen. Save that little decisive wrinkle in her brow that denotes she must be thinking and very particularly so.

What comes of it, is one swallow, trying to stop, something that won't be held back no matter how she tries. There are tears welling up, like tides flow. Confused, scared and lost and that comes to one very particular point that is neither here nor there.

"I want to go home."

There is maybe the briefest pause in which Wysteria fully takes stock of the situation at hand, sees again the girl's discomfort, and hesitates over it. There there, she wants to say. To pat the girl on the hand and give her cheek an encouraging pinch. No need to cry. It's all perfectly fine.

But is it? Is it really? Mostly, she things the answer really is honestly and properly yes. It's all perfectly fine. But maybe it isn't for someone else. Maybe Gilia's come from a place where she knew nothing but contentment, and now here she is sitting in a dark hole in a dark hole in the ground.

Still though: "Oh, yes. I expect you do." She is doing her very best to sound gentle., you know. "But I promise that in time you will find things you rather like about Thedas. Think of it as an adventure, won't you? Why, imagine how lucky the pair of us must be to have come to such a strange place more or less in one piece. The people I know back home would strangle each other for the opportunity to discover a whole new version of the world."

"I'm not supposed to leave without - " it's blurted out, before she can stop it, like somehow this was all going to break eventually with all this pain and misery. "- without my family. I wasn't supposed to go without them, and the war, the - the - " it's all too many words at once, and she hiccups, tripping over them, so distressed.

"I must go home, I must. I must." And she sounds like she is going to cry all over again from just the distress of that.

"Drink your broth, my darling. It will make you feel much better." Because, really - what else is there to say? Everything else she can think of seems like a very cruel attempt at comfort indeed. "I'm sure once you've something warm in your belly, things will seem considerably less dire. Would you care for me to fetch you a blanket as well? You must be exhausted."

Poor little thing.

She does as she told, perhaps, not really because she wants to eat. Her nose is filled with the smell of blood, her ears are still ringing with explosions, and she still hurts. Which all combine to an unsettled, constant nauseated sensation.

But there is a comfort to being told what to do. To not having to think on what to do, but taking the cues of someone else that comes like second nature. That finds familiarity in the complacent.

So she takes the spoon and begins to take a small mouthful. Swallowing, before she nods in reply. "If there is one to spare, I would not mind it."

"Of course. I'll see what can be found. Don't go anywhere." Not that there's much risk of that, she thinks. Tomorrow it may be a trial to peel the girl out into broad daylight.

Wysteria downs rest of her lukewarm broth (when did she have time to drink the first part with all that talking? It's a mystery), rises promptly and scurries away in a flurry of skirts. She's gone for some minutes, long enough for the quiet to seem quite thick and miserable and terrible in the cavernous old thaig with all its shattered stone. When she returns though, it's with a folded blanket with a little book balanced on top of it.

"Do you care for reading, Miss Gilia?"

She will stumble about in it like a newborn deer, blinking and confused as the crushing sensation of being stuck here rolled over her.

No doubt, many nights for the rest of the week will leave her crying herself to sleep, but that is a misery to consider then, rather than now. Homesickness that was only half imagined, and half the pain of being cut off from which is most important to her.

But for now - for now, she takes help for what it is. "I do, very much." Which is to say a lot for a girl that made a habit of never saying anything directly. Tears hastily blotted away like she had been caught doing something she shouldn't here and now. Almost hear it, feel it, Godfinn pulling the lock of her hair, again?

RIFTER ARRIVAL: Guardian 9:45

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