EVENT: TRUTH BOMB

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: TRUTH BOMB
WHEN: Bloomingtide 15-17
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC information. Use appropriate content warnings in your subject lines, please.

It’s an ordinary day—so not a very pleasant one. The weather is dreary and muggy, and the day’s lunch is a soup that’s a little too watery and bland. The griffons are being their usual level of noisy and swoopy. The work is its usual level of urgent and difficult.

But in the storage rooms, something wiggles. Then it hums. Then it pops.

Outside of the storage room, there’s no actual sound, no shift in the wind, and no visible sign of a change. But the pop might be felt—like the moment something finally clicks, or two ideas suddenly fit together, except the opposite. In the heads of everyone in the fortress, something is suddenly not connected quite right.

The first sign of what’s gone wrong is that someone immediately stands up and tells the cook how bad the soup is.

A lot of people’s days are about to get exponentially worse.

Comments

[indissection]

"I have. He is wise and has been most kind to me as I've settled into the infirmary. He has been an invaluable source of advice on many things quite close to my heart."

Thankfully, she doesn't have to say any more than that, despite what urges prickle under the surface of her skin.

"I'm fond of him indeed."

[coquettish_trees]

Disbelieving eyebrows raise, but drop again quickly enough with a brief lift of her shoulders. "I suppose he was most kind when I came to ask after and depend on his expertise." Alexandrie replies in a tone that suggests it had not remained so when she stood up. She remembers how important it had been, how necessary. Enough to send her in breeches and boots to Darktown with a sword snuck from her sister at her waist. But to her when Colin was hurt, to Loki, and afterwards, with Byerly—

"—he was most assumptive, and condescending. As if because we were not mages, because we were nobility, we could not have known what it is to be made powerless and shamed before all. Myself I might have stood, but Byerly—"

She finds she's been speaking aloud as she ruminates, and cuts off with an irritated sound and the rather too forceful replacement of her teacup in the saucer. Tea escapes it, and now she grimaces. This damnable day.

[indissection]

It does seem rather odd, and Sidony herself can admit it. She had made no secret of her frustrations with mages, of her somewhat envious tension with them, and yet here she sits, content and pleased to allow herself to be seen as a friend with one. It is difficult for her to express honestly what Anders has done to help her, what he has done in his quest to support her, but she does what she can all the same, a small smile on her face.

"He can be, yes, but perhaps that is when he is working and not allowing himself a moment for a personal conversation. He has been a great aid for me as I have begun to understand things about myself and my place in this world. I do not think I could do without him and without Byerly."

Sidony's own lips purse, but she's not entirely sure if she can stop herself talking, even as she bites at her cheek.

"They are more like brothers to me than my own brother was, showing me a path I had never dared accept."

[coquettish_trees]

Like brothers?

"It would be a fine thing, I think," is the careful reply, "For Byerly to have someone he considered so."

Testing. Not merely Sidony feeling their relationship so, is it?

[indissection]

"Well, that is indeed what he has me for." Sidony sips at her tea, acting nonchalant even if she must express the truth. "He and I have spoken often about the nature of our friendship and our desire to accept ourselves as siblings long lost from one another."

It is not as though she can rely on Octavian, after all.

"I am sure he understands."

[coquettish_trees]

And so she trades one measure of envy for another. It is, as it turns out, any professed closeness that nibbles away at her, even if the bites are from a different creature.

But there is as little point in dwelling on this as there was before, when she thought them lovers. At least he has some measure of genuine comfort from someone. And if she is such to him, perhaps Alexandrie can be... kinder.

“I am... glad.” She finds she can’t stop there, since she isn’t. Entirely. “That you have found a support here.”

There.

[indissection]

Sidony, it seems, is unconcerned. Whatever feelings burn in Lexie's heart does not bother her any longer; she is frightfully tied of feeling put out by a friendship that she clings to with both hands, clutching at him and digging her nails in deep.

She needs Byerly. She needs him to keep her safe, keep her sane, to be there when she has a word to say - or for her to be his ear in return. She is as devoted to him as she imagines he is to her, in his own way.

"Thank you," she says finally, prim and proper, sipping from her tea and trying not to look smug. "I think we are both lucky to have found one another here."