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]

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."