MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone
WHAT: Some dreams
WHEN: Harvestmere 9:45–Wintersend 9:46
WHERE: The Fade
NOTES: OOC post!

Comments

[sulahnan]

She raises her eyebrows in brief surprise, and nods.

"Sure. Try not to suck on it or something, you'll probably end up coughing and it won't feel good. Breathe in like normal, hold it in, and breathe out like normal." The joint is passed, and Athessa looks out over the water again.

The onset of the haze feels like wrapping a thick, warm scarf over your head and tying it under your chin, with only your face exposed. Tingling slightly in the sinuses, especially when the smoke is breathed out through the nostrils. Athessa likes to do that. It makes her feel like a dragon.

Start at the head, radiate down. It hits your limbs and they feel heavy, but unrestrained. Moving isn't harder, it's just more solid, deliberate. No second-guessing or over-thinking, just doing.

"After Devigny was done with me he dumped me off at a brothel. Real chummy with the bawd, so I guess I wasn't the first," Probably wasn't the last, either.

[justashotaway]

The advice is wisely given--Laura, having never smoked before, only observed others in doing so, would have ended in a fit of coughs otherwise. She breathes in, and smoke comes with the air, and holds her breath probably too long before letting it out. And then she holds the joint up before her face, staring at it with some mild fascination. "How long does it take?"

When do feelings stop being complicated? How long until she's what other people seem to be? Soon, she hopes. She hopes it'll be soon.

More importantly, what Athessa says...Laura shakes her head, the thought of Devigny intrusive. She pictures him like Deepstalker, lacking an alternative, and hopes he is dead. "How long were you there?"

[sulahnan]

"Not long," is the answer to the first question, and to the second: "Long enough to drive away customers. Worthless girl, I said no biting!"

Her chuckle is a little hollow; a balm against how good her impression is of the old woman. In truth, it wasn't her spirit that prompted the bawd to let her go. Athessa was always trying to convince Ciara to run away, leave Kirkwall behind and go wherever they could dream to go. Ciara refused. Whether because she was scared of having nothing, or because she was scared of the madame...It's hard to say.

"I left, and they let me go." She looks at Laura, mostly to gauge her reaction to the root, but also to gauge her reception of this information. The last thing she wants to do is overload the girl with baggage.

[justashotaway]

Laura can't bring herself to laugh, even though she knows it's expected that she makes some kind of response. She remembers too clearly similar experiences, the one time Deepstalker had thought to have someone to pay to hurt her instead of the other way around. She does not want to remember any of it.

She's curling tighter in on herself, glancing over sharply when she sees movement at the corner of her eye. Athessa. It is just Athessa, the way she knows it must be, but the muscles in her shoulders tighten anyhow.

"They did not want you." It's said as flatly as most things that come out of Laura's mouth, but there's envy behind it. She offers the joint back to Athessa, since it is hers.

[sulahnan]

"I was more trouble than I was worth. They couldn't afford me," she corrects simply, and takes the joint. She can feel Laura tense beside her, hear the subtle difference in her breathing and, with some focusing, her heartbeat.

Athessa puts a hand on Laura's back beneath the blanket, gambling on whether or not it'll set her off.

"Breathe, Laura. You're ok. Breathe in, count to four--" She pairs Ciara's words from so long ago with a gentle motion to give Laura something to focus on. Up with the inhale, down with the exhale, in through the nose, out through the mouth. "--breathe out, count to four."

[justashotaway]

"I am already breathing," she mutters, her spine going rigid with Athessa's touch. The elfroot has not worked; everything still feels exactly as it did a moment before. If anything, the world feels sharper than it was a breath ago, the taste of smoke still wooden on her tongue.

But she does breathe as directed, mostly because, when given the choice of following an order, she takes it. In, counting silently to four, then out, and silently to four. She does not think she feels better, only distracted, momentarily, from the night pressing in at her.

[sulahnan]

Welp. She shrugs and looks away.

"Sorry. Just trying to help," She breathes in smoke for a four-count, and holds it just as long before blowing it out and angling it away from Laura. "It doesn't work for everyone." It applies both to the elfroot and to her attempt at soothing an anxious soul.

Athessa doesn't say anything else, choosing instead to close her eyes and just be for a moment or two. The air is cold, the blanket warm. The press of Laura's shoulder against hers is a comfort as much as the tears drying on her cheeks is not.

[justashotaway]

She keeps breathing and counting, counting and breathing, waiting for something better than what she has at that moment. If it works or doesn't work, she isn't sure. All she knows is that she does not feel worse, exactly. Only...aware, perhaps. Too much so.

"I do not want to be this," she whispers, her chin hard between her knees. This focused misery right now, everything else that she is the rest of the time. Laura Kint, with claws and scars and a tongue that doesn't like speaking and a past someone knows all of.

[sulahnan]

"What do you want to be?" She asks. She's felt the same way often enough.

[justashotaway]

Her eyes squeeze shut. "I don't know."

[sulahnan]

Athessa nods. "Me neither."

[justashotaway]

"When does it stop?" she murmurs. And then, in the interest of clarity, she gestures at the joint. "When does it make things easier?"

[sulahnan]

"It should've kicked in by now... If you don't smoke any more it'll wear off in less than an hour." Her voice is soft, gentle, and she hopes reassuring. "It depends. Works differently on different people. And doesn't work on others."

[justashotaway]

"Why?" If there something she can do to make it...not like this, she guesses, not like she's a cat ready to pounce at shadows, she wants to do that. Some way she can have what Athessa described, that sense of being able to see things slowly enough to understand them.

[sulahnan]

She doesn't have any satisfactory answers, and she hates it. She shakes her head.

"I don't know. Same way medicine heals one person and hurts another, I guess. The only thing to do is wait it out, or take another hit and hope it works." She would advise against the latter, but she doesn't know what'll help more.

[justashotaway]

"I will try that," she says, reaching again for the joint. If it makes her worse, she will go away so Athessa does not get hurt, but if there is the possibility it makes this better... She's willing to try to make it work through force of will alone.

While she is there, though, a small dark stone in the smoke beside Athessa, she mutters, "I lived in Cumberland for two years. I think."

It wants to come out, even though she does not want to hear it. She has never told any of it to anyone, besides what Kiden saw, and she cannot keep it back.

[sulahnan]

"Was it...like that the whole time?" She asks, a little hesitant. It's difficult to find the right balance between being a good listener and being an active one, prompting without demanding. She's never really been good at it at the best of times.

[justashotaway]

"Yes." Laura stares at her bare feet, only now aware that she did not think to put boots on for this experience. She should have brought her cowl, too. One of her hands is wrapped around her opposite wrist, squeezing hard in lieu of pulling out a claw. (People do not like when you cut your skin in front of them, Athessa very much included.) "They liked my claws."

[sulahnan]

If it's any consolation, Athessa's own feet are bare, but that's because she doesn't even own shoes. Not feeling the ground beneath her feet the few times she had to wear them was very uncomfortable, moreso than stepping on rocks or in mud.

"Bastards," she breathes out the word with smoke. "You deserved better."

[justashotaway]

She shrugs, head still drooped against her knees--but her heart, at least, has decided not to race. It isn't something she notices, exactly, not just then. She'd notice the reverse, and that is it.

"So did you." The words keep coming out of her, bubbling up like blood from places they shouldn't be able to escape. "You were not...you were something good."

[sulahnan]

She frowns slightly, not understanding. "Something good?"

[justashotaway]

"You did not kill people. You were--" She does not want to say something better than me. Taking the joint from Athessa, she breathes in again, and then out. "I think it is working."

[sulahnan]

Well, that's something. Athessa smiles and nods about the herb no longer affecting Laura negatively.

"I was a thief. I may not have killed anyone, but I hurt my fair share," It's not an argument that she wasn't deserving of decency, or care, but they were both just kids doing what they had to in order to survive. "I did what I had to do. So did you."

[justashotaway]

"Yes. But--" But she does not really have an argument she can make that will stop Athessa from disagreeing. And she does not want to disagree right now, when the world is finally quiet.

She has to look for something else she can say instead. The best she can come up with, in the short span of time before Athessa might speak, is, "Don't tell Matthias. He--I do not want him to know."

[sulahnan]

"I won't tell him. Won't tell anyone. I promise." In this, she's dead serious. Laura is the first person she's ever told about Devigny, about what he did to her and what happened after. She'll guard Laura's past the same way.

Still, it's...freeing, in a way, for one other person to know. Carrying such a burden alone all these years takes its toll. She smiles with her next exhalation of smoke.

"He really likes you, ya know."