faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

“Hard to say,” says Richard. “I’ve only ever experienced it the one time.”

Insufficient data to draw a scientific conclusion. But he does open his right hand to show her his palm, nicked with scars but devoid of the green sliver that marked him as a rifter when last they met.

For a long moment she doesn't know why he's showing her his hand. And then the memory, brief and razor sharp. Sawbones hisses out a slow breath.

"Pit... All right. So it's something that would get rid of your mark and change memories." She frowns, nose scrunching, "That sounds like magic."

Said like one referring to something especially slimy.

“Yes.” It does.

He presses a thumb into the heel of his own palm, feeling through for anything his eyes might have missed before he folds his hands together before his feet.

“Theory number two is that we’ve been targeted by some overarching illusion or mind-altering enchantment. I’m just not sure why anyone with that kind of power would bother with the two of us.”

However long he’s been here, Richard has evidently used 100% of that time to compose a bulleted list of what the fuck. Something else occurs to him, and he adds, evenly:

“No offense.”

Edited (sry) 2019-12-22 20:54 (UTC)

His apology earns him a snort that's almost a laugh. "None taken, I usually prefer a bit of anonymity. Not like anyone gets anything from making me think I've risen in ranks within the Chantry."

To begin with, the headwear is heavy. She dispatches with it entierly, patting the neatly pinned braids to make sure they're secure. "If it's magic then there has to be someone responsible for it. So we just have to find them."

“The lack of any conceivable benefit for someone exerting the kind of power necessary to orchestrate unique scenarios for individuals of our relative level of insignificance certainly points away from -- “ Richard hesitates, “‘targeted’ domination. Someone else here must be doing the heavy lifting.”

There is a distinct pause there, through which he watches her at a curious remove.

It’s a little bit like being booped on the nose. Verbally.

He keeps his hands fully to himself, obviously, knuckles curled over garden soil.

Having never been booped on the nose before, she can only recognize the pause as significant of something. Her eyes narrow at him.

"All right. So we find who it is and... I dunno, break their knees? They probably need hands to undo the magic that got us here, right?"

Richard’s second pause is different -- practical consideration for this level of calculation from Sister Sara.

But her math checks out. Or it would, under different circumstances.

He doesn’t seem especially scandalized by the prospect of shattering patellas. What he does seem is hesitant -- just a shade, under the scrutiny of her narrowed eyes -- in the thin intake of breath before he clarifies:

“I think it might be you.”

The possibility that she's behind all this is so beyond comprehension that she doesn't take his meaning.

"Yeah, I figured. I've got more experience setting bones than breaking them, but if we need to, I know how to do it clean at least."

Well.

“I’m not sure what I expected,” Richard tells her, bland against the grain of her non-comprehension. How does one explain color to someone who was born blind? His reassessment is as intent as it is quick, kindness shaken off in favor of satisfying his own curiosity.

He tried, and therefore no one should judge him.

“We should try to shatter the illusion first,” he says.

His reaction at least does make her realize there's a very important question she ought to ask: "What do you mean? And do be direct about it."

“I can be more direct if I understand what you believe is happening.” Richard is matter-of-fact.

There is something either very reassuring or very slappable about how assured he is in prompting her right back, eye contact level without effort.

"You seem to have accepted that we are not really at a ball celebrating your sanctity."

She does consider slapping him for a moment. "I don't know what's happening, that's the problem. I know this-" Another gesture to encompass the whole of the world around them, "Is wrong. I know I'm not meant to be here. I know I'm not some celebrated Mother. I know you, I know you're name isn't Norman and I know that there was a green shard in your hand."

Her hands settle on her hips, "So. Since you're the only thing that makes sense here, I'm trusting you with that much. I imagine if you were going to kill me, you would have done it already and if this was something to do with lyrium, that would have come up by now."

Because that was a possibility, wasn't it.

“Yes, you’re right about all of those things.”

Especially the bit about the name, but in full truth, his name isn’t Richard, either.

“Are your people capable of hallucination? This is a genuine question.” There is as much caution in his clarification as there is courtesy, as if he might have somehow glimpsed her weighing the worth of a good sound slap. “I know you can’t dream.”

They can come back to ‘something to do with lyrium.’

There's very little comfort in knowing she's right when it doesn't really help. At the very least the question he asks this time is one firmly in her realm of expertise.

"Yes, usually for the same reasons as anyone else. If I've been struck on the head recently, there's no reason I'd remember it, but I'm not in any pain, which I would expect. I haven't taken anything either, but if we're exploring all the possibilities, it's entierly possible I could have been drugged."

In which case, that would make him a hallucination. She hopes not. She'd like to think she would at least hallucinate someone more helpful and less generally cryptic.

“Given that this is a shared experience I’d wager on the active ingredient being magic over alchemy or brain trauma. Unless, of course,” the same thought occurs to Richard, “I’m not real.”

He takes the prospect as well as he takes anything, keen eyes fuzzing distant, as inscrutable in fleeting existential confusion as they are when they focus back on her a moment later. If he’s a figment of her imagination, she’s produced a very lifelike simulacrum of Dick Dickerson. It doesn’t really matter, does it? Nothing here matters.

“Rather than transport us into a neutral or even nonsensical illusion,” he starts again as if he’d never stopped, “they seem to have left the designwork to one of us.”

His moment of introspection at the possibility of his own existence being a very impressive illusion only gets a dry look. But at least he keeps it brief, so Sawbones takes some time herself to roll over both possibilities in her head.

"If that were the case..." And finally what he said earlier falls into place. Sawbones isn't inclined to swoon, but she does start looking a little green around the edges. "That... would be me... Which is impossible. Dwarves can't do magic."

“A hanged man doesn’t have to braid the rope himself.”

Cheerfully pragmatic as ever, Richard watches her equilibrium tilt for a beat, sympathy impossible to distinguish from fascination. Maybe it’s both of those things. Or neither.

He plants a hand down to push to his feet, and looks to the stairs they descended to get here, as if to see if they were pursued.

“Up to this point, you’ve played into the rules of this false reality.”

This is so far outside of her comfort range, she can even see the end of it. Almost reflectively, she grumps at him: "If I am hallucinating you, you could at least be a little less cryptic. I did tell you to be direct."

There is something narrow in his eyes that is distinctly venomous, when he squares back around to her -- alien enough that it’d be tough to conjure from imagination alone.

“If you’re not hallucinating me, you might take into consideration that I could go back to the party and leave you to kick out of this magical potato sack on your own.

“Your Reverence.”

Edited (better word choice) 2019-12-26 05:51 (UTC)

That pulls her up short, the part of her that will always be the smallest stray in Dust Town telling her that that is a threat. Be quiet, be still, don't look. The fit of her robes is suddenly stifiling. This, says the part of her that is not Sawbones, that belongs to whatever world they're in, This is why you did this, the power-

It passes in a slow moment of silence and a slow breathe.

"If that's what you intend to do, I can't stop you. I'm entierly out of my depth here and I haven't any idea what to do to fix this."

Dick watches her shrink in silence, still as one of the snakes he’s claimed to share blood with. He doesn’t seem to breathe until she does, tension slow to ease the pull it has at his shoulders, at the backs of his ears.

“I can’t be any more clear without condescending,” he says. “Unless you mean to tell me the dwarves of Thedas haven’t discovered analogy.” Maybe they haven’t. Without thinking, he brushes illusionary bits of garden detritus from the seat of his illusionary pants.

“I’m trying to help you,” he adds, and it sounds only slightly more like an apology than the ‘I’m not cryptic, you’re dense!!’ that preceded it.

“How do you think this scenario was intended to make you feel?”

"How am I meant to understand an analogy for a thing I can't begin to fathom to start with." It's less snappish than before, but only barely. "Dwarves do not dream. What you're trying to describe would be if I tried to explain what the Stone sounds like."

And that's what's really troubling about this place, the ever present sense of wrongness. Even the faint whisper of the Stone you can catch from time to time on the surface is nowhere here.

Still, she does try to answer his question: "Powerful. I think. The status I have in this place would give me an incredibly amount of power in the Game that I've never had before."

What does the Stone sound like?

Wondering throws him off the track of their existing disagreement, but now probably isn’t the time to ask. Instead he peaks his brows at her answer to his question, not judgmental, but also not not judgmental. Chalk it up to a skeptical brand of sympathy; he hadn’t considered her the type.

“Is power something you want?” She’s not exactly playing into the fantasy, is she?

“You mentioned lyrium, what would the angle be there?”

She knows he wants to ask, most surfacers do. So she raises her brows right back at him, only to snort at his first question.

"Stone, no. I suppose it would keep me safe and well fed for a time. My whole life if I was clever enough, perhaps, but I wouldn't be Sawbones anymore so what would be the point?"

His second question is one she might have tried to dodge if this were any other scenario. Considering they're trapped and it might be relevant, she's forthcoming: "I'm connected with a few different groups who run the black market lyrium trade. My superiors were interested in using that to get their hands on more lyrium, but." She shrugs, "My trade doesn't have anything to do with theirs, it's not exchangeable. No coin, no lyrium, that's the rules. Figured there'd always be a chance I'd run into someone who thought they could get around that."

Interesting.

Richard files that away for later.

“If the presumption was that you would embrace the ambition of what’s on offer upstairs, disrupting that environment might disrupt the -- “ he almost says ‘dream,’ and catches himself, “-- illusion.”

Blah blah blah, magic. He raises a hand to stay further complaint and paraphrases, patiently, on his own behalf:

“You could try to break out by crashing the party.”

MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

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