faderift | OPEN: this will be a better year

OPEN: this will be a better year

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: First Day
WHEN: Wintermarch 1 (forward-dated)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Scouts from both the Western Approach and Emprise du Lion are welcome (but not required) to have returned to Skyhold in time for this event.

There have been better First Day feasts, and less crowded ones, and cheerier ones. It isn't a good year for many to look back on, and this one isn't starting any better. Reports from both Eastern and Western Orlais are grim. Many in the Inquisition can't afford to take more than a few hours away from their work, if that.

But for those who can, the ambassador does her best. At lunchtime some tables, hot food, and finery are reserved for visiting nobility and wealthy pilgrims--cause for grumbling in some quarters, perhaps, but they're the people filling the Inquisition's coffers, and allowances must be made--but there's plenty of stew, bread, and ale for everyone, even with the soldiers and refugees who stay outside the fortress invited inside for the holiday. The recently repaired garden and its carefully tended plants aren't off limits, but anyone noisy and holding a drink will be stopped at the door; the battlements, with their potential for deadly falls, are blocked by Inquisition guards. But the courtyards brim with people, most of them happy despite the possibility that the world might end before another First Day arrives.

If the courtyards are too full of tipsy visitors for comfort, there's also the valley beyond the fortress, expansive, barren, and covered in snow. By the river the soldiers help the refugees make a bonfire larger than would ever be allowed inside Skyhold's walls, and some lend their shields to use as sleds down the embankments. A group of scouts start the most intense game of hide and seek Thedas has ever seen, with snowballs to the face for whoever is found first. In the camp, a refugee girl with her hand wrapped in a green scarf chases other children around the tents, shouting raaar, I'm from the rifts!

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"Sounds like a country where I come from though I've never had the, ah, opportunity to visit it. A friend comes from there, she complains constantly about how hot it is where she lives now." Or not constantly but any day the sun peeked out so pretty much every single day there was some remark about the heat and a lot of fanning her face. "If it wasn't fully winter in the Fallow Mire when I visited then I don't ever want to go back. I can only imagine freezing rain and slush everywhere."

And corpses bursting out of thin ice would probably be terrifying. "Pretty damn good though suffering without a pistol around here."

He almost drops his snowball, staring at her. "Holy shit, you're one of us. A, uh, a, y'know, falling through the tear in the sky. Rifter. Person. God damn I want my rifle, and, look, bogs are bad enough with demons and zombies and things and gross water, nobody should suffer that in the cold. It was cold enough already."

"You know what a gun is!" Surprise and delight take her mind off the snow at last as her whole face lights up because having to explain the weapons to people was one of the more bizarre exercises she'd gone through. "And yes, I fell through a rift in Haven, a few months ago now but I've only met one or two who went through the same thing, but at least that was just snow and rubble and the demons."

It's a bad day when you can say 'just' with those three things following but such is the world they've both found themselves in.

"I'm Araceli Bonaventura." Introductions should absolutely be done with other rifters in her book.

Her delight is his delight. God damn, bonding over guns. Yes. Best way to start a possible friendship. He holds out a free hand to shake. "Church! I'm Church. And I know what guns are. And I miss them so much. I also miss decent armor and, uh, basically everything. I think one of us is going to try setting up meetings for people like us? Which would be pretty cool. Make sure we all know each other and share information. Maybe we can bring the damn industrial era to this place."

Enthusiastically shaking back with more vigour than one might expect from such a small lady, she nods her head, free hand flapping in the air to just do something. "Somewhere my two best pistols are rotting without me. And all the others, their cases gathering dust. I miss lights that aren't candles that keep going out on me." Before all this? Mood lighting. Or emergency lighting but mostly for mood. "I think I spoke to someone about that but I realise now that I neglected to get his damn name. I've learned plenty about mages at least that I can share, not that I understand most of the magic stuff, it's still too odd. Still, if they get a council here, then as the only ones to experience falling through green-- well whatever it truly is or was? We should at least commandeer the tavern every so often. For our own morale."

"Oh my god, it's so great to talk to more people that have a clue what I'm talking about." Snowball fight? Forgotten. "Okay, they make some pretty strong boozes around here even if they taste like...booze. I guess." Hard to compare when you've never actually technically tasted any before now. "But whatever, booze! Booze and food and warm places and entertainment--for morale, yes, because we definitely damn well need a morale boost. Fuck the rest of these guys and their problems! I don't know shit about mages and demons!"

"Have you had that Qunari drink? My friend Korrin let me try it, maraas-lok she called it and it is something, I think part of my throat might have died but it was worth it." Then again her first real act in Skyhold was to steal a bottle of brandy so she knows and likes her drink so long as it isn't dwarven. That stuff just smells wrong. "If I actually think about what they explain regarding mages and demons to me, then it flies straight out of my head somewhere else. So long as my hand doesn't decide to do anything weird then I don't really need to know but I think it only fair that I learn when I have mage friends."

Plus she really feels bad for them, she'd hate to be locked up for doing nothing wrong in the first place.

"I hope you know how to play cards too, there's no better way to get to know people and I would hate to ruin fellow rifters. The Inquisition soldiers however are entirely on their own and I feel no guilt in taking their money or goods."

"I'll have to ask one of the big horny dudes if they have any." Yes he knows what he said and deliberately phrased it that way, smirking. "And dude, mage friends? Can be kind of awesome. I'm not sure if they even have actual doctors here, but healing things with magic I can get behind so long as there aren't any weird...side-effects. Haven't been yet."

He'd still like to get his hand not glowing. And he'd still like them to figure out this whole hole in the sky thing. But he can't be sure anymore if he actually wants to go back. He's not sure what would happen. If time's paused in a moment or if it's going to be months down the line. What if he's back at the facility and nobody's there, moved on? What if they think he's dead? What if they're all dead? What if he goes back in the same instant and he dies?

But fuck it, let's not think about all that heavy shit right now. "Depends on what you mean by playing cards. I could probably do some blackjack. Poker? I might be able to figure out poker. I don't think solitaire counts since it's...solo..."

"Please don't ask the smallest one, he's prickly enough to think you're making fun of him." 'Small' doesn't really cover it when he's almost a foot bigger than her with more muscle but teenage boys right, what can you do? "Watching mages fight is something else, there's this thing some of them can do where they just whoosh forward, in a blur, it looks incredible. But there's a doctor sort of doctor, Bruce, very friendly, and traditional and I think if I break a bone? Well I would rather go for comfort, the first time at least."

A smart man too, who knows much more about magic than she'd expected from someone who wasn't a magical healer although again, it left her with more questions than answers about her hand. About why her fingers and arm aren't being gobbled up by it or whatever it is that happens to demons being sucked back through. Do they even know what happened to her? Do people think she was stabbed or drowned? Would anyone think she would be so terrible to abandon everything and hop on a ship without even a letter?

Maybe it's worth an attempt, to try to shove something through a rift whenever she next sees one.

"I can teach you, I already taught one of the Dalish ladies how to play liar's dice though that was more catching tells than playing. Oh and there was quite the round of Strip Jack Naked with a lovely woman." It wasn't truly that rousing but it's the sort of name for a game that gets people in taverns to go quiet when they've never heard of it before.

"Bruce. Sure, haven't bumped into him yet, but I'll make a point to keep Doctor Bruce on my radar." Still would probably go to Adelaide first, just for the fact that he knows her. Or butter up Christine. But so long as the magical docs here are better than Doc, which isn't asking for much...

But who cares about that when: "Whoa whoa hey whoa back up naked women? Are you playing strip poker or something here and I didn't know about it? I need in on this."

Laughing, she fishes a card from her pocket to hold up for inspection because strip poker is something she's up for but her company at the time? She very much doubts it. "Strip Jack Naked could involve nudity and if we can clear any prudes out of the tavern then I'm not passing up the opportunity but it was just a game, it's called taxes, or beggar my neighbour. But if you want to really get to know someone, we could always use that as the getting to know you game when all we rifters meet."

Because what the hell, let the rumour mill go wild.

"Sure, might be interesting. Unless we got some prude rifters, too. That'd suck. Oh man, though, there's this elfy singer dude, total Spanish tattooed fuck, who's way down with the stripping down. He might be good to play strip something with. And this dancing lady. Uh. Didn't get her name..."

“Zevran.” She doesn’t need to know what Spanish means to know any description of Zevran, and she’s already nodding, remembering watching that night in the tavern from the upper level before deciding she’d maybe like a quiet night for once. “And the woman was probably Isabela, if I had to bet, she’s there an awful lot, tends to call me kitten instead of my name.”

"I really should introduce myself to her. Maybe I'll get a sexy little nickname, too..." Which would be. Interesting. And hot, come on. "But, uh, Zevran sure is a character, huh. What with all the obvious flirting."

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OPEN: this will be a better year

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