WHO: Tony Stark, Joselyn Smythe, Richard Dickerson, Wysteria Poppell, Vanadi de Vadarta WHAT: A group of nerds and one cool elf investigate some strange reports coming out of a Free Marches village. WHEN: Second week of August. WHERE: Free Marches NOTES: TBA.
His shoulder has gone from bloody, to on the mend, to forgettable, to -- well, impossible to forget. It itches. Should it be itching? Vanadi isn't much a fan.
It started as absent scratching as they walked, and it's only when he begins to feel a sharp pain under his fingers that he realizes how long he's really been at it -- and the concern kicks in. He steps out of the exploration line with some word of mumbled reassurance, seeking the cover of at least a few layers of brush. There he unlaces a few of his several layers, shrugging things around until he's got a shoulder bared for self-inspection.
A low, strangled noise might make it back to at least some of the rest of the group as concern rapidly turns to distress. Leaves. Green fern fronds sprout like the cheerful first sign of spring from where they should very much not be sprouting: his own healing flesh.
He'll be tearing at them in a moment, just -- a few seconds for horrified processing are in order first.
Joselyn is there, having turned at the not very reassuring mumbling and having only become more concerned at his progressing distress. As much as she isn't the expert on rifters (besides that spending enough time around them is bound to make anyone start questioning their life choices), she is fairly confident that even foreign elves aren't meant to sprout leaves out of wounds.
Particularly not in a place where questionable growths are becoming a real issue. If they have to leave Vanadi behind, it will be extremely difficult to explain to their superiors later, so,
“Hold still—you can't do anything one-handed—” seems like a more immediately compelling argument than something like don't yank those. Especially since she is going to yank them, she's just also trying to decide if preparing a specimen jar first is going to complicate matters unnecessarily. Where's that knife.
He nearly jumps out of his skin at the sound of Joselyn's voice, having almost entirely forgotten the crew he's left not really very far behind him. Jeez, can't a guy panic about greenery creeping up from under his skin in peace?
"I think I very much can -- " That's a hiss, out before he can remind himself that these people probably don't have any reason to want to make things worse for Vanadi. Hopefully. He relents, dropping the opposite hand.
A little more plaintively, he adds, "Have you seen anything like this before?" Please tell him you know what to do with it.
Almost certainly there is nothing comforting about the way that Joselyn looks flatly back at him, and then meaningfully around the scenery they're trudging through.
“You can't effectively,” is all she settles on saying. “Let me get a good grip on it, and we'll just,”
A gentler woman might have given him a countdown. Joselyn, who is fairly certain anticipation here will help approximately nothing, yanks on just.
He's definitely expecting some kind of -- if not countdown, warning would do. Instead there's just a quick movement and then pain. The sound Vanadi makes is more startle than anything else, and it's instinct when he jerks away and back, a hand clapping over the offending shoulder. But then, of course, it's done, and he exhales a tight breath.
"Yes, I suppose that was faster," he mutters. He eyes the yanked-out sample in her hand, which really looks very ordinary now that it's not growing out of him -- bloody roots aside. He pulls his hand away, turning his attention to the somewhat torn skin left behind.
Joselyn, one gloved hand clutching something she tore out of him and the other rifling through her satchel for something to put it in—at this point, sooner than later comes into play on the off-chance that this thing will put roots in any flesh its near—squints perhaps not very comfortingly at his shoulder.
“Give me a moment,” she says, and considering what happened about a moment ago, he might be forgiven for wanting a second opinion before whatever she's going to do next. But she's the one in front of him, so his leaves go in an empty glass jar and her gloved hands come back to his shoulder, feeling the edges of the wound, pressing.
She stops short of actually sticking her fingers in it. Just.
Her bedside manner really could use some work, but fortunately Vanadi's standards for that are quite low. On the ground, really. The fact that she's willing to assist at all is enough, and he watches patiently enough as she secures the sample.
His eyes follow her hands, then flick away with a sigh.
"If you've the stomach for it, I'd appreciate a thorough check," he says, knowing unhappily what he's consigning himself to. Plants, after all, have roots. Perhaps even plants sprouted from shoulders.
Or, more accurately, a feel: with Vanadi's consent, she might as well get stuck in because she isn't certain that the weed she pulled out of him brought all of its root with it, and it stands to reason that there must be roots.
It has to sprout from something, besides just 'Vanadi'.
Her mouth presses into a thin line as she presses her fingers in through broken skin, the sensation slightly dulled for her by her gloves—which are probably not making it any more pleasant for him.
Well, it doesn't feel great. But on the other hand, he and pain are well acquainted. Vanadi merely stares with great determination at the nearest tree trunk, his lips set to a thin line and shoulders gone tense.
"Feel free to keep me updated," he murmurs, in a voice only somewhat strained. Would a running commentary make this better, or worse? Maybe he'll get to find out.
“If you want to complain about Stark later, you can't quip like him now,” is a conversational warning, and also a completely unfair pretense that she and Wysteria and probably Richard aren't all, in their own special ways, just as fucking bad. What else it is, is the nearest thing he's going to get to a genuflection toward acknowledging that he is the last sane man surrounded by reckless nerds.
A running commentary might have helped, though, because the point at which she draws back and unsheathes not Richard's much more impressive knife but the slim, sharp blade that she carries for purposes similar to this that are usually not attached to another person—
well, it's not as though any questions he might have at this point he can't draw his own reasonable conclusions about, but it's been established: Vanadi likes warning, but he's overlooked the part of this where he's really going to have to be more specific about that desire if he wants to get any.
“I'd offer you a stick to bite down on,” she says, “but under the circumstances I don't recommend putting any sticks in your mouth.”
"I would never complain about -- such -- ah, neatly manicured facial hair," he mutters, the words broken and chopped up by probes into his shoulder. Just what is she finding in there that takes so much feeling around? God, he hates this, and even more when the slim little blade comes out.
It's for the best, he reminds himself, and takes a breath to hold his shoulders a little straighter. She doesn't strike him as someone who needs the encouragement, but nonetheless he adds, "You're doing quite well, keep going."
It'd have been more comforting, probably, if she'd said something about healing, or at least surgery; it would have been less accurate. The sort of desperate patchwork of an alchemist's knowledge and mundane hands that she could put together had inarguably been the difference between life and death at times during the war, but she is an alchemist, an apothecary, a researcher. The staff, as she had so eloquently informed Richard shortly before this wound was received, just does smacking.
But she's pretty good at dissecting things and learning about them. She has the stomach for this, holding his wound open and digging inside it with her knife, feeling for where she thinks the roots seem to be emerging from—
“I can't be as certain as a healer that that's all of it,” she says, when she's deposited bloody roots into a new specimen jar, her gloves filthy with gore. “We'll have to keep an eye on it.”
Dissection, she says, and Vanadi manages not to shudder, but maybe only just. He peels his eyes from that anchoring tree trunk to land them on the sight of those bloody roots instead, which has his lip curling in disgust -- which is about when he realizes that at some point he's set a hand at Joselyn's waist. The wayward hand rests there lightly, clenched into the outer layer of fabric like a hitchhiker. He doesn't move it.
"You're going to need new gloves," he mumbles, and his shoulder throbs. "That's too much blood to wash out."
“I have more in my satchel.” Not so many more that she's going to be careless—but she'd come with the intention of mucking in, and packed accordingly. If she'd imagined that involving more actual dissection and less of this more conversational kind,
Riftwatch, much like the Inquisition, is ruled by a fate that laughs at plans.
“Let me give you something for the pain. It'll dull it only a little, but it won't cloud your mind.” Injured and drugged up. They're already pressing their luck here without getting reckless to boot.
(Joselyn, admittedly, having a slightly different definition thereof than some.)
Ah, more gloves. A prepared woman. He leans in a little, and the hand knotted into her clothing rests lightly against something more solid. Hip, he thinks. A small thing, but comforting.
"What do you have?" he asks, never too tired or pained to be wary. It would have to be something he's familiar with to be any kind of welcome, and the odds of that in this strange world are rather low.
“I have a lot of things, but I'm going to give you a few drops of an elfroot-based tonic. Dull the pain and not your wits, but it isn't strong and it won't win in a fight between its capacity and your aggravating the wound.”
There's a small pause.
“If I step back so I can change my gloves and get it, are you going to fall over?”
He's still considering the answer and whether or not that's something he's interested in when he's quite distinctly called out. Vanadi blinks, withdrawing his hand to take a quick step back.
"Ah -- no. Sorry." It was nice while it lasted. "I'll pass on the tonic, though. It isn't so bad as to need dulling. A few bandages and I'll hardly notice it."
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faderift2020-08-04 09:35 pm
and again! -- @joselyn
It started as absent scratching as they walked, and it's only when he begins to feel a sharp pain under his fingers that he realizes how long he's really been at it -- and the concern kicks in. He steps out of the exploration line with some word of mumbled reassurance, seeking the cover of at least a few layers of brush. There he unlaces a few of his several layers, shrugging things around until he's got a shoulder bared for self-inspection.
A low, strangled noise might make it back to at least some of the rest of the group as concern rapidly turns to distress. Leaves. Green fern fronds sprout like the cheerful first sign of spring from where they should very much not be sprouting: his own healing flesh.
He'll be tearing at them in a moment, just -- a few seconds for horrified processing are in order first.
no subject
Joselyn is there, having turned at the not very reassuring mumbling and having only become more concerned at his progressing distress. As much as she isn't the expert on rifters (besides that spending enough time around them is bound to make anyone start questioning their life choices), she is fairly confident that even foreign elves aren't meant to sprout leaves out of wounds.
Particularly not in a place where questionable growths are becoming a real issue. If they have to leave Vanadi behind, it will be extremely difficult to explain to their superiors later, so,
“Hold still—you can't do anything one-handed—” seems like a more immediately compelling argument than something like don't yank those. Especially since she is going to yank them, she's just also trying to decide if preparing a specimen jar first is going to complicate matters unnecessarily. Where's that knife.
no subject
"I think I very much can -- " That's a hiss, out before he can remind himself that these people probably don't have any reason to want to make things worse for Vanadi. Hopefully. He relents, dropping the opposite hand.
A little more plaintively, he adds, "Have you seen anything like this before?" Please tell him you know what to do with it.
no subject
“You can't effectively,” is all she settles on saying. “Let me get a good grip on it, and we'll just,”
A gentler woman might have given him a countdown. Joselyn, who is fairly certain anticipation here will help approximately nothing, yanks on just.
no subject
"Yes, I suppose that was faster," he mutters. He eyes the yanked-out sample in her hand, which really looks very ordinary now that it's not growing out of him -- bloody roots aside. He pulls his hand away, turning his attention to the somewhat torn skin left behind.
"Is that all of it?"
no subject
“Give me a moment,” she says, and considering what happened about a moment ago, he might be forgiven for wanting a second opinion before whatever she's going to do next. But she's the one in front of him, so his leaves go in an empty glass jar and her gloved hands come back to his shoulder, feeling the edges of the wound, pressing.
She stops short of actually sticking her fingers in it. Just.
no subject
His eyes follow her hands, then flick away with a sigh.
"If you've the stomach for it, I'd appreciate a thorough check," he says, knowing unhappily what he's consigning himself to. Plants, after all, have roots. Perhaps even plants sprouted from shoulders.
no subject
Or, more accurately, a feel: with Vanadi's consent, she might as well get stuck in because she isn't certain that the weed she pulled out of him brought all of its root with it, and it stands to reason that there must be roots.
It has to sprout from something, besides just 'Vanadi'.
Her mouth presses into a thin line as she presses her fingers in through broken skin, the sensation slightly dulled for her by her gloves—which are probably not making it any more pleasant for him.
no subject
"Feel free to keep me updated," he murmurs, in a voice only somewhat strained. Would a running commentary make this better, or worse? Maybe he'll get to find out.
no subject
A running commentary might have helped, though, because the point at which she draws back and unsheathes not Richard's much more impressive knife but the slim, sharp blade that she carries for purposes similar to this that are usually not attached to another person—
well, it's not as though any questions he might have at this point he can't draw his own reasonable conclusions about, but it's been established: Vanadi likes warning, but he's overlooked the part of this where he's really going to have to be more specific about that desire if he wants to get any.
“I'd offer you a stick to bite down on,” she says, “but under the circumstances I don't recommend putting any sticks in your mouth.”
no subject
It's for the best, he reminds himself, and takes a breath to hold his shoulders a little straighter. She doesn't strike him as someone who needs the encouragement, but nonetheless he adds, "You're doing quite well, keep going."
no subject
It'd have been more comforting, probably, if she'd said something about healing, or at least surgery; it would have been less accurate. The sort of desperate patchwork of an alchemist's knowledge and mundane hands that she could put together had inarguably been the difference between life and death at times during the war, but she is an alchemist, an apothecary, a researcher. The staff, as she had so eloquently informed Richard shortly before this wound was received, just does smacking.
But she's pretty good at dissecting things and learning about them. She has the stomach for this, holding his wound open and digging inside it with her knife, feeling for where she thinks the roots seem to be emerging from—
“I can't be as certain as a healer that that's all of it,” she says, when she's deposited bloody roots into a new specimen jar, her gloves filthy with gore. “We'll have to keep an eye on it.”
no subject
"You're going to need new gloves," he mumbles, and his shoulder throbs. "That's too much blood to wash out."
no subject
Riftwatch, much like the Inquisition, is ruled by a fate that laughs at plans.
“Let me give you something for the pain. It'll dull it only a little, but it won't cloud your mind.” Injured and drugged up. They're already pressing their luck here without getting reckless to boot.
(Joselyn, admittedly, having a slightly different definition thereof than some.)
no subject
"What do you have?" he asks, never too tired or pained to be wary. It would have to be something he's familiar with to be any kind of welcome, and the odds of that in this strange world are rather low.
no subject
There's a small pause.
“If I step back so I can change my gloves and get it, are you going to fall over?”
no subject
"Ah -- no. Sorry." It was nice while it lasted. "I'll pass on the tonic, though. It isn't so bad as to need dulling. A few bandages and I'll hardly notice it."