faderift | MOD PLOT ↠ The Darkest Realms of Dream, Part II

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MOD PLOT ↠ The Darkest Realms of Dream, Part II

WHO: Open
WHAT: A dreamy conclusion.
WHEN: Wintermarch 20, 9:47
WHERE: The Fade, Kirkwall
NOTES: Please use content warnings in your comment subject lines as appropriate.

THE JOURNEY

The pull to Skyhold becomes undeniable. Whatever justification is necessary to get people onto the road the dream makes real, whether that's planting an idea in their head or having a message arrive drawing them to the area or having them wake up and find themselves in an onion cart halfway up the mountain. The dream will do its best to smooth over the gaps between conflicting stories and the strangeness of everyone heading that way at once until they're all well underway.

At first, the journey seems normal (in the context of the dreamworld they're in), with the sort of mundane dangers faced by all travelers: wild animals, bad weather, brigands, and in the future where Corypheus has won, enemy patrols. But as they get nearer to the mountains, the trip grows more dangerous. More wild animals—and perhaps now they're infected with red lyrium or Fade-touched. More bad weather, perhaps almost supernaturally so. More enemy forces hunting them, ambushing them, barring the way up into the Frostbacks.

As they get into the mountains the opposition to their journey will become increasingly improbable. Hordes of beasts, entire enemy brigades that have no reason to be where they are, a necromancer coincidentally located atop an ancient cemetery hidden beneath the ice, a rift spontaneously opening to spew demons in their path, darkspawn clawing up out of the ground, a random Qun attack thousands of miles from their front, a dragon appearing out of nowhere. More and more, it will become obvious that things are not what they seem, and that something—some larger force—is trying to prevent them from reaching Skyhold.

HAVEN

No matter where people came from or when they left, they will all arrive on the road into the mountains at roughly the same time. Not precisely, but near enough that they'll begin to encounter others making the same journey. And whether they are attempting to reach Skyhold from the East or the West, they'll find themselves in the ruins of Haven first, converging with the entire group. In the world where the Inquisitor defeated Corypheus, the village is home to a monument to those who were lost when Corypheus' forces first attacked, with evidence of a steady stream of recent pilgrimages—though presently no pilgrims—to pay their respects. In the world where Corypheus dominates, a lifesize dragon has been constructed from bones, some of them human, to stand triumphant over the ruins.

Once they press past this point, taking much the same route once used to lead Haven's refugees to Skyhold, the dreams will begin to unravel. The two dreamworlds may begin to overlap and merge in confusing ways that fuel awareness that the dreams are dreams. People from one dream may step into the woods to forage and encounter people from the other dream there to do the same thing. A person who has experienced both dreams may find that they begin to bleed together, leaving them certain of one history in one moment and of another the next, and increasingly unsure about which of their conflicting sets of memories—if either—is real.* The gaps in memories will also become increasingly apparent, as will the strange coincidence of all of them heading to Skyhold at once for very different reasons.

As people gain awareness that they are in a dream, they may find that they gain more control over the dreamworld. Non-mages may find themselves capable of impossible feats, like willing a storm into being to push enemies back, or speaking to animals to learn the enemy's movements. Mages may find that the normal boundaries on magic have been stretched, and spells that might once have been beyond their power no longer are. Their newfound capabilities do have limits, though: their enemies grow in strength to match them and cannot simply be wished away, and the major threats that more and more clog their path are still too strong to be beaten by any one person alone.

The last leg of the journey up to Skyhold will be the most difficult yet, as difficult as it has ever been. The paths are even steeper and rockier than anyone remembers, in places appearing as if they've been deliberately heaved about and strewn with boulders in an attempt to narrow the way. Surely so much of the road wasn't treacherous goat paths along the edge of precipitous drops before? And if that wasn't enough, while the enemy forces have receded here there comes in their wake a blizzard of tremendous strength, clouds blotting out the sun, the way lit only by the occasional crack of lightning. Snow lashes the rocks and wind screams through the passes, ice slicking every stone, as if nature itself is trying to throw them from the mountain. While it might normally be wisest to hunker down, they will all somehow know that this is not a storm that can be waited out and the only course is to press onward through it to the top.

OOC | * Characters from one dreamworld won't meet the other version of themselves face to face. There's only one consciousness in the dream per person, in one 'body'. They may switch back and forth between dream versions, or lose one version entirely, or begin to muddle their memories and personalities together, or drop them both when they become fully aware of the fact that they're dreaming, but the two versions will never coexist as separate entities at the same moment.

SKYHOLD

They will know when they've reached their destination because just as suddenly as it began, the storm ceases. The tranquility is as abrupt as walking through a door: one moment they are in the howling heart of the blizzard, and in the next step they are beyond it. The air is cold but still, the sky clouded but calm, the path across the great bridge to the main gate clear of snow.

Skyhold would be a striking sight at any time, perched atop its peak against a backdrop of stark white mountaintops, but in these dreams, it's ethereal. The stones have a faint luminescence, like a smooth pond bathed in moonlight, that makes it stand out clearly against the night sky. No windows or braziers are lit, and the valley around it is still. The walls are unguarded and the portcullis open in an invitation they can't bring themselves to refuse.

As they approach, they'll find themselves able to call on memories from both dreamworlds at once—while the gaps in their memories of the years prior to the last month grow. And memories of the true world, one where it's Wintermarch 9:47, may begin to reemerge and solidify, no longer a future that will never arise nor a past that's been left far behind them. By the time they reach the Great Hall, yesterday may feel like as many as three different days, each memory as clear and vivid as the others.

Once inside the walls, the castle grows still more dreamlike. A great tree grows out of the far corner where the War Room ought to be, its massive trunk somehow coexisting with the walls around it, its canopy broad enough to stretch into the Great Hall. The building's form doesn't seem wholly fixed in time—one moment it will appear to be the Skyhold of the Inquisition, in another, one might instead see a glimpse of the ruin it was before the Inquisition arrived, or a bare mountain peak with only a few foundation stones laid, or even an ancient elven temple built around that great tree. There are remnants too of those who have lived and work here in ages past: a flicker of movement in the corner of an eye might be the ghostly shape of an ancient elf or a dwarf lord or a Fereldan mason, or even someone in Inquisition uniform. Attempts to interact with these apparitions will fail, as they continue on about their routines, incorporeal and unaware, vanishing again as soon as they're out of sight.

The only exception is a spirit in the Great Hall, waiting for them.

AFTERMATH

When they wake in the Gallows, it is Wintermarch 21, 9:47, and nothing in the world—outside their own heads—has fundamentally changed from when they went to sleep.

OOC | It will feel like a month has passed at most, similar to how rifters wake up from their canon updates. They will only remember that month-long span of the dream itself, not the years of history that led up to that point. Essentially, they may wake up from the dream and remember "so back when the Inquisition fell I turned assassin and killed a bunch of people," but they'll only be remembering that in the dream this fact was true; they won't remember a years-long period in which they became an assassin, the assassin skills they supposedly learned, or the act of killing those people.

As is the manner of dreams, memories may be fuzzy or disjointed, and some things may stick in the mind more clearly and vividly than others. Anyone who interacts with the Herald spirit (or witnesses others doing so) will find these memories particularly clear and strong.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"What?"

--Not a reply that Val often gives; pardon, therefore, if he sounds annoyed.

"'It'? What is 'it'? What you have said is what I have said. Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle Cannon. What else would I have said? Is something the matter with your ears? Have they been ruined?"

He leans to the left a little, looking for an ear--then to the right, looking for the other. He is still holding to her arms.

The first ear is happily intact. So too is the second. In her best impression of an Orlesian accent, which is poor because she has heard very few as of late, she echoes back, "Mademoiselle Poppell. —That is what you called me. Good gods, I've never disliked it so much."

Her snort is distinctly undignified, a desperate attempt at strangling her humor, but then her laugh bubbles up to follow regardless. And then it's a lost cause entirely. His expression is so set and it was stupid, she thinks, to estimate his presence here as somehow improbable. Where else would he be? And after all this time—Perban. She laughs at his aggravation, and at his nosy dracolisk, and at her own foolishness.

"Even had I said that--a possibility I offer only for the sake of continuing this discussion--but if I had, I certainly would not have sounded like that. Perhaps you dislike it because you imagined it entirely, and your imagining is so poor," and then she is laughing again, and Val stops studying her ears to look at her in the face. Her stupid laughing face. He does not like it. He does not like her.

He therefore exerts nothing by pulling her forward and kissing her, right on her stupid laughing mouth.

She has yet to decide on the exact shape of her retort - whether her argument will consist of the facts or simply trying 'Oh yes, it was much closer to Poppell,' in a slightly different intonation - before she is interrupted and the deliberation evaporates in favor of more pressing concerns.

(In this bitter cold, the scratchiness of de Foncé's upper lip and chin seems a fairly negligible drawback when measured against the shocking warmth.)

The kiss lasts for a second, or for two. Or for whatever measure of time it takes for Wysteria to jerk back by a fraction, swing one arm free and deliver a cracking slap to his cheek.

"You! You are so—" Clutched in that narrow space, with all the heat in the world flaring into her face, her spark of indignation must be instantly familiar. "Insufferably presumptuous."

Which in combination must surely be a perfectly regular predecessor to her finding a grip on his ugly shirt's collar or in the neck of the heavy traveling cloak by which to pull him back down again. He has that sort of air about him, doesn't he?

Hah!, first, a short (and nearly derisive) laugh. The slap was expected, hoped for, the next step in this moment that, if not fulfilled, would mark everything as wrong. But here it is, right on time. It has been some time since Val has been slapped. Relative hermitage is not conducive to creating opportunities. His face bears the impact well, out of practice though he is--thus, only a little turn of the head, easily corrected.

"Am I?" Yes, the situation is better this way. His cheek is still stinging, he is still gripping at one of her arms, the other lost when she shook free to slap him. He allows any pulling, any grip--not submission, never submission, only permission, and yes, she is right about him: insufferable, insufferable enough to give a slight resistance so that pulling is a bit of a fight.

"Meanwhile--" The heat from her face could sear a druffalo steak, still he is gripping at her arm, and still he persists in talking-- "You are not dead. What is more presumptuous than to be presumed to be dead and then to not be? And to have forgotten an appointment besides."

"Says he, as if I arranged the whole thing!"

Even one handed, her grip is very firm; her hands have become admirably strong while clanging about in some dank Venatori workshop, and the way in which he leans against her fingers does little but encourage her to wind them tighter. That Hah! rings hot in her ears, and the urge to shake him is remarkably (sublimely) distinct.

"Allow me to reassure you, Monsieur. That from this point forward, I will be nothing but perfectly forthright with you. So that the next time I miss an appointment, there will be no doubt whatsoever that I have done it by choice in a bid to win some small moment of peace rather than labor further under the burden of your company!"

He is a hand taller than she is, but he still has her insistently by the arm and the difference isn't so broad that it can't be surmounted by pure bull headedness. She presses up into his space, seeking to head off with her kiss whatever obnoxious rejoinder is tragically inevitable.

"You are the bur," Val begins, and he is so committed that he is biting off the, "de," as she makes her move--nearly speaking against her mouth in his need to finish the word so that she knows just whose company is what in this future scenario that they are discussing.

And then, they are joined in their second kiss.

It is not precisely unpleasant. Neither is it precisely pleasant. Too suffused with irritation, for one--a continuation of the argument, which, lacking very real substance, certainly has more than its share of passion. So, then, strangely, does the kiss. More the passion of competition, a demanding will-you-shut-up, a new dimension to an old patter that began some time ago.

It cannot go on. Then again, Val does not move to end it. There will be a natural end, the moment that someone must breathe, or wind up for another slap, or find themselves unable to stop from bursting back into speech.

(Somewhere behind them, Ann-Laure is eating a rock.)

It's the sort of thing meant to produce—a pause? A recalculation, a moment in which the measurement of the space between and about them is assessed under some new lens? Her grip at his collar is to soften. She is to be moved to say something kind. At the very least, there should be an instant of breathlessness. That is only natural.

But that's stupid. If he isn't letting go then why should she? And her nose is right there and it is perfectly fit to breathe through so that when they do separate (and of course they must; his dracolisk is eating a rock) she is more than prepared to instantly accuse—

"I understand that you must be intimidated, de Foncé. If you would prefer to wait for the book rather than hear directly of all the things I made, I can hardly stop you."

—while still up on her toes. All that short tempered heat remains in her face, and with it lives some glinting flash of self satisfaction. She has missed the gratification of fighting so plainly without meaningful censure being expected to follow, and there are very few people indeed who are more natural to argue with.

"You understand nothing. I, mademoiselle, I, have never been intimidated by any one or thing in my life," and in the moment they are still quite close, her plain but pretty but pale like a thing that has grown underground would be, and he all himself, which is to say innately and unconsciously good-looking--

In the background, Anne-Laure is making a meal of that rock and Val breathes out from between his teeth, mutters a very Orlesian-accented shit, and gives Wysteria's arm a little shake.

"This is no surrender," he says, and then veritably shoves her away so he can turn on his heel. "Anne-Laure! Mon chou! Qu'est-ce que c'est? Hm? What book, what is this that you are talking about?" --This to Wysteria, without looking over at her. His usual habit, grown worse in these years--though, a small improvement might be marked in that he does do her the honor of a slight inclination of his head in her direction. "What is it that you are writing that I should be so-- Anne-Laure! Ça suffit, mon chou!"

A surrender? No. But surely it is a definitive shift in the arrangement of the front lines on the field of battle. A retreat is still a retreat, regardless of who is casting off whom or what he might prefer to name it, and Wysteria—

Realizes all at once that her hands are empty. With a clipped "Damn," she half turns, and there is the human coat rack loitering uselessly three paces removed with the bear fur still in their arms, squinting purposefully in any direction but this one.

"My book, of course," Wysteria squawks, rescuing the fur in parallel to the rock (though it must be said that her unwilling assistant surrenders it far more readily than the dracolisk does her prize). "The one that will have to be written to address the work of the airships and the barrier fields, and of utilizing mage talent as a force for mechanization."

This is nonsense. The world is falling apart. Maybe at the top of Skyhold they'll find a rift to fall through to another world, or be forced to face Coypheus' legions. If she were to hazard a guess, of all things it is unlikely that a printing press is waiting up there. But it's a very pretty idea, and as far as make believe ambitions and the points which might be won with them go, she likes the shape of it.

"Airships?"

A single good result: his scoff startles Anne-Laure enough that she drops the rock. Val kicks it away before she can grab at it again. And to avoid the accusing look she is giving him--one fraught with betrayal, from a creature that has nothing but trust for him and now, perhaps, a small measure of animosity--he turns back to Wysteria again.

"What is this? You were working? What work were you doing? What are you talking about? You are very vexing," last and most importantly of all. "If you are wanting me to act as a reader, you need only to say so. Not sprinkle such details about like a woman scattering feed for geese."

Her scoff is equal parts baffled and offended as she hoists the fur up into her arms and over her shoulder. It lends her a certain comically lopsided quality and she must twist her face to address him directly rather than to speak into the pelt.

"For Maker's sake, de Foncé. What on earth would the Venatori have held myself and Mister Stark for if not to work? I've hardly been moldering in a dungeon for my own entertainment. Honestly. Mister Stark and I have refined the repulsion cores for the Tevene airships, to say nothing of the spell throwers or the barrier fields or--You knew nothing of it? What have you been doing all this time?"

For the first time, the assessment she gives his person has a distinctly critical air to it. She looks at his clothes, and at the mud on them. She considers the shagginess of his hair, and the scar high on his face. Her eyes travels to the dracolisk and then, finally, returns to look at him directly.

He seems--

Stubbly.

Val de Foncé has never felt the need to shy away or even to stand taller under scrutiny. These feeling are both for others. He stands exactly as he is, which is quite enough, wearing an unimpressed look on his face--the same look that he has given tutors, servants, professors, parents, peers, librarians. Stubbly, scruffy, scarred, a man of adventure who carries all of it well.

"I have been working," he says, haughtily. "Obviously I have been working, and researching--what else would I be doing? Anne-Laure--"

At the sound of her name, the dracolisk raises her head and makes a qrurk sound. Val acknowledges her with a lift of his hand.

"--is but one of the results of this work. It is not as if Tevinter was publishing papers on your accomplishments, yes? You should not act as if I should have heard of any of these things by these names 'Repulsion cores'? What is repulsive about them?"

She scoffs again, a more forceful sound.

"Papers! Well, no, but—You truly have been far from the battlefield, de Foncé. What good is a dracolisk—forgive me, Anne-Laure,"—this last is an address of the animal in question directly—"in any of this? They are, obviously, the thing which cause the airships to maintain their height."

Slewing from one point to the other, Wysteria juggles the fur up higher onto her shoulder.

Anne-Laure makes another qrurk. Her beetle-colored eyes focus on Wysteria's face with disconcerting attentiveness. She trails after Val, crowding close as he closes the short distance between their parties--he and the dracolisk, Wysteria and her small bear's worth of fur.

"Tell me of them," he says, demanding. Entirely incidental and with an air of near disinterest, he reaches out and pulls sharply on the fur, pulling it more soundly into place. "These cores. You must have studied the properties in the technologies of Orzammar, their work with lyrium. Your interest in the Deep Roads would have been very useful to you in that, and your competent escort."

"Yes, of course. Their work with lyrium and enchanting was quite instrumental. But we speak here, in a sense, of great perpetual motion machines, de Foncé. And that is far more alike to work of the Kalvadan industrial districts than to anything I ever saw in Orzammar or read in any of your books. Lovely though I remember them being."

The line of her chin has risen by a series of degrees, first in answer to the closing distance and then simply out of blunt, bullheaded pride. They are clever designs, regardless of who they had been made to benefit. But if he thinks she will be so easily dissuaded--

Adjusting the edge of the fur slightly further (for he has shifted it just marginally too high), Wysteria's eyes narrows to slits at him.

"Tell me what you have done to your face and I will tell you whatever you care to know."

"And with the advantage of a budget not of Riftwatch--"

In some ways, Val cares little for who would have sponsored the work. Of course he has a side that he has chosen. Of course he has moralities and standards, and it is always best that these be met. Yet it is pure scholarly achievement that interests him more than the source of funding. That it was completed under duress, under lock and likely threat of death? Terrible. But what was the result?

Whatever more he might have said is quite arrested by the bargain Wysteria proposes. A look of mild irritation crosses said face.

"What is wrong with my face? It is not changed."

"Oh really, Monsieur. I will not stand here and—and be interrogated over every little thing while you expect me to be satisfied with working and researching. If I wished to engage in such one sided conversation, I might return directly to the Venatori who would be equally happy to discuss mechanics only they would reward me with new shoes or a dry socks in exchange for my turn towards being agreeable.

"What research? What work? Who gave you that scar? Where have you been? What has Anne-Laure to do with it? Where are your companions? Why are you here? Are you well? How would you rate Perban against his detractors, who I recall having one or two dozen choice things to say about his methods?"

Her manner of speaking has become progressively louder and faster as she has gone along, intent to avoid or talk over any interruption.

"I can go on if you like, but I believe I have made my point. And I refuse to stand in this path any longer. It's quite cold and I am not so happy to see you that I will pretend otherwise."

"But you are happy to see me."

This, instead of anything else. Val gives her a grin and grabs hold of the fur again, hoisting it back into the place that he put it on her shoulders instead of the place where she adjusted it to.

"Anne-Laure is not being received so well. She is not allowed into the stables just yet, they are saying that they will make her up a place--as if dracolisks never graced the thresholds of Skyhold's stables! I am sure they have lived here before. Come, there is a fire here, we have been waiting very patiently--"

He turns away from Wysteria and goes striding off the path, around a crop of rocks dusted at the tops with snow--and here there is an outbuilding, built onto the side of another building--two walls, the rear shared with the main building. The roof is crude pine shingles half grown with moss and dead grass. There is a fire.

"Perban's methodology was poor and wanting. And yet I find most of his detractors poor and wanting in their assessment of his work. They strike upon all the easy points and critiques--where is the heart? The knife of the scholar that might cut more expertly must be a knife that is honed, sharpened upon the whetstone of a subtler critique. One does not simply read the work of the critics that have come before and build one's points fully upon their foundation. Imagine a home constructed in such a way! No--the home must have its foundation, and then walls are scaled upon it, windows and doors and floors and roofs--one does not build foundation upon foundation upon foundation, and call it done! I have been in the swamps. Anne-Laure is a project--a result of selective breeding--she is larger than any other that has come before her and has an excellent ability to climb, though robust strength was more what I was after--but I may pursue this now instead. It is funny," he says, this time to the fire, "but I cannot remember what has become of my friends. I was trying to recall it before I became annoyed that Anne-Laure had been so long denied a stall."

With a scoff, she follows after him. For what else is to be done? Who will put up any contest to him in this, if not her? And where else would she go?

(There is an obvious answer; she ought to return to Ellis and Tony, the latter of which being the reason the fur was fetched in the first place. But for just the briefest instant, she is distracted enough to forget the anxious urgency involved in the errand and it has been so many weeks since Wysteria thought of anything else that she is out of practice at realigning her attentions once they've been diverted—)

"Of course I am pleased to see you. Why should I not be? We are friends, are we not? You have said so yourself on more than one occasion, or do you deny that in the same way you refuse—it has not escaped my notice—to address certain questions that I know you have heard?"

In the shadow of the shelter, she shifts her arms out from under the fur and presents her palms to the heat of the fire.

"As for your companions, I expect they will be along presently from wherever they have wandered, for it seems that is very much the fashion these days. It that really what you wished to discuss? A physician's dissection of Perban. I cannot bear that the thought of such poor scholarship has taken up any measure of your attention whatsoever in all this time! It is depressing to think of it. I would ask that the next time you hold me to something that it be over something more worthwhile than Perban."

"There were so many questions." Val uses his teeth to tug off his gloves--the right, then the left. They are of a very fine make, but worn, as is his habit in the things of the everyday. His teeth, too, are still very fine. The gloves he shoves in his belt and joins her in holding his hands toward the flames.

"I will try to remember the others and answer them. Of course that was only the beginning of what I wished to say on Perban. I had thought that I might write a paper critiquing the critique of his work--or a book, perhaps--one that would close with my own critique that would demonstrate the point that I had just made. You are an arguer, so I had thought to let you posit the poor point and then I could deconstruct it. As a debate would be run, yes? But artificially. Not nearly as amusing as a truer argument, though excellent practice. And much better than writing notes. And it did not occupy my attention." He lavishes an extra Orlesianness to the words, coloring in the ridiculousness. "Indeed I had forgotten it entire until I saw you upon the road and it all returned to me. What would you prefer to be held to?"

She opens her mouth to mame a small noise of objection in reply to arguer, but finds no immediate space in which to leverage the rest of her protest and so clamps her teeth tight around it. And then the process is repeated again at poor point, only to swallow it for artificially. By the point he is flourishing all his syllables, she—

Has failed to decide on the exact degree of her irritation.

"How should I know! To testing the alchemical work outlined in Leona's The Keys of Modern Synthesis, the back half of which I firmly belief is rubbish. Or for discussing the adaption of the springtail pin found in dwarven clocks. Or—forgotten it entire my eye. Anne-Laure, I'm afraid you will be doomed to spending the evening out here in the weather as there is very little your maker can't talk his way out of."

Anne-Laure, having moved to begin nibbling at the dead grass adjacent to the shelter, raises her head and looks over at Wysteria again. She gives another qruk. Val frowns.

"Don't agree with her!" He waves Anne-Laure off, an impatient gesture. "And no rocks! They do not agree with your stomach. You know this, Anne-Laure. I am not talking my way out of anything," this of course to Wysteria, nearly in the same breath, "but I would prefer to talk of springtailed pins if I am given the option. I have said that I will answer your questions. And I will answer them, in due course, but I am not--"

This, that, something. His gesture is uncertain this time.

"Do you know how singularly annoying you are? And how singularly annoying it is to not be able to think where Freddie and Jeannot have gone to? I cannot remember if they are living or dead. And so I see you upon the path and you are living, though I thought you dead--and you are so annoying! And yet I am pleased to see you! It is paradoxical, mademoiselle. When I had not thought of you in years--or I think that I had not thought of you in years. I have been living alone and so then I think, has it been too much? The sharpness of my mind is important to me. And I have been working and researching and--Anne-Laure, pas touché!--and so I prefer that we speak of Leona. The scar is from a hawk. I have trained them as part of my work with Anne-Laure and the others--the similarity is striking. What is your specific objection to Leona? It cannot be the prose or the style. These are very good."

"Oh."

It's a very definitive sound. Oh, like finding some important line in a book, or recognizing the key element in an elaborate mechanism, or perhaps like opening a very old box and finding a thing both familiar and unexpected in it.

Wysteria looks at him, her palms still turned toward the fire. The anchor piece lurks there in her palm. It's largely unchanged from its state five years prior.

"You're worried for their well-being."

This time, Val's impatient gesture is for Wysteria. Anne-Laure is eating a stick--apparently not a problem for her stomach, or at least not an observed problem at the moment.

"Of course I am. Is it not natural, to be concerned for one's life-long companions, when they can be neither remembered nor found among the ranks of those gathered here? And yet I see people I have not seen in, what would it be--years, I think--people I care nothing at all for. A sea of unimportant faces! And then yours. And not theirs. You see why this would be--"

His frown is a serious thing. More serious than the first to which he had treated Wysteria at their reunion. Bad-tempered, he scratches at the hawk scar--then, with decisiveness, thrusts his hands back toward the fire.

"Leona," he says, abruptly. "Your objection. I wait to hear it."

MOD PLOT ↠ The Darkest Realms of Dream, Part II

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