There's a story in my veins, with scars on every page

[notathreat]

WHO: Ellie & OPEN
WHAT: Rifting in less-than-gracefully, a rogue explosion or two, & initial trouble accomplished
WHEN: Arrival and during the first week after.
WHERE: The Hinterlands, The Gallows
NOTES: So much swearing holy shit.

[Arrival.]

The worst part about lucid dreaming is when shit gets a little too real. Especially when it's not the usual kind of horrible. So when Ellie goes from another nightmare about things hunting her in an endless horrible sewer to being sucked into the water, hurtling down through the rain-soaked Seattle depths, she tries to tell herself that she can breathe underwater. She opens her mouth and tries, and the foul water fills her throat-

And she launches out, along with a gush of Seattle sewer water, hits a hillside and goes tumbling.

... and it's steep enough that she keeps going.

Ellie coughs, chokes, tries to scream, and unleashes a garbled stream of hacking, choking profanity.

Maybe you're the unlucky person on the trail she happens to literally bowl into (and possibly take out).

Or maybe you're the one who finds her screaming back into the face of a despair demon, soaked in foul-smelling sewer water, having just hurled a piece of rock shaped suspiciously like a revolver into its face.

She absolutely just called the demon a motherfucker.



[Gallows; Quarantine Times]

A bath, a few square meals and a bit of explanation later, Ellie seems far less... feral. She's dressed in local clothing, a tunic, pants and boots, and has stopped acting like a cat, roaming the stairways in the towers and popping up unexpectedly in places people didn't see her enter.

She shows up near the top of one of the towers, tucked into a window, looking down at the courtyard below.

"... so I heard there were actual griffons roosting up here. Is it true?"


[ooc; HMU if you want a custom starter!]

Comments

[notathreat]

"Literate in English, yeah." Ellie heaves a sigh -- but then nods, this time eagerly. Books, and especially a library's worth of them, mean she'll be able to figure out almost anything she needs to. She's been spoiled utterly by New Amsterdam, but the library here is a huge leg up from her own world.

"You think I could borrow a few of those?" she asks, perhaps giving away that's also seen him in the library, poring over the pages and keeping an unobtrusive eye on things.

[murderbaby]

"Of course," Mhavos says, wondering what 'English' is. "We have a limited supply, but I'll make sure you're given one. You needn't return it; they were donated by a noblewoman who... never had cause for their use. The intended audience is, of course, children."

Surely she can put the implications of those facts together herself.

[notathreat]

Ellie can, and she does put them together, by the look of somber understanding that crosses her face. She nods once, acknowledging things, used to tragedies.

"Well- I'll take good care of it. Thanks."

And then-

"I'm Ellie."

[murderbaby]

He respects that, an automatic understanding uninterested in gossip. "She wanted them to be used, and so that is my only request."

He makes a few more light-footed steps down the tower's winding corridors. "Mhavos Dalat. A pleasure, Ellie."

[notathreat]

"You too."

Ellie nods back, glances down again at the books in her arms, the titles she can't make out, and tilts her head again to one side.

"So where're you taking these? They for you, or some... commander or something?"

[murderbaby]

"I've work in the libraries," he says softly. And then, with something approaching real emotion (awkwardness), he murmurs, "I was reading these on... a break."

[notathreat]

Tilting her head back at Mhavos, she lifts both eyebrows, surprised that he'd be embarrassed about it.

It kinda endears her to him.

"Hell, once I get back up to speed I'll probably be reading everything I can get my hands on, too. You've got a whole library here." There's no mistaking the wonder in her voice; it's clearly a privilege, from her perspective.

"What're these about?"

[murderbaby]

He can appreciate that. While not knowing the Ellie's past, there are plenty of places in the world without libraries, and plenty of people whose minds wish to extend further. In that regard, Mhavos is very lucky for his past.

To answer her question, Mhavos mumbles the word in Orlesian before remembering how to pronounce the Trade equivalent aloud. "Epistemology." His accent is still rather thick on this one and only word. "The philosophy of knowledge. What we know, and how we know it. Rather boring stuff, I'm sure."

Just... not to him.

[notathreat]

Good thing he translates; between the thick Orlesian accent on that one word, and the way she doesn't recognize it immediately, Ellie honestly doesn't know whether it's a word with no translation, native to this land, or something that Joel would've called a "four-dollar word".

"Sounds like it," she admits, a little bluntly. "But I guess it depends on the writer. Like poems can really suck, but some stick with you?"

This scarred-up, freckled girl with missing fingers doesn't look like she might appreciate poetry, but everyone's got their secrets.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos rarely bothers himself much with appearances. People are often completely oblique to his experience, which is somewhat limited.

"Poetry is a recurring fascination," he admits. "I suppose you've not had much time to read Thedas' offerings, but our selection is growing."

Mostly thanks to him.

[notathreat]

"Not yet," she admits with a slight grin, but if he can get her started on primers, she figures she can get caught up once she manages to get the hang of reading. She's never tried to learn something like this before, but how hard could it be?

(She tries to forget Dina explaining Hebrew.)

"What do you do in the library?" she asks. "Keep track of who's got what?"

[murderbaby]

"Yes," Mhavos says with a shrug, "but that mostly takes care of itself. The hardest part is tracking down books that haven't been signed out."

There have been thefts.

"I also archive, notarize or transcribe materials that need it. I worked as a clerk before this. It's much the same."

[notathreat]

Noted- definitely don't steal from the library. Not if she wants to stay on his good side. She has a feeling he takes all his books very seriously.

That's fair.

"What made you come out here?" she asks, tilting her head. The anchor on her hand is a faint green glow, a written record of why she's inside these walls, but nearly everyone else is an individual mystery. There are more direct war efforts, more important positions than anything she's seen here. With his skills he'd probably be able to get a job anywhere.

Seems like most people are here because they mean to be.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos' expression becomes opaque once more, carefully expressionless. "The Lady who owned my employment contract used it to pay a gambling debt in Kirkwall. As such arrangements are... frowned upon, here, the contract was ended. I joined Riftwatch in thanks, as the winning gamblers were part of the organization."

[notathreat]

Puzzled, Ellie glances up at him. It's an unfamiliar arrangement to her, an employment contract, and she's more familiar with community work assignments, or a free market. In her experience, though, you can't gamble away someone's employment to somebody else.

"An arrangement like-"

It hits, suddenly. The understanding. Leaves her feeling cold, a shiver of something down to her fingers and toes, leaving behind a tingling. She feels faintly sick.

"Oh. Fuck."

[murderbaby]

Mhavos' feelings stay his own, hidden behind a stony veneer. "Such arrangements are very common in Orlais," he says. "And farther north."

That isn't important.

"What did you do, before coming here? Would it even be familiar to me?"

How do matters of employ work under alien stars?

[notathreat]

Ellie nods, figures he doesn't want to talk about it. Hell, she wouldn't want to talk about it. She's not about to pin him down about it.

"Uh, probably. This isn't... the first other world I've fallen into. If you can believe it."

Then again, they have demons that pour out of holes in the world, here. Mhavos has a non-zero chance of being eaten by a griffon. Maybe he will believe it.

"I was security at a bar. Drinks, music. That sort of thing. I kept the workers safe and played guitar when it was slow."

She tilts her head to the other side, thinking farther back.

"Before that, back in the original world I'm from, I had a farm. Sheep, chickens. Enough of a vegetable patch to get us by." The words feel thick, in her throat. She moves on quickly, guarding her face.

"Before that, I did scouting and security, and parameter defense for my town. You call them demons and bandits, here."

[murderbaby]

He looks her over, and in her description sees his own technique; quick fighting, based on speed rather than strength. He wonders how good she is at hiding, at jumping out at the last moment, using surprise.

But a clerk would not have such questions, so they don't leave his head.

"It sounds like hard work," he murmurs, "little time for reading."

[notathreat]

Ellie laughs under her breath, lifts her shoulders casually. The scars speak for themselves. She's still alive, even if there's a lot of people who have drawn blood, taken a piece of her down with them.

"There's enough downtime between things getting wild," she admits. "Sometimes in the winter, when the drifts pile up, that's all there is to do."

[murderbaby]

A corner turned, and there they are, in the library. Mhavos walks between the stacks, to a section labelled philosophy in a tongue his companion cannot yet make out. "Then you have arrived at precisely the wrong time."

[notathreat]

Ellie heaves a sigh, and follows him through the stacks, adjusting the books in her grip.

"Yeah. They were telling me. This Corypheus dude sounds like a hell of a piece of work."

[murderbaby]

Mhavos puts his books away, hand out for Ellie to return hers. "Most magisters are, though of course I am biased."

[notathreat]

"You say magister like it's a... title. Is that different from just "someone who uses magic"?"

Ellie readily hands the books over, curious. So long as she's not asking about Mhavos in particular, she's got a never-ending list of questions.

She keeps feeling like there's a million things she doesn't understand the nuances of, and the edges of them feel sharp enough to cut if she presses the wrong way. She has enough experience with sharp things to want to know how to handle them properly.

[murderbaby]

As long as she's not asking about Mhavos in particular, she has a never-ending list of answers. Mhavos puts the books away, answering without looking up.

"A magister is a Tevene mage of high rank. Tevinter not only ascribes to heretical religious precepts, not only holds slavery legal, but once had an empire spanning nearly all the way to southern Thedas. You will find very few outside of Tevinter who admire Tevene practices."

[notathreat]

Ellie wrinkles her nose even before he finishes, which probably makes her feelings on the matter clear. She looks over the titles of the books, pushing her brain to start sounding some of them out. Most are jumbled but she can make out the markings here and there, pick out a simple word or two.

"Is that why people here don't trust mages? Or part of it? I got the rundown on the not doing magic in public thing, if you don't want to get the stinkeye."