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

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!]

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Ellie advances on it the second the thing goes down, unwilling to trust that it won't get up again, only to have goosebumps shiver over her skin when it dissolves, as if it never existed.

She takes a shaky breath, getting air back in her lungs as she sizes up the woman in front of her. She's slightly older than Ellie would have thought at first glance, her height and the way she moves had her assuming that she was closer to Ellie's age.

Ellie shakes off the lingering ache in her hand, glancing down at the green glow that's still there in her palm, though it's calmed down considerably now that the rift is gone. It makes her stomach roll; it's not the first time she's had something fucked up happen to her body, but there's comfort in the fact that the woman seems to recognize what's going on.

"Sh'yeah, no kidding," Ellie answers, her own accent closer to the dwarves of Orzammar than anything remotely local.

"I'm Ellie," she answers, letting herself breathe. She looks from the woman's weird mount, to the spot on the ground where the monster went to dust without a trace, to the now-whole air where the Rift spat her out, and back to the green glow of the tear in her palm.

... there are a lot of fucking questions.

"Thanks. For the save."

"Aenor," she offers in return. It's something she always appreciates, when there's no reason to offer her clan name (or lack thereof) in an introduction. With a Rifter, it's particularly easy--such a girl has no reason to expect one, nor any sense of what Din'adhal might mean. "Your thanks, they are unnecessary."

Then'Harel makes a noise beside her, and Aenor laughs, patting his withers. "And me, he says, you must introduce me. This is Then'Harel. When you are ready, we will ride."

But for the moment, the girl ought to have a moment to catch her breath. The poor thing still looks a bit stunned to Aenor's eye, and this patch of countryside isn't likely to bring them much trouble in the meantime. Compared to the deserts of her home, most of Thedas has felt positively harmless to her.

Aenor's friendly, just saved her ass, and rides what looks like half a freaking dragon. Ellie is definitely still catching he breath, but there comes a point where the weird shit just piles up until it all blends together, doesn't it.

"Hey-" she gives an awkward pause, caught between her natural attraction to horses, and the fact that Then'Harel looks like he could tear her arm off and hawk it back without an issue. "-buddy."

Ellie pauses again, still catching her breath. She swears under her breath, wipes her damp hair back from her face, and centers herself. Next step. What now?

"Where are we headed?"

If Aenor's going to give her a lift, she's not going to sit here and interrogate her about it.

Then'Harel snorts a little, lowering his head toward Ellie. Aenor says something to him in Ander, laughing, and rubs her knuckles into his neck affectionately. "Theni, he wants you to pet him. A demanding creature."

Ellie can or cannot give into the dracolisk's demands. Either way, Aenor will swing herself up back into the saddle.

"A camp. Kirkwall, eventually--but Kirkwall, it is across the sea." First, they'll need to finish up their work in Ferelden, and then sail back to the Marches. "You have ridden before? Or will you need instruction?"

The little horselike gesture the creature makes, the little dip and snort, has her smiling despite herself. It's been so long since she's been around any of them, and he's endearing in his lizardy way. So Ellie reaches out with both palms flat, letting him give her a sniff, then rubs along his nose-bridge, gently knuckling his cheeks, under his jaw, where she'd scratch a horse.

"Hey, he knows what he wants," she quips, and despite being a little breathless, she is smiling. He's not so bad.

She nods, patting Then'Harel's neck, then following Aenor to the side of the saddle, giving it a glance-over, identifying familiar parts. The unfamiliar.

"Just horses. But I figure I'm gonna learn quick." She places her foot in the stirrup and swings up behind Aenor, sliding it back out again and gripping with her thighs. It's definitely a different weight distribution.

She has questions about Kirkwall. About across the sea. But right now, she's not sure she's ready for the answers.

"Never actually seen one of him before. What is he?"

"Dracolisk." She reaches back for Ellie's hands, in hopes of putting her arms around her waist. They'll travel faster if she's holding on properly. "Desert Lightning. Dracolisks, they are not so large, less thirsty, less hungry. Better creatures than a horse, I think, when your work is mine."

What that work is, she doesn't say, but the difference between dracolisk and horse is likely evident as soon as Ellie's on Theni's back. He's a narrow creature, not overly tall, and when Aenor nudges him into a trot, he's all lean muscle and quick response.

Better for covering long distances quickly and with fewer supplies. Definitely more agile, and suited to desert climates...?

Ellie readily follows Aenor's direction, maintaining her seat and holding on like she's used to it. Theni's alarmingly quick at first, but Ellie lets her body relax and adjust to the movement of the mount under her. He's actually a smoother ride than she's used to, though she's not looking forward to regaining her saddle seat. She'll see more than a few blisters by the end of this.

"Messenger?" she asks, since Aenor brought it up. "Or... something to do with those Rift things?"

Since she seemed to know so instantly what the glowing part of her hand was, that Ellie could close it. How to fight what came out of it.

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

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