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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"I don't mind the rain so much," Derrica tells her, though she straightens up off the stone wall at the sweep of Ellie's hand. "I was a sailor before I came here."

An occupation which had necessitated some level of acceptance of the fact that a person is just going to be somewhat damp most of the time.

"But if we go in, we might catch Mrs. Fitcher's card game before the table is full."

That too is a searching question, Derrica's eyes on Ellie's face. Is she inclined to spend her time in a crowd?

"Makes sense, then. Why you suggested swimming."

Ellie gives her a smile- one of those fleeting little things that are no less sincere for it, though they're a lot more subdued than the rest of what makes Ellie up as a person.

She appreciates the silent understanding more, and instead of brushing it off, she takes a moment to think. It'll be loud and a lot, with little chance to be anonymous. But she's hungry for the company, and Derrica will be there to take the edges off.

"Sure," she decides, perking up. "You play poker here, or something else?"

"Wicked Grace, most nights," Derrica tells her, falling into step beside Ellie. "We can watch them for a few hands, if you like."

Some nights that's all Derrica does, when she's in the Gallows and not inclined to spend the night in her room. It's just as good as playing, really. Riftwatch is a lot of things, not all of them overwhelmingly positive, but it's members are always entertaining. Derrica has rarely been bored here.

She nearly reaches to link arms with Ellie, but the movement amounts to just a flutter of hands as the present catches up with ingrained habit, all of which Derrica covers by busying herself rearranging the folds of her shawl before saying, "It's just as interesting to watch them. No one takes it too seriously."

"I'll pick it up if I can watch," Ellie promises, and turns, ready to accompany Derrica back inside.

She catches the movement, the involuntary reach, and catches herself, a sort of stutter of movement, a jumpy pull-back before she can stop herself. They mutually pull away.

For Ellie, it's years and years of conditioning to avoid being grabbed, to dodge sudden movements. It takes a second for it to sink in, what happened- and her ears feel hot.

"Fuck. Sorry."

"I'm sorry," Derrica counters, sincere over the words. "It's—it's a habit. I've been trying to work on it."

To change, or at least, temper the urge to reach out to people, but changing a lifelong habit has proven difficult.

Part of her still instinctively wants to reach out, even to just put a hand on Ellie's shoulder to punctuate the sentiment. It's the way Derrica knows to comfort people, but she tamps the urge down to nothingness. Ellie had flinched away so hard though, enough to ward off the urge even as Derrica's expression shifts to apology.

"I promise not to do it again," is sincere too. Ellie doesn't need to explain her reaction. Derrica doesn't need to know what prompted it to know that she doesn't want to see her recoil like that again.

It's a hard, awful lump in the back of Ellie's throat to see how sad Derrica's eyes are, to realize just how concerned she is.

In truth, Ellie's starved for touch, for tenderness, but it's not something she has ever known how to ask for. Like Derrica's habit of touch, Ellie has practiced telling herself that she doesn't need it. There are very few people who have offered. In the world before this, touching someone came at a steep cost, and was often more painful than it was worth, and before that...

"Shit," Ellie mumbles, shaking her head. She doesn't want to shut her down, and she feels stupid for her reaction. She doesn't want anyone walking on eggshells around her.

"It's okay, it's just 'cause it surprised me. You can do it, just make sure I see it coming."

For a moment, Derrica studies Ellie's expression. Maybe trying to assess whether Ellie's sincere, or if she's offering for Derrica's sake more than her own. It's hard to get a clear read on her, but maybe—

Derrica hitches her shawl up a little higher on her shoulders, worried little crease in her brow softening as she comes to a decision. (Asking first, that's the rule Derrica's settled upon.)

"Okay," she says quietly. "If you're sure."

As she speaks, she draws the ends of the shawl together and tucks them into the belt cinched around her waist. Just for something to do with her hands, keeping them in sight as they talk.

"I can be very obvious, I promise," comes with a little nudging kind of humor, as Derrica steps ahead of Ellie to pull open the heavy tower door. "You'll see me coming from miles off."

Torn between the sincerity of how much Derrica wants to do this right, and annoyed with how fragile it makes Ellie feel, she gives a small snort under her breath. Trying to make light of it as she follows her back, she reaches for the door to hold it open so Derrica can go first.

"Super obvious," she answers, trying to sound playful, a curl of a smile and a warmth in her eyes.

"If you surprise me I'll just punch you, how about it?"

... she would not, but she's awkward as fuck and doesn't know how to not be weird. Stop being weird, Ellie.

To Ellie's credit, the suggestion does register as a joke. Derrica channels the impulse to reach back to shove Ellie into folding her arms over her chest, spinning on the landing to look back with a smile.

"If you promise to punch my arm, and not my face, then we have a deal."

Not that a healer really has to worry so much about such things. But it feels like the right thing to say, nitpicking over terms to keep the awkward worry ebbing out of Ellie's expression.

Ellie beams back, letting the door fall shut behind them, mirroring the way she's crossed her arms over her chest, and lifting her eyebrows. The smile reaches her eyes, relaxes her.

"Deal. Face-punching is reserved for if you're being a huge dick."

Which she doubts, but.

"You can get away with a little dickishness, though. I'll let it slide."

"That's generous," Derrica returns, smile coloring the words. "My arms will thank you in the future, I'm sure."

It feels like some sort of success, seeing the way Ellie's smile loosens every part of her. Ellie carried some kind of apprehension with her, something tense and withholding, and Derrica doesn't know where it came from or who put that onto her shoulders, but even a moment where it eases brightens Derrica's expression in return.

"You can decide whether or not it counts as dickishness to beat you at Wicked Grace after you've gotten the hang of the game."

Ellie gives her a grin back, reaching up to lightly put a hand to the wall as they head down the stairs. Likewise, she likes seeing Derrica loosen up. She's used to putting people on edge, moreso as she's gotten older. Used to feeling invisibly marked.

"You might regret bragging before you taught me how to play," Ellie says breezily, tilting her head as they head down together.

"But let's find out."

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

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let's put a bow on this to make room for exciting orzammar adventures

/thumbsup