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

[heorte]

"Scraps is about what we have," is more of an absent, automatic assessment. Ellis has had cause to think on Riftwatch's limitations over the winter, and hasn't quite shaken off his concerns.

But her question—

"Tony Stark," Ellis tells her, then corrects with a slight smile. "Provost Stark, head of the Research Division. And Wysteria Poppell. She and the Provost have been working together."

Working together leaves out the exact level of squabbling chaos that comes along with their ventures, but either Ellis deems it unremarkable or has just grown too used to it for it to register as something needing a little forewarning.

[notathreat]

Ellie takes in the smile -- someone Ellis likes, then? Shit, she's already weighing his opinion in with her perceptions of people. She hefts a box, hands it to him so he can put it on the top of a stack she isn't tall enough to reach.

The room's already looking much neater.

"Okay, first, what's a Provost?"

[heorte]

"It's what we call the smartest man in the Gallows."

Ha ha.

But also Ellis find himself without a clear definition, so he hedges around it instead as he hefts the box in his hands, turns from her to cross towards the stack and lift it as he says, "He's head of our Research division. They spend their time trying to make sense of old magic, or rifts, or artifacts that we find intact, or build things that might help us."

Or so Ellis believes. Having been the one hauling back artifacts or poking at things so the reaction can be observed, what comes after tends to be outside his purview.

"He's a good man," is more grounded, Ellis turning back to her and saying almost in the same breath, "Can you help me shift that wooden trunk?"

[notathreat]

Ellie automatically takes up the other end of the trunk; feels good to lift and move things, even if her muscles are protesting. She really needs to get back into shape; months of soft living have made her feel slower, more sluggish. Less strong.

"Is everybody here good?" she asks, her tone rhetorical and the words anything but.

[heorte]

There is an easy answer. Yes, they are good. It would almost be true.

"They try to be," Ellis tells her, the trunk's feet scraping slightly as they set it down and back. "Some more than others."

Not a ringing endorsement, maybe. But there are people Ellis doesn't trust, and he doesn't see a reason to pretend otherwise. Few people here are malicious, but some are careless, or inept in a way that endangers others, and Ellis can't take that out of the equation.

But the reason he's given her this answer is, simply because:

"I think you're able to make the distinction."

[notathreat]

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Ellie answers, putting the heel of her boot -- actual boots, the better to fit in -- to the edge of the trunk to push it flush against the wall.

"People are a lot friendlier here than I'm used to. For strangers. Still trying to decide if that's just Riftwatch, or what. I haven't been into Kirkwall much yet."

[heorte]

"Keep that," he says, raising one hand as he speaks to tap his palm in demonstration. There's no gleam of green, but it's clear what he's talking about. "Out of sight, and you'll have better luck."

Riftwatch is uniquely welcoming, so full of oddities that the bar for wariness is unreachable. But Kirkwall, and the world beyond it—

"It's strange magic. I think Kirkwall has gotten used to it, but there are people who will be more at ease without seeing your shard."

[notathreat]

"Yeah, I've heard they really aren't fans of magic out here."

Ellie nods, glancing down at the anchor in her palm, the soft play of light. Something aches, deep down in her chest. Another mark to hide. This one far more visible, unable to be covered up with a tattoo, a quick-thinking lie.

"Is it just that it's strange magic," she asks, "or is it that it's this strange magic? They said it's connected to the Fade, and the Rifts."

[heorte]

Adrasteia would be a better candidate for this conversation, Ellis thinks. Or Richard, maybe. Ellis can't tell Ellie anything about what it's like to walk through the world as someone carrying magic with them.

But she asked, and he turns to her to offer an answer, rather than redirect the conversation—

"I've only my own assumptions, but I think it's that magic scares people. Especially people who don't have cause to mingle with mages, or Rifters like yourself. They don't know what to make of any of it, your shard included."

Does hearing a variation on It's nothing personal help?

"If you care to, you can ask Tony and Wysteria about the shards too. They'll be able to answer better than I would."

[notathreat]

Maybe, or maybe not. Someone carrying the magic themselves may feel too close to it, wouldn't know what the average nonmagical person would think.

And as far as Ellie can tell, Ellis is a sympathetic soul likely to be honest about why it freaks people out.

"Yeah, I think I will." She gives a shrug, looking down at it. "I don't give a fuck if people avoid me because of it, but I don't wanna cause trouble for Riftwatch or anything because I cross some sort of line without realizing."

They've been good to her, the least she can do is return the favor.