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]

"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.