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!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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

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

/thumbsup