faderift | [OPEN] FRIGHTENING FESTIVITIES

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[OPEN] FRIGHTENING FESTIVITIES

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: Celebrating a totally 100% legit wedding.
WHEN: Summerday
WHERE: Edlingham Hall, the Vinmark Foothills
NOTES: cw: Spectral Violence and Ghostly Gore; if you don't want to deal with the spooky ghost adventure half of the evening, feel free to say your character went back to Kirkwall early rather than staying the night.

PARTY;

A few hours' journey from Kirkwall, the great old shape of the house known as Edlingham Hall rises up from out of the Vinmark foothills. In the decades (ages?) since it's abandonment, what must have once been a very imposing stone structure built in the mountain's shadow has given way to age and the elements. What remains is unequivocally a ruin, albeit a stunningly elaborate one. It's a place of columns and alcoves, gutted passages and weather worn stairs leading to the skeletal remains of old towers and chambers, with everything turned to varying shades of brown and green and as it's been grown over or into by the surrounding landscape. There's hardly a roof remaining to be found in the whole of the place.

Luckily, this particular party doesn't require one. In what might have once been the titular hall, a series of tables and benches (borrowed from the Gallows, thank you very much) have been set up around a stretch of cracked tiles which has been more or less cleared for dancing and everything has been lit amply by a collection of merrily burning braziers.

Party-goers will be treated to a host of entertainment, included but not limited to: at least one speech (thank you, Provost Stark), a half dozen toasts, a rather impressive spread of Orlesian-styled cuisine (no doubt prepared by someone devastated to be expected to do so under such rugged conditions), quite a bit of rather good wine, music, dancing, and a few more avant garde Rifter-influenced party games including a vaguely wyvern-shaped pinata and some heinous game called Snap-Dragon.

And if none of that sounds like a good time, then there are ruins to explore, discreet alcoves to investigate, and a campground pitched in the ruin's shadow where one might retire early from the party with only a stock level of scorn.

AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT;

An eerie mist begins to stream from the cracked tiles of the dance floor. Riftwatch does not count a fog mage among their midst. Was one perhaps hired? Is this a trick of some science? A peculiar feature of the weather in this region? Such murmurs begin to circulate as the mist continues to thicken, and rise, and sour to a sickly pale yellow. It clashes with the decorations. Its touch seems to wither the impossibly sumptuous meal, curdling cream fillings and souring fine meats.

And then the screaming starts.

In the stone frame of an upper window, see her: a woman, in a long pale gown, with a horrible wound around her neck. Her slippers peep over the sill. Blood begins to drip down her front as her mouth opens, and opens, and opens, until her jaw rests upon her bloody chest.

Guests seated at the table will feel some creature bumping against their legs--something big, and solid, and hot, and hairy. When they pull away in horror, they will find nothing at all beneath the table. But the growling will not stop, nor will the crunching of teeth on bone.

The twisted figure of a man rises from a pile of tumble-down stone. His limbs hang at loose and unnerving angles. One arm has been crushed and droops down too low, brushing at his warped knee. His face is a mask of pain, and his left eye bulges as if ready to burst. Pressure has thrust his circlet of gold low on his brow, cinching his balding head. He shuffles toward the party, reaching with his ruined hands for human flesh. Or perhaps a cup of wine.

A headless body comes running out from the rotting main keep. It is wearing armor but is otherwise without identity. From its stump of a neck sprays a great geyser of blood, spatting party-goers and the ground and the food and whatever else is in its way. Its graying hands are reaching, but without a head, its path is random and monstrous, trampling over anything and anyone without regard. Or it would, if it weren’t spectral.

The ghosts must be stopped. Find the source of the haunting or this marriage will be ruined.

Those not interested in tracking down the source of the haunting will soon discover that the fog which has wreathed Edlingham Hall has become quite impenetrable. Attempting to escape the grounds will result in being impossibly turned around and eventually spit any would-be escapee back into the ruin. Solving the mystery may be optional, but experiencing the haunting by the aforementioned ghosts (and any other thematically appropriately specters your heart might desire for the convenience of creeping out your characters) apparently isn't.

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Context is sufficient to infer who he means by Bo-Peep, though it still takes her a moment. It's hard to say precisely how she's reacting to his elaboration, first; less because Joselyn Smythe is such a fucking enigma than because she isn't sure, either, pushing past a kneejerk reaction that she has this uncomfortable sensation means something else entirely.

“A fine bit of pantomime, all this, if she did.” Want to leave, that is; who gets married not to enjoy the benefits of that marriage? Whatever they may specifically be. Specifically, they are certainly tied to the world in which one marries, that much she's comfortable being firm on.

"Well."

Let's not be so hasty as to call it not a pantomime, but it is a very calculated means of mooring herself in this world. Tony is, currently, attempting to get a bead on Joselyn, and failing, even with all the practice he has in divining what Ellis might be thinking or feeling on any given day.

He hasn't called Wysteria silly names in a long ass time, and he doesn't really intent to start again. It's still affectionate, even if there's a tension to all this that breaks that particular rule where she can't hear. "I haven't figured out the rules yet," he says. Different rules. He's not talking about Wysteria. "Who gets to stay and go, I mean."

“I don't think what anyone wants has much to do with that,” she says, folding her hands into the fabric of her shawl. “It only really seems to make a difference to what sort of life you have while you are here.”

Tying it, neatly, back onto Wysteria and her wedding. There was a shift to the set of her jaw, a few moments ago, and it doesn't relax.

There's a lapse in the rhythm of the conversation, Tony quiet, some part of his brain wholly elsewhere in the way his focus lands on ruined wall. It's not complicated. He's drunk and the wedding is making him sad.

But he's never done super well at sadness. Or drunkenness, for that matter.

"Maybe," he says, like he didn't miss a beat. "But you care about the people you see every day. And that turns into caring about all the people you don't. Save the world stuff."

Joselyn reflects on that. Reflects on why she's trying to make sense of this lumbering conversation, unclear on what exactly Tony is working out and whether or not anything she thinks she might say on it is at all useful. Probably not. But you do, after all, care about the people you see every day.

She thinks, briefly, of Kendrick.

“Not for everyone,” she says, eventually. “Not everyone does that.”

"It happened to me. On both sides of the rift."

They aren't talking about everyone, after all. Not really. Just rifters, and, if Tony can be so selfish (unthinkable!), about him in particular.

"There's a future where that's true. And I figure that probably at some point in that future, I told you that I was in love with someone back where I came from. That I was gonna marry here, the whole thing." Which may be a gesture as to why this event makes him want to die, slightly.

Maybe he's okay at drunkenness, finding some point of clarity to orbit around. "And then at some point in the future, I decided that home was here. And with you."

Two things happen in Joselyn's head,

and the second one is that of course, the first time someone makes some kind of vaguely romantic gesture in her direction, it's a man whose profound sense of loss in attending someone else's wedding has him deep enough in his cups he might accidentally make the gesture in the wrong direction if he had to do it literally. It's a startling splash of cold water in the face, a thing that she isn't expecting when she's already trying to form the right sympathetic sounds to make for someone reminded of the things he's left behind at a joyous occasion—

It's not just that, but for all the things that are different between their worlds and all the different ways they communicate that don't always marry well (yes), the framework of what he's saying is all familiar beats. It is entirely possible that the other shoe to drop will be a kick in the teeth.

Which is not to say that Joselyn thinks before she says, “You seem thrilled about the prospect,” because she does not. “Apparently weddings really do make people so romantic.”

—maybe she has not had a normal amount of feelings about Tony Stark, actually. Maybe she wishes she was realizing that drunker than this! Maybe not, since it's going so great for him.

"Well, you're not laughing it up. Seems like a good sign."

Some tension loosens. It helps to have said the thing, even if he'll probably reflect at some stage that saying the thing wasn't an enjoyable experience for anyone, but then again, when was it ever gonna be? Maybe you take someone by the hand and you explain to them about what's going on, how complicated it is. Maybe you unload that burden onto them, and do it gently to alleviate the strain. Maybe you just try to compress it down somewhere and hope it never becomes relevant because you get hit by a meteor. If only.

Don't date rifters, he'd suggest. Don't care about them. There's other much less intelligent, less funny, and way less handsome fish in the sea. Ones that don't vanish, or feel like they're being unfaithful to some other life while trying to live this one. In the romantic arena, quite literally.

"I miss her so bad and I like you so much. I'm not—that's not usually how I work. Thrilled's a tough one."

Honesty seems like the only option; Joselyn doesn't know what she'd say instead, how she'd obfuscate, what the point of it would be. She is a good liar, although she's got lazy and comfortable and it hasn't seemed as urgent to be on top of the things that her life used to depend on—

“I didn't know that that's what this was,” she says, because if anything she'd said literally any words to buy herself some time to process it and it really hadn't helped. It's not something she's never thought about (Oh, and we were an item. Sorry you had to find out this way.), and it's not unwelcome but that is a feeling of which she is immediately suspicious because as he has explicitly put it on the table: there is another life he has. Had. If I take it too seriously, if she starts to think she should take him seriously,

It was just a dream, and she didn't dream the part where she might have had a clue what that would look like, and then they were both alive and neither of them really wanted to talk about it and she'd set it aside.

They made sense to her, a minute ago, but she's uncomfortably aware that that was mostly because she just closed her eyes and ran; if you never ask the question, you never get a complicated answer. It feels deeply unfair to have been forced to stop and look, and look at how slim the possibility is that wherever they're going isn't directly off a cliff.

Honesty. She says: “I didn't think about that being what this is. I don't have a fucking clue what that would mean. I don't know what you're missing,” with a half-laugh, “there's never been a person before that I wanted to fuck and talk to.”

"Okay."

Well, sure, that's relatable, the fucking and talking dichotomy. There are a lot of people for whom Tony had this divide, and if you put Wysteria's magic gun to his head, he would not be able to recount their names. He doesn't think that's what's going on here, particularly, but it is likewise hard to make out what is going on here.

So, we break it down. She seems mad. He'd expect, maybe, some kind of hurt for him being a dipshit about an old flame, for being ~romantic~ at a wedding, but this feels different. Like putting your cards on a blackjack table. Oops, sorry about that, let me just—

"Walk me through what this is," he proposes. "For you."

Join him in transparency, Jos. It's a funner way to feel crazy.

Somewhere, Isaac is feeling some kind of terrible vindication when she exhales hard and wishes she had a drink on her and says, “I know that I care about you differently than I do Isaac.” Her blank-faced protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. “And that went somewhere, in a dream.” Which she had failed to address, while making blank-faced protestations to the contrary.

And—in general. Just, in general, she's not addressed that, and they've sort of navigated blindly around each other, close but no cigar. Checking his pulse, and sitting on the edge of his chair, and going to a wedding individually where they just happen to spend time together.

“I mean—Maker.” She pulls a face, wallowing for a moment in how stupid she feels, more than crazy. She's north of forty, south of too old to give a fuck, and that feels much too old to be wringing her hands over tender feelings she'd long ago assumed she'd never have to worry about. The ship had surely sailed, but here it is, in the dock, blowing a signal horn she's thought she could pretend was birdsong. “In the Circle, I was close to my sister. In the Inquisition, I was close to my sister. It's weird that I have friends.”

Under absolutely any other circumstances, she might not have admitted that in so many words; imagines that Miriam would prefer not to, either, for all that it's true. They know people outside of the context of each other, now, and that's

fucking weird.

“I could care about you in a normal way,” she says, somewhere between aggrieved and embarrassed. “I know you’ve got a life you prefer. Of course there’s a woman in it. Obviously.” The first man she’s ever wanted in a way more complicated than she knows what to do with is essentially married, and they had to murder Miriam’s lover, it’s just — obviously. “You haven’t got to let me down gently.” Which is, she thinks, what is happening, running face-first into both her unfamiliarity with how she feels about him and her pride; another thing she wants to have already gracefully understood, and not run after him to catch up.

It’d be more rewarding than hand sanitizer, though.

Edited 2021-07-10 03:19 (UTC)

Tony slides into personal space, which, even while a little drunk, he somehow manages to do like its easy. Joselyn, on her end of things, is free to feel differently, but they've been close like this before, at least. His hands curl around her elbows, holding her there, as he says,

"I promise if I let you down, it'll be cataclysmically devastating," dry and clearly joking without tipping into meanly sarcastic.

His hands squeeze, and he frowns. What to do. There is a lot of processing going on behind her absurdly beautiful face, he thinks, you can almost see the smoke rising.

"That's not what I'm doing. I'm just. Cards on the table, you know? I don't talk about that stuff and I think about it less and less, and then when I do, it's like it all happens at the same time. And you got enough problems without needing to handle mine."

Cataclysmically devastating is almost precisely what she's afraid of, although it seems very unlikely that anything could possibly end as bad as—

well.

“Here are my cards,” she says, finally, looking up at him with her mouth pursed to one side and a certain amount of comfort, all the same, with being so close. (It has just seemed perfectly reasonable that if he's got a chair she can sit on the arm of it. Ordinary behaviour. Probably. All right, maybe something else.) “I'm not trying to be difficult, there's just never been anything to talk about before so I've literally never done this, in all of my life. You're trying to get on the same page before I'd realized I was supposed to have opened the book. I'm not objecting to the book. I just didn't know what it was for.”

This metaphor is doing a lot of work.

"Good thing you're a nerd."

He's explained what that is. It's to do with being good at books, for sure.

The Circles really did a number on their wizards, huh. It's not a problem in and of itself, but it's easy to forget when Joselyn otherwise acts about as normal as every other neurotic weirdo that Tony has made friends with in his life and also literally never does magic. He thinks he has kissed women in even less appropriate moments, to variable success, but god, that hurdle got weird and steep pretty fast.

"To your credit," his hands come off her, now, tucking into his pockets, but still standing kind of close anyway, "I'm pretty sure this works out easier for most Thedas people, maybe even the ones that hook up with rifters. We could get some tips from Val but then we'd have to, like, talk to him. Or Gwennifer, but, same thing."

“I like de Fonce,” is automatic and probably just means he's really nailing it with that nerd thing, which is also the only context in which she's ever actually interacted with the man. Because she does consider, a moment later, “Maybe that's not specifically what I'd want his advice in.”

Rifted animal husbandry, maybe. Actual rifter husbandry—maybe not.

He drops his hands; it seems natural to lift hers to his forearms, which also sort of has the side-effect of her shawl falling down, and snagging, and hanging off her hands.

She considers this for a bit longer.

“Want to hold hands?”

There's a twitch at Tony's mouth, for this first thing. Maybe a smile. You ~like de Fonce~. Okay, nerd.

But he doesn't follow that train of potential conversation, more interested in the possibilities being represented by her hands on his arms. It's a nice jacket, he's wearing. Invites touchiness with its lustrous red velvet. His hands are rougher, all work and old burns and little scars.

But that's what she asks for, and who is he to deny. "Okay," he says, and then turns out those hands for her to place hers in. And some other point of tension eases a little.

There are worse starts to something.

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[OPEN] FRIGHTENING FESTIVITIES

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