faderift | OPEN - Follow me home, if you dare to

It begins suddenly, and it’s just peculiar enough to capture a bit of attention.

Nothing earth shattering - just tiny kindnesses beginning to happen all over the Gallows. A person just thinking they are cold when a blanket or mug of something hot miraculously appears within their reach. A bandage applied to a training wound that stings just a little too much to ignore it...but who bandaged it, they were only there a moment ago? A rumble of the stomach, and then a little cloth parcel with some bread and cheese, sitting there waiting upon turning around.

Perhaps some of the more suspicious people among the number at the Gallows start to be nervous about it - harmless as it may seem, what if there is a demon toying with people? Whispers of possible entrapment, of people dismissing the whole thing...rumors, just being rumors.

In point of fact, though, the Gallows have a new presence haunting the halls - not a demon, no, but not a human, either. Something else. SomeONE else.

You are the target of the newest kindness - but you catch the figure slipping up, letting himself be glimpsed, all gangly limbs and hat and filthy clothes. He hasn’t noticed that you have noticed him yet, drawn taught in a nearby corner, watching you with wary, wild eyes.

((Please feel free to decide what Cole brings your character - it would be something you need at the time, like a sandwich or a book.))

Being seen will help people be less nervous, right?

Cole feels uncomfortable, out in the open with all the curious eyes on him, but...it’s for the best. He’s standing on his own in the field, doing some exercises that he has watched others do - push ups, squats, drills with his daggers.

Anyone can tell the scrawny young man is going through the motions, the movements carried out well, but mechanically, stilted, done as anyone ELSE might do. He’s trying to fit in as best he can, trying to tune out the torrent of terror, of trouble, of tacit distrust. At the least, there is talent there when he is not mirroring the moves, when he lets himself be himself.

He drills a combat roll, neatly coming down over his shoulder, but his hat does not come with him.

It lands at your feet.

The markets in Lowtown are a common haunt for the wandering Spirit - and have been for some time. Lots of hurt here, lots of people who need coin, need help, need protection. Now that he’s known by Riftwatch, it’s a little different - he knows he can’t be stealing from stalls to serve solace to a sore stomach or surly supplicant. He has to do things Right, do them well, do them so no one gets in trouble and he can show he can be trusted.

But...that beggar is so hungry.

And that apple is right there. They need it. He knows. They won’t live much longer if he doesn’t help.

Cole weighs it in his head...and then, frowning, lets himself disappear into the crowd. Perhaps you’re watching, and you see it - a young blonde man with a downcast gaze, suddenly vanishing from sight, then appearing again ten feet away, clutching an apple to his chest with no idea that you saw what he had done.

He would pay the merchant back later, he thinks to himself.

But you see this now, and you see him headed toward the beggar, who can’t seem to see him coming….

One of the things that Gwenaëlle had found a mercy, when she had first begun to train where anyone besides (fucking) Coupe could see her—

strange things and strange people have now been coming through the rifts for a long time. Many of them have fought alongside the Inquisition and Riftwatch, some of them for years at a time, and the truth is if familiarity hasn't bred contempt (—which she'd debate, but it's not as much fun now when she isn't sure any more what will sincerely set Astarion off) then it has bred complacency. The strange has become familiar. Different sorts of magic, different sorts of people, different levels of capability,

all this to say, minding one's own business isn't as hard as it once was. Years ago now Gwenaëlle had feared being thought less beautiful for her scars, and then later feared being thought foolish for trying to be more than only beautiful, and in both cases, mostly no one gives a shit. Most of the things she was afraid of were in her head. It's a strange sort of comfort, but it's not insignificant.

So the hat is the first thing she notices, lowering her bow from target practise and looking down at it come to a stop near her. She squints at it, and then at the head it definitely came off to judge by that hair, and says, “Do you want me to sew a ribbon into that?”

In spite of the entire point of this exercise - not the actual exercise, the being seen - Cole starts a little when he is directly addressed. He stands frozen there for a moment, eyes wide, hands wringing at the hem of his leather tunic.

"...A...ribbon?"

He furrows his brow, tilting his head, puzzled. "What would a ribbon do?"

The spirit has seen this woman around here, has watched her train - and in fact, remembers her vaguely from some time ago. But he's never actually TALKED to her, and his voice comes out in a nervous rasp.

There's a pause, but when it becomes apparent that he isn't—doing a bit, or something, and that the question is in earnest, Gwenaëlle wordlessly mimes tying a ribbon beneath her chin, and raises her eyebrows meaningfully. Keep it on your goddamn head, for a start, her face seems to say. It's not unfriendly—it's tricky to offer to help someone in an unfriendly way—but it's not difficult to see where what she thinks she's communicating and how it actually lands are often miles apart from each other.

“Might help,” is dry. She toes her boot (thigh high, so dark a green as to be nearly black, blending in with her trousers and the vest she's wearing over her lighter-weight blouse) beneath the edge of the hat and gives it a bounce, snagging it from the air to waggle meaningfully.

It takes Cole a minute.

It isn't that he's unintelligent - quite the contrary, he understands more than most - but the idea of anyone helping HIM is just so alien that he has to take a moment to understand what she's offering. When he does, his lips part in a surprised "Oh!"

Coming a little closer, he nods when she waggles the hat. The dryness doesn't even hit him. She's already being kinder than most, anyway.

"...That's a good idea," he agrees, brain working overtime to try to figure out what to say. "I would - I would thank you, for that."

“All right,” she says, and then— “it's in your way, anyway, but I'm not doing backflips presently,”

which is within spitting distance of being an explanation for Gwenaëlle promptly dropping his hat on her own head (it's for safekeeping) (which doesn't really make it not sort of rude when they haven't even introduced themselves), and says, “Let me know when you're done, then, I'm going to finish these groupings first.”

Not presently; while mostly she uses the training yard for her bow (a strange, twisted-wood and enchantment Avvar thing, with no discernible bow-strings except for the jolt of frost magic when she nocks an arrow to where they ought to be), there are knives at her hips and her thighs and a sword-belt unbuckled and resting with her coat (identifiable now by its similarity to the rest of her outfit, best described as what if Flint was a tiny lady) and presumably, somewhere else, she keeps a hand in with those.

Probably with backflips, too.

Well, that's - he hadn't been expecting her to wear his hat. It's grimy, it smells of his sweat and it's never been cleaned beyond being caught in the rain...but she wants to help him with it. That thought sticks with him, really.

Someone wants to help HIM.

Instead of going back to training, he watches her for a moment, tilting his ratty blonde head to one side. She's very good at this, he thinks, and he can see the knives, too. A talented fighter, definitely.

Unfortunately, he has forgotten that he can be seen staring.

“If you're already finished,”

Gwenaëlle doesn't actually turn her head; a woman raised in the imperial court doesn't need to look to know when someone's watching her, even a woman as ill-suited to that world as this one.

“There's T-R-E-A-T-S for Hardie in my coat pocket and I'll only be a little bit longer.”

This is an extremely clever way of avoiding saying treats, in case it turns out Cole would prefer to just stand there staring at her rather than give a dog a treat, but almost immediately after the arrow thuds into the target she wrinkles her nose and looks at him. Shit. Can he read.

“Treats. And I've said it, now, so you've got to do it.”

Hardie is an incredibly well-trained dog; when he lumbers to his feet at the magic word, he does not rush either of them. He will wait, patiently, to be given treats and given permission to eat them. But only some kind of monster could look into those eyes and keep him waiting.

She's right to question his understanding - Cole CAN read, but not well, and his lips are moving as he tries to make sense of what she was trying to tell him when she simply says it. He blinks at her, then at Hardie.

Then, knowing what the dog wants, he of course complies, slipping a deft hand into the coat pocket to fetch a couple of treats for him.

He drops into a crouch, holding his hand out oh-so-gently to the pup. Animals are fine, he thinks. Animals can feel that he wants them happy, wants to help. He likes dogs. A tiny smile tugs at the corners of his lips.

When Cole crouches down he and Hardie become, at a glance, roughly the same size; his hand vanishes underneath the enormous ducked head of a dog who is nevertheless very considerate about not also eating his hand into the bargain. Under the circumstances (—all the knives, as well as the unusually strong anchor-shard gleaming sickly green in her left hand), he doesn't get to do as much guarding as he thinks he does,

(he does a lot of herding, though; he's nearly bigger than his mistress, it's not much of a stretch to say that he's right in thinking he's in charge of walking)

but he is an ideal animal for it. The reserve he has mirrors Gwenaëlle, in a way; he noses to get Cole's scent, but he doesn't gregariously engage him the way a dog meant only to be a pet might, even as he relaxes in the face of trustworthy energy. She isn't unfriendly so neither is he—she hasn't warmed either, precisely, so neither does he. If he has a placid steadiness that she lacks, well. There are a lot of reasons to give a girl a dog.

Gwenaëlle tips the hat backwards, once she's done—

“Hup, you both.”

Mado doesn't sneak up on people, as a rule-- for one thing, he's wearing bright colors most of the time, and for the other, it just seems rude. But he does notice the ragged-looking little fellow sitting there all curled in a corner, and simply goes to sit next to him with a cheerful little smile of greeting.

"Thank you for the beef bone," he says, with total sincerity.

Cole may recall having snuck a bone to a skinny little dog earlier in the day, who had been sunning himself in the courtyard and watching people go by.

What a good dog, Cole thinks to himself as he patiently remains there while Hardie eats the treats. There's a simplicity to dogs, after all, that's a different kind of honesty. He reaches out with his free hand to offer a couple of pets, not pushing past the animal's chosen boundaries.

But as soon as he is addressed again, he pulls back gently, drawing himself back to his feet.

Animals are simpler, and so it's with a little more nervousness that he turns back towards Gwen. He doesn't really know what to say, exactly, where to begin. "I'm Cole," he finally offers, his voice small.

Being approached sends a little thrill of panic through the strange boy for just a moment - but it subsides quickly as he just listens, tilting his head as he considers the person in front of him.

"You were the dog." It's not a question - the feel is the same, even if the form isn't. He blinks owlishly, still all curled in upon himself. He doesn't really question the fact that this man can change himself like that...after all, he wasn't always Cole, was he?

"You were hungry. You needed it."

When you're not used to being thanked, it can be hard to remember to say someone is welcome.

Lowtown is a hodgepodge of all the best and worst of society, filled now with refugees and people struggling to make ends meet. It's also a good place to disappear, and even if Ellie has been avoiding it lately, there are people here she appreciates, and she's on her way back from visiting one of them.

The local thugs have learned by now to stay well clear of her, and so have the pickpocketing urchins for the most part -- all she has is junk and pocket change.

She sees it only by chance. A young man in tattered clothes, first in front of a merchant's stall, and then suddenly gone. He pops back into sight near Ellie, who stops in place, openly staring. Someone behind her nearly runs into her, curses and keeps moving.

... Ellie glances around, but she's the only one who seemed to notice. She steps to one side, nearer a brick wall and out of the walkway, and watches as the beggar seems to look right through the young man.

She steps closer, amazed, realizing all of a sudden that this must be what other people feel when they see her blink out of sight. Except... she seems to be the only one who sees him at all.

A chill creeps down her spine, a thrill of curiosity and the unknown, something exciting.

Unfortunately, she knows better than to trust, so she watches. For now.

Oblivious to the fact that he's been spotted, the strange young man walks right up to that beggar, gently reaching down to place the apple in front of him with a couple of coins from his pocket. The beggar blinks at it as suddenly it's tangible in front of him, and then, briefly, looks up at his benefactor.

Cole just shakes his head a little, not even saying anything, and walks a few feet away.

The beggar looks down to the apple to start eating it, pauses, and then looks around as if confused where it had come from. The gaunt figure in the hat nods to himself, satisfied with this. He has been forgotten, and the man has been fed. It is a good day.

"What the fuck?" Kostos asks as he stands from his desk and turns toward the room's dark corner and the young man tucked into it. His mysterious act of kindness—a book, a very specific book, right when he was cursing the inevitability of having to go down to the library and search for it in the poorly-tended stacks before he could finish his work—is brandished in one hand.

Kostos' gaze is unsubtle in its searching. A rapid journey from head to toe, and especially down both arms, in case there's an anchor. He doesn't find one.

Not a rifter from a world with no doors who needs to be told to knock. Demon, some of the Gallows staff have been muttering lately. He doesn't look like one. He doesn't feel like one.

So the question stands. What the fuck.

The very moment Cole realizes he is being sized up, he completely freezes - eyes widening, shoulders going taut with tension and terror. No anchor, no sign of being a Rifter, just a gangly, pale young man in worn leathers who looks as though he hasn't slept in weeks.

Meanwhile, Cole is inspecting this man for a very different reason, a song about him, something familiar that stings his own heart a little. He misses someone. It makes him a little sad.

"...You needed that," he finally offers, in a low, small voice, as if it were simple.

Ellie watches quietly, confused again. It's not just the invisibility. Even though the beggar saw him, saw the apple and the change, started eating it, and then...

Something bigger is happening here, but she can't quite put her finger on it. It's like looking at this boy makes people confused, or they...

Forget?

This isn't how Ellie's used to magic working -- and she doesn't question why it's not, apparently, working on her. Not yet. She's used to being the exception to the rule. (Infected but immune, hunted but survived-) And who knows, maybe the god-shards in her are the reason. Or the anchor. Who fucking knows.

But more than that... much more than that, she can think of a million fucking ways to use that power that wouldn't involve doing something kind for someone vulnerable.

And here this guy is, doing the last thing most people would.

It's not a question. Ellie follows the boy through the crowd, dodging shoulders until she manages to catch up, keeping her eyes trained on him, making sure she doesn't lose track of him.

She draws up next to him, keeping pace, hands tucked under her cloak.

"... that was a nice thing to do."

"Yes," Mado answers easily, not one to play games, "it was very kind of you."

He angles his head to look the boy over, just out of the corner of his eye; there's something strange about this one, more apparent to his canine nose than his human one. Rifters have their own ozone scent, but this doesn't... feel the same.

"Are you of this world?" It's a fair enough question, in these times.

Edited 2021-09-04 04:27 (UTC)

There is no Anchor to mark this grayed-out young man as a Rifter - he looks unassuming enough, besides the fact that he's so thin, so pale, moving around just fine in spite of looking one more night of no sleep away from death.

Cole contemplates the question, trying to listen to Mado, determine how best to broach the topic. Spirits scare most, but there is...something about this one that makes the forgotten boy believe he may be a little different.

"No," he admits, turning his head to face the other man. "And yes. I...I fell from the Fade. Not from one of the other Rifts."

"From the Fade!"

Just about as uneducated as a mage can get, Mado still knows what that is, and takes a moment to marvel at it.

"Not a mage, then?" he says with an easy smile, curious-- one gets the impression he wouldn't be offended if told to mind his own business. "Are you a spirit?"

Oh. Well, Cole was right about the reaction being different. He doesn't seem frightened at all, mostly just...curious.

"No, not a mage." Not a mage. The real Cole was, once. He shifts his weight down from the crouch, crumpling into a sitting position instead with his knobby knees tucked up to his chest. He's pretty flexible.

"...Yes. I am."

Mirroring Cole's posture, Mado rests his chin on his knees, arms wrapped around them comfortably.

"You must be a good spirit, then," he observes gently, "the kind that sees the hungry and feeds them."

He thinks a moment, eyes going distant as he falls silent, the sounds of the day passing by both of them unceasing.
"What's your name?"

OPEN - Follow me home, if you dare to

Around the Gallows

Training

Lowtown

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