[open]

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria & YOU
WHAT: Anchor-related adventures and/or drama in fantasy September.
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Some anchor and rift-related peril; open stuff is in the comments, but may use this as a catch-all. If an open prompt doesn't suit you, feel free to wildcard me or hit me up and I can write something bespoke. Prose or brackets is a-okay.

Comments

CAMPING. (open, feel free to handwave presence for rift-based action if you'd rather skip to this)

[heirring]

In the aftermath of the assault on the quarry and given the successful closure of the rift, the party has fled an hour south in an effort to put some distance between themselves and the site of the skirmish before making camp in a dense copse of trees high over a riverbed. The cook fire is little more than embers and ashes. Tent canvas has been shielded with boughs of end of summer tree limbs and even the horses have been picketed at a distance so that any would-be assault on the animals might serve as a preparatory warning rather than a too-late signal to arms.

If Wysteria's tendency toward unrestrained chatter might typically be an imposition under such purposefully covert circumstances, there is little chance of her incessant conversation betraying them now. Burning with fever, she has been tucked up inside one of the tents where she alternates between shockingly lucid and startlingly muddled.

slides this across the table before i dip out

[heorte]

And Ellis is on hand.

On hand between the spans of time where he is well and truly required elsewhere, though he has capitulated to those duties with quiet reluctance. The pinch of worry has not left his face. If anything, that it is reduced to a pinch is some improvement over the entirety of their flight from said skirmish.

There is a singed book open across his thigh, but he's diverted from the reading to look at Wysteria and her flushed face, her obvious misery.

"Keep the cloth across your forehead," is spoken very quietly, instruction that precedes Ellis reaching over to her to readjust said cloth for her.

[heirring]

"It is in place already," is her bland protest, her right hand sluggishly chasing his as if she has thought to rob him of the opportunity to make the requisite adjustments and has only moved three or four beats too late to actually accomplish the thing. When she finds his knuckles in the way, she lowers her hand back down with a flicker of exasperation.

It had been fine where it was. There was something soothing about the cool touch of the thing at the top of her head where she can feel the sweat prickling amidst her hair. It would be preferable, she thinks, if by wrapping it about her left hand they might relieve some of the heat from it too. But surely they have tried that. Or, more rationally, if Adrasteia's magic had been of so little effect to it then what could a damp cloth possibly accomplish?

"Why have you stopped reading? At this rate, we will never be through it."

(It would be something to squeeze her fist around at least. The cloth would be.)

[heorte]

"We have time," Ellis tells her, a statement which is true to a degree. There is no specific sense of when they'll be able to travel safely. And so it is fortunate he'd brought something long and so far, satisfactory as a distraction.

He turns the cloth over on her forehead, tipping it back slightly in concession to the clumsy trajectory of Wysteria's fingers.. His thumb briefly smooths along her brow.

And despite the implication in her question, Ellis still asks, "Is the pain any less?"

His voice is very steady, quiet over the words. What he wants to say is that she should drink some water, or tea, or eat even a single slice of bread to fortify herself for the trip back. But he stops over that one question, assessing before deciding whether to press her or go back to the book as prompted.

A fortunate thing: Ellis is well-practiced at suppressing worry, at being a steady, fixed point in the middle of any difficult situation.

[heirring]

In the morning, they will refresh the clay poultice which was slathered over the gash in her hand. She knows that because she recalls having a long conversation about it after attempting to unwind the bandage covering the paste because it had begun to itch on top of everything else. Which she is trying not to give too much thought, for she has only just put it out of her mind and if she thinks on it too much then the itch will return. It will be like when you see a spider in the grass and then every little tickle against the skin is perceived to come from eight legs—

Ellis has asked her a question.

"It is much improved. And this will pass also," is an absent, automatic answer.

Tomorrow she will be fit to ride, she thinks of saying. It is the missing reasonable connective tissue to, "I dislike that horse. I have been thinking of whether I might have one of my own rather than borrowing."

[heorte]

Will it pass?

Ellis doesn't know. There is no one to ask here, and perhaps no one to ask back at the Gallows. His thumb strokes once more along her forehead, thumb coming to rest at her temple, his attention held more by the blithe assertion of improvement than the possibility of the purchase of a new horse.

The missing link between her answer and her objection to the horse isn't questioned, but it wedges like a stone alongside all the worries he is careful to keep from his tone. At any other point Wysteria might have noticed, but he has an advantage in this.

"We can see about purchasing a horse," Ellis says, proposition taken in stride. "You'd have to stable whatever your new mount at the Gallows, unless we knock down the brick wall and expand into your neighbor's yard."

[heirring]

"I don't believe Madame Allard would take kindly to trespassing. She already takes such exception to the clucking. Poor Lady Shayna, unjustly demonized and simultaneously terrorized by the lady in question's cat. It must be a very hard life," she says, closing her eyes under the cool shape of his thumb. "To be a chicken."

No, she is already well sick of living adjacent to a barnyard. Madame Allard is. And perhaps, just a little, herself. It would not do to have chickens and a great dog and a horse on top of everything else. Riftwatch's stables would be a perfectly acceptable place to put such an animal—

She opens her eyes again and looks straight up at him, her attention an unsettling combination of too sharp and too disoriented.

"When we return to Kirkwall, you must meet Derangér. I have been forgetting to introduce you."

[heorte]

Ellis' answering aye is quiet, offered without expectation of response. Wysteria's eyes are closed and perhaps she will sleep; it would be for the best if she did, he thinks.

If the fever would just break—

The motion of his thumb doesn't falter when her eyes open. His expression doesn't waver either, patient attention set upon her face as she focuses on him. (Fear and worry is contained in the furrow of his brow; the tender edge of something at the corners of his expression is likely easily missed.) Some minor adjustment of the cloth occurs.

"Who is Derangér?" he asks, without any real expectation of a clear answer.

[heirring]

"She is my hired mercenary guard, acquired just before our departure. She has finally arrived from—oh, I'm not certain where he fetched her from, actually. Orlais is my assumption. That's the language she knows best."

Assis. Reste. Ici. Au pied, and so on.

"I suspect you will like her."

This, quite confidently.

place your bets on how many tags until ellis realizes it's a dog

[heorte]

Gently, Ellis' fingers guide a few stray locks of hair back from her forehead. There would be a who fetched her? if Ellis wasn't so certain the culprit were Val. After all, who else would choose Orlais to seek a bodyguard? Who else would be seeking a bodyguard for Wysteria at all?

"Maybe," is less non-committal than it would be, prior to having acquired something very close to friendship with Bastien. His fingers return to their ministrations.

"Why didn't you bring her along with you?"

Surely this is the real point of contention: that this Orlesian guard had opted to remain somewhere in Kirkwall rather than accompany Wysteria on this venture.

Lets see how long i can keep up this ruse

[heirring]

Her eyes remain on him from under the line of his hand and wrist, peering free of the shadow cast by them and the edge of the cloth draped across her forehead. Watching him, some absent flicker of—it isn't concern or fear, really. Perhaps trepidation is the best phrase for it. So it's only the palest glint of uneasiness which briefly rises, only to be smoothed away and forgotten as he reorders the loose strands of her hair.

"Oh, she has been charged with minding the house while we're away. With the second cellar being dug, I shouldn't care to have no one in attendance there while de Foncé's contractors work."

This is all perfectly rational, Ellis.

[heorte]

The second cellar. Ellis' expression ticks towards amused and exasperated both. One misstep had been enough to put him off, or perhaps it was the minor dust up over the ventilation. Either way, Ellis seems to find this answer unsatisfactory.

"The ghost minds the house," is a mild objection, for he doesn't intend to argue with her in this state.

The cloth is tipped slightly farther back along her forehead, edge folded to spare the errant drips of water from running into her eyes. His hand passes back over her hair again.

However, it is difficult to be charitable, considering their present circumstances.

"You might advise her to consider her priorities when we return."

Logically, some of this may not be the woman's fault. How many times has Wysteria described an experiment to Ellis in the most benign terms, only to set the kitchen table on fire shortly thereafter?

[heirring]

Something in it makes her laugh. It's a tired Ha that is louder than it ought to be and descends into a wheezing twittering before she covers her mouth with her free hand. They are meant to be quiet lest some Venatori find and catch them.

"Yes," she says after a moment. The word passes softly between her fingers. "I will consult with her on the subject directly. Though I can't be too harsh with her. She and de Foncé are already the best of friends, and he will be furious if he hears I've been sharp with her. It wouldn't surprise me if he preferred her company to mine."

[acreage]

"I brought you some water."

He says by way of announcing himself, as he lets himself in. He's careful to pull the canvas closed completely, offer Wysteria what protection from the elements they can afford her out here.

It's not enough.

But nothing is going to be until they can get her back to the Gallows. He doesn't dwell on the fact that he doesn't know what they'll be able to do for her there; he can't help thinking that the person he'd normally ask that question would be Wysteria. Instead, he focuses on what he can do — which is drawing closer, right now, sitting near her cot and looking for her response. There's a flask in his hand, and he uses the other to open it so that he can bring it to her mouth if she so desires.

[heirring]

Bundled under a veritable coat closet's worth of cloaks and blankets—whatever could be spared from their company's persons or from the horse's tack—she is startlingly pale and kitten weak about the arduous task of freeing an arm (her right one; the one which doesn't currently feel like it's being slowly chewed to pieces). But despite the fever sheen about her person, there is something quite alert in Wysteria's attention when she finds him in the blue shadows of the tent.

"I would prefer you to bring me my traveling case. It is just there near my feet." She makes a small motion toward the end of the cot, shifting her shoulders about her in some vague effort to sit higher in the make-do bed. "My little writing desk is there and I have a great deal of correspondence to attend to."

[acreage]

"Wysteria," is definitely some kind of admonishment.

If she wants to take the flask herself, he'll let her — but hover close, hands at the ready to help in case she needs it. In the meantime, he'll look somewhere between worried and disapproving, glancing towards her case with a frown.

"What you need to be doing is resting."

[heirring]

"I am resting. Here you see me, lying in state in the dark."

She is indeed capable of taking the flask, though getting it as far as her lips to drink from is a bridge slightly too far and requires some gentle guidance from his hovering presence. But after she has had her little sip of bracingly cold water and has managed not to spill it all over herself, she is quite insistent.

"It will hardly take so much effort, Mister Holden," she says, her voice pitched to a hiss for she has gathered they are meant to be quiet. "And I'm only a little ill. And if you like, I will even dictate my responses and you may write them down on my behalf."

[acreage]

There's no reassurance to her glibness —

well. There's some reassurance to her glibness. If she's well enough to gently mock his concern, to demand she be allowed to do her work, to give him things to do,

he can, actually, imagine that she'd be doing so no matter how awful she's feeling. But he takes comfort in it now despite that, because he'll be best useful to her if he does. So he takes back the flask after she's had her drink, sets it down nearby close to hand, and considers her traveling case.

There's a real danger, probably, to her trying to get it herself if he doesn't. And it has to be miserable to lay there, sick and cold, with nothing to distract her. So he sighs acquiescence and goes to get it, sets it nearer his own feet and opens it up.

"I'll read them to you, too."

Read, then write her responses: he can be her eyes and her hands, if it helps her rest.

[heirring]

"Very well. But I warn you that the bulk of them are quite boring and not at all salacious and there will be very little for you to gossip about, should that be your motivation for wishing to read my private letters."

Ha ha ha. James Holden, a gossip. Imagine.

She squirms a little lower under great arrangement of items piled on top of her. If she is going to have to lie here as he reads to her, she may as well be comfortable.

Indeed, the letters are a strange combination of technical and conversation and they range from a number of locations on the globe. It seems that over the course of her travels—which have, in the last years, been rather considerable—that Wysteria has contrived to make and keep a friend or two here and there. There is a brusquely worded but not dismissive letter from a blacksmith and enchanter in Orzammar and long great treatise from a scholar in Markham by the name of Brown with whom Wysteria is evidently quite familiar if the contents of the letter (equal parts mathematical engineering and Markham University gossip) are any indication; and so on and so forth.

[acreage]

"You caught me," he says dryly, pulling out her letters, preparing writing implements. "Having nothing to gossip about keeps me up at night."

The real reason he's an insomniac, revealed! But he dutifully puts himself to reading her these letters and making notes of her responses; though he struggles with the more technical terms at times, needing some help so he doesn't completely mangle them, probably needing to repeat a few for her more than once, till she understands what he's trying to read.

At some point, he'll say, faintly impressed,

"I didn't know you knew so many people around Thedas."

[heirring]

"Well it's hardly as if I go about hither and tither without speaking to anyone. You should do your best to keep up your correspondence, Mister Holden. One never knows when someone might do you a good turn. —Or might do the war effort some good, I suppose."

Perhaps this seems silly from beneath her great mountain of blankets. It certainly feels silly to say so, particularly after she has coached him through one or two tricky bits of jargon.

"Mister Brown was one of the very first people I met in Thedas. I attended a conference with—" Here, she pauses, lapsing into a remarkable full beat of silence. "Oh, it will sound very strange to say but at the time he was only as anyone else in the Inquisition might be. You recalled the name 'Solas' from our shared dream, of course."

[acreage]

It's good advice, but he offers, "I'm not sure I'm as personable as you are."

Maybe surprisingly, there's no sarcasm to it. Who wouldn't love Wysteria de Foncé née Poppell, asks one James Holden. But the pause is enough to have him look up, first for fear of her condition, and then curiosity.

"Solas," he says slowly. He does remember, but more from conversation later than much experience with that particular dream. "The one who wanted to destroy the Veil? He was in the Inquisition?"

[heirring]

"That's right."

Maybe it is the fever or the ache in her fingertips or the heat under the blankets or the strange unreal quality of all of these things in combinations while residing in a tent at the side of the road, but it seems very strange to say. Odd. As if it doesn't fully join together.

"I suppose there was no way for us to have known. He was—well, not personable exactly. But not everyone must be. Imagine if we used that to disqualify someone from Riftwatch."

[acreage]

"We'd barely have anyone left," he agrees, but somewhat absently.

— because no fucking wonder the Herald had thought it important to warn them, specifically, of Solas. No wonder it'd come as such a terrible surprise to some of them. Jesus Christ.

"How did he leave?"

He's certainly not here amongst Riftwatch, at any rate.

[heirring]

Here, a pause as she considers the question. It's a relatively brief combing of the memory, though; perhaps if she weren't currently feverish or in prickling pain, there would be no need for it at all.

"Truthfully, I hardly recall."

Perhaps his departure was all very clandestine, but she doubts it. Solas would have hardly been the first person to leave Riftwatch, particularly in those days. For it had happened not so long after dividing from the Inquisition, had it not?

"You might ask the Provost—Mister Baudin, I mean. Solas was a member of Research while he still oversaw the division."