[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

[nonvenomous]

He glances to her while she speaks, empathizes with the tilt and pinch of his brows, agrees with a low mm on the subject of winter confinement and so on. Engaged, until he peels to uncover the gash in her hand, the ashy pallor of her fingertips. He swallows more tightly then, breath locked out for a long moment, lungs stoppered, cloying sickly warm behind his ribs. The line of infection, dead or dying tissue. Rot.

Pause, reset, resume. He breathes in, short and sharp to disturb the drift of her smoke.

“What was different?”

The dried poultice should go; he wets and squeezes the rag one-handed, strangling herb-sudsy water grey back into its basin.

“About that rift,” is a necessary clarification, probably, given the prelude. “Do you remember anything?”

[heirring]

"This last one? Oh nothing at all. I have the measurements—well, they're in my field kit, which is in my room. But it was all highly regular according to the thaumoscope's measurements. We encountered Venatori there, but that might be for a dozen reasons."

There are young ladies (and no doubt many other sorts of people) who would at this point avoid examining the dreaded part of themselves in full daylight. —Full-ish daylight. Wysteria, with the snub of the joint between her fingers, sits up by the uncomfortable half degree necessary to do so. She turns her wrist faintly in an effort to track the extent of the infection along the length of her forearm. She'd not been able to convince either the doctor or Brother Gideon to let her have a very good look at it.

[nonvenomous]

There’s an abortive micromovement to the way he turns slightly more towards her, as if it’s crossed his mind to stop her from sitting, from taking a closer look. He just never quite follows through to reach for her, the rag in his fist pitter-pattering runoff to the floor, impotent between her and the rarmod of guilty tension that’s keeping his back exceptionally straight.

Instead, after a moment of review, he reaches to catch carefully under her elbow, lifting the hand and wrist into better light. He sneaks a wary glance across her to Ellis as he does so, measuring the depth of his slumber.

It is her arm.

“I’m referring to the rift beneath Kirkwall. You collapsed, after closing the seam yourself.”

[heirring]

"Oh, that."

It's an absent reply, her focus briefly held by the shape of the limb raised up where she might easily observe it. It does look poorly, doesn't it? Something about the anchor lit pallor of the fingers, Wysteria thinks, is especially dreadful.

"The Fadeiation measurements were quite high, but that is to be expected. There must be a concentration of raw lyrium there. Which would follow, given the presence of the Deep Road passage which the Carta told us of, and which Valentine and I mean to explore. No," she says, clumsily lowering her elbow so she might note whether it's at all involved with the inflamed flesh. "I suspect the rift had very little to do with it. Or at least, that it would be impossible to isolate the blame to that specific instance. It's far more likely that it has to do with repeated exposures. Madame de Cedoux, Madame Baudin, Monsieur Thranduil—I believe I've closed far more rifts than any of them. Will they remove the elbow, do you imagine?"

[nonvenomous]

He’ll see the arm laid back to rest once she’s satisfied her curiosity. The better to see to the poultice in earnest, his cloth applied wet to soften the crust. It will be easier then to lift and mop the remainder away.

Work work work work work work.

There’s plenty of room for an answer in a space that is instead filled by the wringing and rinsing of wet cloth. He's mum on the subject of exposure. Skeptical, perhaps. Thot gazes up at him, upside down and reversed, as if she’s also waiting for the answer to this latest question.

“If they must.”

[heirring]

It's difficult to say whether that answer, once it comes, satisfies or disappoints her. With her examination complete, Wysteria has allowed herself to ease back into the pillow—fitting shoulder and neck back around Thot's assortment of right angles as what remains of the clay poultice is mopped at. Her attention has wandered a little in the rhythmic quiet. To her other hand on the top of the blankets, and Ellis' sleeping form, and the door to the infirmary, and then back again.

She turns her face to Richard.

"What do you think we are? Rifters, I mean."

[nonvenomous]

The answer is briefly clear on his face, caught out by the unexpected pushpin of her turning to ask him. It catches behind his teeth, creases his brow with a wry indifference that makes him look older than he is. The nature of their existence here doesn’t matter.

Most of them will vanish and be forgotten, as dozens of their predecessors have.

It would be deeply insensitive of him to say so.

“In keeping with your theory, I believe we are collected from elsewhere in the Fade by a desperate entity searching for help in the war against the blight’s unmaking of this world.”

The time he takes to answer with his hands paused mid-scrub could be wholly attributed to careful thought. Both answers are true, and he’s comfortable enough in that to resume his work.

“We’re here to serve a purpose.”