faderift | 01 - OPEN: while we keep moving forwards

WHO: Sylvie Laufeydottir and You!
WHAT: An open Log for misc encounters and fun
WHEN: Late Guardian through Drakonis
WHERE: The Gallows and Kirkwall
NOTES: All are welcome, if you don't see a prompt that suits your fancy but still want CR, hit me up on plurk or discord (uccellino or aviculae#4520).

📍 Location: The Library

There’s few places that Sylvie feels at home at like a library. Generally in the apocalyptic events she spent time in, these buildings were not heavily occupied. Everyone was too busy living the end of their lives, or trying to run from it, to settle down in a sea of books and papers and just enjoy the magic of other worlds, untouched by reality, for a moment.

All the better for her really.

The riftwatch library isn’t quite like Alexandria, or even that small store she had found in Georgia in 2082, right before the tornado came through and gobbled it up, but it was still close enough to that comforting feeling of peace that she finds herself spending a gratuitous amount of time in there.

There’s so much to learn about this world, and there’s hardly time in her now short human life to absorb all the knowledge that the natives here just take for granted. Lyrium and Dragons and Elves and the Qunari. Dwarves and Inquisitions and war, war, war, and war. Those books are interesting, necessary reads that make her eyes go crossed sometimes with the different terms and titles and words that are just assumed common knowledge but are totally missing any context in her mind.

The books she likes the most of course though, are the few books on magic. Magic and the very meager technology that exists in this world, the spirts and all to do with the Fade. The thing that she can now at least touch with consistency, if not completely grasp: tethered by the space she and Loki have created within it to draw from.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, held together by the memories of a library.

That is where she is now, half sprawled, half curled up, across two chairs on a table in a back corner near a window, the sun setting outside and giving more need to the flickering candles she has precariously set around several very old looking books. In one hand she reads a thick tomb with hard to make out lettering on the front in this lighting, lips moving along with the steady tracking of her eyes. After a moment she goes a bit more still, lifting her hand and focusing until a little flash of green lights up the shadowed corner, one of the candles wobbling and then falling forward.

“Shit!” It’s said loud enough to echo, and most likely disturb anyone nearby—and if it doesn’t her clattering chairs back to slap her hands over the small flames and hot wax she’s now spilt all over her notes certainly will.

Oops.

📍 Location: Training Grounds

With the bitter weather in Kirkwall, made only worse by being on an island, Sylvie finds that training in the smaller indoor arena a little more tolerable. Honestly, training in the traditional sense really isn’t something she’s had to do; the world she lived in for the last millennia gave her plenty of exercise and kept her lean—all densely packed muscle made for running and survival. But this was another world, and this was another body; sadly human and in need of constant maintenance. It helps that there’s simply so much time for her to let her mind wander here, no death and deadlines warring for attention, so what better use than to burn her body into submission to help calm her constant need for motion.

It's almost comical how frustrating this almost-retirement was.

Unlike her variant, Sylvie is up early and already sweating, having peeled off the gratuitous layers of wool and leather used when running the island earlier and now down to loose under layers, all black and long sleeved, pushed up to her elbows as she spins the sword in her hand at the wrist, grinning. It may be wooden, but it’s still a bit deadly looking just by the smile on her face when she points it at the passerby. Honestly, haranguing someone into sparring in the mornings has become a fun little challenge.

“You know,” She starts, voice echoing a bit in the room as she calls out, “Practice is a lot more effective, and a lot more fun, with a partner. Care to join me?”

📍 Location: Communal Baths

Shy isn't a word that Sylvie would use to describe herself, however the communal baths usually aren't something she particularly cares to spend time in. It's simpler to go by when the water is not heated and clean herself quickly, or visit Loki and annoy him for the use of his overly perfumed and lovely bathroom; but this body of hers is not tolerant of this cold that seeps in through the walls and chills her bones. It would figure that of the things she'd lose when coming here, it'd be her resistance to cold. Right now, all cares about is returning feeling to her extremities. The baths are already occupied when she arrives, steam pleasant on her face as the door opens and shuts behind her,she sighs into the feeling.

"Thank god." Sparing no time, she starts to strip even as the words are starting to leave her mouth. "Here I thought I'd have to wait for it to warm up."

📍 Location: Scouting Office

If one was to assure her that her reward for freeing the multiverse from a megalomaniac dictator from beyond time and space would be having to do daily paperwork, Sylvie probably would have laughed in their face; but that is where she is now isn’t it? A reward for hard work and pain and blood, sweat, tears, and abandoning everything important to her on the way. Paperwork. The most boring paperwork one could ask for. Who cares about what time she completed some dumb form or arrived in to work or dragged her ass across Kirkwall to deliver some letter—she needed the internet. Something. There were far more effective ways of doing what they were doing without the use of quills.

There’s a heaved breath and a deep groan from her desk as she stretches out over it, forehead thumping into the papers a moment before she shifts so her chin is squashed up against a notebook, blowing hair out of her face. No, she couldn’t keep this up today. She needed an outing.

The workroom is only partially staffed right now, but there’s enough people there to weigh who might be the most willing to go along with her plans as she lets her body weight, precariously balanced now, push her chair out from under her. Rather than fall when it slips free from her weight though, she rocks herself to her feet with purpose, grabbing a letter from the box on the edge of her desk as she moves towards her victim with purpose.

“Hey.” It’s said as she sits on the edge of the desk, flipping the letter in one hand to bring attention to it. “Let’s go on a trip.”

📍 Location: Research Office

It would have been easy enough to just leave the paperwork she needed to bring to research at the front desk and then be along her way, but it’s hard not to be curious when one is something of an inventor themselves innit?

It’s late in the day, mostly because Sylvie had preferred not to be at work really, but needing to get things done is still something that has to happen, even if it’s nearing sundown and hardly anyone is around. Blame it on a door not latching completely, or possibly a little bit of magic, but Sylvie finds herself quietly peering at the different things in the room as she approaches the last person in for the day, their back to her.

“What are you working on?” It’s asked after a bit of quiet observing, and Sylvie is careful not to be standing too close lest her breaking the silence startles them.

📍 Location: Diplomacy Office

Delivering things to Diplomacy was another matter. Knowing that that person worked over here left a sour taste in her mouth, and she’s been avoiding the area for pretty much the whole time she’s been in the gallows—no it’s not because she’s afraid. It’s because she knows she probably can’t keep her mouth shut if she ends up having to run into him. Astarion had given her good advice, and she’s trying very hard to listen.

“Hello-” There’s a bit of a bright spot, it looks as though the boss isn’t in, but his secretary is sitting neatly where he belongs. It’s tempting, just oh so tempting, to play a little mischief if she can get inside that office and out without too much suspicion. Mess with his chair, or unorganized all Byerly’s files—oh that would just be perfect wouldn’t it. As such she approaches with a bit more pleasant a smile. “I have something for Monsieur Byerly. You look like the person to talk to.”

📍 Location: Kirkwall

It’s not that she hates living in the Gallows—ok no. She does hate it. It’s the lack of privacy over anything else, the inability to have a space to herself. Everything here is communal, communal living, sleeping, bathing, shitting. The whole lot; and she’s just incredibly tired of it.

Sylvie might not have much experience in saving and spending and the nonstop work of supporting herself in a monetary fashion, but she’ll learn if it means having her own space. And that is something she desperately needs, even if she won’t accept Loki’s help for it. The little notched apartment built into an attic space was enough for her, even more so that she can see the sky from here, and the less than stellar landscape of lowtown beneath her. She’ll take all the ridiculous stairs for that.

There’s not much to the place, just beams and a thin bed, a mattress like sitting area in one corner and a slightly wobbly table, but for now it’s hers. If you’re a friend, or close enough to it, you’re welcome to visit. If not, she can also be found wandering Kirkwall, and it’s bars at night.

📍 Location: CYOA!

Feel free to ping me for a new prompt, or to modify a prompt a bit for our use, or to assume that it’s a similar situation on a different day for another thread. I’m happy to chat and make something up fresh!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Hey."

Even if Sylvie's path hasn't brought her across Cosima yet, the woman whose head pokes around the nearest bookcase isn't hard to clock as a rifter. While her clothes are mostly Thedosian, her glasses frames are clearly plastic, and a few trips to Midgard in the right century or so would make Doc Martens easy enough to identify.

"You OK?" Her tone suggests concern rather than irritation at being disturbed. Seeing that Sylvie doesn't seem immediately injured, she ventures to add, "Sounds like either a wild discovery or a chair tilted too far back. I've done both, so, you know."