[open] and when i wake up you'll be here

[laruetheday]

WHO: Clarisse
WHAT: Arrival + some quarantine stuff
WHEN: Now, ig
WHERE: Ferelden somewhere + the Gallows
NOTES: n/a

Arrival

Weird dreams are a near nightly thing for demigods, so Clarisse doesn't bat an eye when she finds herself waiting for the elevator at the top of the Empire State Building in her basketball uniform, other than to wonder what kind of weird symbolism it is and hope that it's not going to interfere with her midterms. Even when the doors open and she steps in and lands on nothing but empty air, she manages not to scream. It all happens too fast, anyway.

Clarisse only has time to think, oh shit, and then she hits the dirt hard. The breath gets punched out of her chest and she wheezes pitifully, wondering since when her dreams are realistic enough to hurt. She rolls onto her back, wipes at the dirt on her chin, and finds herself staring up at something she can't comprehend, much less identify. The air looks... torn open, and through the jagged green split, she can see patches of concrete and red rocks.

The view is interrupted by something moving—something humanoid but elongated, with a grin that spreads too far in each direction. That's comprehendible. She's not sure what she's looking at, specifically, but she knows bad news when she sees it. Clarisse pushes off the ground at a run, angling herself away from the whatever-the-fuck-that-thing-is and trying to put some distance between her and it.

Quarantine - Dining Hall

At least the food here looks... pretty normal. She should be thankful for that.

Clarisse is in the dining hall, sitting straight backed and uncomfortable and pushing a piece of beef (probably?) around with a fork. She looks a little bit miserable, but what else is new? Push, push, push. The fork never seems to actually make it to her mouth.

Finally, she can't stand it anymore, and says to whoever's nearby: "Is there a place around here I can make an offering?"

Quarantine - Training Yard

Maybe she'd been slacking off on training a little bit, before she'd fallen out of the fucking sky, but that's over. If anything, the practice gives Clarisse a sense of familiarity, even while she's stuck in a place that's the complete opposite. She knows the moves. She's done them almost every day, for years. Doesn't matter where she is.

For anyone who happens to walk by and see her, it's clear that Clarisse is no beginner with the spear. She handles it with practiced ease, and it seems like she'd have no problem showing anybody else what it's like to be on the other end of Maimer's barbed tip. But when she does notice somebody watching, Clarisse only gives them a terse nod.

"You waiting for the space?"

Comments

[laruetheday]

Back at home, Clarisse had never needed to know how to respond to somebody asking her to sit with them for dinner. It had genuinely never been an issue, and in fact there was a pretty strict rule against sitting at any of the other tables, so she sat in the same spot with the same people for years. All this to say that when Gela asks her if she wants to join, Clarisse looks up with a confused expression on her face, looks left, looks right, looks at Gela again.

"Me?"

[sprent]

Gela feels a tiny tug at the heart strings in response, oh, aw, and nods enthusiastically, "Yes, you. What, are you spoken for?"

By who... is the joke, as it's very subdued in here. To emphasise her point, she slaps the spot of table across from her, clearly gesturing for Clarisse to sit. Noose, making sure he has not been forgotten, starts to lick her palm to get the grease off and it twists Gela's expression instantly, loosing a snicker.

[laruetheday]

“Uh, no.”

But the woman just slapped the table, and almost like she’s been ordered to, Clarisse stands and moves herself and her food over to the spot across from Gela.

Oh, there’s a dog under there. She’s weirdly thankful that dogs exist in this universe. They tend to like her, and they’re a familiar touchstone for her. Not even thinking about it, she reaches over to give Noose a scratch behind the ears.

“This your dog?”

[sprent]

"No. He's just a dog." Noose likes to be scratched and if Gela no longer has scraps for him he will seamlessly redirect his attention to her, leaving Gela to wipe a spitty hand off on her skirts. "I sat with him by accident, but he makes good company.

M' Gela, by the way." She holds out her hand to shake, the one she wiped. "I only got here a few days ago."

[laruetheday]

"Dogs usually do."

Clarisse makes a bit of a face, not because of the spit (who cares), but because shaking hands seems so... formal and dorky. But after a second she does offer her own hand to Gela and give it a shake. "Clarisse La Rue. Same with me."

She wiggles her fingers to draw attention to the anchor shard in her palm. Spooooky.

[sprent]

No, go on, shake. The moment she does, Gela's smile grows impossibly wider. "New, together! Good, good- I hate bein' the only new one." It's just the worst. And of course, her eyes go right to the glinting shard. If Clarisse hadn't wriggled her hand about she probably would have checked for one anyway.

"Show off. Almost feels like everybody but me got one."

[laruetheday]

Clarisse would gladly give away her anchor shard if she could, and has more than once considered the possible ways she could remove it, so the comment about being a show off has her wrinkling her nose in annoyance.

"Why don't you have one?" That's not fair.

[sprent]

"Dunno." Propping her elbows back up on the table, she leans in conspiratorially, "Did you get it because you can use magic?"

Because every rifter she has met so far, can!

[laruetheday]

"Oh."

It hadn't occurred to her before now, but maybe Gela's right. Not every other rifter she's met has seemed like they can use magic, but that doesn't necessarily mean they can't. It's not like Clarisse herself walks around bragging about it. (She just brags about other shit.)

"Yeah, maybe." Something to consider.

[sprent]

Ah ha. Gela's eyes brighten- she's realised, by now, that even though magic scares her she'd rather know about it than not have any idea. It's better to know who can use it and how, so she can plan accordingly.

"What can you do, then." She's already heard tales of shifting and throwing weapons with perfect accuracy- what do you have for her, Clarisse?

[laruetheday]

Clarisse is eating again (she saves a scrap for the dog, too, she's not a monster), and her mouth is still full when she answers.

"I can call down curses on weapons. And I used to be able to summon the dead, but it doesn't work here." She has a theory on why, but she doesn't want to say it out loud.

[sprent]

"Oh," is all that Gela can think to say, and then she smiles at her untouched forkful, and listens to Noose chewing something underneath of the table. She shouldn't have asked. She scoops food into her mouth, and after chewing, swallowing, she goes, "Where did you say you came here from, again?"

[laruetheday]

Clarisse would have to be blind not to see the reaction. It's plain on Gela's face. Well, is she supposed to feel bad about it? She doesn't. Gela asked her a question; she answered it.

"I didn't. I'm from Arizona." She's gonna go out on a limb here and assume that Gela doesn't know what that is. But, hey, Clarisse doesn't know shit about this world, either, so they're even. "And you?"

[sprent]

A much safer topic of conversation. She clutches it, firmly. "Never heard of it. If I could go there someday, what would I want to go and look at first?"

Tourist perspective, you understand. "I'm from Nevarra. I'm guessin' you haven't heard of it either."

[laruetheday]

Clarisse shakes her head, sucks some grease off her thumb. There are certain places in this world that seem to get namedropped more often, but Nevarra is new.

"The Grand Canyon, probably," is what she decides on after a few seconds of thought. The other places coming to mind are also parks, so why not go with the biggest one? "It's exactly what it sounds like."

She waits, figuring that Gela will tout Nevarra's most famous tourist attraction right back.

[sprent]

She will be waiting forever, and Gela, in the meantime, is nodding enthusiastically. “A grand canyon… never seen one of those before. I’d love to go and see it. Though I should probably finish seein’ the rest of Thedas first?”

There is much more yet to go, after all. “Stayin’ in the Gallows is the longest time I’ll have spent in one place in years.”

[laruetheday]

"Why?"

If Clarisse sounds kind of judgmental, it's because she... is. "Why would you stay here?"

Gela's obviously not a rifter. She can go anywhere she wants. People aren't going to give her shit about it.

[sprent]

“Because I want to help,” Gela says, lifting a shoulder, “in the war. And Riftwatch is the place to do that, if you don’t wish to have a finger in the Divine’s pie.” Which she obviously does not, thanks!

Curiously, “You haven’t even been anywhere else, and you think I should leave?”

[laruetheday]

A shrug. "Maybe. I don't know what other places here are like. All I know is I fell out of a hole in the sky and I can't get back home."

She's not a prisoner. Like, everybody has made it clear that her being here—here here, in the Gallows—is voluntary. But it still feels like being trapped, when her only other option is to strike out alone in some world she's never heard of before.

[sprent]

“That’s fair,” Gela amends, loading up her fork again with a silent note for herself: just because you don’t want to go back home, doesn’t mean everybody else is the same. “But Kirkwall is nicer. And it’ll suit you better than– Orlais would, I think.

And if you ever want to know more, I’ve done a lot of travel, and I like to answer questions.” A wink, before popping her fork into her mouth again.

[laruetheday]

"Kay," Clarisse says, aiming to sound less interested than she really is. "Let's start with why Kirkwall would suit me better than Orlais would."

What! People bring up Orlais a lot, that's all.

[sprent]

Hahaha. "Orlais only suits the people who were born there," Gela says. She doesn't sound disparaging at all, more like she's parroting the information from somebody trusted, somebody she usually agrees with, "Everybody there is either rich, or tryin' very hard to be. They are interested in the arts, and ownin' things, and not much else.

You don't strike me as that kind of person, serah. That's all."

[laruetheday]

"So you don't think I'm rich or interested in the arts and owning things."

This is a trap, because Clarisse isn't rich and isn't interested in the arts, but she does like to own things if the things are cool and make her seem cool by association.

[sprent]

"No," Gela says confidently, "I think that you like runnin' about and bein' on the loose and doin' whatever you want. Like me."

See? "That's why we'll make good friends."

[laruetheday]

Clarisse laughs, partly because—because Gela's got her pinned down, and yet also not at all. It's complicated. She is that person, but she's also the girl who wakes up at sunrise to train with her spear every day, no matter what. Who used to yell at her siblings to straighten their lines or take a knee or lock shields. Sometimes she doesn't know how she can be both at the same time.

The laughter is also partly because of the way Gela announces that they'll be friends. It reminds her, in a way, of how she'd become friends with Silena. There hadn't been another option.

"We will?"