player plot | when my time comes around, pt 2

[cozen]

WHO: Anyone who didn't die here.
WHAT: A sad week.
WHEN: Approx Solas 21-30
WHERE: Granitefell, the Gallows, wherever else you want.
NOTES: A second log for this plot. Additional posts/logs will cover the time travel/fix-it components—this one is for the time period where no one knows that's a possibility.

Those who fly out to Granitefell arrive a few hours after dawn to find a smoldering gravesite and fewer than twenty living souls, Riftwatch's five included. The survivors have done what they can in the intervening hours, but there's still work to be done to tend to wounds, move the bodies—especially the delicate ones—and help the remaining villagers, mostly children, build pyres to see to their own dead before they're relocated somewhere safer. Somewhere with roofs that aren't collapsed or still lightly burning.

Carts to carry Riftwatch's dead won't arrive for some time afterward, and bringing them back takes just as long. It's a few days before they're returned to the Gallows, preserved from decay as best everyone could manage but nonetheless in poor shape from the battle. Pyres are an Andrastian tradition for a reason—to prevent possession—but burials and mummification aren't so unheard of that anyone will be barred from seeing to their loved ones as they see fit.

Before, during, and after any funerary rites, there are absences. Empty beds, empty offices, voices missing from the crystals, pancakes missing from Sundays. Belongings that need to be sorted and letters that need to be written. And, perhaps most pressingly, work that still needs to be done, including the work left behind by those who can no longer follow through on their own projects or tie up their own loose ends, as the world and its war keep moving steadily onward as if nothing happened at all.

Comments

[deuselfmachina]

His eyes are momentarily glassy, wide, but a rapid blink later—

"D'accord," he says, dusting off his hands, mouth twinging aside. His palms are covered in soot and grime, so he smears a little more on the sides of his pants as he carefully picks his way back out of the collapsed wreck of a house. Up closer, there are no clear and visible injuries—a scrape on his hand, maybe, but no obvious source for the blood about his face, no peeking bandages.

Florent then sketches a look towards the more focused gathering of efforts. Not too closely, of course. "How long until we can leave?"

[sprent]

"We're nearly done."

Gela actually has no idea, but she doesn't think that she could possibly say otherwise. It feels mean even dragging him along to look for toys in the rubble of burnt houses. When he looks out toward where the wagons sit, slowly bending underneath the weight of the dead, she touches his arm. Hesitantly first, then she squeezes.

"... Are you okay?"

Stupid question, but.

[deuselfmachina]

That gains a laugh. Short, somehow both dry and watery, too quiet to be considered harsh, impulsive smile louder than the sound.

"No," Florent doesn't mind saying, looking to her. A quick and bright smile dulls, some, and his hand goes to hers on his arm, absent mindedly transferring sooty smudges from his palm to her knuckles in a clasping over.

Pat-pat. "But I haven't been hurt. Isn't that incredible? I think everyone else was at least hurt."

[sprent]

Gela wants to cry looking at him. It's quite hard not to, her eyes growing filmy with oncoming tears, when he puts his hand on hers and leaves it there.

"I'm glad you weren't hurt, friend." She gives his arm another squeeze, punctuating it. Her voice is as steady as she can make it be. "But it's a terrible shock. And I think you should be gentle. To yourself, if you could, or I can do it."

[deuselfmachina]

There's the danger of mutual reflection, like when two mirrors face each other and make each other cry. Florent flicks his attention forwards and down, although he maintains that point of contact between them as they go.

Quiet, for a few steps, before he says, "I hid," like he is confessing something terrible.

[sprent]

They walk again, Gela lifting her other hand to touch fingertips to the corners of eyes. God, if she starts now she won't stop. She takes a deep breath in, trying to put a cap on it.

"That's what I would have done," is meant to be reassuring, here. "I can't hold a sword. I would have hid too."