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Entry tags:
- ! open,
- ! player plot,
- bastien,
- benedict quintus artemaeus,
- derrica,
- ellie,
- fifi mariette,
- florent vascarelle,
- gela,
- james flint,
- julius,
- loxley,
- matthias,
- mobius,
- petrana de cedoux,
- redvers keen,
- stephen strange,
- tsenka abendroth,
- vanya orlov,
- viktor,
- wysteria de foncé,
- yseult,
- { peter parker },
- { tony stark }
player plot | when my time comes around, pt 2
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.
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.
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.
i
She tries to put it aside, won't look at faces. She works diligently, quickly, and pretends she is home, in Cumberland, lifting up heavy rolls of fabric. The bodies start to blur together. It feels like she's been doing this for hours.
To Nina, she calls out, calm as anything (too calm, brown eyes open wide, a fine trembling in her hands that she'll say is from the lifting). "Hello – can you help me, here?"
Her partner had to take a break.
no subject
"Yes," she says. Her own manner is steady. Not exactly calm, because her brow is furrowed, and her mouth is pinched, but - Steady.
"I can walk backwards," she says as she grips the body under the armpits, "you walk forwards." It's just like lifting fabric, truly, the weight less an issue than the awkward dimensions of this object that used to be a woman. "Are you ready?"
no subject
Together, they lift her. Gela is grateful to Nina for choosing to walk backwards, it means she has an additional reason to keep from looking down. Somebody has to look where they're going as they make their way toward the second cart.
The first is full.
"Thank you," she adds, faintly. "I think we're nearly done."
Please. Please, let it be nearly done.
no subject
She looks beyond Gela, once they've lifted that body into the cart, and sees what's next. It's - a couple of kids, dead kids - "You've earned a break," Nina says, forcing a smile onto her face and turning her gaze to Gela. "Go get some water." (Because Gela looks like this next grim delivery might shatter her.)
no subject
"... It isn't always like this."
Smoking battlefields, dead bodies.
no subject
"Come on." Nina holds out her hand to Gela. "We can both go."
no subject
"Thank you. I'm sorry, but I don't remember your name."